Buddhism is a theory of radical decentralization, specifically of the self, a recognition that suffering comes from seeking to impose a coherent center on what is ultimately decentralized and emergent. This insight applies to politics, too, where centralization causes suffering.

Our society and economy are nothing more than an emergent property of millions or billions of interconnected, but still distinct and changing individuals and social patterns.

Yet much of the project of the left and right is to impose an identity on this and centrally control it.

The right likes to imagine a “national character,” and this leads to exclusion and the disease of nationalism. The left likes to imagine a singular set of tastes and way of life, too, and shames those who deviate, especially in more conservative and traditional directions.

Both the progressive left and the populist right seek to centrally plan and give a singular identity to the economy, as well. The economy is by nature decentralized and highly dynamic, but this uncontrolled dynamism upsets patterns the left and right prefer to maintain or create.

And so they demand the state centrally control these decentralized but interconnected individual preferences and actions and instead turn them into a single, unchanging identity. And just like with the false notion of the unchanging, coherent self, this only brings suffering.

A planned economy is ultimately poorer and less innovative than an open and free market. And an empowered state is a tempting height for authoritarians to scale, and even if it avoids that fate, it will ultimately use its power for its own ends, immiserating the powerless.

Buddhists ought to take the insight that centralization and the imposition of unchanging identity on what is naturally decentralized and emergent results in suffering and apply it more broadly. Our political culture and economy will be better for it.