Democracy - The Right to Fail and Responsibility to Correct it

A couple of years ago, I was asked, on Quora, the question, "Is order or freedom more valuable to society?" Today, this is the question that we, in America, are asking ourselves. It is the irony fueling our political system and our individual responses to it. I had forgotten about the question and the answer until this morning when I received an email. It said that I had received an UP vote for my answer. I followed the links back to see what question and how I had answered it.

The email came from Quora and said "Jack Rogers up voted your answer to: Is order or freedom more valuable to society?" I had forgotten about it. Quora is a website where individuals, usually students can ask questions on any subject they wish. The questions are organized under major headings (or interest groups) and the questioner then waits for others to answer. The quality of the answers and questions is fairly open and varied from amateur opinions to expert professionals. To get an UP vote is generally rare but very ego satisfying when you get one. 

Quora.com defines itself as "A place to share knowledge and better understand the world." One is free to join and to become active in areas of mutual interest. I joined out of curiosity some years ago as an Adjunct Professor in Business. Over the years, my participation has been sporadic. So today's email was a pleasant surprise. More so today, because the question and my answer seem so timely.

The question hits at the heart of the debate going on today within our democracy. "Which is more valuable to our society, order or freedom?" 

This question faced the representatives from the colonies who came to the Continental Congress. They gather to decide the reasons for forming a NEW and Independent nation in the New World and separate from the Britain. Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence investing the power in “We, the People” and not a King appointed by God. Today, we are facing a similar problem 250 years later. Are we to remain E Pluribus Unum or devolve into a set of fiefdoms controlled by a privileged minority. As a nation and society, we are breaking along two different lines.

 

Some of us see the USA as a Society of the human beings who are citizens gathered around the light of freedom creating order. This view is the one favored by the Democrats and the Left. They look to free People to produce an orderly society. It is an order that comes from the freedom to express one's views and decided by a vote of all of the people. In its most basic form, the question is -- who or what is a "person"?

Others of us see the USA as the land of opportunity, where individualism is tested and measured by achievement. This is the one favored by The Republicans and the Right. They look to the Institutional leaders who have to impose the order on chaos that made opportunity possible. The successful industrious individual who achieve his\her goals proves his/her worth. Industry is defined by results that is measured in terms of one's power over nature and other humans. Power is the individual's reward for the insight and effort invested in the opportunities.The Freedom comes from the power that leaders have to impose Order on the other people. 

I was not thinking about this actual division in America at the time I answered the question. But as a child growing up during the Cold War I was aware of the difference. By the 1960's, I began to realize that the high moral positions taken by groups were made up of different premises: part reality, part desire, part privilege and part desperation. America was a divided nation, despite a mythology that said different. Yet there was common denominator -- POWER. Who had it and when was it used?

It has been my goal, as an anthropologist, to understand how and where power in a society is determined and exercised. Did it come from the personality of the individual, or the individual's status (achieved or assigned) in the Society and what is it about the Cultural values shared by each that can create the divide.

When I saw the UP vote announcement to the question -- Order or Freedom I was curious. What did I say? And Do I still believe it? So I took a look and here is what I said in 2018.

Both when in balance. When order breaks down the freedom is also lost. Disorder limits your freedom because it makes life more unpredictable. Unpredictability limits your freedom. Your freedom increases with your ability to predict your options and your chances of success/failure. From a social perspective, manners, etiquette, morals, laws, and rules that “limit” freedom make life more predictable for individuals and therefore gives the individual “choice.” Your degree of Choice is the true measure of freedom.

The answer I found then and today more than ever leads me to believe that the ability and opportunity to choose one's fate is the Key. Choice is the measure of freedom for an individual to take a risk or not. Choice gives the individual a voice in their own destiny. In a society, the individual's personal choice gets lost if the individual does not have the power to exercise or register their choice.

So today I want to share the answer that I found, that confirms the answer that our Founding Fathers found in those hot, sweltering days in Philadelphia as they hammered out their gift to the future -- the Constitution of the United States of America. The Constitution is the business plan of a group of radicals who were charged with designing a new product founded on the NEEDS of those radicals spelled out in their DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 

That product, a new NATION, based on a simple set of assumptions. Those assumptions, have come the basis, for the new nation and are 

Those assumptions are:

1. If you are born, you have been given the "Right to Life". Jefferson, in his period, referred to it as a GOD given right to LIFE. Today we fight over the source of that right. Is it GOD, the Mother, or the State that gives us that RIGHT?

2. "The Right to Liberty" which I have come to see as the INDIVIDUAL's right to make a CHOICE when presented with the alternatives available at the particular time and place. Today that would mean that choices are made by individuals and based on the individual's sense of values.

3. "The Right to the Pursuit of Happiness" which I have come to accept as the RIGHT to fail. Today, we have, as a species, advanced technologically so that the core of Modern Society, has many different solutions to its basic animal problem. It is our RIGHT to try these and find or create a solution that produces HAPPINESS. But what brings me happiness, may not bring you happiness. 

The question those radicals meeting in Philadelphia was how to create a plan, a business plan, that would satisfy the basic principles or rational for a Declaration of Independence and still insure the both the rights of the individual and the demands of conformity of a society?

I did not discover anything new. But, I finally understood what and why I am proud to be an American; and why I feel that everyone has the RIGHT to Fail. In the long run what really matters is, What one (the individual and/or society) does with the failure. The American Experiment is defines how those ideals could be achieved. By insuring the right of the individual to fail and try again.

Rules, or laws, created by society to govern and legitimate individual behavior provided society's standards to define the person and social responsibility for doing so. And provides the opportunity to try again if one fails. The question facing the radicals was: How do we balance the desires of the individual and the needs of society?  The answer is a Constitution that defines the powers of society and how they will be managed -- a business plan for a New Nation.

The only why one learns is through failure. It allows you to see were you and your country need to direct your attention and resources to improve your skills. The problem with Success is, over time, it becomes routine and the assumed normal. Success breeds a sense of privilege that is a beginning of the decline of freedom and the beginnings of an obsession for order, an order to maintain the status quo. Or, as the song goes, “Stop the World I want to get off.”

The proper balance of order and freedom is determined, I feel, by RIGHT of all people to CHOOSE and adjust the balance. Choice is a function of the person's power to make a choice. Society functions when everyone has the opportunity to express their opinion, agrees on the rules of the group or society, votes according to the roles, and accepts the result of the vote as the has legitimate choice of the whole group. The result is Order freely agreed upon and freely accepted.

Statues and Players

 I have been a Structural/Functionalist most of my professional career. I know that anthropology has advanced in its methodologies and theory since the mid-20th century. But Structural/Functionalism is at the very foundation of understanding of any event. It is the difference between Science and Religion.

Structure is the statue, the photograph, the paragraph. Structure is freezing time so that one can examine the situation, the context, the inter-relations of the parts, and the emotional response to an event. On the one hand, it is the player rooster, the theater program, the blueprint, etc. Put simply, structure is the picture of human activity without TIME. It is Culture as represented by a particular artifact.

Function is the players, the organization, the history, the novel. Function opens up the structure by adding Time to the analysis of the whole. It not only shows us the inter-relation of parts, but it illustrates how these parts operate in relation to the structure as a whole. Function describes the How? Where structure describes What? 

Together, these TWO perspectives tell us that life is not static. Culture is NOT static. They are cyclical and evolutionary. If there is one basic concept that describes both, it is TIME. They are cyclical when the process is repeated over and over again. And it is evolutionary when it responds to the context (environment) and adjusts to the longer cycle of an immediate context. Structure is based on duration of a process, where TIME is held constant. Function is based on the process cycle, where Time is to change. They may be studied independently, or in conjunction with one another.

Structure and Function, together, are the basis of scientific anthropology. 

Traditional, early, anthropology assumed a fixed Culture could be found in different societies. The traditional anthropologist went off to the field and spent a year or a few years studying the same group. The assumption that cultures were fixed in time comes from the context. 

The annual cycle of group was studied (funding permitting) and written up as a monograph describing the Culture of the people. Sometimes this was done by the anthropologist acting conservatively and describing the study of the  group, or the village. Other times it was done liberally with an extrapolation that the observations applied to the inhabitants of a physical area. The ethnography, or site report for archaeology, lead to a static description. It froze time. 

But this strategy can be forgiven because early anthropologist were attempting to salvage cultures that were threatened by the spread of Western Civilization. Archaeologist were also attempting to salvage stages of development before human prehistory was lost to modernization of the environment and natural decay of time on physical artifacts. In a way these are our baseline for the development of our discipline, much like the arbitrary laying of the datum line in an archaeological site. It provides  a statute --- a frame of reference -- as a reminder of where we started in our history of discovery of CULTURE.

Archaeology gave us a time perspective through the stratigraphic context of the salvage effort. It also provided a warning about the destructive nature of the science. Field archaeology evolved from art history to a science with the imposition of scientific methodologies for preservation of both the artifact, its context, and the site. This has lead to an evolution in the size and methods of archaeological anthropology. From a function to salvage art artifacts to the function of salvaging the context and "time".

Field ethnology attempts to salvage the material and behavioral aspects of people's actions in TIME by determining the context of time -- "the ethnological present." The original tradition recognized the difference between the aboriginal behavior and "contact" behavior and attempted to "salvage" the former from the older, surviving members of the earliest generation available. Further, because these older subjects generally represented a smaller sample of the target population and relied on memory, the field anthropologist was faced with an editorial decision as to who and what is the more authoritative evidence. Here "authority" is a issue since it reflects the "present" [the specific time of the research] "official" cultural values that the members hold "today."

As the ethnological record has expanded, in part due to the evolution of the profession and part to the size of the sample, the salvage issue has devolved into a broader range of detailed study of the specific cultural practices on one hand, and acculturation at the other end. In the former, the salvage concern becomes a more specific attempt to determine the differences between "cultural" and "social" practices. On the other, it is the focus on the processes of resistance and acceptance of  socio-cultural differences between social groups.

The Structural/Functional perspective unifies these two perspective by isolating TIME as a variable to the context of the analysis. Structure holds "TIME" as constant. Function focuses specifically on change in the structure over TIME.  Together the supply a complete picture, while individually they provide a contextual uniformity.

PROUD TO BE AN APPLIED ANTHROPOLOGIST IN THE 21ST CENTURY

 As an anthropologist, I find today's America provides the greatest source of cultural diversity and challenges to a discipline that many in the public still identify as the study of "rocks and bones". Cultures clash and synthesize all around us. They compete with one another and cooperate synergistical with others in larger systems. It is this quality that leads me to view organizations, communities and institutions -- societies for short -- a superorganic entities.

Nature creates plant and animal communities that adapt and fill their ecological zones and expand to neighboring territory through adaptation. Adaptation comes from inbreeding whether by genes, synergeyes,  ideas, values, and/or through inter- and cross-breeding. History provides the record of the new emergent structures. Patterns emerge as these systems grow, and then eventually retreat into a smaller, narrow ecological zone much like we see in biological viruses or social movements such as the Taliban, or cultish political ideologies. There they join to form a local system. or community. Each element becomes part of the community's own life cycle.

But more than just a rich field for academic research is the challenge of applying the lessons learned by humanity over the thousands of years of our existence ,collected, analyzed, and evaluated by academics to the solution of human and societal problems that serve all human-kind and the general welfare of human actions on the planet.

Today, as we see, the world is becoming a singular place, people and a vast network of conflicting values. A challenge to anthropology and all the social, biological and medical sciences.

This is the world of the present and future. Technology and climate change are forcing all life to adapt, adjust, or die off. Earth will survive but will the higher life forms or at Venus or Mars our eventual destiny?

SOPA -- a brief history of local applied anthropology circa 1980

 

Society of Professional Anthropologists (SOPA)

               Founded in 1974; Disbanded in 1983

               Mailing list of about 300 persons

               Addresses [? What would be the best one to use?]

               Correspondents: Barry Bainton and Margaret Knight

A.     History and leadership

After incubating during the fall and winter of 1974-75, SOPA came into being during an open invitation party that winter at the Statler Hilton on Miracle Mile in Tucson, Arizona. Fifty people attended. Margaret Knight and Barry Bainton had discussed their ideas for a local anthropology organization and concluded that there was a strong need for such a group to help pave the way for the future of the discipline outside of academia. Originally, they considered the possibility of forming a program evaluation group (the Southern Arizona Program Evaluation Group), but later moved in the direction of organizing local anthropologists who were working outside of academia.

According to Bainton: “The keystone to the SOPA concept is the definition of the professional anthropologist as someone who has training in anthropology, identifies with anthropology, and shares the anthropological perspective...”

 

“SOPA tries to fill a structural void in the profession by:

(1)    building links the local academic anthropologist and the practicing anthropological communities;

(2)    creating a forum where individuals can interact with each other as professionals, regardless whether each has a PhD;

(3)    providing responsiveness to local, rather than national or even regional needs of anthropologists, and

(4)    removing the barriers that often confront working anthropologists  …” (1979: 319)

 

During the first SOPA meetings attendees expressed a good deal of hostility against the anthropology establishment for the lack of preparation of graduate student for working outside of the university. Furthermore, many felt that they had entered into a field, become converted tp an anthropology identity, and then when they ended up working outside the traditional university setting, they were considered “less than holy” in the eyes of the discipline.

 

A Steering Committee was established, consisting of Barbara Curran, Ann Cowan, Gordon Krutz, Ernie Walter, Bainton, Knight, and A. D. Rund (?). [any others?]. They held board meetings every other week in addition to regular monthly or bimonthly evening programs. Many of the people participating in SOPA were working in community development organizations. SOPA leaders really networked to find members. Resulting in a really substantial mailing list of about 300. During the hay days, 50 - 60 people attended meetings.

 

SOPA was especially active in the 1970s, and then as some of the original core group left the area. It gradually went out of existence. A second generation of potential leaders did not take the reins; furthermore, the times, the people, and the environment all changed. During the late Spring of 1983, they held a party and spent the rest of the money in the treasury [and went out of business].

 

B.     ARIZONA AS A CULTURAL CONTEXT FOR AN LPO IN THE 1970s

Tucson and the State of Arizona were alive with anthropologists applying their wares in the 1970s. It was a very unique period.

Considerable federal and state monies were available for projects in many programs those associated with OEO [Office of Economic Opportunity], the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Indian Health Services, the Bureau of Ethnic Research [? U of A], and the National Park Service, etc. While anthropologists were working in research and evaluation, surveys, planning, transportation, museums, education, health much of what they were doing could come under the rubric of community development. With the change in the federal administration in the 1980s, funding for such programs drastically declined, and many of the anthropologists who an applied focus at the time. Ned Spicer is remembered as having been “more than an were leaders in SOPA left the area to take positions elsewhere.

C.     THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL COMMUNITY

Some of the initial SOPA leaders had graduated from the University of Arizona, Department of Anthropology. Under the efforts of Dr. Edward H. Spicer and others, the anthropology program had anthropologist.” An extremely charismatic person who was an embodiment of what he taught. In addition to “turning out applied anthropologists during the 1960s and early 1970s, he backed SOPA all the way.

While SOPA’s may mission focused on providing a network for anthropologist working outside of the university, it also made a point to maintain cooperative links to the department for mutual benefit.  SOPA was determined to bridge the academic-practitioner gap and was persistent in explaining its goals and needs of its members to the academic anthropologists.

D.     PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS

The dissolution of SOPA was spurred, in part due by internal organizational development and in part by changes in the society. The original steering committee was no longer able to lead the organization. Barbara Curran, a very important founder and leader died. While others left the area, including  Barry Bainton and Margret Knight.

 

While some of the people were really excited by what SOPA was doing at the time, there was not enough support to sustain the organization as the leadership turn over.  Another very important factor was the economic constriction of programs and projects anthropologists were involved in, in Arizona reflecting national political-economic changes.

 

E.      ONGOING ORGANIZATION

SOPA met very regularly during its hay day. Members really enjoyed getting together, and they did not have problems of getting people to come to meetings. Dues were levied. In an attempt to keep things simple and manageable, they did not publish a journal. They did have a newsletter and a directory of members. Newsletters and other SOPA documents are held in the archives of the Arizona State Museum, Tucson, Arizona, 85721.

 

F.      OTHER ORGANIZATIONS

SOPA was the first LPG (Local Practitioner Groups). It served as a model for the generation of WAPA, SCAAN, COPA, and MAPA.  Realizing that they would need to put their energy into themselves, SOPA did not spend a lot of time developing links to other organizations. Early in SOPA’s history, Edward Lehman, Executive Director of the AAA at the time, visited Tucson and met with SOPA and was encouraged to see this development at the grass roots level in applied anthropology.

 

No formal links were established, however [at the time] with either AAA or SfAA.

 

 

[This essay is a copy, with minor editing, of a paper I wrote initially in the 1990’s]

MYTH vs. HISTORY

Myth is the history of cultural values buried in a story of an ideal past. History is the chronology of a society's experience based on physical evidence from the past.

Both serve an important role in the development of a socio-cultural system and for the enculturation of the next generation. Yet individuals and societies must be able to distinguish between the two. 

The former, Myth is the glue that holds society together and makes it one. Shared myths determine who is "one of us" and "who isn't". The latter, History is the explanation of how we got to this point. It is, if done scientifically, conservative and scientific based on physical evidence and weighted against a standard of "preponderance" evidence and agreement among those who study the evidence. Both maybe true, both maybe false, and both may contradict one another. This is the human and societal dilemma. 

In the scholarly world, myth is the territory of religion and history is the territory of science.

Politics is the battleground on which the various points of view are fought. And Nature (or God) could care less. We are part -- not of Nature's or God's plan -- but their experiment. This is an experiment that began with BIG BANG some 12 billion years ago, while the human race (Homo Sapien species) is only approachmently 100,000 years old. That is 100,000/12,000,000,000 or 1/12,000 of the time Nature has experimented with the BIG BANG or .0000008333 per cent of the time that the universe has been estimated to have been around. 

These two human adaptations to our time on Earth have shaped Human existence and human institutions. As modern man left Africa and invaded Europe and Asia Sapiens have encountered related Homo species, mating with and/or conquering them. And adapting to their new environments.

Our adaptation was not the miracles that our mythology tells us about but what our genes and the survival of procreating adults produced.

LAW vs Fairness: An anthropological perspective

A basic question for society is, "How does it balance the interests, needs, wants, and rights of the individual member with those of the group, or society? 

Further, "How does the society transfer its knowledge and solutions from generation to generation?"

 For thousands of years, humanity has evolved solutions to these questions. Each have been specific to the time and circumstance and have proven to be successfully passed on generation to generation. In the process, there have emerged thousands upon thousands of individual and distinct societies with their own distinct culture. And in each of these, the same questions are asked and answered. "How does the individual relate to the group, and how does the group relate to the individual? From a broad perspective, it has been through addressing the basic question of individual fairness versus the collective benefit or interests that we recognize the role Law plays in the evolution of culture.

What is a "fair share" and "how do we determine it?"

As anthropologists, we have found that there are a number of recurring solutions to the human questions of fairness. These solutions exhibit a similarity over time and space. In addition, they also reveal an underlying pattern of growth and focus. By growth, I am referring to the inclusion of situations that show a particular bias that favors the individual or the group. By focus, I am referring to the process of resolution -- fairness or law. The goal of any society is to create a method that the group, as a whole, will ues to create a sense of "fairness" among its members.

 Fairness comes in two forms -- situational and cultural.

 Situational fairness is the "deal" where two parties negotiate the costs and benefits of resolving certain points of conflict that prevent them from mutually benefiting from the situation. Each openly lays out its list of costs and benefits as its sees the situation. Then they begin a process of weighing their individual cost or benefit to accepting or rejecting the other's claims. Through this process, the parties arrive at a conclusion. That conclusion maybe either a deal, that each agrees satisfies their individual need, or no deal that may result in a simple agreement to disagree, or elevating the conflict into a violent confrontation using force to achieve "personal" objectives despite the objections of the other party.

 It is the latter outcome, passed on from situation to situation, from generation to generation, that leads from an individual to collective feeling of fairness and unfairness. Fair deals become routine. The beheavors become almost ritualistic. Like the Kula ring described by Malinowski, the Potlatch described by , or the Church offering described by , these acts are based on a culturally defined TRUST between the parties.

 Unfair deals are seen as threats or rights, Threats or rights depend on what outcome one might expect if the deal is not made. A threat is a potential loss of the status quo, property, identity or life. In modern society, the lose in a game may be seen by the parties to the game as a threat to status. The purchase of a house may be seen as a threat to the buyer and seller unless guaranteed by the bank writing the mortgage. The loss of a driver's license can be a threat to one's identity where such a license from the state is used to guarantee one's identity. And, the warning label on the dangers of a given product tells of the threat of misuse of the product can lead to death.

 A right, on the other hand, is the anticipated privilege or standing that one finds in the situation. When these expectations are passed on, generation to generation, they become normative expectations or cultural rules of fairness and unfairness. The right to own a house is guaranteed by the ability to get a mortgage, to buy liquor or board a plane is guaranteed by a driver's license, And the manufacturer's warranty or seal of approval is a guarantee of the safety of the product.

 Laws are the social and cultural counterparts to fairness. These are the elements of a deal that have been reached and accepted by the parties involved, who find themselves in a similar situation time after time. They are the solutions to situations that group members have resolved in the past. The most significant feature of the Law is how group authority is acquired and the degree to which it is legitimized. It is the individual granting authority to precedent. It is permission by the parties to a deal to accept past decisions as the solution to similar future problems or situations.

 Laws, if democratically debated and approved, is the compromise of a civil society. It is a compromise over a complex set of issues that otherwise could or would divide the public. It is the Art of the Deal that leads to shared actions and collective order. It is not the BIG LIE that "personal fairness" sometimes pretends to be.

 That is the point. Fairness is an individual and small group value and relates to a more personal interaction such as "a fair price" or "fair exchange". Lawful is a political term referring to a formal agreement that socially and culturally defines the Context and circumstances in which it is "FAIR" to do and act in a communal way. Fairness is more emotional, more personal, more immediate, and more idiosyncratic than the LAW. Fairness rest upon TRUST based on personal or family experience.

 The LAW is more abstract, more cultural, more dependent on literacy and most of all, on authority. It is abstract in the sense that it requires an analysis of the facts measured against some principle of fairness, shared or in conflict. It is cultural in the sense that it is historical built on group experience. It requires literacy since it is based on written rules of evidence and histories. And most of all, has the authority of the social order to determine priority the relative rights of the parties involved.

 On a personal level, fairness and lawful are the same. But on the social level there can be a wide difference between the two. Lawful justice weighs the claims of "fairness" of both sides in order to render a decision that should "always" be applied to such an issue. It does this to the determine and weigh the facts in the situation, i.e. the evidence. The question that the LAW must answer is, Who or What will administer the process?

 This is the challenge facing the professional applied anthropologist both morally and ethically.

1. Should the anthropologist working on a principle of fairness? And if so, "fair" to whom?

2. Should the anthropologist work as an expert witness, adding clarity to authority of the LAW.

3. Should the anthropologist serve as advocate, and if so for whom or what?

 The anthropologist can never separate his or herself from the fact they are human, cultural beings, and actors in the situations they seek to study. They are in many ways their own subjects.

Like the society that they are a part of, anthropologists find themselves tools of the authority structure they live in as human beings. Among western applied anthropologist, there is a bias toward "fairness" embodied in the idea of "do no harm."

 The conflict between what is "fair" and what is "legal" is the challenge of Democracy. A democracy is "fairness" under law. All other social orders are "law" under what is "fair" to those who are in power and with the power.

 We live in a binary world of reality. What is personal is only half of the equation. What is professional is another part of the equation.

 

SIZE MATERS

Human beings fear failure and seek security. The smaller the social group the more conservative the group is. It is the radical, the one who will question the status quo, and risks failure who advances the group and the human race.

Socialism as an economic system is an example of the former. Capitalism as an economic system is an example of the latter. The former is the society of conservatives. The latter is the society of the radicals. Yet, we seem to confuse the two. We call Socialists, left wingers radicals. And we can Capitalists, right wingers and conservatives. As anthropologists, we should be more careful in our use of these terms. When we look at human history we find that there is a constant pushing and pulling between the individual and society, between the fear of failure and the desire to take risks in order to win. 

The Socialist wants security by insuring winning and by avoiding all risks. The Capitalist is willing to lose everything in order to win something new. The larger the society, the greater and more intense the struggle between the forces of the fear of failure and the forces willing to take risks. This is the world today.

We are in the Twilight Zones and the New and Old Normal are at war.

It is time for INVESTMENT and that means GOVERNMENT must think in terms of INVESTING IN THE FUTURE rather than worrying about maintaining the past with minimum investment and by cutting taxes.

The one of the first great Constitutional Issue faced by the Supreme Court, was McCulloch v Marshall in 1819. It dealt with the right of the Federal Government to form a National Bank in addition to the State's right to establish and manage a banking system. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCulloch_v._Maryland)

It is an has been the evolution of the Federal Government's role as the Investor of first and last resort that has built America and made it possible for the Nation to grow. The Government has become the underwriter that makes Capitalism successful. Not what the Greedy beneficiaries of these investments would have taxpayers believe. 

Individual taxpayers benefitted by the Louisiana Purchase from France by opening up the Mississippi Valley and the Mid-west to settlement and investment by ordinary citizens. The purchase of northern California from Russia put America on both Coasts and created a Continental Power in the 19th Century.

In the 20th Century, Federal Investment during the Great Depression helped to save the country and instituted a tremendous investment in Capital projects through the New Deal. (see https://www.history.com/news/new-deal-infrastructure-projects-fdr). The Cold War was a major driving force through DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Project) and later ARPA in the civilian sectors.

The Federal bailout of the Savings and Loans in the 20th Century and the Mortgage Crisis of the 2007 point to the importance of the Federal Government investment to save the Capitalist System. It is Federal Investment through the Tax System that enables the Rich to risk their wealth in new ventures.

It is our Government, that takes the risk of failures that WE, as citizens, are afraid to take. Government in Capitalistic society is the Investment BANK and Not the Savings and Loan in a Socialistic society. This is the difference between the Left and the Right. The Left would risk failure to win the long game. The Right is afraid of losing any gain from the past if it means risking the future.

As Anthropologists,and social scientist, we should know that civilization advances when the resources of society expand. And that civilizations collapse and die when the voice of capitalism at the highest level becomes to afraid of taking chances.