← Classical Stuff You Should Know
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- [00:12]
A
I'm not actually going to do a joke, though. Hello, and welcome to Classical Stuff. You should Know. A podcast about classical stuff that you should know. My name is Thomas Magbee. I am joined, as always, by Mr. A.J. hannenberg.
- [00:23]
B
That's me.
- [00:24]
A
And Mr. Graham Donaldson.
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B
Hello.
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A
And today we are talking about the First Federalist Papers.
- [00:29]
C
Just one of them.
- [00:31]
A
Every single one of them. Oh, gosh, if you don't cover them all, I will be furious.
- [00:34]
C
There was just one. I think there's like 50.
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A
I was going to ask how many are there?
- [00:37]
C
There's a lot. And for. So these were written by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and the other guy that no one remembers, or at least I never remember. Clay, I think his last name is. I can't remember.
- [00:48]
A
But will you be singing all of these?
- [00:49]
C
I will not be singing all of them. I one I've never seen Hamilton. And because I've never seen it, I also don't like it.
- [00:55]
A
Oh, cool. You're following a pattern.
- [00:58]
C
I respect. I don't want to. I, I, I don't want to. That I like it. I don't know. It gives me weird vibes. I just don't like it.
- [01:03]
A
You should listen to it. It's great. It's fun. I don't know. It's terrible. I hate it. What do you want me to say? I don't.
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C
Hip hop history.
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B
That's cool.
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A
Why not?
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C
I don't know. I'm just not into it.
- [01:13]
A
Hey, fun things can be fun, Graham. You can enjoy things anyway.
- [01:16]
C
But from what I understood, like, Hamilton and Madison and the other guy wrote all these Federalist Papers, but Madison wrote, like, the vast majority of them. And so it kind of feels like a group project.
- [01:25]
A
Like one person's.
- [01:26]
C
One person gets all the credit, does all the work, and they all get the credit for it. But anyway, we're gonna be talking about federalist number 10. And AJ was. So the question was like, okay, what. What? We've heard that. We hear the Federalist Papers, we know that they are part of American history. Like, what are they? And they were, think of it as they were kind of like op eds or they were essays that were written and to be distributed in periodicals and whatnot, in defense of passing the Constitution. So they were debating. So this federalist number 10 is 1787. So they were in defense of, hey, we should pass the Constitution. That is floating around because before then you had the Articles of Confederation, and they had a very. There was sort of these, this two visions for how these states should move forward. You have one vision where the states, it was a lot less, they were a lot less tied together. This was the anti federalist position and that was each state as we know it, like Massachusetts, New York, Virginia, New that they would be states in the way that we kind of talk about countries today. They would be their own individual countries and then they would have some kind of like loose relationship with the other states around them. So probably the closest analogy could be if we went the anti federalist way. The United States would probably have looked more like the European Union. You got France, you've got Germany, you've got Spain, you've got Italy. And they are independent states and they're like kind of joined together by a centralized body that can make laws that are supposed to be binding but like everyone kind of can agree whether or not they're going to do it and they can kind of do it and sometimes they don't do it. And, and so that is sort of the European Union is, it is this opt in society of these independent states that have, that have made agreements to sort of be tied together, but the actual like centralized body has way less control to be able to enforce things. And that was one vision that the anti Federalists had for the night for the country, for the United States was that these states were sort of joined in that way. And then the Hamilton and Madison and the other guy wrote they were trying to convince people that we should, we should have the Constitution the way that we have it. We should federalize. We should have a bigger and stronger centralized government.
- [03:46]
A
JOHN J. J okay, what did I say?
- [03:48]
C
Clay yeah, yeah. JOHN JAY okay, we should have a bigger and a stronger federalized government. And they wrote all these papers for saying why a bigger federalized government and a stronger centralized government with its legislative branch, its executive branch and its judicial branch, but more importantly its legislative branch. Why it's going to solve a whole host of problems. And Federalist paper number 10 is it solving the problem of what he says is the, the, the factions. Factions. The, the biggest problem that small popular democracies have is factions. So federalist number 10 starts like this to the people of the state of New York. Among the numerous advantages promised by a well constructed union, none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency. So well constructed unions tendency to, to break and control the violence of faction later on. It says the instability, injustice and confusion introduced into the public councils have in truth been the mortal disease under which popular governments have everywhere perished. So a popular government is a government of like you don't have representatives, you have sort of 51. Mob rule is the voting. And he says that a. When you have a small nation, you have the problem of factions. And then he sort of continues on to describe what a faction is. Let's see, Madison says that completely says right now people are complaining that our governments are unstable, the public good is disregarded in the conflict of rival parties, and that measures are too often decided not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by superior force of an interested and overbearing majority. He says the evidence of known facts will not permit us to deny that they are in some degree true. So there's fear that in our current structure that we have, before we pass this constitution in our small independent state legislatures, that. That you're going to have factions who are going to carry the day and rule over the minority. Then he defines faction by a faction. I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion or of interest adverse to the rights of a other citizens or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community. So what's a faction? How do we summarize?
- [06:36]
A
That group of people doesn't have to be a majority who they are adverse to the rights of other citizens. So there's something they want that is taken from someone else.
- [06:47]
C
Yep. So there's something they want that's against the rights or the other citizens. Which makes sense. The second one is the one where it's like, whoa, this is going to be harder to define.
- [06:56]
A
To the permanent and aggregate interest of the community.
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C
That's right.
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A
So like they may disagree with whatever the community as a whole wants.
- [07:03]
C
Yes.
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B
Or they want to hurt the community in such a way that is lasting.
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C
So their interests, if their interests are made supreme, is actually going to be detrimental to the community as a whole.
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A
So we're starting with a pretty negative definition of faction.
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C
Yeah.
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A
Like they're inserted.
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B
There's no such thing as a positive faction.
- [07:19]
C
Well, I don't know. So this is a great question because I think maybe there could be way that he develops factions. So Federalist paper number 10 is often read as the. The document about like people who get really fired up about like a particular rel. Religious sect and that we need a big federal government to like, keep all those like, religious people in line.
- [07:42]
A
And that.
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C
That's definitely true. But Madison himself is going to talk about what the main driver of factions is later and has. It is not. It is not Religion, and it's not even social causes. Right. So, but anyway, let's just camp out with this sort of idea of faction for a second. So, like, if people are really animated by a certain thing, that doesn't necessarily make them a faction. So, like, AJ is, like, gets really into bowling, like, after work every day, goes to the bowling alley. He's really into bowling. He, like, gets people into bowling with him. He really starts to believe that, like, bowling is life and that, like, life is like a bowling alley and all, you know, he begins to sort of wrap his identity in bowling to. Not a faction. It would. It would become a faction if everybody has to bowl. Yeah. If AJ started to really push for the fact that if we wanted to have people hold elective office, they need to have, like, bowled a perfect game or whatever, because then that shows that they really understand that bull is life, and then they can, like, they can lead us. Right. And so at that point, you're a faction because you are now imposing your strongly held passion or interest above the rights of other citizens. Right? Like, you're holding. You're saying that people can't vote or people can't hold office until they can bowl or against the aggregate community or the aggregate. What is it? The aggregate interests of the community. So, I mean, that makes sense. And you can sort of very easily see that, like, okay, if you had some kind of like, like the KKK or ethnic supremacy or somebody that was like, you know, certain groups of people are morally superior than others, and those other people shouldn't be allowed to vote, like, those are factions. That's bad. That is difficult. And that is a thing that we want to control in society. But Madison says there's kind of only a couple ways to control factions. But are we. I mean, before we move on, are we, like, clear on definition of faction?
- [09:34]
A
I. I think so. I think so.
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C
Okay, so then Madison continues. And I actually think that there is. If not, there's not good. I think there may be good factions by the end of the. By the end of this conversation. But we'll sort of see. He says, all right, there's two methods of controlling factions. You either the one is to remove the causes of factions, and you can get rid of factions that way, or to control the effects of factions. So he's going to take these two things separately, remove the causes of factions and control the effects of factions. And he says, if you're going to remove the causes of factions, there's two ways of doing that. There are two methods of removing the Causes of faction. The one by destroying the liberty which is essential to its existence. The other by giving to every citizen the same opinion, the same passions, and the same interests.
- [10:23]
A
What?
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B
So either make everybody uniform or take away the power of the faction.
- [10:27]
C
Correct. Okay, so, and then when he says, all right, the first one, remove the cause of faction by destroying the liberty which is essential to its existence, he says it would never be more truly said than the first remedy, that it was worse than the disease. He says it's just like fire. If you really want to control fire, you can remove all of the oxygen, but you are also going to remove all of the oxygen that is going to, like, also kill everything that requires oxygen, namely all of life.
- [10:53]
A
Yeah.
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C
So if you're going to stamp out the oxygen of liberty to control a faction, you are stamping out the oxygen of liberty that is going to have liberty. Like, that's worse. Like, yeah, don't do that. So in other words, if you are going to have, like, you have a faction, the faction is going to be against the certain rights of other people. It seems like Madison is saying, don't overly restrict their ability to exist. Or, like, is that how you read this? Like. Like, would Madison be okay with, like, groups of people who are animated by passions that are against other people? Kind of seems like it.
- [11:35]
B
Wait, what did he. So what did he say was the solution?
- [11:37]
A
Or has he just said there are two ways proposed?
- [11:40]
C
He's proposed two ways. Okay. The solution is going to be to control the. To control the. The effects of factions. He says you're never going to remove factions, but he says if you try to, you'd have to do it by removing liberty. So, like, the old world, the King of England hears that there's a bunch of people who are geeked up about, like, a republican form of government. He doesn't like this because that means they're coming for him. What is the king do, lock him in jail? Demonetized their YouTube account. Like, so they have, like, republicanism is cool. Like, make sure that they can't get ad revenue from that. Yeah. Throw them in jail. Maybe even kill them. Right. And Madison is saying, like, that is worse than having the faction in the first place, is removing that liberty so
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A
you'll have people who disagree. Right.
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C
You're not. Yes.
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A
People with bad opinions.
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C
Yes.
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A
And you're not. We haven't finished the whole essay for, like, what you do about that, but it's not stamping out those people.
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C
Yeah. And I don't know if Madison would go as far as to say, like let everybody self organize. Like if you like have a bunch of racists, like let racists, like let white supremacists have their parties as much as if they want to. I don't know if Madison goes that far, but he definitely is saying that if like the hard control of freedom is worse than, than the disease, than a faction.
- [12:56]
B
Well, because yeah, you're gonna, you're gonna baby out with the bathwater, right?
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C
Like then the second thing he says is you can then try to make everybody have the same opinions that also probably the other by giving to every citizen the same opinions, the same passions and the same interests. And he says the second expedient is as impractical as the first would be unwise. You can probably guess why he thinks trying to get everybody to have the same opinions on things is not going to work.
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A
Just won't happen.
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C
He's just not going to work.
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B
He's lived in the world.
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C
Yes, exactly. Like it. Sometimes it doesn't matter. You can have people, two people are looking at the same thing and they come to very different conclusions about what is, about what is prudent. And he actually gives a rationale for this. He says. He says sometimes people are just doing it because their reason and their self interest are at war. As long as the reason of man continues fallible and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed. So he says as long as people are have fallible reason, they're all going to come up with different opinions. I just want to bracket that sentence for a second and say that it does seem that Madison maybe believes that if everybody was just smart enough, we would all have the same opinions.
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B
He that like it's a very Madison thing to say.
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C
Well, that's sort of like a very Enlightenment thing to say. It's like the reason why people have differing opinions is because not everybody is enlightened. That does seem a very bougie thing to say. But anyway. But he. But there is some common sense as he continues on with this. As long as the connections subsists between his reason and his self love, his opinions and his passions will have a reciprocal influence on each other. And the former will be objects to which the latter will attach themselves. The diversity in the faculties of men from which their rights of property originated is not less an insuperable obstacle to a uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government from the protection of different and unequal faculties of acquiring property. The possession of different degrees and kinds of Property immediately results and from the influence of these on the sentiments and views of the respective proprietors ensures a division of the society into different interests and parties. Woof.
- [15:09]
B
I'm going to need that one more time.
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C
Yeah. What on earth is Madison getting out there? We'll get to that. But what he's saying is like, people think different things. They're going to disagree, people are going to disagree. People have different capacities of character and those different capacities of character are going to lend themselves into being in different places in the working world, the marketplace, the ownership of property. And the way that I sort of sometimes describe it to my students is like, think about it this way. Some people are just naturally less risk adverse. And they're like, I want to be able to take risks with my money, with my life, with my, with my freedom, with the things that I can do. And I want to be able to, yeah, I'll suffer the consequences, but I want to be able to like quote unquote, go for it. And I don't want to be held back on going for it. I want to start a business. I want to, you know, do X, Y and Z. I want to like roll the dice on this invention of mine. I want to kind of go for it. And there's some people for whom they're, they are less risk adverse and they've got that kind of temperament. And there's more people that are like, you're going for it when it, when it breaks is my problem because I. My insurance premiums go up or we have to maybe suffer the social consequences of your crazy experiment. Or like, you know, you create, you create social media and now we've got misinformation, like whatever, right? People. There's other going to be people who are going to be less risk adverse and they're going to be maybe more in tuned with the responsibility that the cohesive whole has. Right? And there's all sorts of like, doesn't, like, oh, was it, what's the first name hate? Jonathan Haight. Doesn't he have like some psychological or sociological studies to talk about that? Some people just have like temperaments that lead them towards more conservative and more.
- [17:02]
A
It's like liberal values. That's the righteous mind. It's like people, it's like when you ask conservatives about their aversion to things, it's that they have a. I think it's purity is the axis and it's like you view things as like pure or impure. He has a different word for it. But basically it's like all these moral conclusions come from like, starting places. It's like you have a belief and then that creates the moral thought that you have.
- [17:31]
C
You have certain things in the landscape of value that you, that you focus on. And if one of them is like, yeah, is purity and the other one could be like, what is it like? I think the other one is like inclusion or some sort or empathy or whatever that is. Right. The two sides. And so Madison is saying that like, because people are going to be coming at have like good reasons for thinking different things, you're going to have factions. The best. So great example. Oh is the, the faction you, you can have these two factions in society, let's say, like energy independence and environmentalism. There is a great example. So here in Texas, we would say, you know, a lot of our livelihood, we don't have a state tax, we get a lot of financial benefits because of the oil and gas industry. And so people whose entire livelihoods are in the oil and gas industry, who. That's where they make their money. That is, they look in the world and they say, we have achieved good things because of the policies that we have in regards to utilizing oil and gas. So we don't need to be dependent on the Saudis or the Iranians or getting natural gas from Russia like the poor Europeans. Right. Like, there are good reasons why being energy independent is a good thing to have. And they could be. And then on the other hand, you could have somebody in Oregon that is, that looks at the world around them and lives in a beautiful landscape and is concerned about the environment and says like, the burning of oil and gas is like, you know, is putting carbon emissions into the, into the atmosphere. And this is, if we're not careful, this is going to heat the planet. And they've got good reasons for, for their environmentalism. And you have these two groups of people that are looking at something and both have their own moral paradigms as to why they are coming to their conclusions. And, and they are going to be contrasting with each other. And Madison is going to say, like, it's not the government's job to convince one side to be on the other side or not, because you're never going to do it. You're never going to convince people or if you are, you're going to have to either lie to them or you're going to have to like, remove their freedoms. Like you're going to have to really fine to that AI algorithm of, of propaganda to get or whatever. Right. Like never going to happen. A zeal for different opinions concerning religion, concerning government and many other points as well as speculation as a practice, an attachment to different leaders ambitiously contending for preeminence in power or to persons of other descriptions whose fortunes have been interesting to the human passions, have in turn divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other and than to cooperate for their common good. Right. So people are going to get fired up. People are going to get. People naturally are going to flock together into like minded communities. And when they bump up against each other, this is their. It is, they're more naturally going to be vexing to one another as opposed to like working together.
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B
So factions happen.
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C
Factions happen. Yeah. So you're not going to remove its causes, then you got to deal with its effects. But then he gets into what he says is the biggest driver and creator of factions. It's not going to be religion and it's not going to be like social identity issues. So you know, it's not going to be things about like what the example that was giving before, like, like white supremacy, like ethnic, like, like ethnic identity or religious identity. Do you know what Madison says is the biggest driver of the creation of factions in the world?
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B
Cash.
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A
Economic.
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C
Yeah. It is going to be your economic interests.
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A
Is it like, I mean bourgeoisie proletariat. He would not use those terms.
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C
He would not use those terms. And he's gonna, he's gonna open it up further. Yeah. So the most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property. Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society. Those who are creditors and those who are debtors form fall under a like discrimination. A landed interest, a manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest, a moneyed interest with many lesser interests. Grow up of necessity in civilized nations and divide them into different classes actuated by different sentiments and views. So how you make your living is a big driver of where you're going to lie in terms of like what kind of faction you're part of. So he has all those interests. A landed interest, this is somebody for whom their livelihood is tied to the productive assets of their land. The farmer. You probably like the farmer. So you grow things and you make money from the, the production of your land. Then you've got the manufacturing interest. The person who takes raw materials and creates some sort of good and sells that good. So the farmer grows the grain and he sells that bushel of wheat to you. You are the miller. And you buy that bushel of wheat and you mill that and then you bake bread and you sell bread. You're a. You are a manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest. Someone who sells things, who doesn't make things. He just, he sells things. H E B. Right? Our grocery store, our much loved H E B. They are mercantile interest. They're not. They, I guess they're like, they are making some of the stuff. They got the little bakery in there. But for the most part they are just like figuring out supply chains and they're selling things and that's how they make their money. Mercantile interest. And then the moneyed interest. Thomas, this was your former life. What is a moneyed interest?
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A
Are these people who are independently wealthy and they don't have to work.
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C
Yeah. Or people who. For whom their livelihood is based on the lending out of money? I think so. Like bankers and people for whom, like, who have sort of raw capital and who are investors. So he says you have all of these different kinds of people who have all of these interests. And those interests are going to put them into, into having, voting for or having different views on how sort of things in society should be run. And if you have too small of a state or you have too much of one industry in a state, you can have a faction. So if we were just a. If the vast majority of our state were farmers and a small percentage of those of the people who lived in our state were millers. AJ As a farmer, he could say, like, man, farming is great. I love farming. But one of the big anxieties that I and my fellow farmers have every harvest is whether or not we're going to get a good price for our grain. And it would be awesome if we could get a guaranteed floor price for my bushel of wheat. And AJ convinces all of his farmers to do this, and they say, you should run for office to do this on that platform. And AJ Says yes, and he runs on this one issue. And he wins on this issue. And AJ now says, all right, there is now a floor of $5 a bushel for every wheat out there. Thomas the miller, all of a sudden his life begins to suck because you now have a fixed cost associated with your product. You have to buy wheat at $5 a bushel. So what are you going to do to your bread prices?
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A
Increase.
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C
You're increase your bread prices. He was like, I got to make some money. I got to increase my bread prices. Now bread goes. Is super expensive. And everyone goes to AJ and they're like, AJ the bread prices are expensive. This sucks. And AJ says, you know why? It's because the miller roses friggin prices. The miller should be. We should have price controls of bread.
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B
Let's kill the miller.
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C
No, it may not kill the miller, but let's say like you're now allowed to sell your bread for $2 a loaf. And so you go to the miller. Now all of a sudden the miller has to buy at 5. I don't know how many loaves he can make with a bushel of wheat, but he sells it at 2. And all of a sudden that miller is squeezed on both ends and there's no way out for you because you can't vote out of this faction of, of the, of the, the landed interest. Madison is saying this is a problem that. But the thing is, it's like it may not be a big enough problem that society like you're going to get, you know, Kalashnikovs and the millers are going to go to the woods. But, but it is a problem that it kind of sucks to be a miller and, and everyone's sort of voting for your life to be terrible. You may decide to go be a farmer and then we don't have any millers and.
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A
Or I move to Millerlandia.
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C
Or you, you move to Millerlandia and then, and then now you have to have like trade disputes with, you know, the farmer land and then that becomes a huge problem. So he's saying that this kind of situation where you have these various interests in a small state, you could have the faction that kind of ends up controlling policy and it just becomes super messy and it becomes super difficult. So he says the regulation of these various and interfering interests forms the principal task of modern legislation and involves the spirit of party and faction in the necessary and ordinary operations of the government, the legislative branch, so Congress, the Senate and the House of Representatives. Madison is saying their most important task is that they need to be sort of like outside of the factions and they need to be trying to figure out how these factions are going to be able to operate together.
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A
You wish.
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C
This is like the regulation of these various and interfering interests is the principal task of legislation.
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A
Doesn't this like. You love the optimism in this?
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C
Yes, of course you love the optimism.
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A
Is this also incredible that like this is how they're hashing out their issues as like this well thought out published article that they're.
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C
I think that's great.
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A
Yeah. Yes, I really like that.
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C
Anyway, so. But then he says, okay, this is now putting a constraint because this means that we could. We should be voting in a certain kind of person into office. Yeah. The certain kind of person that we should be voting into office is, he says later.
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A
Is it like an unconflicted person, like, you don't want the farmer to be?
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C
Yes. Well, we should have someone whose wisdom may best discern the true intents of their country, whose patriotism and love of justice will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial consideration. So essentially, we need to. If this is going to work, we need to have representatives who are going to be above faction and who are going to have. Who are going to be animated by their wisdom, patriotism, and love of justice, that they are going to make sure that they are passing laws that aren't going to be overly favored to one faction over the other, but they are going to create compromises for these factions to work together. There is an economist named Thomas Sowell I don't think we've talked about on this podcast yet, but Thomas. So he's still alive, actually. And his famous phrase is, there are no solutions, only compromises in anything. There are no solutions, only compromise. There's no solution to immigration, there's compromise. There's no solution to poverty, there's compromise. There's no solution to whatever. There's only compromise.
- [28:30]
B
I feel like that doesn't apply to, like, a dirty bathroom.
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C
There's only.
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B
Do I have to compromise with my dirty toilet or can I.
- [28:37]
C
Well, the compromise is that you are clean it. You've got to clean it. Which means you're not doing something else.
- [28:41]
A
Yeah, that's clever. Yeah.
- [28:43]
B
You guys are smart.
- [28:44]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [28:45]
C
That's what we have, a podcast. Yeah. Professional. All right.
- [28:49]
B
You agree with us because you're a public intellectual.
- [28:51]
C
Yes, exactly.
- [28:52]
A
I'll put that. Graham Donaldson, comma, public intellectual. Get a business card. But like these. These political figures are like, elected. Right. They are like, so doesn't it. They're representing the, like, wants of the people who brought them there. Also, does he get.
- [29:06]
C
So he says this is also. Then why, like, a bigger government is better? Because it's true.
- [29:11]
B
Like, you are local factions.
- [29:12]
C
Yes. Yeah. So like, AJ may still run to his farmers and be like, guys, I'm a get that price floor for our wheat. And they're like, let's vote for that guy. Then AJ is elected Senator of Breadlandia.
- [29:23]
A
Yes.
- [29:24]
C
Or Senator of Breadland. And. And he goes off to Congress. And like, 90% of Congress is like, that is not. We are not putting a price floor for wheat. And then AJ has to come back and be like, sorry guys, I didn't do it. And then he's not going to get elected next time. So if you want to be optimistic about this vision, it is a vision where the path, where theoretically the path of least resistance to the person to be elected is somebody who is conciliatory, somebody who is able to compromise and win small victories. I can't win the war and get you a price floor, but I can win some kind of small victory for you because I am skilled in being able to compromise with all of the other people. And I am working with representatives who are also wise, patriotic and love justice, who are working for the society to work together for the common aggregate interests of the community. And we all recognize that like farmers working well is good for the community. Farmers getting an absolute sweetheart deal is not going to work well because it's going to screw over the millers. But a miller getting a sweetheart deal is not going to do well because it's going to screw over the farmers. And if we have a big enough community, we don't have a faction big enough to screw over everybody.
- [30:43]
A
Yep.
- [30:43]
C
Or so. So, yeah, so that is, that's sort of the vision of it. The criticism of this is like, so the optimism is we are a big enough society that no one faction is going to rule the day. The criticism of this is, is that we are a big enough society that factions begin to. We just kick the can't the problem down the road and factions actually grow and metabol metastasize until they are really, really, really big. It's kind of like the antibiotic problem, right? We take stronger antibiotics to kill a faction and then the faction just comes back more virulent. And maybe we can talk about that in the in between episode. But Madison says, therefore, you know, we want to have people who are sort of above factions because he says no man is allowed to be the judge in his own cause because his interest would certainly bias his judgment and not improbably corrupt his integrity. So in fact, we even had to have a constitution amendment because in the Constitution it said that the, the legislative branch, so Congress was going to be paid and their pay was going to be determined by law. And they were the legislative branch. So they got to vote what their salary was. And we actually had to amend the Constitution to make sure that they couldn't just like vote their salary to like a billion dollars anyway. So he's saying like no one should be able to judge their case, therefore we need to have a Big enough government, a big. Not just a big enough government, a big society so that no one faction can swamp it. Enlightened. So he says it is in vain to say that enlightened statesmen will be able to adjust these. Adjust these clashing interests and render them all subservient to the public good. Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm, nor in many cases such an adjustment be made at all without taking into view indirect and remote considerations which will rarely prevail over the immediate interests which one party may find in disregarding the rights of another on the good of the whole. So we're going to elect AJ who's going to promise the moon to his farmers, but he's going to get stymied when he gets to Congress. And so then the farmers aren't going to get their sweetheart deal. A.J. is going to have to like, scratch and claw and compromise to get something that generally works. And it's this compromising spirit that the bigger federalized government gives, at least according to Madison. We're tracking.
- [33:11]
A
Yeah, tracking.
- [33:12]
C
Okay, cool. Then he says, all right, we're never going to stop the causes of factions we're going to control as effects. Let's see. If a faction consists of less than a majority, relief is supplied by the republican principle, which enables the majority to defeat its sinister view by regular vote. It may clog the administration, it may convulse the society, but it will not be. But it will be unable to execute and mark its violence under the form of the Constitution. When a majority is included in a faction, the form of popular government, on the other hand, enables it to sacrifice to its ruling passions or interests both the public good and the rights of other citizens. To secure the public good and private rights against the danger of such faction and at the same time to preserve the spirit and form of popular government is then the great object to which our inquiries are directed. So how do we do this? And the answer is going to be we. We have a big. We sort of have a big government that kind of lets. Doesn't let any one faction, sort of. We basically dilute the passion of factions. And so this is just sort of ends up being his solution. This is why we should have a big federal government is so that we don't have any one faction. But the question that I've always had when I read this is what happens when like, almost everybody, like, what happens when like the entire nation is a faction? I guess, like, is that just then the common good is the permanent. The people. Then it's just the people. But what if like 90 of the nation and there's like 10 that like are just going to get screwed. Is that still a faction or is that now just a common good and you guys get better play ball.
- [34:57]
A
I mean that's why we need rights in addition to will of the people.
- [35:00]
C
Yes, and that is exactly why the Bill of Rights was passed like seven years later or whatever.
- [35:06]
A
It's like you need some kind of protection. But I mean that's the dance. Right? You do need the, like the centralization of the federalist is like what creates America and makes success for the country. Right, but that would have been stomping on even more rights like that. Yeah, the anti federalists are important too.
- [35:25]
C
Yeah, that's when you need the Bill of Rights that says okay, even in light of, even if 99% of America votes that like AJ doesn't get the right to free speech. Yeah, AJ gets the right to free speech. Right, right. And so we have to have these Bill of Rights just so that we can't have. Because. Yeah, so we don't have like a faction of almost everybody versus one person. So that, so that ends up being a necessity. And. But I guess let's see how we want to.
- [36:02]
A
Do you think that answers that question you raised?
- [36:04]
C
I think so. I also just, I'm like, I think he's right in saying that the main driver of faction is financial interests or is, is, is like, is economic reasons. So like the example that I gave you of, of environmentalism and, and energy independence, like people are coming to those conclusions for all sorts of reasons, moral reasons. But there's also economic reasons. Like the environmentalist says we have, if we don't have any Earth, we don't have any, we don't have any economy. People are going to be suffering, people are not going to be able to eat. And, and then the energy independence says like okay, that may be true, but if we do what you say, we're going to be, we're going to be like bending the knee to foreign powers tomorrow as opposed to a, you know, you can't fight physics. Like we have already gone down the petrochemical, you know, path and we are dependent on it and we can't just like turn it off and not have it be bloody and painful, you know, and so you've got, you've got this problem and then it's sort of up to Congress to, to sort of try to hash that thing out. But like what happens if society, what happens in society if it Moves more and more and more towards one of those economic interests. And the question that I sort of have is you had those landed interests, manufacturing interests, mercantile interest, and moneyed interest. Well, the history of America, you have moved away the mercantile interest, sorry, the manufacturing interest. There's less manufacturing interest in the country. There is still mercantile interest. We still have goods, we still have services. We're very much a service economy. But we also. We've had the growth of the moneyed interest. We're a financialized economy. So do we create a problem where if we become as a whole nation more. If all of our economic interests are into, let's say, into one thing, we are more of a financialized world where we. Where we're going to be the. The financial hub of. Of the world or wherein like the vast majority of. Of wealthy people in this. In this country are making money because of. Of capital, of being able to lend out money, not because they're making things, not because they're manufacturing things, not because they're growing things. Do you eventually end up having a nation that passes more laws that are geared more towards the moneyed interest than the mercantile interest and the manufacturing interest and the landed interest? I think there's an argument to be made that this is maybe the path that a nation could go down. If you don't have a legislative branch that says we need to keep landed interests, we need to keep manufacturing interests, we need to keep mercantile interests and moneyed interests and all these other economic interests that can create factions. In fact, in a weird sense, we need more factions because this creates a balance in society. Because if we don't have factions and we all just become a nation of bankers, well, we're going to pass banking laws, and we're going to pass laws that are more geared towards interest rates and things that benefit the lending of money, and then we can sort of be overweight on one side. And as far as Madison is concerned, that is going to be dangerous to liberty or maybe even just like dangerous to the body. Like if you just eat the same. The same thing for the rest, for your whole life. You're not going to be healthy if
- [39:46]
B
you only do habits that help your legs.
- [39:47]
C
That's right. It is going to be actually detrimental to the entire body. So if everybody in Congress is. If the legislative branch gets enamored by one kind of. This is the problem.
- [40:00]
A
If.
- [40:01]
C
Yeah, if everybody in Congress gets enamored with one kind of faction, one kind of like one kind of vision of the American life, and then they vote towards that Vision, you're actually going to end up creating this lopsided society.
- [40:14]
B
But I think that's when you end up with like, is that, is that not a self correcting ship? You know what I mean?
- [40:20]
C
Like, but how all of a sudden
- [40:22]
B
we don't have food and oh no,
- [40:23]
C
how virulent and violent the correction is.
- [40:25]
B
I guess the question that I think that's the question is, is it? I think you could get to a place where it's so violent that it takes down the, the state. Like for example, I, I think of, I think of Rome, you know what I mean? Like their, their interests went away from like military protection and all of a sudden there were barbarians at their doorstep. Right. Everything kind of dissolved into pleasure seeking. If we went all the way banking, all of a sudden all that has to happen is the country whose farming we depend on for food either doesn't trade with us or they have a tsunami and oh word screwed.
- [40:58]
C
Yeah.
- [40:59]
B
So either we have forward looking people who can see, okay, this is going to be a problem. We need to pass laws that like we have subsidies for farms. I don't think that's going away anytime soon. And I think that if like we have enough people that are forward looking to see the problem that they can kind of stay away and veer away from that. But it could possibly take down the ship. You know what I mean?
- [41:21]
C
There's a very, I think you could make a very good argument and it's a little bit simplistic, but I think it kind of illustrates the point. You could make an argument that like as, as America Maybe in the 90s moved away from like caring about labor and said all right, and move towards like the offshoring of labor if we can get manufacturing jobs in a cheaper district. And sort of both parties went along with it or like, or everybody sort of in the 90s this was like everybody was, seemed super cool with let's send jobs, you know, sort of overseas because we can get cheaper labor. We can get all these sort of efficiencies by doing it. And, and so then back in the United States we need to focus on like the organization of the business or working on the financialization of the business and the actual like production of things can be done overseas. There was a big move towards this in the 1990s and both parties usually the, and then originally the, the Democrat party was the party of like labor. There's a party of like sort of the working man, the party of, of of the unions and labor rights and sort of abdicated that to. To. To sort of this growth of this sort of internationalization. And so there's an argument to be made that like there was an example of an interest and laws were passed around that interest that 30 years later created a problem. And the problem was is that like there. There is no manufacturing base in the United States or very small one. And then, and then that's now actually starting to reverse where people realize during COVID Well holy crap, having all of our production made somewhere else is actually a national security problem. And now there's this big push to reshore or there's re. There's reshoring and there's like friendly shoring or I can't remember what it's called like reshoring and like ally shoring or trying to reshore manufacturing here. Not because it's just get it in the neighborhood.
- [43:20]
B
You know what I mean?
- [43:20]
C
Well, it's like our house or our neighbor's house or Canada or Mexico. This idea that like we actually. It's not just. Even though it may not be like the best for the moneyed interest, it's probably maybe the best for you can make a national security reason for this. And so you've kind of got this ebb and flow. But you hope that you don't have to learn your lesson by having the bad thing happen. You want to learn your. You want to have people who have some kind of ability to extrapolate into the future what our decisions, what the potentialities of our decision, what the trade offs are going to be.
- [43:58]
B
You need somebody with a spidey sense.
- [43:59]
C
Yeah, a spidey sense or g even just can like formulate the trade off. It's like listen, if we're gonna do this, this just means that like factories in Ohio aren't going to have jobs. Maybe we're cool with that. Maybe that's a trade off because everybody is gonna have like the. That we're just. There's just gonna be more. Everything else is going to be cheaper to purchase and maybe that's fine, but it just means that you know, we're not going to have the manufacturing and if we really needed it, it's not going to be ready at our fingertips. Just as long as we know that's what's going to happen. And then if we all vote for it, that's sort of what we elect legislators to do. But anyway, so I guess at the
- [44:39]
A
beginning when we talk about the definition of factions, that second one is so factions of this group united and actuated by some common impulse. Of passion or of interest adverse to the rights of other citizens or to the permanent and aggregate interest of the community. There's not like a person who checks that or who reviews that and says, this is the permanent interest.
- [45:01]
C
Yeah.
- [45:02]
A
And I think it's even a question of is there a permanent interest in the community.
- [45:07]
C
Well, this is the problem. So let's say that you have a community that is predominantly ruled by a faction of moneyed interests, the manufacturing faction, who comes up and says, if we do this, this is going to destroy us. They are going to be seen like agitators and against America or against society, when in reality they have maybe a legitimate point.
- [45:30]
A
Right.
- [45:30]
C
We need to balance this, or else we're going to be lopsided in terms of this one faction and it's going to create all these external. These. These tertiary problems down the line that we're not going to want. And then if the electors at the time say, like, ma, it's for future senators to worry about, you know, so this goes back to the. AJ Said there's no good faction. But I. There's a part of me. It's like, okay, clearly there are bad factions. Like, no, no.
- [45:56]
B
According to his definition, there's no good faction.
- [45:58]
C
I don't know. I think there may be good. Well, maybe according to his definition.
- [46:00]
B
His definition was like, against the aggregate
- [46:03]
C
good unless the society itself has become a giant faction.
- [46:06]
A
But that's the second.
- [46:07]
C
Yeah.
- [46:08]
A
Aren't there two? It could be a common impulse of passion or of interest. And so, like, you can have a common impulse. That's like, fine. And this other one, is this permanent? You're against the community, adverse to the
- [46:19]
C
rights of other citizens or permanent and aggregate interests?
- [46:22]
A
The second one is bad. The first one is fine.
- [46:24]
C
Yeah.
- [46:24]
B
Okay, so I didn't see there were two. Am I reading that right?
- [46:27]
C
I don't.
- [46:27]
B
I'm just wondering if it's like.
- [46:28]
C
I think he's saying there's a faction can be, like, a group of people that's against another group of people. So, like, it has to be. Or you are against society as a whole.
- [46:38]
A
So it's common interest. So you need both, Right?
- [46:41]
C
Yes. So the farmer that wants price controls is against the society of a whole because it's good for me, but it's bad for everybody else.
- [46:48]
A
Yeah.
- [46:49]
C
And the person who's against other groups of people is like the white supremacist who hates other racial groups.
- [46:55]
A
Yes.
- [46:55]
C
Or the. Yeah.
- [46:57]
A
So factions need both common interest and it's against someone else.
- [47:00]
C
Yeah, but. But then when you're talking about like economic interests, I think you do need all of those interests sort of working together in concert. Because if you, if you were. There are problems. If your entire society is just a mercantile society, there are problems. If your entire society is just a landed money. A landed society, you're making money through farming, your society has problem. If it's completely a moneyed society of banking, your, I mean, your, Your society has a problem. If it's a totally 100% manufacturing society, you kind of need to have this balance. But the trou is the balance of those things are inefficient. It is much more efficient to send all the manufacturing jobs to a manufacturing society like China and then to sort of reap the moneyed rewards by. By financial. By sort of sending away the jobs and then having. Anyway, so it's like. But that's such a complicated thing. Nobody. To be fair, there was probably very few people. There was probably senators who were. Who were talking about this in the 90s, but they kind of got shouted down or they didn't make their case in such a way or Congress was filled with too many people that were part of the faction that was going to benefit from voting for the moneyed society, the moneyed interest that it didn't work. So the question is, is Madison right. Does a big society keep us from faction or does it just make the winning faction a leviathan?
- [48:27]
A
I guess it was my question of. Because with the Federalist, you're like consolidating power, right? That's the whole thing. And so, yes, you can have many different representatives, but you've concentrated. It's easier to reach all those representatives than it is to reach everyone in a country. So if you have all the power located there, like, is lobbying even a concept that he has?
- [48:48]
C
Yeah, I don't know.
- [48:50]
A
Because you can like persuade that group of people that know. Actually what I say is in the best interest of the whole country.
- [48:55]
B
Well, doesn't it also means that like, legitimate small interests go ignored?
- [49:00]
A
Yes, yes.
- [49:01]
B
Like, like take our. Take our grain guy, right? He wants a price floor for wheat. And maybe it's actually like we kind of need a price floor for wheat.
- [49:08]
C
The.
- [49:09]
B
The miller is making an absolutely absolute killing on his bread. He's charging up. There's like an upcharge of like 500% and he's. And there's a. Maybe a small faction of millers that's refusing to pay for wheat. And so the wheat's like, maybe it really is a good thing to have A floor in this imaginary scenario. But because he can't get enough traction in Congress, it's never going to happen. Even though it would really would help this local concern.
- [49:32]
C
I mean this is also just. It comes down to various views on how to function a modern economy. There's, there's a like free market that say never have price controls on anything. But I mean there's also been like we've had government control of industries that are critical to the safety of a nation. Have been standard for as long as countries have ever existed. Like it was kind of an aberration that we had, you know. Well, like anyway.
- [50:02]
B
Well, my point is it's not an actual point about wheat. Yeah. Use any example you want. Like the bowlers union really wants cheaper bowling but it's because something's, something screwy is going on in the actual bowling alleys. Like because they are part of this giant sprawling government now, they actually can't get any traction. That that's my concern is that yes you have fewer factions or less power for factions, but then you have less power for factions that might have a legitimate concern.
- [50:29]
C
I know we're getting sort of close. The, the, the thing I want to talk about in the in between is that our, we actually in, in the United States because of our electoral college. It creates these weird little bugs in our system wherein the minority, the like a small little faction's needs and desires end up becoming and having an oversized play in electoral politics because of where they happen to reside. Like so Florida, like Florida is a big example but we're going to talk about that in the in between. But, but anyway this is Madison's Federalist number 10. It to me, I read it and it's like on the one hand it makes perfect sense that like yes, a big government can control factions. And I think by and large the 250 year history of the United States has been one that a big federalized government has meant that like small special interest group factions don't get to rule the entirety of the day. But on the flip side of that a faction that can take hold and can take root in the heart or in the imagination or in the social fabric of a society maybe gets a chance to be. Doesn't burn itself through fast enough. Like it can actually get really big and, and be quite sort of become this leviathan. And I think the example of a moneyed interest, so a financialization of an economy to the detriment of land, mercantile and manufacturing, just to use Madison's terms, has meant that we've had legislation that has geared more towards sort of the financialization and capitalization of everything. And it would be very hard for a senator from a manufacturing hub and a manufacturing base in the country to propose legislation that would be good for everybody if. And that would actually be good to bring some sort of balance to the economy as opposed to sort of overclocking and overweighting on the financialization of the economy. But the ship may have already been passed. Like it's just that the, the. The faction of the moneyed interest as opposed to the manufacturing. And it could have been any of these things. I'm not saying that bankers are evil. I'm just saying that like when you have an economy that decides to go all in on one sector, you are going to have a fragile economy. It could have been like China is in the opposite sense. They have, they have a, a fragility that comes with being with mercantilism. There's a fragility that comes with being the manufacturing and the, and the production hub who manufactures goods and then also sells goods. Like there is a fragility there as well. Anyway, so it's just like Madison says, the, the best way to, to alleviate this is to hire is to elect people who are prudent and love justice. So luckily we've done that.
- [53:31]
A
That's a great solution though, right? Yeah, hard to disagree with that part. Okay, this has been classical stuff. You should know. You can find us on Patreon patreon.com classicalstuff. That's where we post our in between episodes. Additional episodes we record after every single episode. We also post monthly ama's Monthly Ask me Anythings where patrons ask us questions and we answer them and they are a lot of fun. You can find us on our website classicalstuff.net, you can email us at theguyslassicalstuff.net you can find us on Twitter or X whatever. X.com classical stuff C-L-S S C A L stuff. I believe that is it. So we're going to record our in between now. Thanks everyone.
- [54:12]
C
By. It.