Imagine you're a specimen from a highly advanced race of super intelligent beings populating a planet that is far away from Earth.
You have an idea of the
complicated history that Earthlings have gone through during thousands of years
as they tried to find a formula by which to govern themselves peacefully.
Unfortunately, they never made sufficient progress to end the chicaneries that
flare up from time to time and lead to wars that claim numerous lives. Being a
scholar interested in the culture of all life forms in the galaxy, you came to
Earth to study the governance difficulties that human beings seem unable to
overcome.
You were greeted with open
arms by the Earthlings that proved to be friendlier to aliens than they
normally are to each other. Having consulted with a handful of the Earth's
elite thinkers, you decide that the best way to conduct your study is to invite
to your place the boss of a company and one of his workers from each of liberal
democratic America, and the People's Republic of China.
You all sit comfortably around
the room with you in the middle, two of them on your left, and two on your
right. You identify them as American boss, American worker, Chinese boss, and
Chinese worker. Each of you faces a monitor, and you have beside you the
computer that controls them. You turn on the computer to show on all the
monitors an article under the title: “As freedom retreats worldwide, US must
show leadership.” It was written by Quin Hillier and published on March 3, 2021
in the Washington Examiner.
The guests read the article,
and are ready to express their opinions. You ask the question you want each of
them to answer. It goes like this: What do you want your government to do
ideally?
The American boss says he
wants to be free to do anything he wants within the law, while living his
private life quietly and running his business the best way he knows how. This
is the way he can produce the maximum amount of goods and services, thus enrich
himself and in the process, enrich the nation and every citizen in it. In
addition, while living his life and running his business without interference,
he expects the government to provide him with the best security possible
against domestic and foreign mischief makers. And he wants it done at a minimum
cost, being a taxpayer that pays for all government services.
Answering the same question,
the Chinese boss says he wants to run his life as freely as possible as long as
he does not infringe on the rights of others. When it comes to running his
business, which is a concern that impacts the public, he recognizes that the
government has a role to play in regulating him and all the other businesses
because you cannot have a free for all wealth creating operation without an
overarching supervision, any more than you can have safe traffic without
traffic lights and a traffic cop. In short, someone must be in charge and
accountable in the same way that the boss of a corporation is in charge of running
the business while accountable to the shareholders and the public.
The American worker now gets
to answer the question. He says that to him, working means exchanging his labor
for a salary. He acquired what he knows by going to school, training, doing
apprenticeship, gaining various experiences and doing constant upgrades to his
skills. He does not care whom he works for as long as he has a job. He has a
family to provide for, and wants a sustained income whether he is working or
between jobs. He wants uninterrupted healthcare for the family as a right of
citizenship whether or not he can pay for it. Other than that, he does not care
which team governs the country as long as it is competent.
Finally, the Chinese worker
gets to speak. He says he is aware of the adage that says two heads are better
than one. This makes it so that a thousand heads are better than two. What this
means ultimately, is that central planning of the economy by a small number of
heads, cannot be as good as free enterprise which allows for a large number of
heads to plan and run the economy. However, he cannot ignore the reality that
no modern enterprise can operate, let alone thrive outside the structure of a
modern society. This means that by its organization, society is a de facto
stakeholder in every enterprise. For this reason, he wants to see private
ownership replaced by the public-private ownership of all big businesses.
Puzzled, you remind your
guests that the Quin Hillier article shown on the monitor, is about freedom.
So, how does freedom factor in this discussion? The American boss says that the
exercise of freedom does not depend on something the government gives you or
takes away from you. It depends on what your parents instilled in you since
childhood. It also depends on how you were treated in the community where you
grew up, by the extended family, the neighbors, the schools and places of
worship you attended. To a lesser extent, it also depends on your treatment by
the bosses for whom you worked. All of that shapes your character, thus remains
responsible for how you have developed and how you got to be saddled with the
hang-ups, fears and idioms you choose to express or censor in your daily life.
The other three guests agree
with that statement one hundred percent, and say they have nothing more to add.
Done with your study of the human culture, you fly back to your home planet and write a report which says that everyone on Earth fundamentally knows what freedom means to them except those, like Quin Hillier, who write about it and wish to impose it on those that have no time to listen to their nonsense.