The Common Good

by Robert B. Reich

Copyright © 2018

Contents

Contents read Chapter 10 on 7/23/2023 started from beginning on 8/8/2023; finished 8/15/2023 Reich, Robert B.. The Common Good . Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Introduction

Introduction read 8/8-9/2023 Reich, Robert B.. The Common Good (p. 3). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Yet our civic life—as citizens in our democracy, participants in our economy, managers or employees of companies, and members or leaders of organizations—seems to have sharply deteriorated. What we have lost, I think, is a sense of our connectedness to each other and to our ideals—the America that John F. Kennedy asked that we contribute to.

Starting in the late 1970s, Americans began talking less about the common good and more about self-aggrandizement. The shift is the hallmark of our era: from the “Greatest Generation” to the “Me Generation,” from “we’re all in it together” to “you’re on your own.” In 1977, motivational speaker Robert Ringer wrote a book that reached the top of the New York Times best-seller list entitled Looking Out for # 1. It extolled the virtues of selfishness to a wide and enthusiastic audience. The 1987 film Wall Street epitomized the new ethos in the character Gordon Gekko and his signature line, “Greed, for lack of a better word, is good.”

The past five decades have also been marked by growing cynicism and distrust toward all of the basic institutions of American society—government, the media, corporations, big banks, police, universities, charities, re...

pervasive sense that the system as a whole is no longer wo...

Whether we call ourselves Democrats or Republicans, liberals or conservatives, we share many of the same anxieties and feel much of the same distrust. We have nonetheless been cleaved into warring ideological tribes, and tribes within those tribes. Some of us have even been seduced by demagogues and conspiracy theorists. We seem to be a long way from when John F. Kennedy asked that Americans contribute to the well-being of all. We no longer even discuss what we owe one another as members of the same society.

As I write this, I am now a septuagenarian and Donald Trump is president. In many ways Trump epitomizes what has gone wrong. But as I hope to make clear, Trump is not the cause. He is a consequence—the logical outcome of what has unfolded over many years. His election was itself propelled by widespread anxieties, and distrust toward our political and economic system. Say what you want about him, Trump has at least brought us back to first principles. Some presidents, like Ronald Reagan, got us talking about the size and role of government. Trump has got us talking about democracy versus tyranny. Some presidents, like Bill Clinton, invited a discussion of how we can make the most of ourselves. Trump, by dint of his pugnacious character and the divisiveness he has fueled, raises the question of what connects us, of what we hold in common. Hence, this book.

Is there a common good that still binds us together as Americans? That it’s even necessary to ask shows how far we’ve strayed. Today, some think we’re connected by the whiteness of our skin, or our adherence to Christianity, or the fact that we were born in the United States. I believe we’re bound together by the ...

My hope is that this book provokes a discussion of the good we have had in common, what has happened to it, and what we might do to restore it. Perhaps this book can even provide a means for people with opposing views to debate these questions civilly. My goal is not that we all agree on the common good. It is that we get into the habit and practice of thinking ...

I should clarify from the start what this book is not. It is not about communism or socialism, although in this fractious era I wouldn’t be surprised if the word “common” in the title causes some people to assume it is. It is not a book about what progressives or Democrats or Republicans ought to do to win elections, what messages they should convey, or policies they should propose. There is already quite enou...

It is a book about what we owe one another as members of the same society—or at least what we did owe one another more than a half century ago when I heard John F. Kennedy’s challenge. It is about the good we once had in common—and, if we are to ge...

PART I What Is the Common Good?

CHAPTER 1 Shkreli

CHAPTER 1 Shkreli read 8/9/2023

Months after he bought the rights, Shkreli raised its price by over 5,000 percent, from $13.50 a pill to $750.

I chose to begin with Martin Shkreli because his story typifies what has gone wrong.

In all these ways, Martin Shkreli defies what might be called “the common good.” But, I ask you, how different is Martin Shkreli from other figures who dominate American life today, even at the highest rungs?

The idea of “the common good” was once widely understood and accepted in America. After all, the U.S. Constitution was designed for “We the people” seeking to “promote the general welfare”—not for “me the selfish jerk seeking as much wealth and power as possible.” During the Great Depression of the 1930s and World War II, Americans faced common perils that required us to work together for the common good, and that good was echoed in Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms”—freedom of speech, of worship, from want, and from fear. The common good animated many of us—both white and black Americans—to fight for civil rights and voting rights in the 1960s. It inspired America to create the largest and most comprehensive system of public education the world had ever seen. And it moved many of us to act against the injustice of the Vietnam War, and others of us to serve bravely in that besotted conflict.

Yet the common good is no longer a fashionable idea.

CHAPTER 2 What Good Do We Have in Common?

CHAPTER 2 What Good Do We Have in Common? read 8/9/2023

THE COMMON GOOD consists of our shared values about what we owe one another as citizens who are bound together in the same society—the norms we voluntarily abide by, and the ideals we seek to achieve.

A concern for the common good—keeping the common good in mind—is a moral attitude. It recognizes that we’re all in it together. If there is no common good, there is no society.

Ayn Rand,

Robert Nozick

it logically followed

When Rand and Nozick propounded these ideas, they seemed quaint if not far-fetched. Anyone who lived through the prior half century

had witnessed our interdependence, through depression and war. After the war we had used our seemingly boundless prosperity to finance all sorts of public goods—schools and universities, a national highway system, and health care for the aged and poor (Medicare and Medicaid). We rebuilt war-torn Europe. We sought to guarantee the civil rights and voting rights of African Americans. We opened doors of opportunity to women. Of course there was a common good. We were living it.

But then, starting in the late 1970s, Rand’s views gained ground. She became the intellectual godmother of modern-day American conservatism, especially its libertarian strand. President Donald Trump once said he identified with Rand’s character Howard Roark, in The Fountainhead, an architect so upset that a housing p...

circle were influenced by Rand. Atlas Shrugged was said to be the favorite book of Rex Tillerson, Trump’s secretary of state. Rand also had a major influence on Mike Pompeo, Trump’s CIA chief. Trump’s first nominee for secretary of labor, Andrew Puzder, said he spent much of his free time reading Rand. The Republican...

Rand fans are also found at some of the high reaches of American business. Uber’s founder and former CEO, Travis Kalanick, has also described himself as a Rand follower. He applied many of her ideas to Uber’s code of values. Kalanick even u...

I believe Rand, Nozick, and their more modern incarnations are dangerously wrong. Not only does the common good exist, but it is essential for a society to function. Without voluntary adherence to a set of common notions about right and wrong, daily life would be insufferable. We would be living in a jungle where only the strongest, cleverest, and most wary could hope to survive. This would not be a society. It wouldn’t even be a civilization, because there would be no civility at its core.

Americans sharply disagree about exactly what we want for America or for the world. But we must agree on basic principles—such as how we deal with our disagreements, the importance of our democratic institutions, our obligations toward the law, and our respect for the truth—if we’re to participate in the same society. It’s our agreement to these principles that connects us, not agreement about where these

principles lead. Edmund Burke, the eighteenth-century British statesman and political thinker who is the philosophical founder of modern conservatism, saw the common good as “the general bank and capital of ...

To take the most basic example, we depend on people’s widespread and voluntary willingness to abide by laws—not just the literal letter of laws bu...

The followers of Ayn Rand who glorify the “free market” and denigrate “government” are fooling themselves if they think the “free market” gets them off this Shkreli hook. The market is itself a human creation—a set of laws and rules that define what can be owned and traded, and how. Government doesn’t “intrude” on the “free market.” It creates the market. Government officials—legislators, administrators, regulators, judges, and heads of state—must decide on and enforce such laws and rules in order for a market to exist. Without norms for the common good, officials have no way to make these decisions other than their own selfish interests.

Over the years, public officials have decided that you cannot own human beings, nuclear bombs, recipes, or the human genome. You’re not permitted to buy sex, babies, or votes. You can’t sell dangerous drugs, unsafe foods, or deceptive Ponzi schemes. You mustn’t force other people to sell or buy anything from you. By the same token, you have to pay your debts, unless you are allowed to reorganize them under bankruptcy (even then, you’re allowed to use bankruptcy only under certain conditions). Other market rules cover everything from what can be copyrighted or patented to whether contracts can require arbitration of disputes, whether specific proposed mergers and acquisitions create too much market power, and whether employment contracts can prevent employees from working for a competitor.

Hopefully, government officials base these sorts of decisions on their notion...

Truth itself is a common good. Through history, one of the first things tyrants have done is attack independent truth-tellers—philosophers (Plato), scientists (Galileo), and the free and independent press—thereby confusing the public and substituting their own “facts.” Without a shared truth, democratic deliberation is hobbled. “Alternative facts” are an open invitation to what George Orwell described as “doublethink,” in which the public is so confused it cannot recall the past, assess the present, or contemplate the future. As poet and philosopher

Václav Havel put it, “If the main pillar of the system is living a lie, then it is not surprising that the fundamental threat to it is living in truth.”

Yet in a world populated by people like Martin Shkreli, we could not trust anyone to be truthful if they could do better for themselves by lying. We couldn’t count on any claim by sellers of any product or service. Internet-based “reputational ratings” would be of little value because Shkreli raters would be easily bribed. Transparency would be impossible because Shkrelis would hide the truth and mess with all indicators of it. Journalists would shade their reports for their own selfish advantage, taking bribes from advertisers or currying favor with politicians. Teachers would offer lessons to s...

selfish motives. The truth would degenerate into a cacophony of comp...

The common good is especially imperiled when a president of the United States alleges that millions of unauthorized immigrants voted illegally, when there’s no evidence they did; that the news media cover up terrorism by Islamic extremists, when nothing suggests they do;

that his predecessor in office illegally wiretapped him, when no facts back up such a claim; and that his journalistic critics peddle “fake news,” without evidence of such duplicity. Such baseless claims mislead and confuse the public. They erode trust. They fuel conspiracy theories. They can lead to a vicious cycle in which opportunists use the prevailing distrust to propagate more lies, for their own purposes. Alex Jones, best known for suggesting 9/11 was an inside job and the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was “completely fake,” has said, “The public doesn’t have any trust in the system. They believe the social contract is broken”—which is exactly what has enabled people like Jones to gain influence.

History has shown that the more commitment to the common good there is within a society, the more willing are its inhabitants to accept disruptions that inevitably accompany new ideas, technologies, opportunities, trade, and immigration. That’s because these inhabitants are more likely to trust that the disruptions won’t unfairly burden

them, and that they stand to gain more than lose by them. This sort of virtuous circle is more likely in societies that promote political equality and equal opportunity, because people who have an equal voice in setting the rules and an equal chance to get ahead naturally feel more assured that their concerns will be addressed and that changes can work to their advantage.

But when that trust is undermined or was never there to begin with, disruptive change can generate widespread anger and fear, and even political upheaval. Under these circumstances, virtuous circles can reverse themselves and become vicious cycles. If those who feel left behind view the system as rigged against them, they can push open societies into becoming closed and autocratic. Where a sense of common good is lacking, dem...

address the traumas that made them angry in the first place. Societies experiencing economic stresses and widening inequalities are particularly vulnerable to tyrants intent on undermining democratic institutions by lying repeatedly, accusing critics of conspiring against “the peo...

If we are losing our national identity, it is not because we are becoming browner or speak in more languages than we once did. It is because we are losing our sense of the common good.

But we are not in a zero-sum game with the rest of the world. Our common good is inextricably bound up in the good of the rest of the planet. America understood this explicitly in the decades after World War II when we helped rebuild war-torn Europe and Japan. To be sure, at least since the end of World War II, America has sought to be the