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The Need for a “Buy Human” Program – Article by Bradley Doucet

The Need for a “Buy Human” Program – Article by Bradley Doucet

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The New Renaissance HatBradley Doucet
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The Canadian government is apparently facing growing pressure to graft a Buy Canadian program onto its billions of dollars of planned infrastructure spending. That way, all those taxpayer dollars would help support employment and economic growth here at home instead of shipping it across the border and overseas. Who could object to such a well-meaning policy to prop up good, Canadian jobs?

Well, for starters, someone concerned with cost-effectiveness could raise an objection. Such a person might argue that our representatives in government have a responsibility to see that we taxpayers get our money’s worth when they, for example, decide from whom to buy the steel that will be used to build our bridges. Before raising our taxes even higher than they already are, or sinking us further into debt and saddling our kids with the bill, they should try to stretch each tax dollar as far as it’ll go. And if getting the best value for our money means buying steel from China, then that’s what they should do.

Someone who understands the general benefits of trade and specialization could also easily object to a Buy Canadian program. When we engage in voluntary exchange with other people, we do so because we expect to benefit—and the people we trade with do the same. By specializing in some form of production, we can get better at it, becoming more skilled and even finding better ways of doing things. Then, through trade, we benefit not only from our own skills and innovations, but from other people’s as well. Importantly, this dynamic holds whether our trading partners are across the street or on the other side of the planet.

On the flipside, someone who understands how harmful a trade war is to everyone concerned would have good reason to object to measures like a Buy Canadian program. All parties are losers in a trade war, as protectionist barriers beget more protectionist barriers. It’s like two imbeciles in a gunfight: one shoots himself in the foot, and his rival retaliates by shooting himself in his foot. As our economies limp along with these self-inflicted wounds, we are also in increased danger of seeing our strained relations deteriorate into actual wars, since instead of at least valuing foreigners for what we can get from them through trade, we find it easier to denigrate them as something less than human, the better to justify dropping bombs on them. If this seems farfetched, just think of how certain media outlets portray the people who are currently having bombs dropped on them.

And speaking of foreigners, someone whose concern for the well-being of his or her fellow humans doesn’t stop at an imaginary line on a map could also find a Buy Canadian program objectionable. It’s true that some people’s lives here at home are disrupted when businesses close, or when certain kinds of jobs disappear altogether from the local landscape. But the people we trade with in other countries? They’re people too, and trade benefits them just as it benefits someone in this country. Why their well-being should matter less to me because they live in a different country, I’ve never understood.

If we want to lend a hand to our neighbours who lose their jobs, we can help them transition to some other kind of work. But “we” shouldn’t keep making steel if “we” can’t make it at a competitive price anymore; instead, we should switch to doing something else, and buy our steel from people willing and able to produce it and sell it at a lower price. They in turn will buy from us the things that we are comparatively good at. And if other governments want to subsidize their steel industries—and therefore our purchases of steel—then our own governments shouldn’t compound the mistake by following suit.

Think about it: If it makes sense to Buy Canadian, then why not Buy Quebecois? Buy Montreal? Buy Mile-End? Buy Fairmount-between-St-Laurent-and-Clark? The simple fact is that global trade has made the globe richer, helping to bring us closer than we’ve ever been to eradicating extreme poverty, and allowing everyone not living under the boot heel of authoritarianism the opportunity to live a decent life. Parochialism will only make us poorer and less connected with other people around the world. Instead of Buy Canadian or Buy American programs, what we really need is a Buy Human policy, trading with whichever of our fellow human beings are offering us the best value for our money in their efforts to improve their own lives.

Bradley Doucet is a writer living in Montreal. He has studied philosophy and economics, and is currently completing a novel on the pursuit of happiness. He also is QL’s English Editor.
Now If Someone Could Just Invent Actual Reality Goggles – Article by Bradley Doucet

Now If Someone Could Just Invent Actual Reality Goggles – Article by Bradley Doucet

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The New Renaissance HatBradley Doucet
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It seems like virtual reality goggles are the hottest tech gadget at the moment. I mean, they’ve been around for a while, but I guess they’re really coming into their own. But allow me to put on my grumpy-old-man hat for a second and say that what the world could really use in 2016 and beyond are some actual reality goggles. You know, so that wearers could see reality as it actually is, instead of as they imagine or wish it to be.

The value of such a tool would be incalculable. Of course, if you were wearing a pair and looking at another pair, then you would instantly know the true value of this invention, measured in dollars, or ounces of gold if you prefer, or even (leaving out the middleman altogether) in utils of happiness. But for now, I think we can safely assume that it would be worth a lot.

For instance, say you were reading an opinion piece arguing that the minimum wage should be bumped up to $15 an hour. A little display in the upper right corner of your actual reality goggles might pop up, with a tiny graph illustrating how, as long as they are allowed to fluctuate freely, prices are determined by supply and demand. Raise the price of labour artificially with a legislated price floor, though, and the amount supplied will become greater than the amount demanded. In other words, while some workers will benefit from higher wages, others will become unemployed. This illustration might be followed by suggestions of better ways to help the less fortunate.

Or say you were watching a certain Nobel Peace Prize winner condemn the politics of fear in his State of the Union address. Your goggles might remind you that politicians of all stripes use fear to manipulate you, whether it’s fear of immigrants or fear of markets, fear of recreational drugs or fear of guns (unless held by police, soldiers, or politicians’ bodyguards). They might give you a quick lesson on how realistic different fears are, how statistically likely or unlikely they are to come true, and whether you might be exaggerating the dangers posed by immigrants, markets, drugs, or guns, while underplaying their potential benefits.

Or again, imagine that you’re wearing these goggles while seeing an ad for a really big lottery. Your goggles might point out to you that your chances of winning are infinitesimal, that you’re more likely to get hit by a bus or a lightning bolt, and that a $10-million jackpot and a $1.6-billion jackpot would be almost identically life-changing. And if they caught you nodding your head when you saw that Internet meme proposing that $1.6 billion was enough to wipe out poverty in a nation of 300 million, it would administer a mild electrical shock to your temples and send you back to primary school.

Of course, the real question is whether anyone would want to buy such a useful gadget. Do we want to see the world as it really is, or are we content to misperceive it? Are we happier believing that we are already wise and well-intentioned, or do we want to learn what kinds of actions would actually be of benefit to ourselves, our loved ones, and the wider world? As I don’t have a pair of actual reality goggles on hand to tell me the answer, your guess is as good as mine.

Bradley Doucet is a writer living in Montreal. He has studied philosophy and economics, and is currently completing a novel on the pursuit of happiness. He also is QL’s English Editor.

Giving Thanks and Looking Forward – Article by Bradley Doucet

Giving Thanks and Looking Forward – Article by Bradley Doucet

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The New Renaissance HatBradley Doucet
October 15, 2015
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Expressing gratitude, according to self-help gurus and neuroscientists alike, is a sure route to being a happier person. Thanksgiving, then, should be the happiest of all holidays—and not just because of the turkey dinner with all the fixings and the football-watching marathon. In addition to the good things this holiday brings, it also contributes to well-being by encouraging us to give thanks for the good things in our lives. And when I do stop and think about it, I am grateful for a great many things.

On a personal level, I’ve got loving and beloved friends and family, a happy and sane home life, relatively good health, and work that I find meaningful and stimulating. I grew up in an overwhelmingly French-speaking town, but went to English schools all my life, allowing me to become almost perfectly bilingual, and now I live in one of the safest big cities in the world. I had the pleasure of spending years formally studying music, philosophy, and economics, all of which I now have the privilege of continuing to study informally these many years later.

On a political level, I’m grateful to be living here and now, in this country and century. Canada is one of the most economically free countries in the world, and not coincidentally, one of the wealthiest. Thanks to a newfound liberty and dignity for inventors and businesspeople starting just a couple of hundred years ago in northern Europe, an explosion of innovation and rapid economic growth has made almost everyone much better off today than anyone could have conceived of back then. Furthermore, in much of the world, the lot of women and minorities has improved dramatically. And despite the impression left by a media formula that still favours bad news over good, violence of all kinds continues to decline.

If I sometimes complain—and I do, about things both big and small—I like to think it’s because I can see an even better world just around the corner, and I know we could get there a lot faster if we would only tweak a few things. Of course, as often as not, I complain because I haven’t been managing my sleep schedule properly and I’m just cranky. Assuming that my motives are always noble is an example of a self-serving bias, by the way, one of many that can get in the way of objectivity and clear-headedness, and thereby keep us from that better tomorrow.

I do see a better world, though, and I look forward to moving toward it, in fits and starts, as we humans are wont to do. I look forward to the continuing spread of Enlightenment values and sensibilities: reason, science, peace, and trade. I look forward to the further democratization of human life through that most democratic of institutions: the market. Instead of imposing majority (or plurality) preferences on each other in alternating cycles as the pendulum swings from left to right, the market allows multiple options to coexist peacefully. The more we can allow each other the freedom to live our lives as we see fit, without trying to force our values down each other’s throats, the more experiments in living we can carry out, with all the benefits that we know experimentation brings.

It is important to note that this better world does not rely, as Marxist and other utopias do, on a violation of human nature. We are flawed and fallible creatures, which is a good reason not to invest in some of us the power to rule over others. We tend to act for ourselves in the first instance, and for others only in widening and weakening circles of empathy, but how could it be otherwise? As long as we do not initiate force against each other, this egoism can spur us to serve each other through positive-sum trade, and can even be a fountainhead of creativity.

I look forward to a time when the legitimacy of peacefully pursuing your own interests is more widely recognized. On a related note, I look forward to a time when actions are not judged primarily by their “good” intentions, but by their actual effects. Many altruistic or seemingly altruistic acts do more harm than good, and many egoistic ones are immensely beneficial. To judge according to intentions alone is to care more about appearing virtuous than about actually working toward a better world.

We have already come so far, and I am truly grateful to the giants of the past who gave so much of themselves—altruistically perhaps, but with a deep and healthy egoism as well, I am convinced. And I look forward with optimism, in this age of information, that we will do what it takes to continue to evolve our institutions and bring them more in line with the accumulated knowledge and wisdom of humankind.

Bradley Doucet is a writer living in Montreal. He has studied philosophy and economics, and is currently completing a novel on the pursuit of happiness. He also is Le Québécois Libre’s English Editor.