Politics is Downstream from Ethics
On Fiduciary Responsibilities
The last four Moneyball Method podcasts were focused on personal finances, capital markets and the investment advisory relationship. More specifically, true financial independence demands a radical approach to money and self-ownership, investment performance must be measured as dollars of future wealth, and markets are to be understood according to time-tested price information.
Advisory fees make sense when they are aligned with all three. That is the new investor/advisor dynamic - and it is consistent with America’s founding principles: self-ownership is individual rights, controlling your own destiny is political liberty, and free markets is legal and moral justice. And what follows is your relationship with a financial advisor compared to your relationships with political candidates.
That is because both have fiduciary responsibilities to you, but without question, private sector professionals are infinitely more knowledgeable and diligent about the duties they have assumed. This exercise is useful because politics is downstream from ethical standards (morality) and epistemic beliefs (knowledge).
In addition, no political party can map closely to your ideals, but nearly everyone has political opinions and allegiances without knowing anything about rights, liberty or justice. To simplify this, my article will focus on the published platforms of four American political parties.
The Dominant Parties
As published by the American Presidency Project, the first nine planks of the 2024 Republican Party platform are 1) Seal the border, 2) Stop the immigration invasion, 3) End inflation, 4) Make America the dominant energy producer in the world, 5) Stop outsourcing and turn the United States into a manufacturing superpower, 6) Large tax cuts for workers and no tax on tips, 7) Defend our Constitution and our Bill of Rights, 8) Prevent World War III, restore peace in Europe and the Middle East, and build a great iron dome made in America, 9) End the weaponization of government against the American people.
Also published by the American Presidency Project, the nine planks of the 2024 Democratic party platform are 1) Growing our economy from the bottom up and middle out. 2) Rewarding work, not wealth, 3) Lowering costs, 4) Tackling the climate crisis, lowering energy costs, and securing energy independence, 5) Protecting communities and tackling the scourge of gun violence, 6) Strengthening democracy, protecting freedoms, and advancing equity, 7) Securing our border and fixing the broken immigration system, 8) Advancing the president’s unity agenda, 9) Strengthening American leadership worldwide.
As you can see, the third item on each agenda is related to price inflation, which only proves that both parties are committed to greater political power over your diminishing economic freedom. Just as bad, neither party’s economic advisors can properly define inflation or care about its cause.
Seventh and sixth, respectively, are empty rhetoric for the defense rights and liberty that their platforms violate with every plank. Eighth and ninth, respectively, is a nod to protecting American sovereignty that includes tribute paid to foreign dictators.
Of course, both mention the repair of immigration policy while evading the problem they created - the Department of Immigration and Naturalization (INS), and the right to move or trade across town and across borders. Governments do not have rights. Perhaps the most meaningful difference in the first nine planks of both parties is abundant energy vs. climate despotism. But other than that, statist politics is the effect of collectivist ethics.
Once we understand that nearly no voters and nearly no representatives from either party are informed or concerned with rights, liberty or justice, we begin to understand why The Moneyball Method is the ethical and epistemic support system for an independent life.
The New Dynamic
Because elected officials have sworn an oath to the principles of US Constitution, all of them have a fiduciary responsibility to the citizens and residents of America. But without a doubt, nearly none of them know what that means and they don’t care.
Yet, this is America – the most prosperous, liberty-minded and creative society the world has ever known, and there are upstart political parties that might map more closely to the ideals of an objective investor. But only if their candidates are willing and able to behave according to their published platforms.
According to the Libertarian Party website, their four planks are mercifully few: 1) Personal liberty, 2) Economic liberty, 3) Securing liberty, and 4) Non initiation of force. Not only do these do a far better job of stating the morally defensible purpose of government, but the first one is critical as it specifies individual sovereignty as an unalienable right. The second plank addresses property rights and a society of contract that both the Republican and Democratic party platforms dismiss or repudiate with industrial policy and destructive immigration laws.
Securing liberty is a nod to national defense and specifies a ban on compulsory service, but the fourth item - actually labeled “Omission,” is purposefully ambiguous about coercive regulatory agencies.
Coming closest to fulfilling its fiduciary responsibility to America is the youngest and smallest political party with no candidates, state affiliates, financial resources, or marketing infrastructure. But what the American Capitalist Party does have (including me as a member) is moxie and solid philosophical principles that are aligned with the American experiment: 1) The Individual, 2) Security, 3) Economics, 4) Science and 5) Society. Briefly, rights, liberty, justice, retract subsidies, and phase out entitlements.
The best advice is to control what you can control and become an activist for your own productive virtues. Recognize good people who are dismissed by a culture that worships mediocrity, reward the producers, sack the looters - and help make the supply side, the benevolent side, the dominant side.