On Cooperation and Win-Win

An excerpt from Bill's best-selling book, Un-Civilizing America: How Win-Win Deals Make Us Better

[Ed. Note: Members of the Bonner Private Research team are spending time with respective family and friends over the holiday period. But we didn’t want to leave you, our dear reader, empty handed. So please enjoy these complimentary excerpts from Bill’s best-selling book, Un-Civilizing America: How Win-Win Deals Make Us Better, available on Amazon, here.

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On Cooperation and Win-Win 

By Bill Bonner

“A physician cannot heal the sick if he is ignorant of the causes of certain conditions of the body, nor can a statesman help his fellow citizens if he cannot follow how, why or by what process each event had developed.” 

— Polybius 

At one point in his short life, Jesus was invited to take control of government. Political power... the power to force win lose deals on others... was offered to Him. 

Luke 4:5–8: 5 And the Devil taking him up into a high mountain, showed unto him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time . . . 

6 And the Devil said unto him, All this power will I give thee, and the glory of them: for that is delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will give it. 

7 If thou therefore wilt worship me, all shall be thine. 

8 And Jesus answered and said unto him, Get thee behind me, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.

Who offers political power? The Devil himself! Not the voters. Not the aristocracy. Not God. Instead, the Devil says clearly that government is his to do with as he wishes. And if Jesus wants it, all He has to do is worship him who gave it to Him: Satan. 

We’ve heard sermons of all sorts... in big cities... and in small country churches . . . high churches, low churches... Catholic, Baptist... and God-knows-what. Almost all the ministers, priests, and preachers we have heard from believe that God is good... and that He expects us to support good works, private and public. Often, they think they hear our political leaders speaking for God Himself. They think they hear Him telling us to back more government aid to unwed mothers, limits on carbon emissions, or more help for Native Americans. “We need to do this... or that...” they say, sounding a bit like an editorial in The Washington Post. 

But there is no “we” in the Gospel. No appeal to special interests or to the common good...or to collective justice, shared virtue, patriotism, or social economy. No tribes. No sects. No flags. No creeds. No political parties. Neither Pharisee nor Sadducee. There is only the unique person... the individual, alone... with his God. 

Only once, in a little country church in Normandy, France, did a priest take up this insight: 

“God doesn’t ask you to change the world,” he said. “He asks you to do something much more difficult—to change yourself.” 

It is difficult because you are changing your own software...updating programming that has been in place for thousands of years. Of course, it is much easier to ask somebody else to change. Change his religion! Change his behavior! Change his government! Change the way he spends his money...the way he treats his wife... the way he drinks... the way he works! Make his women take off the hijab. Make his men say the Hail Mary. 

But wait. What if he doesn’t want to change? He’ll bristle at higher taxes. He’ll whine and complain about new regulations. He’ll want to keep his old gods. He’ll resist your grand projects for a better world. Marching to Moscow in the winter isn’t in his plan. Nor is living in a godforsaken slum simply because the party bosses say so. What to do? What would Attila or Adolph do? Force him to On Cooperation and Win-Win 61 do what you want! You know what’s best for him. You know what’s best for the world. Force him to do it! 

Jesus knew it wouldn’t work. He never suggested that the Roman rulers should take care of the poor. He never hinted that it was Pontius Pilate’s responsibility to look after the cripples of Judea or to fix the price of lamb on behalf of Jewish shepherds. In his Parable of the Good Samaritan, a traveler was beaten, stripped of his clothes, and left for dead beside the road. He wasn’t rescued by the army... or by the tax collectors... nor by the social welfare agencies of the time. Even the priest walked by. Instead, it was a Samaritan—a member of a group with whom Jews enjoyed a mutual contempt—who helped him. 

This story was told by Jesus in response to a question. When told that one should “love thy neighbor,” a lawyer asked: “But who is my neighbor?” “Who’s ‘we’?” he might have asked. 

Jesus explained that it had nothing to do with group affiliation or group responsibility... or the “common good”... or the good government can do with central planning and elite, expert guidance. It didn’t matter what race, creed, religion, or gender box you checked. “Loving thy neighbor” was a radical idea at the time, a major software update. It still is radical. It suggests, to many, that the whole edifice of Christian morality is built on love. Our own guess is that it stands on a more solid foundation—two sturdy pillars: fear and self-interest. But either way, the responsibility is squarely on the individual, not on the group. 

This new religion did much more than announce a “moral code” or a “good idea.” It also described the transactions of a modern, growth economy and anticipated the codes of modern civilization. “Do unto others...” turned out to be a capitalist manifesto. 

There are only two kinds of deals: cooperative, voluntary deals... or deals made at the point of a gun. In a fixed, non-growth economy, violence is almost the only way to get ahead. The idea was, you can only get more by taking market share from someone else. That was why murder and theft were so common in the ancient world; there were few alternatives available to the ambitious person. 

Back then, the idea of the “common good” made sense. Tribal life was, perforce, collective. The “common” good was the good of the tribe. Ethnologist Richard Dawkins describes a human being as a “survival machine” for our genes. But it is more likely that the tribe was the survival machine. The individual was simply a detachable part. The tribe carried a group of genes. Individuals were expendable. The tribe was not. 

The “common good” was not universal. That is why the Old Testament is focused on a tribe—the Jews—and its progress. The tribe could benefit, for example, by exterminating a rival tribe. It could benefit by pushing another tribe away from its prime hunting grounds, or by capturing its young women in a raid. Wealth was limited. Generally, it couldn’t be increased. It could only be moved from one tribe to another. 

There was little opportunity for an individual to realize any “progress” of his own or pursue happiness in his own way. He could hunt. He could gather. He could fight. He could pass along his genes to a new generation. What he thought probably didn’t matter much. What he wanted probably never came up in conversation. It was probably very rare for tribe members to sit around the campfire and discuss their eating disorders, their political preferences, or their career aspirations. The individual didn’t count for much. 

Modern, extended societies sometimes slip back into tribal thinking. “Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer,” as Hitler famously put it. The idea was simple enough—he would treat the German people as though they were “we,” members of the same tribe with a “common good” that could be had by following their leader. 

There was one Reich (government), but there were many different Volk (people) in Germany. But while the “we” of a prehistoric tribe was natural, authentic, and could benefit from the win-lose protocols of a zero-sum world, the “we” of Nazi Germany was fake. Needless to say, not all Germans shared the same enthusiasm for the success of the master race. Eventually, almost all of them— Jews, Gypsies, and Nazi Party members, too—came to detest it, as they suffered from trying to insist on win-lose deals in what had essentially become a win-win world.

Regards,

Bill Bonner

[Ed. Note: If you’d like to pick up a copy of Bill’s book, Un-Civilizing America: How Win-Win Deals Make Us Better, for a spot of holiday reading, you can grab one on Amazon here.