Managerialism v individualism

Although contemporary society is supposed to champion individualism, it often fails to do so in practice because the desires of the individual frequently clash with the smooth functioning of the managerial state.

A classic example of this is the modern state's attitude to owner-operated small businesses.

Despite the pro-small business rhetoric that we’ve been hearing since the late 70s, most modern liberal governments almost invariably consider small businesses a pain in the ass.

As DIY generalists, owner-operator businessmen and women, violate one of the primary tenants of economic theory, that people should specialise in one task if possible, since according to rational economic thinking, specialisation equals efficiency and small-scale multi-tasking doesn't.

Government bureaucracies also find educated specialists a lot easier to deal with. This is why government and big business get on so well. Both have large bureaucracies staffed by professional employees with specialised skills who can talk to each other in the same jargon-filled language. Subsequently government's in most western countries have been making life more difficult for small business, with increasing regulations, indirect taxes and new or expanding accident compensation levees. Some free business advice is now available, but it tends to be of the generic common-sense kind, which is often of limited use to those in specialised, technical fields.

The recent bailouts of big US and UK corporations in the financial sector, is only likely to add to the already high level of grievance felt by the western small business sector.

Interestingly, while governments in the individualist West have been steadily making life harder for small businesses, governments in communitarian Japan have been trying to make life easier for them, with specialist help for example in research and marketing, and in learning to use the latest technology.

This seems paradoxical from the perspective of western individualism -shouldn't collectivists who believe in tempering economic goals with social ones be anti-small business?

Well it does make sense if you take into account that small business is in many respects a communitarian activity, and that people often go into business for non-rational reasons.

People prefer working for themselves for all sorts of reasons; they don't get on with their co-workers, they want to work in a place of their own choosing rather than sit in traffic for hours, they don't have a great CV, they want to pass on a business to their children, and so on and so on.

Since Japan is more communitarian society than most western countries, it understands that rational managerialism can undermine social cohesion if pushed too far, so the country’s elites try to direct the goals of the bureaucracy towards the needs of society rather than re-mould society to fit the rational logic of the bureaucracy.

No doubt Japanese small business owners still have a lot of hassles with government bureaucracy, but at least they know that the bureaucracy isn't ideologically opposed to them.

Unlike westerners, the Japanese also have a more concrete, producerist mentality when it comes to the economy and they realise that in a post-industrial society, many people will struggle to find productive employment which adds real value to society.

Conversely, western elites seem to assume that laid off manufacturing workers can easily find steady, reasonably well-paid work in the service sector, even though much of what the service sector produces is non-essential distractions that people have to cut back on in a recession.

Another example of managerial opposition to practical individualism is secondary taxation. Since people who hold multiple jobs are an inconvenience to the state, it discourages people form taking on more than one job by overtaxing them and then making wait in hope for a tax rebate.

A similar bureaucracy first mentality exists in welfare departments, where, in New Zealand and Britain for example, those seeking short-term unemployment relief are treated like minor criminals, while long-term welfare recipients like solo parents and sickness beneficiaries are regarded as permanent wards of the state.

Cognitive enhancement vs hedonism

A British medical ethicist argues that adults should be free to take the popular stimulant drug Ritalin for cognitive enhancement.

Professor John Harris, of the University of Manchester, says many adult students are already taking the the drug which is illegal in the UK without a prescription. He says that if it is safe for children with ADHD to take Ritalin over an extended period for a non-life threatening condition, there was there is reason to prevent healthy adults using it to.

The problem with making stimulant drugs more freely available though, is the likelihood that a large segment of the population will prefer to use them for getting high instead of performing smarter.

In the first half of the 20th Century, stimulant drugs were quite widely used among professionals and the military for cognitive enhancement. Even the original Coca-Cola was advertised as a red-bull-style pick-me-up which contained a small amount of cocaine.

However, the fallout from hedonistic sixties in which the use of pharmaceutical drugs for recreational purposes was widely popularised for the first time, has done considerable damage to the cause of those wishing to promote stimulant drugs for improving mental performance.

The image of stimulant drugs was further damaged  in the 1970s when dextroamphetamine was used in large concentrations as a sliming aid for women, with the result that a number of prominent female celebrities suffered from stimulant-induced heart failure.

Since then authorities in most developed countries authorities have been severely cracking down on the use of stimulant drugs, which are now are now primarily abused by the underclass. Ritalin for example, is often taken from children to which it's been subscribed and ground down and smoked or snorted for a quick rush (slow-release versions have been developed to get around this problem, but not without significantly increasing the cost).

The demise of smoking though, has created a large gap in the market for a relatively safe stimulant, that's only been partially filled by the renaissance in ground coffee products.

Over the next few decades it's going to be interesting to see whether the needs of the middle class for increased cognitive enhancement options will win out over the needs of the therapeutic state to contain the pathologies of the underclass.

At this stage my money's still on the therapeutic state.