Life, freedom and wealth are individual. They constitute the good life. To pursue these goals people cooperate in the fields of business, politics and ideas.
Business is best governed by the market but that being based on human judgement is not perfect. Its utility is in the fact that he market aggregates value judgements from a large number of people thus reducing but not eliminating the possibility of error. The danger of error exists because market choices might be made on the basis of insufficient or erroneous information. Therefore the market needs regulation by the government. The advantage is that political value judgement is formed in a manner different from that of the market thus minimising the danger of aggravating the same error. The way politics define value does not have the numerical measure that the market has and its less straightforward and well defined. That is why politics need a political theory which is based on philosophy and especially ethics and resulting theory of law and economics where it negotiates the legitimacy of its interaction with business.
Freedom is what makes us human. Bees and ants have better organised and consequently more effective and efficient societies but lack freedom and the concept of the primacy of individual interest. In contrast monkeys are on a constant vacation with few if any constraints (especially for the stronger individuals) and where food and shelter are basically free. Yet if compared to humanity their abilities to enjoy life are limited.
People unite to pursue their goals. This political activity has the potential for undesirable side effects. The first are grouped around the necessity to establish rules. That can be mitigated by negotiating the rules. The others are grouped around the potential of united people to exploit and oppress other people leading naturally to the danger of humanity obliterating itself. This threat is overcome by the elaborate security arrangements that define human history.
Faith and art define humanity and might have played a decisive role in its survival. Art and faith have an legitimate but uneasy relationship to philosophy through aesthetics and theology and to politics and business through their influence on public opinion and distribution channels and religion. Nevertheless governing faith and art using political or business tools have proved to be disastrous.
The modern democratic state based on a prosperous middle class thriving in a well regulated by an unobtrusive government market economy is the pinnacle of contemporary governance achieved through centuries of experimentation with theocracies, hereditary monarchies, primitive democracies like the ancient Greek and Roman and merchant republics like Venice and Florence. Apart from it there are states that are state only in form but not in substance which I will label collectively kleptocracies. These are states where the governing elites are concerned with providing exclusive privileges for themselves at the expense of the people they are supposed to serve.
