It”s always interesting and informative for me to read the Record-Bee”s letters to the editor. While not a true gauge of the average opinion around here, it does give me a feeling for the current zeitgeist (spirit of the times) that we live in. I think both left and right are experiencing high levels of dissatisfaction in democracy right now, but they see different origins causing the problem. The right sees the problem as government being too intrusive and overbearing, while the left sees the government as abrogating its responsibility to create a just society. On the surface they look like two diametrically opposite interpretations but the different views may have much more to do with different types of individuals viewing identical things through their own viewing prism.
If you have ever played the games of Tic-Tac-Toe and Monopoly then you will see the two opposing views. If you have played Tic-Tac-Toe more than twice then you know that any two reasonably informed people playing it can only tie. One person could be Albert Einstein and the other could be a well-trained parrot and Albert could only manage to tie the parrot. Poor Einstein! This game shows no meritocracy at all; everyone playing it gets equal results. This is how the right views government and it”s many regulations that seem to be hamstringing individual talent.
Diametrically opposite is the game of Monopoly. My experience is that it is an infuriating game. It gives the illusion of fairness, because everyone starts out with the same amount of money and no property. It is only the roll of the dice that determines your chances to acquire property and collect rent. But hidden in the chance roll of the dice you soon learn that luck at the beginning plays a disproportionate role over success toward the end. You are not likely to ever overcome your opponent”s early ownership of all the Park Place properties with your full set of Oriental Gardens properties. Early luck breeds disproportionate success later on and skill plays little part. There is never a tie and the winner takes all and everyone else loses. This is the left”s view of how things work.
In reality our government and economy lives at a moveable point on the spectrum between Tic-Tac-Toe and Monopoly. That point is best represented by the ability of individuals in society to have upward economic social mobility. Studies have shown that upward social mobility is now at its lowest point in nearly a century in this country. In fact this trend of upward social mobility has changed to downward social mobility since about 1980, when tax rates across the board were decreased on the wealthy. We have moved far on the spectrum in this country to the Monopoly model, where early luck breeds disproportionate success later on. Neither end of the spectrum is at all a desirable place to be. But I think the right, at least those who now subscribe to reducing taxes and regulation, have it completely wrong in their interpretation of what is causing our current lack of a good working democracy.
Eric Habegger
Lakeport
