What I mean by bourgeois equality is equality before the law, that’s essential, but it’s not sufficient, because exactly as you say, you need equality of social dignity, or else the equality before the law is eroded…
We think highly of Athens, and I do too… Yet Athens was a slave society, yet women were absolutely unfree, yet if you were a foreigner you couldn’t vote. Yet yet yet. So that wasn’t a liberal society. It was a commercial society. There’s no question about it. What made Athens strong was its commerce. You can have commercial success, and not get all the way to this modern [growth miracle].
There’s a great statement by Rumbolt, a leveler who was hung by James II in the 1680s. As he was facing the hangman, he said “I think there is no man and also no woman who is born superior to another, for none comes into the world with a saddle on his back, and none comes booted and spurred to ride him.
And that radical idea, that every human is equal–not equal in the French way–but equal in dignity and before the law, took a long time to come on the scene, and that’s what made us rich.
That was Deirdre McCloskey on the Free Thoughts podcast.
McCloskey differentiates “French” equality, or equality of outcomes, from “Scottish” equality, or equality of dignity and before the law. She strongly believes that ethical ideas of the latter type were at the root of modern economic growth. I tend to agree.
What this implies is that if you try to create DOD institutions that are streamlined and business-like, you might get some gains, but not exponential “hockey stick” growth in productivity. That only comes from broad based innovation, where people can “have a go.”
So you can be unfree and commercial like Athens. You will reap some benefits. But Athens still put Socrates to death for asking questions. It is that leap to liberalism that really let’s human potential explore, leading to modern growth.
In the DOD, the way decentralization works is that you delegate administration, but you still require policy approval from several layers of bureaucracy. This approval process does not provide innovators equality of dignity.
The purpose of the approvals is to generate an realistic program baseline that all managers are expected to hit. DOD policy makers seek a defense-wide program plan such that all reasonably efficient managers meet their targets. The expectation is that every manager meets his or her requirements on time and on cost. In short, they seek the “French” equality of outcomes among programs and management. It looks like everyone is both happy and efficient.
In contrast, the “Scottish” equality of dignity would provide all managers to roughly comparable sums of money to be spent as they see fit to accomplish missions. Equality before the law still buffers against fraud or abuse. Equality in performance evaluation is also an important consideration. Project outcomes should be evaluated based on their merit and test performance, not based on doctrinal conformity or preconceived notions of what technology should look like five or ten years out.
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