People Feel That They Have A Right To Be Treated In A Way That Meets Their Reasonable Expectations
When people say they have a right to something they mean that they feel they are entitled to laws requiring others to treat them in a way that they think is fair.
David Grace (www.DavidGraceAuthor.com)
The Origin Of Tribes
In my column The Concept Of Government Is An Outgrowth Of Our Genetic, Tribal Instincts I talked about how humans form tribes because:
(1) we’re tribal animals, and
(2) we know there is strength in numbers.
I said that tribes consolidate, and with greater size they acquire a more formalized structure.
Leaders of tribes were first picked by physical strength, then through family wealth and power, until, eventually, leaders were chosen by the consent of or by appointment by some or all of the tribe’s members.
As more of the tribes’ members got a say in picking the leaders, various tribal groups saw that the power to pick leaders could be used to advance their interests.
Until that time, the rich and powerful members ran the tribe for their own benefit. As more members obtained the ability to have a say in the selection of the tribe’s leaders, those members realized that the tribe could be used to curtail the power of the rich and powerful and give more power to themselves.
Tribes Change From Enabling The Rich & Powerful To Controlling The Rich & Powerful
And that scared the shit out of them. “What, I can’t screw over whoever I like any more just because I want to? How dare those losers tell me I can’t screw them over anymore!”
In response to the exercise of tribal power over their activities, the rich and powerful (and those who thought they would someday join the ranks of the rich and powerful) evolved a political theory whose foundation premise was:
“Nobody can use the power of the tribe to tell anybody they can’t get away with whatever they can get away with, except murder and robbery and the like, because, otherwise, rich and powerful people might start murdering and stealing from each other and we can’t have that because that would put ME in danger.”
The Rise Of The Law Of The Jungle Philosophy
Their invented First Principle was: “Everyone has an innate right to be able to do whatever they can get away with and the tribe cannot make any rules to stop us.”
The rich and powerful, and those who expected to become rich and powerful, wanted to formalize this Law Of The Jungle society. Under their rules, murder and robbery aside, the tribe/government would be forbidden from using its power to stop anyone from doing anything they could get away with.
So, on one extreme we had this push for a return to a Law of the Jungle society.
Push-Back Against The Law Of The Jungle Society
Of course, the people on the top who had always run things and had accumulated almost all the wealth represented only a relatively small percentage of the membership in the tribe. There were lots of other people who had been on the receiving end of the Law of the Jungle society for all of history. There were a large number of sheep out there in contrast to the relatively small number of wolves.
The sheep wanted to use the power of the tribe to stop from being wolf food any more. They invented an opposite theory of how the tribe should work, namely that every member of the tribe deserved an equal share of wealth and power just because they were members of the tribe.
Building on that premise, their First Principle was:
“All wealth springs from the power of the Tribe and therefore all wealth belongs equally to every member of the tribe.”
So, now we had two extremes of political theory about how the now large, complicated and powerful tribe should operate.
While in an industrialized society the Law Of The Jungle was great for the those already in power and for those individuals with exceptional talent or intelligence, it resulted in a crap life for at least the bottom half of the population as wealth and power became increasingly concentrated in a relatively few hands.
On the other end of the scale, the Everybody Shares Everything society was doomed from the start by the basic fact of human nature, namely, that you need to motivate people to work really hard and the Everybody Shares Everything rule kills that motivation. The End.
The Reasonable Expectations Society
As industrialized societies, the Western Democracies have more or less operated under a modified philosophy that falls between the two extremes: The Rule Of Reasonable Expectations
The Rule of Reasonable Expectations says that the tribe’s rules should give the members a society where they are treated the way reasonable people think that they should be treated, a society that works in a way that reasonable people think is a fair for them.
Law Of The Jungle………. Reasonable Expectations………. Everybody Shares
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Specific Rules Implement General Policies
This Rule of Reasonable Expectations sounds vague in a world where lots of people want black and white rules. The people who believe that you can run an industrial society according to black and white rules have no common sense.
The fact is that the world and the human beings in it are too diverse and too varied to be run by a few, simple, black and white rules.
The best you can do is state a general policy of how you want things to work and depend on intelligent people acting reasonably to craft specific rules that promote conduct that advances the spirit of that general policy.
Black And White Statements Are Policies, Not Rules
For example, let’s take the rule “Thou shalt not kill.”
That’s a very straightforward black and white rule — You can’t kill people.
But wait. What if some crazy guy with a machete is running at you intending to cut off your head?
Well, sure, then you can pull out a gun and kill him. That’s an exception to the rule.
What if you’re in the army and you run into a bunch of guys who have invaded your country? OK, you can kill them. Another exception.
What if you’re in a bomber flying over a city in a country that’s at war with your country? Yeah, sure, you can drop a bomb that will kill thousands of them, many of whom are little children, even babies in the cradle.
So, much for your black and white rule, “Thou shalt not kill.” It doesn’t work as a black and white rule. It’s a hoped-for, general policy that does not automatically apply to all situations.
People expect to have the right to speak their minds. They expect to have freedom of speech and of the press. To protect that right we made the black and white rule:
“Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press . . . .”
Except if your speech is a lie. There are laws that make it illegal for you to tell lies about me. So, that’s an exception.
You can print what you like, but not pictures of naked children. Another exception. And not stuff other people printed first. That’s copyright infringement. Another exception. And not government secrets. More exceptions.
Now it’s looking like freedom of speech and of the press are not really black and white rules after all. They’re an expression of a general policy subject to exceptions to meet people’s reasonable expectations about how free speech and a free press ought to work.
Yes, we don’t want people running around killing other people, but we expect that if someone’s trying to kill us we have the right to kill them first. That’s our reasonable expectation.
We want the right to voice our opinions and print our ideas, but we have a reasonable expectation that people won’t be allowed to publish lies about us.
The central problem with the Law of the Jungle is that it creates a society where people are allowed to do things that violate most other people’s reasonable expectations about how their tribe should work and about how they have a right to be treated.
What Is A Reasonable Expectation?
What’s the difference between a reasonable and an unreasonable expectation?
If two reasonable parties had exactly equal bargaining power, each had an equal desire to make a deal, and each had the equal ability to walk away from an unsatisfactory proposal, on what terms might those two reasonable parties finally agree?
Those equal-bargaining power, negotiated terms between two reasonable parties would reflect people’s reasonable expectations of how they should be treated in that situation.
Sheep have a reasonable expectation that wolves won’t be allowed to run free and eat them anytime they want a snack. Complain about that all you like, but that’s how they feel and you’re not going to be able to convince them that they’re wrong.
Most people think that rich and powerful organizations shouldn’t be allowed to deceive us, rip us off, gouge us, or treat us unfairly. Sure, people deserve to be able to make a reasonable profit, but there’s a big difference between making a reasonable, cost-plus profit and a monopoly profit.
You go to work and a machine crushes your hand. You have a reasonable expectation that since you were injured on the job that your employer should pay your medical bills. Most people think that the Law Of The Jungle employer’s policy of “Get lost. You’re on your own” isn’t the way an injured-on-the-job worker should be treated.
Most people’s reasonable expectation is that a massive corporation shouldn’t be able to dump toxic waste into the river even though the Law Of The Jungle philosophy says they can.
Most people’s reasonable expectation is that you don’t have the right to price a drug that people need in order to live at an amount that’s thousands of times greater than what it cost you make that drug just because you can.
The Problems With A Law Of The Jungle Society
The fundamental problem with a Law of the Jungle society is that it operates counter to people’s reasonable expectations of what they think is fair treatment.
Other problems with a Law of the Jungle society:
- When people’s reasonable expectations about how things should work are not met, it causes them to resent the tribe and scheme to bring it down. Where do you think the communist and socialist notions came from in the first place?
- Power and wealth concentrate in a feedback loop which results in a Law of the Jungle society becoming a stratified society with a few big winners and lots of impoverished losers. The unchecked concentration of power and wealth leads to an even greater concentration of power and wealth and an unhealthy society.
- The greater the impoverished percentage of the population becomes, the higher the level of crime, drugs and alcohol abuse.
- When almost nothing is against the law, people are encouraged to do anything to get money. The lack of rules destroys respect for any rules and encourages even more abusive, anything-goes, destructive behavior
An Alternative Approach To Meeting People’s Reasonable Expectations
Tribal rules aren’t the only way to achieve a society that meets people’s reasonable expectations. The abuses of the Law of the Jungle will decrease if the incentive for those abuses disappears. Tribal rules can be structured to limit Law of the Jungle profit incentives.
Rewards for desired behavior and a loss of incentives for bad behavior are always more effective than affirmative punishment for prohibited behavior.
The challenge is to create rules that provide an incentive to act in a way that will meet people’s reasonable expectations and that removes incentives to act in ways that violate their expectations in preference to punishing people for violating other citizens’ reasonable expectations.
– David Grace (www.DavidGraceAuthor.com)
