The political, social, and economic forces of change are
dependent, interactive, and simultaneous. They are not independent,
hierarchical, and sequential.
Source: Originally published
by Z, March 31, 2026. Feel free to
share widely.
The Power of Balance
Edward Renner
The distinction between a conservative Republican and a
liberal Democratic Party is no longer useful. Both are using singular political ideological
perspectives which oversimplify the complexity of our current social issues.
This has left the nation without clear positive alternatives to deal
with the disruption
of rapid change. In addition, the takeover of the Republican Party by Trump
and the right-wing MAGA movement has elevated political power at the expense of
essential economic and social constraints. There is now a choice before us –
either create a functional democracy that is relevant to modern life in the 21st
Century or default into an authoritarian style of dysfunctional government.
Complexity Not Simplicity
The significant social issues of our time all have political,
social and economic elements that must be considered simultaneously. A recent
example was the politicization of COVID management that rejected a mandatory
mask or vaccine mandate because it was an infringement on personal freedom.
This is a singular political perspective that overrides the social and economic
elements of the pandemic and failed to identify the most appropriate
comprehensive set of management practices when all three elements are simultaneously
considered.
Likewise with the current stalemate in response to climate change,
the political, social, and economic elements are interactive and must be
reconciled with each other simultaneously. Science has shown us that we are
consuming our global resources faster than the earth can regenerate them. We know
we are killing the very planet we need to sustain ourselves. The environmental
collapse resulting from climate change can only be addressed by global
cooperation and agreements, which have political, social, and economic
components.
Such objective, definable “social issues” only appear to be
intractable because they are complex, and because the relationship between their
three components must be reconciled. The three elements are all exponential,
not linear, functions. An exponential
function is a rate of change which gets larger (or smaller) over a series of
steps. While a linear function adds a fixed amount at every step, an
exponential function multiplies by a fixed amount at every step. An example is
wealth and income disparities in the United States in which the bottom
percentages of people have little money, while the upper 1% have huge amounts
of wealth.
Such complex social problems cannot be solved if we continue to
treat them, from either a simple liberal or conservative ideology, as if the
three element are independent, hierarchical, and successive. The required task
is to account for the complex interplay between these three elements as dependent,
interactive, and simultaneous.
Dependent, Interactive, and Simultaneous
The political,
social, and economic elements are components of a single entity. This requires the
resolution of three vectors in three-dimensional space defined by the three
elements, not a linear projection from a single primary political, social, or economic
perspective. In plain language, the value of each of the three depends
on the value of the other two; they combine to form the whole package (i.e.,
unity, 100%).
If the goal is to maximize the positive value of each of the
political, economic, and social elements, then the resulting consequence is
that as one element increases toward its own upper limit, the corresponding
values of the other two elements must decrease to maintain the overall balance.
This relationship illustrates that the value of any single element is not
independent; rather, its exponential value is determined by its relation to the
other two. Thus, any efforts to maximize one element will inevitably require even
larger concessions in the others, demonstrating the dependent, interactive, and
simultaneous nature of the three elements.
A Graphic Example
In practical terms this translates into a
situation in which any one of the factors can increase its relative weight only
at the expense of reducing the relative weight of either one, or both, of the
remaining two. Because the function is exponential rather than linear, there is
a balance point in which the sum of the three is maximized; but, if any one of
the factors approaches the limit, the value of the other two approach zero.
The attached graphic illustrates the
principle that balance has greater utility than even a small increase in the role
of any one of the three elements.
In the context of the current concern over the
shift toward authoritarianism in the US, the graphic illustrates how marginal
increase of political power, beyond the balance level, can be achieved only at
a cost of extreme reductions in economic and/or social institutions and their stability. Changing the balance among the three
elements by increasing political authority is therefore extremely disruptive to
the integrity of the democratic process.
The Utility of Balance, illustrated
by the graphic, goes well beyond the specific illustration of the abuse of
authoritarian power in a democracy, such as the negative social consequence of greater
economic inequalities.
For example,
holding the political element constant at the balanced value, relatively small additional
increases in the concertation of wealth above the balanced level will produce significantly
larger decreases in the strength and effectiveness of social institutions and
services as illustrated in the second figure. This application of the model illustrates
the exponential effect of diminishing marginal utility: An extra $100 for a
billionaire has no social or personal value, but for a destitute person, a meal
and warm bed have many more times of social and personal value.
Raw Political Power
Contemporary examples of the excessive exercise of
political power in the United States are detailed by Joseph O’Neill in Trump’s
exercise of raw power. These include such items as his efforts at annexing
Greenland, rupturing NATO, transforming the Department of Justice, the FBI, and
the Department of Homeland Security into political security forces, ICE
abducting children and breaking into homes without a judicial warrant, and in Minneapolis,
shooting of a peaceful protester. His conclusion was:
“Trump and the Republican Party have embarked
on a new stage of authoritarianism: an imperialistic foreign policy,
extrajudicial murders on the high seas, and the mass deployment of Border
Patrol and ICE agents into Democratic cities…(as) an unprecedented spectacle of
democratic implosion.”
Left unchecked, the imbalance illustrated in the graphic
example could become a reality for the United States as it has in other
authoritarian nations, such as Putin’s Russia. The ineffectiveness of the Democratic Party to
meet this challenge is as large of a problem as the effectiveness of the
Republican Party. There is no viable future
if we anchor our beliefs, values, and actions on Nationalism,
Prohibitions and Censorship, and Privatization as Trump and the
Republican Party are now doing; those authoritarian policies are not compatible
with living successfully in the globalized modern world.
Two Principles
First, the significant challenges of our time, such as
environmental collapse and international law and order, are like a complex
mobile -- messing with any single part ruins the whole piece. Our current
ideological political divide is messing with one part of our urgent challenges,
while the whole package has three parts that must be considered simultaneously.
The three elements are not independent, hierarchical, and sequential. Singular
ideological political perspectives are not only a distraction, but they are
also dangerous.
Second, increasingly we need to move toward relying on
the greater utility (power) of balance rather than striving to achieve the
balance of (political) power. This is the exact opposite of MAGA and
America First. The greater utility of the “power of balance” rather than owning
the “balance of power” applies not only to the relationship among nations and
the effects of economic inequalities, but also to the relationships between
individuals for a peaceful and more cooperative world.
