Government is the social realm. The virtue of politics is liberty. To say what we want to say and do what we want to do, and have what we need is liberty. The freedoms of self-determination, opportunity, movement, expression, and possession are all part of liberty. The vice in politics is authoritarianism, inequality or fascism. When one person or group controls another, they are unequal. Laws that divide, like the Jim Crow laws, are destructive of liberty. Legality often has a low moral standard. Laws allow stealing, predation, prejudice and many forms of injustice.
There is no universal victim. A black person may be mistreated in a white country or a white person mistreated in a black country. Similarly, Muslims, Christians, Jews, Buddhists and atheists can mistreat one another in their respective spheres. Citizens can mistreat non-citizens. The rich class can mistreat the poor class, and vice-versa. The employer can abuse employees. The unions can abuse consumers. The public servants can abuse the taxpayers. Every form of prejudice can be a government policy or a cultural norm. True liberty encompasses systemic equality and requires personal responsibility, not individualistic opportunism.
Authoritarianism is systemic inequality, which grants a privilege to one group or individual to exercise power at the expense of others. When Thomas Paine described society as a blessing, and government as a necessary evil, the dividing line was how power was used, not who was using it. Slavery and Jim Crow were as unfair as monarchy or feudalism. Plutocrats practicing democracy amongst themselves is not liberty. The peace symbol represents social harmony and equality whereas the fist represents violence and inequality.
Political Virtue by Steve Consilvio
The virtue of economics is production. Economics deals with the physical. Money, or finance, deals with the numerical values that we assign to the physical. We can live without money, but we cannot survive without work. We must produce so we can consume. The more we produce, the higher our standard of living, and the more people society can support. Goods and services are created through cooperation. No man is an island. As we step through the sequence of our lives, we need one another to fashion the physical world for our mutual benefit.
Distribution is an important element of production. Moving the wealth of land and labor between businesses, between the city and the countryside, and between nations, is at the heart of economics. Everyone lives a hand-to-mouth existence, and shares an immediate need for food, healthcare and shelter.
The vice in economics is destruction (war) or hoarding (selfishness). Both reduce the quality of life. When the goal of work is to make things difficult for others, to mutually destroy what others manufacture, or when we demand more than our share, we destroy economic balance. Selfishness (inequality) is a lethal act, but it works more slowly than a bomb. Greedy behavior mimics the slave-master who robs the productive labor of the slave. It is like an assembly-line worker who disrupts the line by not using the parts they were given. They have extra pieces which serve no purpose, and everyone else suffers the consequences of inferior products and avoidable repairs. Economics is an assembly line on which we are all a participant. The happy face symbol represents hunger satiated. Through equality everyone's needs are met. In contrast, the percentage symbol with the embedded up and down arrows represent inequality and volatility, which eventually makes everyone miserable.
Economics Virtue by Steve Consilvio
Consistency
Commonwealth requires the understanding of a system, the recognition of our role, and standards of proper behavior for everyone. Commonwealth is more than just physical wealth, it is social harmony and intellectual enlightenment, too. Commonwealth combines faith, liberty and production.
In looking at the virtues and vices of religion, politics and economics, we can see that they are almost inseparable issues. Every criteria can be triangulated, which forms the pattern reflected in the Big History model. The virtues form a complete whole: faith, trust, equality, working hard, productivity, cooperation, sharing and optimism, whereas only a single vice is necessary to disrupt harmony.
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