Impulse Control Fixes This

Regardless of your system of values, there is one meta-vice that is responsible for a massive share of your discontent with the world as you know it. This is not a vice that has characterized every age, but the last hundred years or so in the western world can be characterized as an increasing growth in lack of impulse control. Not all impulses are wrong, but this recent inability to fight them has led to a great amount of friction where one’s natural impulses are directly contradictory to the common good. Arguments made by the right against government control, and by the left against individual freedom are often grounded in observations from recent and systemic overreaches in both of those areas driven primarily by an inability to do what is best for all because of this vice. The government and every politician within it has a natural impulse to increase the reach of their power, and this shows up in regulatory expansion and the utilization of the central bank. Most of the cultural issues that make the heritage right upset arise from young people’s inability to say no to their desires, and the associated set of beliefs that arise from that. Even the most noble desires of the left often come from the same source, as they see how those with power can choose to exert their will over others for no reason other than their own lack of care if the system allows it. Regardless of where a society or legal structure is on the spectrum of freedom and justice, individuals at every level exhibiting a greater amount of beneficence that flows into impulse control would create a better society within the boundaries of the world that already exists, hearkening back to Adam Smith’s the theory of moral sentiments.

It is an axiom almost as empirically and theoretically verifiable as anything in the social sciences that all governments have a tendency to gain power for themselves. Whether the  government is communist or fascist or a democratic republic, it is difficult for a state to live below its means for long, particularly in a world where governments taking out excessive debt is normalized. While in personal morality, self-indulgence at the expense of one’s future self or others is seen as immoral, in government, it is nearly enshrined as sacred. Most central banks devalue the currency of their people while also exacerbating natural economic cycles. On top of this, a constantly growing stack of regulation increases the government’s power over the people they have responsibility to promote the welfare of. This legislation usually arises from the desire for power along different pathways, and the need for reelection and the instinct towards regulatory overreach allow the multiplication of several different types of ill advised legislation at once. While the structural damage to growth of a government without clear boundaries would remain, a government full of people with higher levels of impulse control would allow for a slower growth or even rate of growth than we currently have in government power.

The pre-Trump right is particularly concerned about a wide range of social issues that are almost entirely linked to impulse control. They believe, and are mostly correct, that at the start of America people of all types worked extremely hard with the primary goal of providing a better life for themselves, their families, and their communities. Although there were notable exceptions to this, the spirit of the age demanded the subordination of short term desire fulfillment for long-term financial success and security. This cannot be entirely credited to the moral character of the people of the past, as it was a hard world that did not have the same level of space our world does for fun and self-indulgence. However, we arose from an unknown nation to a prominent one through many people having real agency to better their situation in the world through hard work. The current economic conditions, as unfulfilling as they may be for many, allow a level of self-indulgence almost unseen in the world before us. There are regulatory and cultural limits to creativity and fulfillment, but every person has access to and even a guarantee of luxuries that were not even existent just a century ago. Even in this environment of plenty, the standard individual lack of impulse control still leads people into financial and personal ruin. People have to work far less for what would’ve contented almost anyone in the past, and they still demand more. The fight against the belief of entitlement is one of the greatest battles of the old right, and that entitlement arises almost entirely from a lack of impulse control.

The left sees how corporations act with other people’s money, and they recognize something true yet prescribe the wrong solution to it. Lobbyists have pushed for regulation and sweet deals that allow the largest corporations to succeed. These huge businesses have nothing to limit them from expanding their power to the harm of others when they are given a regulatory advantage. The entrenchment of these large businesses that arises not from undercutting prices or innovation, but from regulatory arbitrage has a great amount of cost to society as a whole and should be recognized by these businesses as a different type of success than the one they are striving for. Of course, businesses cannot be expected to be so altruistic, but even a small amount of reflection could allow them to push towards industrial success rather than regulatory success. The impulse to succeed in competition must always be balanced with an understanding of where that success comes from. Because businesses do not have the impulse control to act for the common good, they cannot be given access to government benefits and industrial protection.