Political Compromise and Political Necessity

I have made the point often that the clearest distinction between Civilization and Barbarism is that Civilization offers Institutions that provide for a significantly greater Population Density, and that Barbarian Cultures are only appealing when their Population Levels are slight. You see, Barbarism, with its seething aggressions and cultures of competition and conflict, if the Population Density were NOT sparse, then it soon would be. The low population densities of Barbarian Societies is self correcting.

Anyway, Barbarian Cultures, when the population levels are low, have a great deal of slack built into them. Distances will exist between individuals that minimize conflict. Resources would be relatively plentiful. But when these certain favorable levels are exceeded, then the Bloodletting begins – Wars, Rebellions, Disease and Famine reduce the Population once again to optimum Barbarian Levels.

Civilizations have institutions in place to deal with Wars, Rebellions, Disease and Famine, and for many of the Societal Dysfunctions that are prelude to such troubles. But there is much less ‘slack’ within a highly populated Civilization. The margins are thinner. There is less room for error, and less allowances can be made for inefficiencies. With populations always approaching the very edge of Subsistence, and surplus reserves being finite, then Civilizations of necessity must make exactly correct choices, and must come to these precisely exact choices in a timely manner. Lives depend upon it and Civilizations take Human Life seriously. Barbarism has other Priorities, such as Freedom and Private Property Rights.

Well, here is a surprising tidbit – Barbarian Cultures, for all of their Aggressions, firmly promote the policies and practices of Compromise. It seems paradoxical, but we have many such paradoxes in Nature, for instance, the most dangerous predators such as Lions and Wolves will greatly restrain themselves during struggles for dominance, with winners and loser being decided with a minimal amount of damage being done. They roar and pose and then the lesser of the two roaring posers backs down. But deer and birds and other such ‘peaceful’ animals will often kill each other over dominance struggles. So it is that Predators and Barbarians are better at structuring and delineating violence and making finer distinctions in their Aggressions. So it is that they are willing to Compromise and have it so well built into their Institutions.

Remember that Compromise may have other purposes besides alleviating conflict. Compromise may be engaged in simply as a matter for ‘buying time’, so to speak. Compromise is more often then not only a prelude to a Violent Resolution of a Conflict. Appeasements come before Total War.

Civilizations, though, have embedded institutions designed to prevent internal conflicts – they are Police States that allow for no private militias, and there are few private arms allowed. In effect a Strong Government guarantees Peace by keeping a firm lid on aggressions, crimes and conflicts. So where such problems of Conflict between private parties is minimized by Civilized Institutions, there is less need for Compromise. Government is free to simply do things entirely in the most correct manner possible.

Now, yes, there is such a thing as an Engineering Compromise, that is, where more than one Factor is involved, and where one quantity can be increased or decreased for a positive result only in adverse proportion to another positive, then the Best Decision would be to arrive at the Best Balance. A good example of this is Automobile Design – small cars get very good gas mileage, but large cars are inherently safer, so it has to be decided what is the Best of Both Worlds, so to speak. But such Engineering Compromises are different from Political Compromises where the factors involved often only involve some small but powerful group’s greed or self-interest. It would be like deciding upon optimum Car Size on the basis of how much money the CEO of U.S. Steel can make on the deal.

All this comes to mind now because of concerns regarding Global Warming and the depletion of International Oil Reserves. Now, if we were Civilized and worried about maintaining the Highest Levels of Population Density, then we would acknowledge that Carbon Based Energies would soon become prohibitively expensive due to their increasing scarcity, pushing up Survival Costs past where billions of people would be able to pay, and that burning such Energy Sources would be extremely damaging to us all anyway. The Civilized thing to do would be to immediately implement policies that would put in place a new Energy Regime – reliable or renewable sources of Energy that would allow the Green House Gases quotient to stabilize and finally to drop, all while providing enough Energy to assure the affordable delivery of Life Sustenance to a highly populated World.

But the Barbarian Policy would be to delay any significant action with Compromise until it could be decided whether an Attack would be necessary to limit the International Demand for Petro-Energy, or whether the Catastrophes predicted to follow along with Global Warming would be sufficient to keep the Population Levels manageably low… well within the parameters that Barbarian Capitalistic Democracies can work with.

The unspoken Policy of America may be that the real Problem for America is a too high World Population, causing too much international competition for resources that would otherwise go to America, and that Global Warming is coming along just in time to solve these Problems. And if not, well, that is why America is still so focused upon keeping to itself a Military greater in size than everybody else’s Militaries all put together. The American Mindset, therefore, is entirely out of the Barbarian corner.

But when the dust settles, the World Population will again be so slight, that those few who remain will be able to enjoy their Freedom. Especially so since they will almost certainly be Americans.