We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness—That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed…
- Declaration of Independence
The right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness: sounds good to me. These rights pretty much cover the purview of government, not counting the obligation to protect other species - but that’s a subject for another day. For now we’re dealing with what governments owe their humans. First, some clarification according to my sense of these three basic rights.
The right to Life implies a duty to protect from harm. Policies that protect the right to life keep evolving in line with what’s possible and feasible. Think clean water regulations or standards of medical care.
Per the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, Liberty is “the exercise of the natural rights of every man or woman [which] has no bounds other than those that guarantee other members of society the enjoyment of these same rights” . The principle of liberty leads directly to the ideal of limited government.
The Pursuit of Happiness requires a bit more unpacking. The contemporary sense of happiness mixes "lots of positive emotions" with life satisfaction. That's too trivial, for me. I'm looking for a sense of happiness that is less about feeling good than about having a sense of meaning and purpose. As it turns out, my way of thinking about happiness is pretty close to that of the Founding Fathers.
When Thomas Jefferson penned the Mighty Declaration, happiness was more than "being in the zone" or an internal state that accompanies smiling and laughing. Happiness was frickin' virtuous! Happiness was akin to “felicity”, a sense of wellbeing that comes from fruitful labor in harmony with the world. Ok, that's not exactly a clear concept - but go with the feeling. When you’re happy, you are honoring something bigger than yourself; you are both grateful and wanting more, ploughing the fields of what life has offered. Humility and ambition – together at last!
And in the olden days, to "pursue" was akin to practice, as in to practice medicine or law. Practice makes one more disciplined, patient, knowledgeable and skillful. Practice is how we get better at something. To pursue happiness, then, is to practice the art of happiness. But practice only confers happiness when conditions allow the “feeder streams” of happiness to flow. These feeder streams of happiness include:
Agency: you are able to act on your goals
Sense of control: your actions have an intended effect
Purpose: you're motivated to achieve goals
Self-Efficacy: you're pretty sure you can do what's needed to achieve your goals
Sense of progress: you are moving forward and getting closer to your goals
Achievement: you’re able to actually achieve some of your important goals.
So how do the above considerations factor in how to run a country? Getting there! I’ll start with a story.
Years ago I visited several eastern European countries, whose economic systems were still of the Communist "command and control" variety. One thing that struck me was how sullen and disengaged the workers in these countries seemed to be. They looked depressed - just going through the motions of their jobs with zero enthusiasm. They weren’t pursuing much of anything, much less happiness. What was going on? What had squelched the spirit of these workers?
Some clues are in this sketch of working conditions in East Germany during the bad ol' days:
"In East Germany's 40 years of bureaucratic socialism, people had little chance to express initiative at work. Behavior by and within companies was highly regulated by central planning. Middle- and low-level management and workers had little input into how things were produced. Because there was no feedback via the market, there was little pressure to change things at workplace. As there was no competition with other companies, there was little incentive to develop high-level goals. The company goal was not to reach a high productivity level but to not make mistakes. Managers in the East were by and large more conventional and risk-avoidant than managers in the West, and they showed little independent thinking or achievement orientation. For these reasons, managers were not interested in workers' initiative and even imposed negative sanctions." Frese et al (1996) Personal Initiative At Work: Differences Between East and West Germany, p. 40
In bureaucratic systems like the one described above, workers are hemmed in by rules, procedures, and protocols. Going above and beyond the call of duty is not rewarded and may even be punished. There's not much workers can do to improve their situation; they're cogs in a machine, with little sense of purpose but to get through the day and avoid trouble. These conditions clog up the feeder streams of happiness.
Ok, but that was a now-discredited communist system. Wouldn’t participatory socialism be better? Probably, but not by much. True, participatory socialism would replace central planning with a more distributed system of command and control, such as industry boards and committees representing workers, consumers, suppliers, the local community, and “cause” groups such as environmentalists, job safety activists, feminists, etc. But the net effect would still zap the spirit. More generally, there would be a danger that these decision-making bodies “…would tend to represent existing ways of doing things and offer resistance to innovation” ( David Kotz, Socialism and Innovation, p. 104). System-wide resistance to innovation undermines personal initiative. Over time this type of system leads to disengaged and passive workers: yet another recipe for diminished well-being.
Ok, so government’s job is to secure the people’s right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The policy challenge is to secure each right without losing sight of the others, e.g., to protect life but not to the point of smothering liberty or undermining the pursuit of happiness. It’s a balancing act - and one that calls for a mix of caution and boldness.
Next: Translating basic rights into actual policies.
References:
Frese, M., Kring, W., Soose, A. and Zempel,J. Personal initiative at work: Differences between East and West Germany. Acad. Manage. J. 39, 37–63 (1996). doi:10.2307/256630
Kotz, David M. (2002) Socialism and Innovation. Science & Society: Vol. 66, Special Issue: Building Socialism Theoretically: Alternatives to Capitalism and the Invisible Hand, pp. 94-108. https://doi.org/10.1521/siso.66.1.94.21007