Most people don’t have a logical theory to understand how countries and politics work. Many just believe the mythical stories they heard at home or school. Many people have an intuition and belief that their country is indisputably the best in the world.
We should not despise ordinary people. The poorer a country is, the more they need to do their best to survive and raise their families. In richer countries, the ordinary people are those who, when given their freedom, formed the middle class that started and sustained the Industrial Revolution. The problem comes when they try to gain benefits and privileges at the expense of others through a state that they do not understand and that tries to dictate how other people should live (see my “Princess Mathilde and political immorality(Econlib, April 1, 2024)
The political leaders whom they aspire to follow and blindly obey do not necessarily have a serious theory of the state, other than seeing the state only as an instrument of their own ambitions and power. As far as we know, Nicolas Maduro, who was fraudulently re-elected president of Venezuela, He fell to the ground along with his mentor and predecessor, Hugo Chavez.appears to have a simple theory of the state, which happens to be very favorable to his own interests. Financial Times Reports (“Nicolas Maduro, the disputed president of Venezuela(August 2, 2024):
Ultimately, his fate will likely depend on the powerful military and whether it remains loyal. In the meantime, he’s focused on polishing his image. “I’m just Nicolás Maduro, a student, a worker, a trade union leader, a member of the Constituent Assembly, a member of the National Assembly, a foreign minister,” he told a news conference. “And I’m acting out of love.”
Another part of the report is where the reporter states matter-of-factly that “Maduro has approached China and Russia and adopted free market policies.” If “free market policies” are policies that respect and protect voluntary cooperation between individuals without coercive dictates from political power, Maduro has not done so because it would threaten his power. The point the paper is trying to make is that Maduro recently allowed dollars to circulate in order to deflect frustration from those who need his political support.
Love, in its various expressions, is a natural and useful emotion in private or small group interactions; but public love, exercised by unrestrained political masters and coercive meddlers, is a very dangerous emotion. James Buchanan and the modern school of love: Constitutional, Political and Economic Theory It advocates the opposite ideal: a system that obliges political leaders to contribute to the preservation of a free society based on an ethic of reciprocity among equally free individuals. Consent calculationJames Buchanan and Gordon Tullock write:
Christian idealism, to be effective in ushering in a more harmonious social order, must be tempered by an acceptance of the moral imperative of individualism, the principle of equal freedom. Acceptance of the right of individuals to do as they wish so long as their actions do not infringe on the freedom of other individuals must be the hallmark of any “good” society. The commandment “Love your neighbor, but if he wants to be left alone, leave him alone” may in some sense be said to be the most important ethical principle of Western liberal society.
