The Common Good, 1. Equality, 0.

by Micah Tillman

When Detroit goes under, your world will fall apart. Everyone’s will. Every business and organization in your community is somehow connected to the automotive industry.

So the Coming Big 3 Collapse won’t just be bad for autoworkers. It will be bad for everyone.

That’s what I’m told.

Bailing out Detroit, then, is the common good. It’s good for everyone because not bailing them out would be bad for everyone.

So, if you were sitting alone in a two-person lifeboat, and had to choose between letting a GM exec or a Mom-N-Pop proprietor on board, who would you choose?

Naturally, the answer is “the GM exec” since everything else depends on him. He is the center. He is the top of the hierarchy.

In the interest of the common good, therefore, we must sacrifice equality. Some people—or corporations, or industries—are more important than others. Some deserve direct government handouts, while others must content themselves with the trickledown.

To do what’s best for everyone—to treat everyone as if she were valuable—government has to treat some as if they were more valuable.

Equality before the law is out; the common good is in. When faced with the choice, the feds choose what’s best for everyone.

If the Powers That Be teach the public that some people are more important than others, however, can the public honestly be expected to believe that everyone is worth helping?

If it’s possible to gain value in the eyes of government by doing certain things, then couldn’t people lose value in the eyes of government by ceasing to do them, or by doing something different?

And if you can lose value by doing or not doing certain things (e.g., by running or not running certain businesses in certain industries) why believe that everyone has value? Having value becomes a choice, not something natural.

But if we’re not all equal—if some people are less important than others for government—why believe that everyone is worth helping? Why worry about what’s good for everyone?

What’s so great about the common good if we don’t believe we’re all equally important?

Why should the government not restrict the “common good” to those who have true worth? (Whatever government determines that to be.)

And if making economic value judgments is government business, why not judicial, ethical, and religious value judgments as well?

If the collapse of some religion or other (through competition with other faiths, a failure to meet the "changing needs" of followers and potential converts, and a bevy of authorities and doctrines which must be given their due even though they "no longer contribute anything" to the religion) would lead to cascading societal problems, why not bail it out too?

To avoid such absurdities, won’t government have to erase the difference between the handout recipients and the trickeldowners? And won’t it have to do that by putting everyone and everything on its payroll?

To save the doctrine of equality, won’t America have to become a totalitarian welfare state?

Micah Tillman is a lecturer in the School of Philosophy at The Catholic University of America.