Some Tough Questions on Balance

I often find myself torn between the extremes of full government intervention and absolute private individual activity when thinking about issues related to distributive justice and the allocation of resources. Like many others, I have come to understand the major mistakes and faultiness of Communist systems. It seems to me that these systems collapsed primarily because they (1) tried to over-regulate human economic (and other) behavior that is often too hard to predict and constrain, and (2) didn’t offer the right incentives towards individual progress and development, namely, failing to reward ingenuity and creativity and failing to instill a sense of personal responsibility in contributions to society. But I often find myself questioning the merits of a global capitalism that has seemingly gone haywire and which has in many instances failed to produce the foreseen or aspired promises.

There is no doubt in my mind that capitalism is one of the most logical systems of organizing human behavior towards efficiency and prosperity. But what if capitalistic attitudes and conducts generates externalities that grossly outweigh any foreseeable benefits? What if private individual activity, while assuming that it is undertaken to promote self-interest, instead leads one to get lost in, or confused by, self-interest so much that perspectives and observations on where we stand and where we want (or need) to go are no longer reached with the clarity required to move towards progress, development, prosperity, or even sustainability and survival? What if, as a result, multiple market failures converge to the point where what once seemed to be balance and level-headedness vanish? What if personal and social responsibility are forsaken for profits while the whole gamut of political, social, and economic systems have been so heavily titled towards free-market philosophy end of the spectrum that checks and balances set up in these very same systems fail to reasonably protect the average individual and the society as a whole? What if short-term thinking has so heavily predominated over more longer-term considerations that we have actively made so many mistakes and failed to take so many crucial actions that we have set ourselves on a terrible course that may not be reversible and we have realized it only too late?

I guess what I am pondering here is: what is the right mix of political and socio-economic philosophy and activity, and how can we reach it? With the world seemingly in a state of increased polarizations of wealth, access to opportunities, influence, power, ideas/positions, and so on, these questions take on more significance. These questions may also be significant in light of the recent financial meltdowns and the propelling of other calamities, quagmires, and conflicts facing us. Their answers and resolutions will certainly have far-reaching implications whether these implications become visible or not.