Dear Friends,
It seems to me, justice requires that when there is asymmetric power, the stronger party must be held to the higher standard… not the lower one. In human societies, however, the stronger party is almost always held to no standard at all. This is because the stronger party must be the one that holds both itself and the other to the law, but it violates human nature to punish oneself. The result is that the weak are held to every dotted I and crossed T in the legal code, while those that write and enforce that code aren’t. A double standard is always eventually created. Not because those who write and enforce the law are evil, but because they are human beings. There will always be asymmetric power. It can’t be avoided, the trick then is to hold the stronger party to the higher standard and limit power.
Double standards exist whenever there is a disparity of power. Take the example of two men charged with the same crime. One is poor and innocent and the other is rich and guilty. Which one would you wager will go to jail? First we have to look at the effect of wealth. One is that the wealthy person can hire the best lawyer. Meanwhile, the poor person has to use a public defender. This means that the rich person has access to a meaningful defense while the poor person really doesn’t. Public defenders plea-bargain, they don’t have time for trials. So the poor innocent will be punished while the rich guilty will usually go free. Ask yourself this, would OJ Simpson have got off that murder charge with a public defender? If that wealthy person has political connections, the game is even more rigged.
Let’s face it, we treat strangers differently than we treat friends. If a friend breaks a law we are far more likely to call it a mistake, than if a stranger breaks the same law. This is because we have an affinity for the familiar. Moreover, we don’t like change, and punishing a friend must bring change. Then there is the fact that if a powerful rich person owes you a favor, that has real value. On the other hand, what favor can a poor powerless person bestow? This all-too-human behavior feeds back into creating and maintaining a double standard. This is why the powerful get away with things that would put you or I in prison for decades. If a large bag of cocaine is seen in the possession of a few elites, they get the benefit of the doubt, but if you are seen with 3 ounces of coke… there would be no benefit of the doubt.
People who write laws make decisions constantly. Many of those choices have consequences for themselves as well as the nation. Even if there is one-sigma of bias to self-benefit, that inexorably bends government to profit those who write the laws. Bonhoeffer said that stupidity is more dangerous than malevolence. So we could say that Bonhoeffer identified four kinds of people. The robbers, the martyrs, the wise, and the stupid. To argue that there are enough martyrs to counter the robbers in power is absurd. That’s not even counting the stupid. Certainly, the wise are smart enough to eschew power and loneliness for happiness and fulfillment. This means there are few wise people or martyrs in positions of power, leaving it to robbers and the stupid.
This is why double standards exist and why they are so persistent but it doesn’t tell us how to combat them. Getting the elites to hold themselves to any morality has shown to be a fool’s errand. Then again, how could it be anything but? We could create a group of elites to hold the rest to the law. That’s the Numa idea. We could also limit power to such an extent that political favor is irrelevant. Both involve divesting the elite of power. If they have little power to bestow favors, then their favor has little value. The mirror is also true. The more power they have the more valuable their favor becomes. Unlimited power then creates favor with unlimited value. This is how to counter double standards, limit their power, and create a faction of elites to hold the rest to the law and constitutional limits.
Sincerely,
John Pepin
