Cooperation Civics
and the
Big Civics Approach
Is it possible to make a compelling positive moral case for America?
It is now.
It begins with learning why our free market democracy and constitutional republic is the greatest engine of human cooperation the world has ever known.
It pivots on explaining why, if properly constrained by the right kind of civic culture and institutions, nothing promotes the common good more fully than human cooperation.
It ends with seeing America as the latest step in a long process of social, political, and economic evolution driven by the social gains produced by cooperation.
“Cooperation Civics” is therefore more than a retelling of American history and a review of how our governing institutions work. It is about what drove the evolution of the West and America to produce mass human flourishing as never before.
Cooperation Civics
Here’s something awesome to consider: America’s free market democracy and democratic republic is, at its core, the most effective engine of cooperation the world has ever known. Cooperation is the story behind our American story.
We explain how cooperation works at the micro level to produce win-win outcomes made possible from the value of the whole exceeding the value of the sum of the parts. This is the first step to achieving general prosperity. Since people will freely choose to do things that benefit them, the win-win nature of cooperation is also the key to having everyone prosper under a condition of liberty.
We also explain how American culture and institutions evolved over time to support ever more effective cooperation at the macro level. As but one example, an entire industrial sector might come into existence to make money by producing an output that can be used as an input to another sector. Even though no one in the first sector has ever met anyone in the second, everyone benefits greatly at the same time.
The Big Civics approach
In conventional civics curriculums there is a great deal of emphasis on American history and government. But being a good citizen involves more than just being a good voter because one understands the issues and the way government institutions work.
Our Big Civics approach recognizes that government is only a part of our civil society. By being mindful of the difference between the whole of “civil society” and the subset of it we call “government,” we naturally consider what it means to be a good citizen in the private sector, too. This avoids equating “social” with “government,” which avoids students presuming that society must be highly regulated by government and viewing all social problems as only having government solutions.
Our Big Civics approach also involves a new and exciting way to organize how civics is taught. Big Civics employs a natural history approach, meaning that we introduce content along the timeline of human social development beginning with life in hunter-gatherer bands. The farther back we go in time, the simpler societies are and therefore the easier it is to understand how they work. And by starting at the beginning, we don’t start with something complicated and try to make sense of it, we add complication bit by bit, as the circumstances of development history gave us reason to evolve or invent new aspects of our culture, institutions, and organizations.
A moral case for the American way of life
The American system of political economy has a formula for government—our Constitution—that was written to ensure that government abides by its designated role in our social contract and civil society. When government is limited in this way, citizens are not abused by government tyranny, which is clearly a superior moral outcome.
At the same time, our culture, institutions, and organizations evolved in response to the imperative to become ever better at cooperation. Cooperation depends on prosocial behaviors. It also produces win-win outcomes whereby everyone can be made better-off in the long-run. Both are clearly superior moral outcomes.
Finally, when citizens work together in voluntary fashion to solve their problems, as they do when all citizens understand the limitations of government in a healthy society, we grow closer and more dependent on each other. We appreciate each other more. We take comfort in knowing we are valued members of society. We are able to prosper all at the same time while being free, all of which produces superior moral outcomes.
