What should society be

This is opposed to monocentric approaches to governance, where authority, decision-making, and the provision of public goods and services are limited to a single, centralized governance unit. Though many at the time argued that polycentric governance structures were wasteful because they often duplicated functions, the authors argued that there may be some non-obvious benefits to polycentricity. For instance, the decentralized nature of a polycentric regime may give rise to market-like competition among different political units, which can result in more efficient provision of public goods.

There are other benefits to polycentric governance structures, however, besides their ability to induce quasi-market competition.

Namely, polycentricity allows for diverse preferences to be satisfied. Disagreement over how our schools should be run, whether we ought to be able to own guns, or whether we ought to be able to smoke marijuana need not result in winners and losers in the political process.

In a polycentric governance structure, different political units can cater to diverse individual preferences.

Instead of living in constant strife with one another, polycentricity allows us to live better together by, essentially, allowing us to live more apart. This is a key lesson the Rawlsian can pick up on. For recall their main problem: there are attractive features that come along with a society being well ordered, but a society cannot be well ordered so long as we disagree about justice.

But though society as a whole cannot realistically be well ordered, it is more likely that individual political units within an overarching polycentric governance structure can better approach well-orderedness when compared to centralized governments. Instead of living in a society where persons constantly fight over egalitarian versus libertarian schemes of redistribution, a polycentric governance structure allows both camps to have their day. Now of course it is also utopian in a pejorative sense to think that individual governance units within a polycentric order will be well ordered: this would implausibly require that we perfectly sort ourselves into governance units according to the conceptions of justice we think are best.

This is not the claim. Rather, the claim is that decentralized governance units better approach being well ordered when compared to single centralized governance units, in that a comparatively higher proportion of us residing in decentralized governance units agree that the demands of justice are being carried out when compared to the number of us residing in a single centralized governance unit who think this. This does not guarantee that those attractive features Rawls thought accompanied well-ordered societies will be met.

But, plausibly, they will be met to a greater degree when compared to centralized political orders. Public scrutiny will be realized to a greater degree in that there will likely be greater coherence between the policies governing us and what we think justice requires.

Our sense of social unity will be greater within our decentralized political units for there is greater agreement. And more of us will realize our autonomy, in that a greater number of us will live under laws that we would self-legislate, for a greater number of us think that we live in a society where the demands of justice are carried out. Above I said that political philosophers often do not think in terms of polycentric governance systems.

Instead, they usually think in terms of centralized governments regulating single political units. But there are some exceptions to this. In his famous or perhaps infamous Anarchy, State, and Utopia , Robert Nozick sketches his vision of the ideal society.

And in many ways, it looks quite similar to what we just discussed: Nozick argues that utopia will consist of multiple utopias, where we can pursue our own conceptions of the good uninterrupted by others pursing their own accounts of the good. Famously, Rawls and Nozick were intellectual rivals. But as this essay shows, this may not be so. His research interests combine philosophy, politics, and economics.

Search for:. Brian Kogelmann October 25th, Several changes, positive in their own right, would eliminate these reasons for abandoning cities:. The United States has essentially no military enemies. Moreover, there are virtually no countries even capable of attacking U. Still, the U. Without solid information, citizens cannot make good decisions. In a good society, there must be a wide variety of information sources and the main sources must be held to high standards of journalistic integrity.

Journalists always bring their own prejudices to their work and have a tendency to support the people they know or like. So there also must be checks and balances to minimize this influence. Some examples of news reporting in a good society:. In this society, it is considered immoral to walk around wearing no clothes, but perfectly acceptable to build weapons of mass destruction.

In a good society, the United States would no longer exploit the resources oil, minerals, timber, agriculture, and labor of other countries. This would greatly reduce the need for foreign military bases and for a bloated military budget. The cost of these foreign goods would probably go up, but this would be offset by the decrease in the vast resources now consumed by the military. As much as possible, the people of the United States would cooperate with the people of other countries and treat them honestly, fairly, and compassionately.

People would think of themselves as global citizens in fellowship with all other humans, not as U. To provide defense against whatever enemies might still exist, everyone would be trained in nonviolent, civilian-based defense techniques and organized into nonviolent reserve militia units. If necessary, the country might maintain some minimally sufficient level of armaments and a small, trained military. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.

Eisenhower, Farewell Address, January 17, In a good society, government would exist to nonviolently protect and support all people, instead of defending the property, wealth, or ideology of the wealthy and powerful. The government would be responsive and responsible to ordinary people. It would work to eliminate corruption, inefficiency, waste, and dishonesty. To achieve these goals would require a different governmental structure than our current one — one that vastly reduced the temptations of wealth and power and that had even more checks on power.

It would also need to be a more activist government that sought to restrict the concentration of power everywhere in society. Our current democratic system relies on majority votes to elect representatives who then use majority votes to pass laws.

Individuals have little input into the process. To protect them from possible oppression by the majority, minority factions are granted basic rights of privacy and well-being. It assumes and encourages self-interest and competition, which often leads to selfish and anti-social behavior. Under such a system, a group can garner a majority honestly by convincing others of the merit of their proposals. But under this system, a group can also secure a majority disingenuously by misrepresenting their motives or the impact of their proposals or by coercing, bribing, or manipulating supporters.

With this ill-gotten majority, they may then grab control and secure benefits for themselves while taking no responsibility for the common good. They may deliberately or inadvertently exploit and oppress individuals or minorities. It is particularly easy for an unsavory majority to ignore or overrule those who cannot participate in the process such as animals, plants, the natural environment, unborn generations, infants, children, and people who are mentally retarded, disturbed, senile, weak, or homeless.

Because the current system rewards greed, it can rarely find good solutions or determine a fair allocation of benefits. A man must be both stupid and uncharitable who believes there is no virtue or truth but on his own side. A good society demands a much better system — one that requires the consent of everyone and provides stewardship for those who cannot speak for themselves. This type of democratic system can only occur when virtually everyone in the society wants it to work and everyone attempts to look out not only for themselves but also for other individuals and for the society as a whole.

They must care about the society and feel a strong sense of responsibility for others — as people often do in a tight community. They probably must also feel a strong connection to one another — much as they feel towards members of their family. People must be strong and responsible: adhering to their own beliefs and values as well as supporting community goals. Rather than a system of winner-take-all elections for representatives who may or may not represent a constituency or may or may not look out for the common good, a good society would have a more direct and participatory decision system.

This might require a great deal of time, but would result in much better decisions. It would also ensure that society was responsive to the needs of people. Some people would likely devote much of their time to civic affairs while others would only participate when crucial issues arose or when they were concerned that poor decisions were being made.

To ensure accountability to the whole community, any final decision might require a 95 percent or 99 percent acceptance vote by everyone affected. This would not be a vote of desire or preference but merely an acknowledgment that the decision was tolerable and that a valid body made the decision one with a large enough quorum and that included all those concerned.

A good society allows everyone to have a say in the important matters that affect their lives. But to sustain a good society, they must also make decisions that are good for the whole community. This requires that everyone be included in the decision process, have access to all the necessary information to make good decisions, and take responsibility for making decisions that are good for the group. Anything less will result in poor or irrational decisions or domination by one or a few people.

Bad decision processes, like our current system, often simply tally the ignorance, prejudices, and biases of the dominant group or the majority. Nothing is more odious than the majority, for it consists of a few powerful leaders, a certain number of accommodating scoundrels and submissive weaklings, and a mass of men who trot after them without thinking, or knowing their own minds. True democracy thus probably requires using some form of consensus decision-making process, practiced skillfully and effectively by those affected.

Our current society has prepared us very inadequately for such a task. A good society must devote extensive resources to teaching everyone the skills of cooperative decision-making, providing everyone with the information necessary to make good decisions, and ensuring time to make good decisions. To encourage cooperation and high principle, there might be a short community-building ritual like standing in a circle and holding hands with others or reading an inspiring quotation before each session.

When information was needed to inform a decision, researchers would turn to a variety of sources and investigate each thoroughly. Advocates for particular positions could add their information and make their desires known.

Then the group would prepare a wide range of options and delineate the advantages and disadvantages of each one. Once the group thoroughly explored all options, most people would probably see that a few were superior and the rest could be eliminated from consideration.

Most people would also recognize that none of the remaining options was perfect, but all were acceptable. Then strong preferences for a particular option or a majority vote of those at the meeting could determine the final choice. On highly controversial issues, the group might make decisions by a super majority vote perhaps 66 percent or 75 percent , or it might defer the decision for a few months or years until a true consensus emerged.

Cooperation would be essential, but dissent would also be accepted and supported. Dissidents would be encouraged to question assumptions, criticize decisions, and closely monitor the effects of policies over time. Lobbying would be tolerated, but discouraged in favor of mutual exploration and a principled search for truth. National or global decisions could be made by spokespeople from each local area.

These spokespeople might be empowered to agree only to decisions that their local group had already endorsed. In cases of impasse, they would attempt to forge new options based on the best ideas of their local groups.

Then they would take these new options back for ratification by the local groups. If ratified, they would then meet again with the other spokespeople and make a final decision. This cumbersome process might be expedited by traveling discussion facilitators, video conferencing, electronic mail, electronic bulletin board discussion groups, and other techniques. Unlike our current society in which war and violence are often glorified, children would be raised so that they considered the idea of assaulting another person repugnant.

As adults, they would then have no desire to hurt another person, and they would recoil from any kind of violence. They would also be taught how to resist aggression nonviolently. A good society would be safe at all times of the day and night.

Men and women could walk alone anywhere without fear of assault, rape, or harassment. It costs the same to send a person to prison or to Harvard.

The difference is the curriculum. Rather than relying solely on police, everyone would be encouraged to recognize destructive behavior and to interrupt it whenever it arose. Militaristic ideas of domination, control, hatred, punishment, and revenge would be discouraged.

Weapons would be restricted. To handle the worst situations, unarmed police would be trained to intervene and to subdue people without hurting them. Courts would primarily mediate disputes. For malicious crimes, specially trained counselors would support and counsel the transgressors to heal them of whatever emotional disturbance drove them to hurt others.

Those who could not change would be required to live and work in a special area separate from the rest of society and be continually monitored so they could not hurt anyone. Their crimes would be condemned, but they would not be tormented, rejected, or hated.

A good society would discourage the use of mind-numbing drugs. It would also try to help anyone trapped by an addiction to drugs, alcohol, tobacco, nicotine, sugar, sports, gambling, sex, television, computers, or any other substances or practices around which people develop destructive obsessions. Anyone who wanted help to end her addiction would be assisted by trained counselors and supported by others trying to overcome the same addiction.

Only those whose addictions caused antisocial behavior would be prevented from pursuing the addiction. This is just a preliminary description of a few elements of a good society. The books and articles listed in Chapter 12 are invaluable in filling out this vision and suggesting other possible elements. Appendix A describes a variety of interim measures that could move the United States toward this vision.

Many of the ideas described here seem impossible in our current society and they are. In our current society, power is much too concentrated to allow many of these ideas to work. In our current society, there is so much misleading propaganda that most people are severely misinformed. Moreover, our current society breeds large numbers of angry, misanthropic, cruel, violent, and savage people with whom it is extremely difficult to cooperate or even to co-exist. It is only as our change efforts begin to transform people and society that we could produce sufficiently favorable conditions to allow these ideas to be implemented.

Next Chapter: 3. Obstacles to Progressive Change. For example:. Civil society is the underlying antidote to the wilding virus, involving a culture of love, morality, and trust that leads people to care for one another and for the larger community.

E58 The Center for Partnership Studies, P. Box , Pacific Grove, CA , — For another list of basic elements of a good society, see Lester W. M53 , pp. He proposes that a good society one that would sustain a viable ecosystem would include the following four core values:. These, in turn would be supported and implemented by eight societal processes:. The thirty articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights , adopted in by the General Assembly of the United Nations, also describe the elements of a good society.

W , pp. Being able to have good health; to be adequately nourished; to have adequate shelter; having opportunities for sexual satisfaction, and for choice in matters of reproduction; being able to move from place to place. Being able to avoid unnecessary and non-beneficial pain, as so far as possible, and to have pleasurable experiences. Being able to use the senses; being able to imagine, to think, and to reason — and to do these things in a way informed and cultivated by an adequate education, including, but by no means limited to, literacy and basic mathematical and scientific training.

I believe that the protection of this capability requires not only the provision of education, but also legal guarantees of freedom of expression with respect to both political and artistic speech, and of freedom of religious exercise. Being able to have attachments to things and persons outside ourselves; to love those who love and care for us, to grieve at their absence; in general, to love to grieve, to experience longing and gratitude.

Supporting this capability means supporting forms of human association that can be shown to be crucial in their development. This includes, today, being able to seek employment outside the home and to participate in political life.

Being able to live for and to others, to recognize and show concern for other human beings, to engage in various forms of social interaction; to be able to imagine the situation of another and to have compassion for that situation; to have the capability for both justice and friendship.

Protecting this capability means, once again, protecting institutions that constitute such forms of affiliation, and also protecting the freedom of assembly and political speech. Being able to live with concern for and in relation to animals, plants, and the world of nature. This means having certain guarantees of non-interference with certain choices that are especially personal and definitive of selfhood, such as choices regarding marriage, childbearing, sexual expression, speech, and empowerment.

This means guarantees of freedom of association and of freedom from unwarranted search and seizure; it also means a certain sort of guarantee of the integrity of personal property, though this guarantee may be limited in various ways by the demands of social equality, and is always up for negotiation in connection with the interpretation of the other capabilities, since personal property, unlike personal liberty, is a tool of human functioning rather than an end in itself.

About Census Bureau, Statistical Abstract of the U. S36 Census Bureau, Census of Population and Housing , Y68 , defines two basic kinds of injustice:. Marginalization : excluding from the normal system of labor those that the system cannot or will not use and expelling them from useful participation in social life p.

Somalia is the only other country that has not ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Michal Ann Young, M. The study surveyed parents. Philip J. Thomas P. Bonczar and Allen J. H85 Line marriage is a type of group marriage in which members of the family range in age from children to seniors and a new young person is married into the family whenever an elder family-member dies.

Robert A. The homicide rate of children aged 0—14 in the U. M66 M67 That works out to about 2 percent of the total surface area, and to 10 percent of all arable land. In American cities, close to half of all the urban space goes to accommodate the automobile; in Los Angeles, the figure reaches two-thirds.

R46 , p. Renner bases the U. Brown and Jodi L. B79 The U. G46 , p. K36 Government, Fiscal Year There were 52, active-duty military personnel afloat and , ashore.

There were 49, direct hire civilians in foreign countries. William D. Both these groups focus on individual well-being. While this is important it does tend to feed into the neo-liberal agenda by putting less emphasis on collective happiness. It also supports the burgeoning self-help industry. It implies that if you are not happy you should do something about it. Happiness is an individual problem. Happiness is a fleeting and ephemeral emotion that is difficult to capture in statistical analysis.

For this reason, social scientists have tended to focus on various measures of well-being in addition to emotional states, such as life satisfaction, freedom to flourish and also negative states — the absence of well-being. Again the emphasis is on the individual and their immediate environment.

But what sort of society allows people to live well? The focus on economy tends to look at money -— is it enough? The focus on individual well-being asks, what can I do to make my life happier?

But both these approaches neglect the social context, even though it is tremendously important for explaining well-being and could also be an important focus for policy developers. What aspects of society can foster well-being? There has been a long tradition of quality-of-life research in Europe measured through social indicators. The University of Mannheim in Germany collates and analyses them across various categories: work, family, housing, health, and so forth.

This research has influenced the EU policy agenda as well as that of particular nations such as Italy, Austria and Germany. The European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions has been carrying out surveys and publishing reports to help our understanding of well-being across Europe since including both the EU and accession countries.

In the UK, a question on well-being has been added to standard national surveys, which should help us understand what affects it in future. More policy bodies are starting to pay attention to all this research. We know well-being can be influenced by public services and social policies.

It is clear for example that in Turkey, the recent strides in improving public policies and services have had an impact on well-being. Even really poor countries such as Rwanda have been able to improve their quality of life by focusing on policies to improve societal well-being.

On the other hand, societies where social safety nets have been removed and where people are subject to sudden and bewildering change have plummeting well-being. This is noticeable in the former Soviet Union and other ex-communist countries in eastern Europe. Yet equally those that joined the EU and have enjoyed improved social services have seen their well-being improve once more. This involves combining objective assessments of well-being — are basic needs such as shelter, social security, health fulfilled?

You may have a good house or a bad house — but is it what you want? We look at four main aspects: socio-economic security, social cohesion, social inclusion and social empowerment.