The Problem With Principles

Modern ethical philosophy fits pretty neatly into two camps, the world of Bentham and the world of Kant – the consequentialists and the deontologicalists. Bentham was concerned with the outcomes of actions – how much good or bad came out of whatever you were doing. Killing people produces lots of pain and misery, so it’s bad unless it’s for a greater good. Kant was more principled. His equation for living in the world was essentially “do unto others…” but more thought-through. Everything you do, run it through your head as if that’s the way it should always be done by everyone. If you think helping the poor is important, you need to give a few cents every time you see a real beggar.

Jane Jacobs made a compelling argument in Systems of Survival that we need different value systems (“ethical syndromes”) in different jobs – even in different parts of the day as we change roles going home from work. I’d like to take that idea and go a different direct. We should be principled in our personal lives, but consequences are about the only thing worth considering in the world of politics and policy.

A Broken Culture? The Government (Part 1)

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about James Fallows‘ twenty-three year old description of the Philippines today, “A Broken Culture.” It’s important because there’s another election around the corner, a new round a people promising an end to poverty, but the outlook is the same. Fallows argued, and was right, that the end martial law under Marcos and return to democratic rule under (recently deceased) Aquino wasn’t going to fix the underlying problems of the Philippines despite the optimism at the time.

All in all, I think I agree with Fallows. But it isn’t just a broken culture. It’s a broken economy, a broken polity, and a fractured state. I unfortunately agree that these problems seem as intractable today as they did then. I want to take a different approach than Fallows and instead of looking at what’s wrong with the Philippines, I want to look at what’s right and ask why it’s not working. The most frustrating thing about the Philippines is that it seems like it has all the right pieces when each part is viewed in isolation, but the whole of society and the polity just isn’t moving like it should.

First, let’s look at the government.