Individual and the State

I believe that you must separate the economic sphere from the social sphere. There are many thinkers like Milton Friedman (in Capitalism and Freedom) who merge both issues together and this forces you to have all or nothing solutions. When you merge both spheres together, you must then say government is either good and can interfere in everything or government is evil and can interfere in nothing. This is counter-productive to progress and understanding. It doesn't allow for the (sometimes important) in-betweens and grey areas.

There are issues that overlap such as eminent domain (private property). Some people believe you have things, they are yours and no one can take that away (this would be a classical liberal idea). However, under modern social-democratic thinking, things can be taken if it is for the public good. For example, using an area for a bridge or subway system which helps with commerce but may take away someone's house in the short term. We do compensate people for this (or they should be!).

In most cases, there is significant separation. Do not kill people is not an economic issue, for example. This is a human rights issue.

If we assume we can elect competent people to iron out the kinks we can separate the spheres and deal with the cases where things are unclear or overlap because dealing with these things is inevitable and reality since these situations exist. When it comes to issues of individual rights in the social sphere (let's say anything in Bill of Rights, Universal Declaration of Human Rights) then the government should not impinge on the things dealt with in those documents. When it comes to the economic sphere, anything to deal directly with money and property can be decided collectively by the representative government to tax properly for the greater good of all. You cannot apply these laws in a way that is likely to cause harm. Harm can be defined as material harm here. In terms of taxes, when applied correctly they do not cause injury (proper taxing on the wealthiest for example) or harm. But again, judiciousness is needed. In this example, you would not want this tax on the whole of society where it would harm those in the lower income brackets. This is an illustration of sensible limits decided by society and society's elected representatives in government.

Blindly following either ideology in terms of Mills or Marx would potentially not be best for society as shown in the examples above.

A state which blindly follows a policy of non-government interference in all matters will be a state that collapses in on itself due to the inability to perform collective action. More precisely an example would be the requirement that people are protected from force. In today's world, this means you need a well funded military and to do this you need government interference in terms of taxation. Additionally, you need protection from force domestically which also requires government interference. Non-government interference is not realistic or even an ideal to strive towards to have a healthy state. That would be a non-state (anarcho-capitalism for example) and will not last. In a non-state anyone can then label themselves as the state due to their unwillingness to go by the ideals set out (which will always inevitably happen in any system, not everyone will be on-board with the system 100%).

Modern American Society and Buddhist Enlightenment

Is it possible to live according to the Buddhist teaching of enlightenment which requires one to detach oneself from selfish cravings and desires in the U.S.? It could be possible but it certainly would be a difficult proposition. I would even go so far as to say that the proposition is difficult for our time period first and foremost.

Buddhist teaching and specifically the teaching of the way to enlightenment involving detaching from the narrow concern with oneself, escaping the prison of one's own desires and illusions was expressed hundreds of years ago when people were far more isolated and less connected to the rest of society. To detach in such a way was far easier because one potentially had far less in the way of social relations, material possessions and distractions since things were far more simpler then. People were closer to 'nature' in some respects as well. The very act of detachment was perhaps easier.

In this time period, we live closer together, we are connected by technology in ways that I am sure people in the early days of Buddhism could not have even imagined, our social connections are broader, many people live in advanced cities where education and betterment of the self is the goal to remain alive and survive in a societies influenced by or run entirely by capitalism. There is less reliance on nature in that resources are not gathered by us specifically but we rely on others to gather them for us and then we compensate for such gathering. Our lives are very much colored by the desire to 'find ourselves' and we do this either through formal education or through career hopping, travel or self education. We reward those who formally educate themselves and look up to those who seem sure of themselves. In many ways celebrity culture is part schadenfreude and part reverence for those who seem to possess what most only can dream of namely the very materialistic qualities of perfect beauty, perfect fitness, perfect wealth.

To add to this, the media over the last 40 years or so has launched billions of images, mantras and ideals for us to work towards. We see airbrushed, illusionary images of models in commercials advertising the newest way to get thin, get rich, get happy and we fall for them (using we as the general populace) because there is a heavy emphasis placed on finding oneself and then bettering oneself in every way imaginable. It definitely is a culture based around concepts of self and selflessness is not something that is sold. This is pretty much the opposite of the Buddhist teaching of the path to enlightenment. As I postulated above though, given our time period and the technological and scientific advances which bring us closer together and give us more insight into ourselves I am not sure that the Buddhist path to enlightenment is any easier today (even with the persistent media messages pushed at us daily) than it was hundreds of years ago.