Katherine Tai, the US Trade Representative in the Biden administration, is one of the many lawyers tasked with understanding and running the economy. Last May, she gave a speech to celebrate the Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and PacificIslander Heritage Month. She told her audience:
You are not invisible. I see you and I hear you. The President sees you and hears you. And we’re fighting like hell for you.
Because you belong.
What does that mean? What does “you belong” mean?
In a liberal-individualist society, that is, in a free society, there is no way for an individual to belong but by choosing which group not to belong to, for he (or she) is a member or potential member of a practically unlimited number of groups with different degrees of abstractness and compatibility. “Belonging” to everything, belonging in general, is impossible in a free society.
In an unfree society, it is different. I can think of three sorts of “belonging.” In a tribe, one does indeed belong in general, because there is little choice but to adopt the belonging uniformity imposed by customs and the fear of being banned. In a more structured society, we meet the second kind of belonging: to belong to “society,” which means to its government, which may or may not be a majoritarian democracy. In Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, Lenina expresses this in her simple way: “Everyone belongs to everyone else.” The “Dear Leader watches you and will take good care of you” that one can see in Ms. Tai’s lyrism is very consistent with that way of belonging. The third way to belong is slavery, the ultimate form of belonging; if you really want to belong, that’s the way to go.
One objection is that “belong” can be used not in its property-right sense but in a derived symbolic sense such as “to be attached or bound by birth, allegiance, or dependency … they belong to their homeland;” or “to be a member of a club, organization, or set … she belongs to a country club.” (See the online Merriam-Webster.) But note that “slave” also has figurative meanings, which do not totally defang its literal sense. Ms. Tai should have said more precisely how her audience belongs.
Ms. Tai might emphasize her use of the intransitive form of the verb, which conveys the more fuzzy meaning of “to be suitable, appropriate, or advantageous … to be in a proper situation” (as Merriam-Webster writes). But this could also suggest that one must stay in his place, or he will be put in his place by the power that be. In a free society, the individual largely chooses not only what he “belongs to,” but also which idea he espouses, what is “suitable, appropriate, or advantageous” for him to believe and to do.
Another way, perhaps more practical, to look at the problem is to consider a recent statement by a Starbucks spokesman:
We remain committed to creating a culture of warmth and belonging, where everyone is welcome.
A free society is not a big Starbucks. It includes even those who don’t like Starbucks or don’t want to be watched and taken care of by some Dear Leader. In such a general context of liberty, Starbucks itself, of course, should be free to do what its owners decide. Absent a general context of liberty, Starbucks would not be able to define for itself what is “a culture of warmth and belonging.”
I doubt that the current USTR, who is philosophically a 17th-century mercantilist (just as her predecessor in the Trump administration, Robert Lighthizer, was), meant that an individual is free to “belong” or not as he decides. (Say you don’t want to belong to the minimum-wage “beneficiaries” or to belong to a union.) All this leaves open the question of the minimal rules, legal or moral, on which a free society might depend. Political slogans and incantations about belonging cannot answer this question. It is, in my view, difficult to think about it without reading Nobel economists James Buchanan and Friedrich Hayek—and for that matter Anthony de Jasay, who showed that the Dear Leader is an illusion, for he is only dear to part of the population.
READER COMMENTS
vince
Aug 24 2023 at 1:14pm
Your question is a good one. Here are two more. By what authority does Tai choose who belongs? Her condescending quote raises the question, Who doesn’t belong?
Mark Brady
Aug 24 2023 at 1:45pm
“Katherine Tai, the US Trade Representative in the Biden administration, is one of the many lawyers tasked with understanding and running the economy.”
I was surprised to read that you used the expression “running the economy” without qualification. No one runs, or is even tasked to run, that vast spontaneous order known as the economy!
Richard W Fulmer
Aug 24 2023 at 1:46pm
Someone who believes he can steer the economy is like a flea who believes he can steer a dog. While the flea can make the dog miserable, the dog is unlikely to end up where the flea intends.
Monte
Aug 24 2023 at 3:05pm
This!!!
Jose Pablo
Aug 24 2023 at 3:16pm
Well, if the flea is an Argentinian flea … or a Venezuelan flea … Mexican flea …
I don’t know, “high dog steering capacity” fleas seem to thrive in many places!
Jose Pablo
Aug 24 2023 at 6:22pm
Chinese fleas too …
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2023/08/24/why-chinas-economy-wont-be-fixed
vince
Aug 24 2023 at 3:51pm
Did you mean to say the flea cannot steer the dog, or the flea can steer the dog but in one direction, misery?
Jose Pablo
Aug 24 2023 at 5:35pm
The flea seems to be driving the dog (as in “being the main culprit in making the dog go the way that the dog is going”), but sure the flea is not making the dog going in the direction the flea wants to.
https://www.heartsonvenezuela.com/end-poverty-the-eternal-and-unfulfilled-promise-of-the-bolivarian-project/
Whether this is “steering” or not looks like a semantic discussion.
Pierre Lemieux
Aug 24 2023 at 2:53pm
Mark: Your substantive point is good an useful in the conversation, and I share your views on this.
However, I am pretty sure Biden did not tell Tai: “You are tasked with non-rnnning the process by which we run the activities of Americans who want to import goods from foreign lands because, as you know. there is a spontaneous order under that, and trying to interfere or to conspire to intervene could only do damage.” Similarly, I am also pretty sure he did not tell Lina Kahn, another lawyer (I have other examples), when announcing to her that she could have the job of competition cop: “You are tasked with non-rnnning the process by which large firms compete against, and merge with, other firms because, as you know, there is a spontaneous order under that, and trying to interfere or to conspire to intervene could only do damage.”
Mark Brady
Aug 25 2023 at 5:30pm
Pierre, I was prompted to post my comment because you often chastise writers for using expressions like “running the economy.” 😊
Jose Pablo
Aug 24 2023 at 2:57pm
I read the “running the economy” part as an irony and smiled
Craig
Aug 24 2023 at 5:51pm
“Katherine Tai, the US Trade Representative in the Biden administration, is one of the many lawyers tasked with understanding and running the economy.”
I was surprised to read that you used the expression “running the economy” without qualification. No one runs, or is even tasked to run, that vast spontaneous order known as the economy!
The Professor deserves the benefit of the doubt that it was written fully intending a sarcastic tone.
steve
Aug 24 2023 at 2:16pm
My assumption is that she was responding to those who tell Asians, among others, that they dont belong here in the US and should go back home. It’s not an uncommon complaint I hear at our rural hospitals and some of my non-white providers have received threats referring to their race.
Steve
Jose Pablo
Aug 24 2023 at 3:06pm
It is not an uncommon complaint I hear, either, that the immigration policy should prevent foreign “criminals” entering the country. Criminals don’t belong here!
Well, there is between 70 and 100 million Americans with some form of criminal record (as many as one in three Americans). So, you could be inclined to think that “people with a criminal record” do belong.
https://www.sentencingproject.org/app/uploads/2022/08/Americans-with-Criminal-Records-Poverty-and-Opportunity-Profile.pdf
The concept of “belonging” is certainly interesting. Thank you, Pierre!
Pierre Lemieux
Aug 24 2023 at 3:19pm
Steve: Yes, perhaps, but allow me to elaborate. She said that in a collectivist perspective. You belong to the president and the vice-president like we all do. Or, to view her statement charitably: You belong to America like we all do, for as Lenina said “everyone belongs to everyone.”
She could have said something like, “Each of you is, as I am, an individual, and none is worth less than any other,” perhaps adding, “I know that many of you come to America to escape your communitarian cage, and the president, God, and I are working so that America never develops along those lines.”
But she obviously does know how an individualist perspective could make any sense. Instead, she blabbers with funny lyricism about how “We [in America] are a community of communities”, “the Vice President of the United States gets us because she is one of us,” or “we’ve always been about community.” It’s worth reading her speech.
steve
Aug 24 2023 at 9:25pm
Read it twice. Didnt see anywhere that is said they or anyone belong to POTUS or VPOTUS. Seems like a fairly banal speech pandering to Asians on the basis that they have been victims in the past and again recently, but everyone is a victim so this is hardly unusual. Still looks to me like she is saying they belong in the US just as much as anyone else.
Steve
Monte
Aug 24 2023 at 3:03pm
Public statements like those issued by Katherine Tai and Starbucks are nothing more than thinly veiled approbations of DEI, meaning that only BIPOCs or servile whites willing to embrace this philosophy “belong” or are “welcome.” Under the aegis of DEI, our Dear Leader (the State) wants to homogenize society and marginalize the individual, a core tenet of the deconstructive postmodernist movement.
How appropriate that you should reference Brave New World and “the question of the minimal rules…on which a free society might depend.” In order to preserve liberty, liberals and conservatives will have to recognize that our common enemy is Mustapha Mond, or the State, and not the individual.
Craig
Aug 24 2023 at 5:19pm
If I discuss illegal aliens/immigration, do you not gently chastise me along the lines of: “Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto” (figured you’d appreciate the Latin)? So you ask, “What does “you belong” mean?” and I would suggest that there are degrees of kinship. I suppose there could be some objective generic query where we could submit our DNA and find out how far back in time we share an ancestor. On a very local level that remains very pertinent since I am a son to my parents, a husband to my wife, a father to my children…..a resident X town in Y county, in Z state in the United States on Planet Earth. This is about preferences, no? I should prefer my son, at least generally, and so on. Not an absolute indication of course and for sure one can surely change the circumstances of how they are woven into the tapestry of humanity to much greater degrees than might’ve been defined by feudal ties of course.
Pierre Lemieux
Aug 25 2023 at 12:55pm
You are not wrong, Craig, but I believe there is a crucial piece missing in your puzzle: cultural evolution, and the distinction between genetically inherited instincts and preferences in a Great Society. The book to read is Hayek’s The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism. Hayek is not easy to read, especially for a new reader of his work. My review (which I just linked to) can provide many keys to facilitate reading the book, but the latter should be on your program anyway.
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