The Reverse Princpal-Agent Problem

The Principal-Agent problem is a well known phenomena in the bussiness world where a conflict of interest arises between an owner (Principal) and the Manager (Agent) he apoints to make decisions on his behalf.

Its intuitive that if someone acts on your behalf there is a natural conflict of interest. What if there are some situations in life where the same happens when you act on your own behalf?

Transcript

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Welcome back everybody to Common Christendom Podcast. I can never do it first go. This always happens. This always happens. I'm not even kidding. Welcome back everybody to Common Christendom Podcast. Hope you're all doing well, and it's exciting to bring you an episode today. Last episode we did a little bit, something a little bit more abstract culture type episode, but today we're coming back with something a little more political. Actually, no, no, last episode was very political because we were talking about literal politics. NVM, we'll be coming at you again with another political podcast. Not necessarily electoral politics, it's more uh political philosophy, which is some one of my favorites. Probably your guys, not that's favorite, because it's a bit boring, but I find it exciting. So um I hope you can I hope that my uh eagerness makes up for the lack of excitement uh in the episode. But thank you for tuning in anyhow. Today we're going to be talking about something called the principal agent problem. And no, not the principal agent as in the agent that is the most principal, but it's uh principal hyphen agent, principal agent um problem. Because um, and this is a problem from the business world, the principal agent problem. But as I've sort of I've sort of realized that it's also kind of a political problem and has sort of implications for the political realm, which we're going to explain as well. But first of all, what is the principal agent problem as is traditionally understood in business? Well, it's very simple. The principal agent problem is a problem that arises through a natural conflict of interest between the principal and his agent. The principal being the owner, or uh as in the principal, the owner of something. And when an owner, let's say of a company, of anything really, the the owner of a company uh delegates to a manager, he delegates authority to a manager so that the manager can act and make decisions on the principal's behalf. But there is always, sometimes it's large, sometimes it's small, there is always a tension, a conflict, potential conflict of interests, where the manager interests might be different to, or the agent's princip uh the agent's uh incentives, the agent's uh interests might be different to that of the principal. For example, the a raw a real raw example would be, you know, a manager who's skimming money out of the till um, you know, before he reports the income of the shop or whatever. Something something something kind of raw like that. Could be that, or it could be even more subtle. So that's the principal agent problem. There's always a conflict of interest. Now this is pretty simple, right? Well, nowadays it's not. Nowadays it's not. Because the big companies that we have today, everything's a little bit different, it's a little bit obfuscated. Because really, what happened back in the day? Let's save an example of a business from back in the day and now, and an example from one in the present. The best example that I've heard so far is the example of Ford Motor Company. Back way, way, way back when Ford was making those cars called the Model T, um, where it has the little, you know, the little bicycle wheels and the little um shield, sort of inverted shield shape radiator and the b the big the big bulbs either side where they look like eyeballs. These kind of old cars back in the very early part of the early, early part of the 20th century. So basically in Ford Motor Company, Henry Ford was basically he was basically you know, he was basically the king of Ford Motor Company. His word was law, he controlled everything, he uh cu he decided could decide who to fire, who to hire, he could decide whatever he wanted, he could decide if maybe let's say the we are actually gonna shut down Ford Motors, we don't want to operate anymore, I'm shutting it down. He had complete authority to do anything he wanted. Obviously, even back in the day it was a large operation. Uh there were many, you know, factories, people to oversee. So naturally, Henry Ford appointed managers to oversee the factories, to oversee the business. Now, obviously, yes, there is a little bit of a conflict of interest in there naturally, yet this is still a very simple arrangement. Well, yes, there is in there is conflict of interest, but the the main way to minimize the conflict of interest is for Mr. Ford to call the managers into his office every now and then, ask them some questions, overlook uh what they've been doing, and make sure that they're on the right track. And it really is as simple as that. Um it's um and you know, maybe maybe they'll slack off a little bit when the boss isn't looking, or you know, and or maybe they're probably not, you know, working with the same veracity as someone who owns a company, but that's just a natural that's just a natural outworking of just life, life in general. So it's really quite simple in in those sense. But in modern companies, we don't really have we don't really have Ford Motor Company anymore. All the companies that are big, because Ford was big, like very big, um one of the biggest companies in America. Um but today all of our big companies are not personal fiefdoms of the of the owner. There are no Henry Fords anymore. What are the top countries in the in Australia right now? Well, let's do it, let's do an exercise. Here are some of Australia's biggest companies that I've looked up, and you let me know whether you can name off the top of your head the main man, no, um the the owner, the principal, the person who is you know the the large and in-charge person of this company. We got BHP. I don't know, who's the who's the boss of BHP? Commonwealth Bank. Well, actually all the banks, because our whole stock market is basically banks, if you didn't, if you didn't know that. Westpac, National Australia Bank, ANZ, Macquarie Bank, there's a lot of banks. What about some other companies? Rio Tinto, is that Gina Reinhardt? I can't remember which one she is the boss of. Fortescue, Telstra Group, Woodside Energy, CSL, Transurban, Aristocrat Leisure. I'm reading these names, uh, the names of these companies out. And I don't know, maybe you're a bit more switched on than me, but I can't I can't uh really think of any of the you know high profile business people who have most of the control and and cachet in these businesses. James Hardy Industries. I'm pretty sure Mr. Mr. Hardy doesn't run James Hardy anymore. Um I can't I can't really uh I can't really think of any of the people who run this business. My point being that in today's world the public company is the number one uh top dog on the market. There are not really there are not really very many companies that aren't public that are big and worth noting. Uh there's not very many at all. I can think of maybe SpaceX as a famously private company, although I'm pretty sure they're going public very soon, so even that even that's defunct. The public company is now the done thing. So who is the principal in the public company and who is the agent? Well, who is the principal the CEO? Hmm, could be. Is the principal the the board of directors? Hmm, maybe, but real in re in reality the principal, the owner of a public company is the shareholders. Um and notice that the shareholders are plural. And it's not just to say that it's a partnership, you know, where the you know, we're like uh Dodge Brothers Incorporated, whatever it might be, is was and in the in Henry Ford's day owned by the Dodge Brothers. And you know, there's a certain limit to how many brothers one can have from one mother. Um uh so it's the it is plural, but it's not necessarily too diffuse. But the shareholders in general, who is the share who are quote unquote the shareholders of Commonwealth Bank? Who are the quote unquote shareholders of BHP? Well, I know some I know at least one friend who owns shares in BHP. Is he the principal or is he just one of many, many, many? And the answer is he's one of many, many, many. Who's the principal of Commonwealth Bank? Well, all of us. Because we all own Commonwealth Bank. A lot of people own shares in Commonwealth Bank, and almost everybody, there'd be all pretty much 99% of us own Commonwealth Bank somewhere in our super fund. So that is to say the principle of companies these days are essentially so obscure that they might as well not exist. Um even uh you know, uh even there are shareholders who own a lot of shares, but even so, it's the ownership is sort of so watered down and expanded that we don't really know who the principal is at all. Um and even if I'm a shareholder through my super fund, I don't know what's going on, and I have no you know, uh I have no influence over what happens in the daily running of the company. And yeah, you can go to the AGM as a shareholder and you know make a scene, but it doesn't really do much. Doesn't really do much. Um who is the who is the agent then? Ah, well the board and the CEO and all of the higher up management, they are actually the agent in the principal agent equation. So the principal is the shareholders and the board, CEO, etc., is the agent. So we've gone from Henry Ford calling his factory managers into the office at the start of the week to check in with them, being the way that you hold people accountable, to essentially the public company structure where we have today. Uh and yes, we have AGMs where shareholders, you know, it's got to be live streamed, the shareholders can ask questions, etc. Um, but really that the decisions made in the boardroom, you have no control over, no influence over, and the agents are sort of free to run around to do whatever they like. Accountability is almost impossible. Because here's the thing the the um director, the pool of sort of directors who direct our public companies, it's definitely well known that it's sort of a revolving door of directors and CEOs. Um, CEOs, some of them stay for a long time, but many of them go from being the CEO of one company to taking a job as CEO of another company, and that happens regularly. They might be they might hold five or six different CEO positions in their career. Um the it's the being at one company and running one company a whole life like Henry Ford is increasingly rare. And so it really is the case that if you are a CEO and you are planning on job hopping, then what you aren't the only thing you need to do really is make sure the company runs good enough for the next five years, and then at the end of your five-year contract, you can try and get a job somewhere else. And so when year six comes around and the company starts getting into trouble, it's okay because you'll just jump ship. You just want the company to run long enough um for you to get out and cash out, take your bonuses, and start working somewhere else so you can blame it on somebody else. It's kind of like how products today seem to uh have problems as soon as the warranty is finished. Um or I recall the uh film uh adaptation of the book uh Matilda with Danny DeVito in it. I don't know if you remember that movie Matilda where he puts the he puts the sawdust in the in the uh yeah, I don't know what I don't think that I don't know if that's a real thing you can actually do. Uh he puts the sawdust in there in the engine oil or whatever so it runs smoothly uh for a day and then the car stops working. It's kind of like that. You just need to have the company run well enough so you can cash out. So that really creates a sense that we're our public companies, we're it's basically not the current uh business landscape is not too unlike communism in a way, is because there are no capitalists anymore because everybody owns everything, and companies own pieces of each other, and they own pieces of other companies, and we own all the companies in our super and in our stock portfolios. Uh everybody owns everything. So, in that sense, the the agents, the managers, the CEOs, essentially are allowed to run wild and do essentially whatever they want because they know that the owners are toothless, the owners are spread so disparately that there is nothing they can do, and they're free to pillage as they please within the very spindly uh laws of um the ASX, etc., and public uh company uh regulations. So that's what the principal agent problem really is in the business world. And I was thinking about this a little bit. I was thinking about this a little bit, where you have um where people have agents have uh an interest to act, not in the interest of the owner. And I thought to myself, this kind of is a little bit like what uh uh there's kind of like an opposite problem in a lot of cases. For a lot of things, acting in your own interest, you've almost got a incentive to not do that. Um it's it's weird. So as I was fleshing this out, I recall I recall in the Bible that there is a proverb that says, Don't praise yourself with your own lips, but let another praise you. We all know that being praised by somebody else um is more preferable and more effective than being the then praising yourself. So in that sense, there's an incentive to um to hold back, to not act in your own interest, to um because um because there are consequences to acting in your own interest. And you know, I thought to myself this is kind of like this is kind of like when uh a mother is forced to discipline her children. Now everybody and look, everybody should know by this point, and we're we're not some sort of this is not a gentle parenting podcast, okay? If you want to do gentle parenting, this isn't the podcast for you. So all of us, all sensible people know, and people indeed people who read the Bible, because it is supported definitely in the Bible, is you need to discipline your children. You can't just let them get away with anything. How's that gonna set them up for life? Because um they'd be in jail. If you let your kid do whatever he wants with no consequences, he's gonna imagine that he can act without consequences out in the open world. And you know, if he gets angry, if he if he gets angry and hits his siblings at home, what's to say that one day he won't get angry and hit someone as an adult and y you're in jail. So we can't do that. So we know that, and of course we if we're taking um having good children to be the ultimate end in this thought experiment, then we all know it's in our interest to discipline our children. It um it drives the sin far from them, as the Bible says, um, and it um equips them to be a well-functioning human in the future. And um having um adult I have heard, and indeed it says also in the Bible that having um righteous adult children is one of the greatest glories that one can um that one can achieve. So we know it's in our interest to discipline children, but there are some it uh it's unpleasant. It's unpleasant to discipline one's children, and it's surely unpleasant for the child and it's unpleasant for the parent. So in that sense, there are certain perverse incentives in in the discipline case to act against your own interests, your interest being disciplining the children for long-term benefit. So I'm thinking if I'm thinking of my let's say my son disrespects or disobeys my wife. She knows that she should discipline for it, but there are there are things that are convincing her to act out of her own interest. She is a ten-day lady, bless her. She doesn't want to, you know, she doesn't want to feel that unpleasant feeling of disciplining a child. She wants to be friends with with her son, she wants him to love her, she wants she wants him to think um think that she's nice. She doesn't want to feel mean and discipline. There's so many of these weird perverse incentives that force her to act in the opposite manner. But I thought as I thought that to myself, hmm. If, like it says, let another let another one's lips praise you, not your own, if I was at home and I saw my son dis disobey my wife, or let's say I see my son hit my wife, all of a sudden when I'm and when I I must say when I'm home, I usually do the disciplining, because you know, it's only fair, you know, I'm out all I'm out all day, all week, you know, it's only only fair that I do my share when I get home. So all of a sudden, when I see that happen, I know that I ought to discipline him. But all of a sudden the perverse incentives that my wife had, now that I am acting on her behalf, all of a sudden disappear. All of a sudden, I have um reasons, incentives to uh inf to my own interest that make me want well not want to necessarily, but make it preferable to discipline. While if Samantha's doing it on her own behalf, she feels mean, she doesn't, you know and she does a good job of this. I don't want to I don't want to make it out like she's not a good discipliner and not a good parent. But she usually rises above these temptations, you know, she doesn't want to feel mean, she wants to feel loving and be loved and all that, but as soon as I do it, I think, hang on, you know, that's my wife you're hitting. You can't hit my wife, that's not good. I'd feel I'm fe I'd feel disrespected. You know, so all of a sudden I've got a certain pride that is a self-interest that is toward the ultimate goal. All of a sudden I'm thinking, hang on, like I can't let this uh I can't let this hitting get out of control. There's gonna be chaos in the home, and I want a peaceful home because I I just got home from work. I don't want to have chaos around here, I want it to be peaceful, you know. I don't want my weekends to be a madhouse, I want it to be nice and peaceful so that I can have a break from work on the weekend. You know, and let's think of let's think of it also. I know that if if he hits my wife, she's not gonna think very much of me if I just let it happen, if I just sit sit by. She's gonna think that I'm a that I'm lazy, that I'm a wuss. I don't want her to think I'm lazy and a wuss. So all of a sudden I say, hey buddy, you've just hit your mum. Let's go, buddy. We've got some business to do. And all and all of a sudden those those conflict of interest go away. I almost it could almost be called the reverse principle agent problem, where in the realm of uh of law and politics, acting uh acting as an agent on someone's behalf actually orientates your personal interests toward the ultimate goal of the toward the ultimate good of the principal. Whereas in business, usually the the agents self-interests orient their goals away, more away from the the uh ultimate goals of the principal. In matters of politics and justice, acting as a principle acting as an agent for the principal turns your self-interest toward the ultimate goal. It's almost like a reverse principle agent problem. So that's kind of one example, but we can easily, and obviously I think um the family and the home is sort of a microcosm of broader society. Um so it can easily we can easily apply this and um and take this further out to broader broader society. There's a certain there's a certain temptation if someone wrongs you in under the law to get revenge. But we know that's not good, right? You know, we know and we I think we ultimately know that it's not satisfying, you know, and I think something that was very helpful was when I don't know if you remember, or you surely remember a few months ago when Charlie Kirk was assassinated, his wife was asked in an interview not long after, um, you know, do you want do you think that the shooter deserves the death penalty? Do you want to see the shooter have the death penalty? And she said very wisely that I'm not going to make a comment on that. Justice is in the hands of the government. God has given the government the sword of justice. I'm not going to foolishly comment on that. I will let the justice system. uh work its way through and and let them decide the appropriate punishment and I think that's a very smart and wise thing to say because ultimately if you say you if you say I think he should be I think the shoot like this is I'm saying Mrs. Kirk saying I hate the shooter he took my husband away I just hate him so much I'm so bitter I want him to die I want him to get the death penalty yada yada yada all of a sudden that's just an overflowing of bitterness and rage and all things that are not nice and so really it is for the victim to pray and to forgive um and if they won't accept it then at least ready your heart for forgiveness and forgive in your heart the perpetrator but the the civil magistrate the justice system it is so much more satisfying for the victim and so much more dignified for the victim when it is the civil magistrate who says we are convicting you of murder we cannot let we cannot let chaos like this happen in our in our society you are being given the death penalty for murder it is it is this it is almost a big picture a macrocosm of the disciplining of the child in the home it's a macrocosm is the state punishing criminals um within its borders so in this case the um the uh what you know like like Mrs Kirk you have an incentive to act against your interests obviously you know you um you uh would be seen as bitter you'd be seen as vengeful and rage uh rage uh wrathful let's say if you said and to that you know he deserves justice he needs to be brought to justice whereas you might get even more peace and satisfaction should the civil magistrate execute the justice. And that's just that's just one example. That's just one example. But I think and this is the this is the thing which originally um made me want to record this episode is I have been thinking about different, shall we say hot button issues um that Christians have to deal with in the political realm. Obviously we're members of churches but we're also members of nations and we have to deal with how we behave uh in uh the nation and one of these I think is the death penalty. Um and another one I think oh well I'll talk about that one later. But what I mean to say is that back in the day and up not up until very recently um we did not live in democracies. We lived in very very different uh political arrangements now those are obviously very vi diverse throughout the world but but what uh I think that democ democracy in the way in the same way as the as the uh justice system and the discipline of the child I think democracy per perpetuates the same reverse principle agent problem because when you are at the ballot box that is to say acting on your own behalf as the principal because I think civil government I think God gave civil government for the good of the people so I think it's not um while God is the principal in a way and the the rulers are the agents in a way I also think government is given for the good of the people so ultimately the people are the principal in this situation as in kings and rulers should act on for the good of the people the principal acting on his own behalf at the ballot box has a perverse incentive to act against his own ultimate goods and ultimate interests. Now what do I mean by this? Let's say the death penalty what would be under the old system and the old system I'm talking about is pretty much anything that's not democracy you know whether it's some sort of absolute monarchy whether it's some sort of monarchy bound by some sort of advisory council um like the House of Lords for example whether it's an aristocracy but essentially anything other than mass democracy. In any other system and we're just gonna say the king in this sense because and let that in your mind represent all these other types of uh all of these other types of um uh governments and so to to make it simpler to digest we're gonna talk about democracy versus absolute monarchy just as an just to take it you know add infinitum to the to that's not the right that's not the right Latin phrase but basically to take it to its most extreme end. In an absolute monarchy um and we're also going to assume that the king like you and I if we're thinking about how to how a Christian should approach the ballot box we we're also going to think of how Chris how how a Christian should approach the throne were he to be randomly become an absolute monarch. So in the case of the death penalty it's a very very different vibe when one says at a dinner party um do you think what do you think about the death penalty? Do you think it should be a law because in that sense everybody who is has the right to vote has a stake in that question because theoretically um a candidate could be running you know could be running on that issue or indeed you can you can lobby a candidate to run on that issue. So in a sense while it's not necessarily on the table now there could be a time in the future where we are at the ballot box having our say about whether the death penalty should be should be given or whether we should keep it the current system with no death penalty. That's very different asking what do you personally think we should have the death penalty? Acting on your own behalf that's one thing whereas if you had asked the king should there be a death penalty that is a different thing entirely because the because the king is not acting necessarily on his own behalf but he uh he is acting on behalf of the people he's acting for the good of the people the voter is acting for the good of himself whereas the king is acting for the good of the people and yes I know there's bad been bad kings and um bad absolute monarchs indeed but for this sort of thought experiment where we are pretending that the king is a virtuous Christian like I hope that you are at the ballot box. It's very different it's very different while you are thinking ah well would I want would I want my murderer to be getting the death penalty? Would I want my someone who murdered someone in my family to get the death penalty all of a sudden you're thinking from the Erica Kirk perspective as you are the victim and acting on your own behalf but the king you know the king is away in his big tidy car high castle he's not he's got security guards and soldiers the king's not really worried so much about getting murdered. When the king is thinking about this question he's thinking about it from the perspective from what would I want to happen should one of my subjects be murdered and all of a sudden he's thinking about different interests whereas the voter's thinking about how would I feel if I got murdered well not necessarily if I how would I feel if someone close to me got murdered would I want revenge would I want them to be killed or would I forgive them I probably should forgive them but at the same time they should be punished. I don't know the king is thinking how do I preserve peace in my kingdom for the good of the people how should I um preserve you know moral morality in my kingdom and justice and I'm thinking and he's thinking about it from a totally different perspective on the behalf of someone else in a way that the voter is essentially saying I if someone close to me died I would want revenge whereas the king is thinking about it from a from a much more dignified position of you know I would want j I would want justice for my subjects I want peace in my realm these are a lot more dignified more detached ways to think about it that you can only get when you are acting on someone's behalf not necessarily your behalf it goes take it back to me disciplining my son for hitting my wife it's more dignified for me to do that and it's more dignified to and more aligned with my interest to do that to take it away from my wife and say you don't need to make this call you don't need to be the bad guy I'll do it for you and all of a sudden these interests are aligned. It's exactly the same thing when you extrapolate that into politics so um criminal justice is obviously one part of it but it had me thinking about other dip different issues also thinking about things like more in the more boring sense of fiscal policy if you are the king looking at the treasury um you are looking at the money and seeing how do I act to keep the kingdom functioning to keep the order you know to keep the um you know protection of the realm from foreign powers etc the king's thinking those perspectives but if you're a voter and acting in your own interests you are kind of thinking um about um what where do I want the money to go in my interest, in my personal interest. So I think and then you get you know then you can get nasty things like you know I'm gonna vote to have bigger Medicare because I use it a lot compared to well I'm gonna vote against bigger Medicare because I don't use it. Whereas if you for you know had a hypothetical king of Australia instead of thinking well obviously the king's not going to be using Medicare the king's going to get the best medical treatment in the in the realm because he's the king. Where he bet the king's going to be thinking more along the lines of you know how do I keep my subjects healthy? It's not necessarily about me it has to be about the subjects how do I keep my subjects healthy and what's the best thing for the general good of everybody so in that sense fiscal policy you know and people know people are great at voting for taxpayer handouts to themselves. It's just you and this is not an indictment on people it's not an indictment on people it's an indictment on the system because that's how democracy requires you to behave to get the best for yourself. Why do you think political parties are often grouped in economic interests why do we have a labor party because laborers are teaming up together to preserve their economic interests and I don't blame them for that. I don't blame laborers for forming labor unions and labor parties. But at the same time if that's the game we want to play this democratic game I don't blame businesses for ganging up together to preserve business interests. That's just the how the game is set up and I will get now to the uh to the issue that made me think of this in the per first place and that's actually immigration. Now as Christians should we should we want immigration or no immigration and we want to kick everybody out now I don't really care so much what your answer is um but you've got to admit that when you're talking to other people when um there is a certain way that saying that you want to kick everybody you know saying that you want to kick all the immigrants out there is a certain way that that could be uh seen as mean as nasty as unloving as all these different buzzwords and why is that it's because you're acting on your own behalf and there is a way that saying oh we should have all these refugees and immigrants because they're looking for a better life that sounds loving that sounds nice it sounds agreeable and all these different things now what is in our actual interest well it would be to kick all the immigrants out and even and I know and I know full well that even people who have said to me that we shouldn't kick out all the immigrants and that I'm racist and we need lots of immigrants I know that for all those people it would be in their economic interest to kick all the immigrants out. So what am I saying? I'm saying that because we are Christian voters at the ballot box are acting as principles on our own behalf without agents we are we have rather incentives to act against our own ultimate good. We have perverse incentives to act against our ultimate good and I think the immigration argument is the perfect one is because there is even something undignified about um about arguing about immigration about arguing about policy because it's very personal and I don't mean even personal as in personally I think there's person as in it's dealing with persons it's dealing with persons who are in the country who you talk to every day. It's very personal it's very personable and so I think what would you think if you were at the ballot box compared to what would you think if you were the ruler if you were the king in so in the old sort of democracy way we are we have these incentives to say oh we should love my neighbour and vote for immigration because of my decision. Oh I need to you know love my neighbour I need to vote for you know religious tolerance is another good example in that manner whereas the ruler and a a ruler acting on the behalf of the people would say hmm should I let all these immigrants in even uh no even though it's going to decimate living conditions for the poorest people and the working class in my realm should I do that? Well that doesn't sound very loving because I'm the king I'm gonna I'm always gonna have meat on my table. I'm always gonna have wood in my fireplace and well you know king's still still around so I guess they probably use um you know liquefied petroleum gas to heat their homes these days you know I'm always gonna have meat on the table I'm always gonna have gas in the heater I'm always gonna have I'm always gonna have a good life so is it really loving for me to invite all these immigrants in who are going to decimate living standards for my subjects that doesn't seem very loving and now you can see is that as soon as it's the ruler acting on behalf of the people all of a sudden he has interests that are aligned with bringing about the general good of the people compared to me at the ballot box where I have incentives to act against my own interests and say oh well we've got to be nice and let all these immigrants in another one is religious freedom you know should I as a Christian it feels a little bit undignified to be going around saying we need to shut all the mosques down we need to make protect Christianity in this country we need to stop idolatry that would seem a little bit mean it would seem a little bit unloving it would seem a little bit not good where but how how would it feel if you were the king? Okay let's think of it from the king's perspective well should I let all of these mosques into my country um you know uh and they're gonna persecute my Christian subjects is that really loving for me to do that to them I don't know if I should do that like I am defender of the faith it says in my title I'm defender of the faith you know come to think of it I don't maybe we shouldn't let all these Muslims in because they're gonna they're gonna make um you know they're gonna be persecuting my Christian subjects we can't let that we can't have any mosques in my country that's really bad. We need to shut it down now and that seems a lot more loving a lot less mean it actually seems loving in of itself compared to me going to the ballot box and voting for the shutdown all the mosques party. So in that sense it's exactly the same as that the interests line up better when you're not acting on your own behalf. It's just like how it's better for someone to praise you than them from their perspective. It's better rather it's better I need to cut this part out and let's make a note to edit. It that's exactly why it's better to have someone praise you on their on your behalf rather than praise yourself. It's exactly the same thing. So a lot of people I don't I don't know if I have a lot of detractors listening to the show by the nature of there's actually not a lot of people uh in total watching the show um uh if if you are hearing if if you're hearing me say you know um you know that you know are saying kick all the immigrants out that's mean and unloving and you think the solution is just for me to you know vote to have all the immigrants in here well that's kind of missing the point. That's kind of missing the point. And I think if you want to get the point of this episode if you want to get the lesson from this episode it's realizing that this system of acting on your own behalf is not good. Is not good and let me just tell you that the more democracy we have the more we're acting on our own behalf and the worse this problem is the wider the franchise gets the worse it is because even before the franchise was large let's go back to our um parents in p a political sense which would be um great britain go back to Great Britain when the House of Commons when when the uh franchise was was quite small who was allowed to vote well we we it with the voting age was a lot higher you had to have a requirement of owning land you know well rather let's go backwards right now in the UK sixteen year olds can vote so everybody every man woman and child you don't even have to be an adult you can be sixteen is able to vote and so in a given household mum dad and the three kids can all vote and they've all got to vote in their own interests well what happens when we what happens when we restrict because we all think that the best thing to do is to make sure as many people can vote as possible. Not true let's take that family and say okay children aren't actually allowed to vote now all of a sudden mum and dad are voting on their own interest but you know mum and dads for the most part have a natural inclination to love their children. And so mum and dad are now going to think I've got to vote in my interest but I've also got to vote to make sure that my children's interests are are um are represented. So they're gonna vote a little bit differently and that's a lot more dignified you know because they're doing something on someone's behalf. And let's let's take it even a step back before women can vote. Let's do okay so now we've got family of five and we've got only dad voting and he's gonna say well I'm gonna vote in my own interest but all of a sudden I've got to worry about my family's interests my wife and my children what are their interests I've got to consider that and take that into account before I vote. Let's let's and let's even go a bit further in back when there was a land requirement to um the back back when there was a land requirement to vote. Now all of a sudden the landlord is the only one voting and he's gonna think I've got to vote in my interests but I've also got to consider my tenants' interests and I've got to consider my tenants' wives and children's interests because you know if um if the government does something that is really really bad for my tenants then they're then they're not going to be very productive on my land and I'm gonna lose out so I've got to take all of these people's interests into account. All of a sudden them the less franchise you get it's actually weird it's actually weird the less franchise you get the less suffrage you get the more dignity you get because the more you get people with an incentive to act on other people's behalf and they get the dignity to act on other people's behalf and the people whose behalf they are acting on have the dignity of having their interests pursued by someone who is not them and there that is so much more dignified just like the Bible says let another slips praise you it's so much more dignified to have someone else pursue your interests altruistically than to have it done for yourself. So this has been a little bit of a political theory type episode which I've thoroughly enjoyed I it's something that I like to have a little ponder about um and if you think hang on this episode is coming across as very anti-democracy like that's crazy and my answer is well yes it is and you know democracy is not a good system at all so I and that was radical well it's still radical now I guess but it was radical even more five years ago but it's a bit less radical now and I just think you know I'd think people are waking up to see like democracy isn't all it's cut out you know cut out to be we just kept get we just the system just keeps uh uh put pulling us down putting us down and if the system is doing that for so long it makes you think well is the system really very well equipped to do what it says it's there to do and it never does what it says it's there to do so this has been another episode of Common Christina I hope you enjoyed it um what do you think about democracy? Let me know and what do you think about disciplining your children let me know what do you think about immigration don't let me know because I don't want you to be undignified keep it to yourself and do it at the ballot box I guess um but anyway thank you for listening to um common Christin and I'll uh hopefully see you in the next episode thank you so much for listening