At the end of my mother’s magnum opus, she argued that the business of philosophy suffers from a lack of real-world perspective. Philosophers, by and large, live outside the cadence of family and normal human existence. My mother argued that changing diapers (and engaging with the real world in other ways) enabled her to have a richer philosophy than professionals who did nothing but analyze reality from a distance.

If she was right, then that bodes well for me. After all, I play a key role in raising my six children.

Photo by Stephen Isaiah on Unsplash

Indeed, I do believe my experiences as a parent have strengthened my political and economic philosophy. Today, I want to focus on just one small example of this: I have taught five of my children (the sixth is still only three) how to bike. The process is pretty consistent: when they’re ready, you take off the training wheels. And then you hold them up and give them pointers and help them learn how to ride. At first, they just coast for a bit without falling over. And then you get them to pedal. And then, over the course of a day or two, they learn how to bike without you. Their exhilaration is palpable. As a parent, you never forget it. You have, after all, empowered your child.

The process of empowerment fascinates me. As a parent, you constantly balance your support against their growing capabilities. You simultaneously support and challenge. And when they fall, you help them up. Of course, you can’t instruct them on every little movement, you can’t live within their bodies commanding their muscles. Fundamentally, they need to learn how to balance on two wheels. You are just providing broad direction.

Over the course of the last few months, I’ve written a series of articles for TalkMarkets on public policy. I’ve covered areas as diverse as taxation, welfare, foreign policy, healthcare, education and policing. Although I have a professional history modeling taxes, the concepts presented in the other areas are all based on my general education and my experience as a parent focused on empowering his children. They are all about balancing support and challenge while recognizing that you can’t tell people everything they need to know.

The tax and welfare system is a progressive revenue tax. 25% of all revenue (including salary) is taken before it hits an individual or business bank account. There are no other taxes. But individuals get their initial spending subsidized. This means that very low earners enjoy a spending boost so they can get by. At the same time, it encourages them to earn more and more over time so the supplement becomes increasingly meaningless. It is like holding the kid on the bike but letting go as much as you can. It is also a far simpler system – with filings only in unusual situations and no calculations of income or depreciation or all the rest. It also cuts out the mishmash of ineffective welfare systems that often do as much to hold people down as lift them up. Rather than trying to micromanage economies and lives – telling your child which muscle to move when – this system encourages people to take responsibility for balancing themselves.

The policing policy calls for localizing police efforts to neighborhoods – encouraging people to take far more direct responsibility for their own policing. Instead of pointing fingers at City Hall when things go wrong, responsibility would lay with your neighbors and friends. This isn’t about people from wealthy neighborhoods managing the poorer parts of a city, it is about enabling neighborhoods to manage themselves with an eye towards their unique concerns. Step-by-step, as they achieved known milestones in self-management, neighborhoods would take greater and greater control. It might start with beat cops and then move on to other aspects of policing with an eventually target of complete local control (with the exception of resources that need to be pooled like corruption oversight and crime labs). This approach is, once again, about empowering people.

Just as you’d help a child with a disability or a skinned knee, the education and healthcare policies are about dealing with misfortune – either of birth or situation. People shouldn’t be disadvantaged just because their parents are poor or they are genetically pre-disposed to a health condition. However, while we help, we don’t take away choice and empowerment. Instead, we use that choice and empowerment to drive continual improvement in our education and healthcare systems.

In my system, the government pays the median costs of services. Individuals can choose to pay more, but if they find services for less than the median, they can get up to 5% back. This system will use individual’s decision-making ability to drive up quality and drive down costs. We will enable the unique power of the free market far more effectively than third-party insurance or existing public schools do – even as we ensure people have the resources they need to deal with the unexpected. This system won’t rely on rationing, it won’t undermine innovation and it won’t trigger the ever-rising costs that normally result from subsidization. There are a few wrinkles in each case. The healthcare system will enable and reward the discovery and reporting of fraud. Meanwhile, the educational system will grants lower-income children a bigger education reimbursement in order to give them the opportunities wealthier children enjoy. It will also mandate exchange programs so there is no Balkanization of education.

Finally, there is foreign policy. The goal here is simple. Instead of a mishmash of policies that result in ultimately useless wars, we’d focus all of our efforts on supporting those countries that have predictable, transparent and consistent rules. The focus on rules goes back to the child on the bike. The laws of mechanics remain the same for each kid. Gravity doesn’t change as they ride. These simple truths are all they require. This reality is what empowers them. A world in which the rules people live by aren’t shifting in undetectable, unpredictable or inconsistent ways is a world in which people can flourish – including Americans involved in business and culture as part of a global reality.

As we look at American politics, we see a great divide. The right argues the left wants to keep everybody on training wheels while the left argues the right just wants to see people fall off again and again because they lack support. The result of this argument is an overwhelming patchwork of confusion and complexity in our public policies. It leaves many unable to ride while hindering those who have learned how to do so.

As you consider these ideas keep in mind that I’m not advocating for the family as some sort of static political model. It is a terrible model unless you like communist authoritarianism. Instead, I’m arguing that the process of parenting – of continually enabling and encouraging independence and responsibility – should be a model for our own society and government.

This coming November, there is no ballot option for empowerment.

Maybe, just maybe, there should be.

If you agree, share this post; you never know what might happen.