Bank On It

We should all be more compassionate. But should we feel each other's pain? Is there a difference?

2015-07-19T15:27:00.004-04:00

Last year, the psychologist Paul Bloom wrote a provocative article called "Against Empathy", and the response was predictably angry.

Empathy is a confusing subject. It's used to describe many parts of human psychology and many parts of our lives. Bloom makes a distinction between three kinds of empathy and I will his follow his terminology throughout this article.

First, there is emotional empathy. This is when we literally feel the pain of others—think of the sadness you feel when you see a TV ad for Save the Children.

Second, there is cognitive empathy. This is when we understand the mental states of others.

Third, there is compassion. Compassion is more complex than emotional or cognitive empathy, because it's more entwined with practical judgement and action. Bloom describes compassion as "a more distanced love and kindness and concern for others." That isn't as straightforward as feeling someone's pain or knowing what someone is thinking. And it isn't as directly observable by, for instance, fMRI.

Bloom wrote his article in the Boston Review forum. In the forum, the Boston Review requests responses from other writers, and many of the respondents criticized Bloom uncharitably. There's much to criticize in Bloom's article. And the caustic headline "Against Empathy" didn't help. But the respondents who disagreed, as well as later respondents in the New York Times, ignored Bloom's distinction between emotional empathy, cognitive empathy, and compassion. They presented Bloom's views as totally absurd and indefensible. A notable exception was Elizabeth Stoker Bruenig, who wrote in a way that we should all emulate. She made an attempt to read Bloom's article charitably, and then made a reasoned critique based on her unique knowledge and perspective.

On the other hand, the psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen wrote that Bloom's views are compatible with the Nazis murdering the disabled. It's hard to square that with Bloom's emphasis on Buddhist "great compassion".

These respondents refused to read Bloom charitably. And I think I know why. Part of the reason is that most people experience the three varieties of empathy together as a coherent whole, at least most of the time. But I think there's a larger reason as well: we think that it's necessarily true that people are selfish, and emotional empathy is the only thing that can motivate us to be altruistic. So when we read a criticism of emotional empathy, it comes off as an attack on human decency in general. I think Baron-Cohen's response makes sense as a defense of human decency, but he can't see that there's more to decency than just emotional empathy.

We're stuck on one image of human behavior: people act out of self-interest. If we do something that appears altruistic, we need some kind of explanation that ends with "human beings are self-interested".

I don't mean that we assume people are selfish jerks, and that we never help other people. But I think we assume that people are self-interested in a more abstract sense. We assume that we can only explain human behavior by referring to individual wants and desires.

For instance, we might think that Sally only helps Jane because Sally enjoys it when she empathizes with Jane's happiness.

This picture doesn't represent human beings properly because it fails to account for all of our behavior. It's easier to see this if we compare it with another view. Specifically, some religious people think that we only act morally because we want God to reward us.

I find it easy to understand this view of moral motivation, and I find it easy to understand its appeal. It explains a lot with a little. People act morally because it's in our interests to be rewarded by God. God's rewards build a bridge between morality and self-interest.

In many countries today, more people are atheists. And even very religious people can see that atheists act morally, at least some of the time. So the "divine-command theory" of moral motivation is less popular. It just fails to explain the moral behavior of atheists.

But we've replaced divine commands with a theory that retains the same structure: we act morally because we literally feel the pain of others, and we share in someone's joy when we help them. People act morally because it's in our interests to avoid the pain of empathy and to feel the joy of empathy. We used to say that God builds a bridge between morality and self-interest. Now that we don't believe in God, we've put emotional empathy in God's place.

Again, emotional empathy explains a lot with a little. But it doesn't explain some moral or immoral acts. For instance, when a friend is depressed or grieving, it can be hard to make yourself visit them, because you know you'll feel their pain so intensely. If you're a health professional and you need to give someone a painful treatment or examination, it can be hard to go through with it for the same reason. And I think we've all seen TV ads for charities, only to change the channel because it's just too much to feel the pain of starving children or maimed victims of war.

In all of these examples, we have to overcome our emotional empathy if we want to act morally—to act with compassion. A good friend will be supportive. A good nurse or doctor does what's in the long-term interest of their patient. A good person will learn about large-scale suffering so they can figure out how to help.

So emotional empathy can't be the source of all of moral behavior either. It definitely contributes to our motivations and informs our judgements. But there's more to it.

At a more abstract level, we shouldn't think there is only one kind of explanation of people's behavior. That's because we shouldn't think there's only one kind of explanation in general.

Hilary Putnam has a great example of this in his wonderful essay, "Why there isn't a ready-made world". Imagine that space aliens are investigating a forest fire on Earth. The aliens quickly figure out the source of the problem: The danged atmosphere was full of oxygen, and the oxygen caused the combustion that burned down the forest.

There's something nutty about this answer, but it isn't really wrong. We would just prefer an explanation that is more relevant to our interests, like a lit cigarette or lightning. And different explanations are appropriate to different interests. You could say that the "true cause" of an event is the total state of the universe immediately before the event. But that is boring, uninformative, and obtuse.

Let's try applying this to a very mundane example of human altruism. Someone asks you for the time. You take out your phone and tell them.

Why did you do it?

You could say it was because of the total state of the universe leading up to that moment. You could say it was because of the oxygen in the atmosphere. You could even say it was because you had a desire to tell them.

It's true that we can re-describe almost any behavior in the language of self-interest. We could say that someone donates bone marrow because they want to donate bone marrow. So a bone marrow donor is really acting from self-interest, just as much as a conventional greedy hedonist. I tend to think this is abusing language, but it's easy to get stuck in this picture of human motivation.

So why did you tell a stranger the time? They asked! Isn't that the best explanation?

When we explain moral behavior in terms of self-interested wants and desires, it isn't always the best explanation. It doesn't always jibe with our experiences; sometimes it hurts to do the right thing. And it isn't more scientific; it's more of a philosophical picture of human action, rather than a scientific theory.

We overemphasize the role of emotional empathy because we're trapped in one kind of explanation. But we should be open to focusing our empathy appropriately so that we don't get burnt out and we can still act with compassion.

I would describe compassion as the ability and proclivity to see the full dignity of others as human beings, to see what's important about their suffering, to take the appropriate attitude, and to act appropriately in response.

That description gestures at something important about being human, but it doesn't require us to literally feel everyone's pain, even if that is also a valuable way of being human. In this and in other things, we shouldn't let a simple explanation seduce us into ignoring the complexities of life.

Market socialism isn't crazy, so why haven't I ever met a market socialist?

2015-07-10T14:29:00.004-04:00

The time I met socialist economist Abba Lerner. This did not happen.

People believe in all sorts of ideologies. Some of those ideologies are reasonable, some are totally nuts. I've met red Tories, libertarians, market liberals, social democrats, Marxists, and anarchists. But I've never met a market socialist. And I think I know why.

I've always found it easy to sympathize with the radical, democratic left. The world isn't as it should be and capitalism is the likely culprit, not only because we have a capitalist economy, but because capitalism treats human beings as a mean to its own ends. And that's the essence of immorality. So it's no surprise that many people want to dismantle capitalism. Unfortunately, no one is sure what should replace capitalism. We know that society is messed up and needs to be radically transformed, but attempts to replace capitalism wholesale with central planning have been a disaster.

Worse still, it is difficult to propose a moderately radical transformation of society. Karl Marx explains in his Critique of the Gotha Program:.

"Do not the bourgeois assert that the present-day distribution is "fair"? And is it not, in fact, the only "fair" distribution on the basis of the present-day mode of production? Are economic relations regulated by legal conceptions, or do not, on the contrary, legal relations arise out of economic ones?"

Marx is criticizing the United Workers Party because they speak of "the fair distribution of the proceeds of labor" even though their moralistic language implicitly justifies the current distribution of wealth. According to Marx, we must uproot our economic relations if we want to conceive of a "fairness" that could justify equality.

Marx thought that economic relations are the real basis of our society: our social structure and moral beliefs are an epiphenomenal outgrowth of economic relations—Marx's base and superstructure.

Most people don't share Marx's views that our thinking is determined by our economic relations. But we could ask Marx's same rhetorical questions about contemporary policy analysis. Do not the market liberals assert that present-day policy is "good"? And is it not, in fact, the only "good" policy on the basis of the present-day mode of production?

I think the answer is no. But that criticism still packs a punch. From the premises of contemporary capitalism, tax cuts and deregulation make sense—at least some of the time. And it's difficult to analyse a policy change like "socialize the means of production". So it can be hard to square revolutionary fervor with bourgeois policy analysis.

Can we follow Marx's example in policy? If we uproot our economic system, can we find the basis for better and fairer policy?

Market socialism is a system such that the economy is organized through markets, but the firms that participate in those markets are owned by the people.

Let's look at John Roemer's succinct outline of his version of market socialism. [I've separated the quote into paragraphs to make it more readable. The quote is from Roemer's review of Whither Socialism]

There should be a separate currency (call it the ‘coupon’ currency) which could be used only for the purchase of shares of firms in the ‘public’ sector, or of mutual funds of such firms’ stock. Conversely, only coupon currency, not regular money, could be used to purchase such stock or mutual funds.

Each citizen would receive an endowment of coupons at the age of majority, and would purchase mutual funds/firm stock with it. The shares of these funds/firms would trade on a stock market, with prices denominated (only) in coupon currency. Since no regular currency would be useful on this stock market, the wealthy could not purchase more shares in these firms than the poor.

The profits of firms in the public sector would be distributed to citizens in proportion to their share holdings. It would be illegal to give shares to others, and at death, a person’s portfolio of such shares would be returned to the state treasury.

Firms, in turn, would compete for the coupons of citizens, for they would be able to exchange coupons with the state for investment funds; as in the Bardhan proposal and as in Japan and Germany, they would be primarily monitored by banks. The coupon stock market is a mechanism to induce firms to compete for investment funds, to permit citizens to hold diversified portfolios, and to distribute a substantial share of the nation’s profits in a fairly equal manner among citizens.

None of these seem like terrible ideas, but it's hard to imagine who would find them appealing.

From the standpoint of economic policy, Roemer's ideas are at best untested. And they raise many questions about savings and corporate governance. Roemer's ideas are unappealing from a revolutionary standpoint as well. They sound less like the emancipation of human beings, and more like a dull videogame.

But we shouldn't throw up our hands and accept our economic system as it is. Market liberalism doesn't have a monopoly on good policy. Single-payer healthcare isn't necessarily market-oriented. But it's the best policy idea anyone's ever had, and it's a radical transformation of society that's both fairer and more efficient.

In the same vein, I think that the left can make criticisms of capitalism without needing a full-blown replacement. It doesn't require a revolution in our thinking to see that capitalism and our mixed economy are often poorly thought-out, poorly run, and morally suspect. It doesn't require a revolution in our economic relations to see that either. We can take single-payer healthcare as a model and look for a political program that is both inspiring and feasible. For instance, a carbon tax could raise money for state action while saving our environment. And more radically, a guaranteed annual income is easy to understand and easy to manage, and it would genuinely transform people's lives if they didn't have to worry about choosing between a terrible job and starvation.

You could argue that this is just defining socialism down. And there's some truth to that. Socialism is workers' control of the means of production. But when we look at market socialism as a practicable forms of worker's control, socialism doesn't necessarily sate our desire for a new, fair, and workable society.

I don't think we'll ever have market socialism because it doesn't work as a bourgeois policy proposal, and it doesn't inspire as a utopian vision. But there's other ways of achieving both.

Defining, Contemplating, and Evaluating Neoliberalism

2015-01-21T09:35:00.000-05:00

I'm not really a fan of the term neoliberalism, as it tends to produce more heat than light. But I think I can come up with a useful definition that is charitable, but speaks to the concerns of neoliberalism's critics. I should note that the most relevant timeframe for this definition begins around 1971, and has been less relevant since the financial crisis.

Neoliberalism is not defined by a single thinker, manifesto or political party, and it is not readily defined by any necessary or sufficient conditions. It is a constellation of related ideologies, policy prescriptions, and historical developments that revolve around the following interrelated ideas:

1. Markets should be the default mode of economic organization. In less sophisticated accounts, markets are the natural mode of economic organization. Regulations bear the burden of proof; markets do not.

2. Social problems can and should be ameliorated by the expansion of market mechanisms. We should remove impediments to markets. For instance, we should reduce the number of occupations that require state licensing. We should also create new markets where none currently exist. For instance, we should ration road space through scarcity pricing (aka congestion pricing).

3. Collective action, specifically through government, is generally inferior to the actions of individuals because individuals know their situation and their interests more intimately than any bureaucrat. Thus individuals are better at purchasing goods than government and taxes should be lowered accordingly. Cooperation is most efficiently organized through markets and prices. The best way to help the poor is through economic growth. Redistribution, if any, should consist of direct transfers of money rather than in-kind benefits such as housing or healthcare.

4. Central banks should be independent, similarly to the way that the judiciary is independent, because governments are easily tempted to to secure their reelection by overclocking the economy or printing money to cover deficits, which can both lead to runaway inflation. Monetary policy is always preferable to fiscal policy for economic stabilization because it is not subject to the corruption of pork-barrel legislative politics. Monetary policy has only one objective: a low and stable rate of inflation that will create an environment conducive to investment and growth.

5. Corporations should aim to create "shareholder value"; they should maximize share prices rather than promote the interests of their managers, their workers, their customers, or their surrounding community. Corporate managers have no way of knowing what is best for anyone. Their main source of information is the price mechanism and their only criterion for success is profit. Corporations are owned by shareholders and are responsible only to shareholders.

6. Desiring money is nothing to be ashamed of. Conspicuous consumption is nothing to be ashamed of either. Finance is as respectable as any other professional career and plays an important role in the so-called real economy.

7. Neoclassical economics is the queen of the social sciences and social science should either be modeled after economics or explicitly done under the banner of economics.

8. We should promote international trade not only by lowering tariffs and eliminating subsidies, but by bilateral or multilateral trade agreements harmonizing regulations and patent protections. Currencies should be traded freely and the movement of capital should not be impeded.

9. There is no alternative to capitalism.

Developments that were not necessarily forseen by anyone in particular are also included under the umbrella of neoliberalism. Finance, insurance and real estate played a larger role in the economy. There was a "great moderation" and developed economies avoided major economic crises (lolwut). Structural unemployment increased in Europe. The postwar boom ended and growth rates decreased. Almost all communist countries have embraced some aspects of capitalism.

Quite a motley.

I wanted to spell out what neoliberalism is because I think evaluating neoliberalism demands some nuance. Don't get me wrong. Many aspects of neoliberalism look awful in retrospect. Economists today have a more advanced and expansive understanding of market failures. The transition to capitalism in the former Soviet Union has been a disaster. Wealth didn't trickle down. The zero lower bound on monetary policy has proven to be more than just a theoretical quibble. It's led to a severe injury to human flourishing.

Much of neoliberalism was a bad idea even from the start. Markets are in no way natural. And it is a tragedy when creative, intelligent, driven people waste their potential working at Goldman Sachs instead of discovering new vaccines, designing particle accelerators, hashing out human rights codes, or for that matter, working as executive VP for logistics at a mid sized chemical company. And conspicuous consumption is a sin. And frankly, the cult of shareholder value never made any fucking sense. The list goes on and on.

But I still think that neoliberalism should be critiqued, and not just criticized, because a reflexive rejection of neoliberalism can kneecap our thinking about markets. And everyone, even socialists, should think very deeply about the functioning of markets, the moral consequences of markets, and the role of markets in our society.

The rhetorical role of "neoliberalism" reminds me of the pejorative use of "postmodernism". Sometimes postmodernism is a skepticism about truth, reason, and grand narratives, especially when propogated by post 1968 French thinkers. But sometimes postmodernism is just a cudgel for beating up the humanities, liberals, or experimental art.

If you have to be for or against postmodernism, I would be against it. But isn't that a juvenile way of thinking? A lot of postmodernism is great! Foucault was a profound and original thinker! We should be skeptical about the human sciences! Operation Shylock is an excellent book! Pop culture is sometimes worthy of academic attention! Maybe!

Neoliberalism is, as I said, a motley. And neoliberal policies run the gamut from essential (carbon taxes), to suboptimal (the healthcare exchanges in Obamacare), to beneath contempt (allowing doctors to practice without a license).

Mature thinking partially consists in making distinctions, and invoking finer-grained concepts in our evaluations. Of course, there is always the danger of casuistry. But there are also dangers in thinking with slogans.

The Symbolism of the Swedish Economy and the Consequences of Failure

2014-04-18T21:25:00.001-04:00

Sweden is officially experiencing deflation.

Bulgaria is experiencing 2% deflation. Bulgaria is much poorer and any economic pain in Bulgaria will cause much more suffering there than in Sweden. So if you're reading for purely humanitarian reasons, feel bad for the Bulgarians.* But I don't have much to say about Bulgaria, so I want to talk about Sweden. Actually I'd like to talk about "Sweden"

In a certain kind of informal political discourse, "Sweden" stands for a kind of center-left dreamland. "Oh you know, I like the way they do things in Sweden" is a smug euphemism for "I'd like it if 50% of GDP went to taxes. It works very well in practice." Don't get me wrong, I "like the way they do things in Sweden" too and I'm glad to have "Sweden" in my arsenal of cheap rhetoric.

But if the real Sweden falls into a deflationary spiral, then soon enough "I like the way they do things in Sweden" could make you sound nuts, or at least ignorant. And that's a big deal.

Political questions are, in general, difficult. And we don't have many resources for resolving disagreement. For instance, there isn't much folk wisdom that will tell you the best kind of healthcare system, and there aren't randomized controlled trials for how to tax capital gains. We go with what little we have.

And part of the little bit we have is the experience of different places and different times. None of this is ever definitive, but it would be insane to ignore it. So it's entirely rational to look at conspicuous examples in trying to understand politics.

The respective legacies of Franklin D. Roosevelt and George W. Bush are both illustrative examples.

Franklin D. Roosevelt laid the foundations for the American welfare state. There are strong economic forces pushing countries towards social insurance, but the New Deal was not inevitable. And it was not inevitable that the Republican party would accept the New Deal under future presidents.

But FDR was an exceptionally popular president. Voters loved him! He got America out of the depression! He led the allies to victory. In reality FDR saved the economy by taking America off of the gold standard, and he did so on pretty idiosyncratic grounds, to put it politely. And it's hard to imagine a plausible scenario where the Allies lose World War II because of a different American president. Still, nothing succeeds like success; The New Deal survived long enough to become the status quo of American politics.
In contrast: George W. Bush was a terrible president. The Iraq War was a catastrophe, Katrina was a disaster and the economic crisis has made the whole world permanently poorer.

It's one thing that Democrats hate Bush for his failings, but it's pretty clear that much of the right does too. The Tea Party has been the animating force in the Republican party since the beginning of the Obama presidency and they stand for the parts of American conservatism that Bush tried to repudiate. Namely, they stand for libertarianism and white identity politics. Bush was certainly not a libertarian. He may have been against taxes, but he was certainly a fan of spending. He even expanded Medicare to pay for prescription drugs. And Bush, for all his failings; supported immigration reform, instead of demonizing "illegals". It's no coincidence that American conservatives are looking at isolationists like Rand Paul in foreign policy either.

Even here in Canada, I'm sure that many young people developed a permanent distaste for conservatism because of Bush. I know I did.

And I can't prove it, but I've often wondered if the United States is so reticent about government involvement in healthcare for the same reasons Canadians are so complacent about theirs: they're only familiar with each other's. This might be unsettling to the kinds of people who put huge Canadian flags on their backpacks when they're traveling, but Canada's healthcare system is sort of terrible. Canadians only feel proud of their system because the United States is such an international outlier in ugliness, cruelty and inefficiency. Canadians throw up their hands as if waiting lists were a necessary trade-off. But the UK doesn't have our waiting lists, and their healthcare system is dominated by the government to a much greater degree than Canada's. We just reason from conspicuous examples.

More generally, there's pretty strong evidence that people use similar kinds of heuristics when they vote. The world is a complicated place, so people vote for the incumbent when the economy is good, and they vote for the challenger when the economy is bad. Seems reasonable!

We can't do anything about what happens in Sweden. But I think we should be ready when Sweden tanks, if it does. It won't tell you much about the viability of their social model; Sweden's failings in monetary policy are real. Unfortunately, that's really, really hard to explain. Experts don't even agree on the mechanisms of monetary policy, much less on what optimal monetary policy looks like. It's difficult to even explain why deflation is bad, if you've taken the extreme step of boring your friends by talking about monetary policy.

My friends, it looks like we might lose a piece of cheap rhetoric to our enemies.

Moreover, we should always remember that good performances mean a lot in politics. A movement in a democratic society that doesn't take governance, and monetary policy, seriously will have to rely on lucky breaks.

* (Although if we follow that logic, you should feel bad for kids with worms and you should give them twenty dollars.)

Would Frank Ramsey Discuss Himself Today?

2014-04-13T17:48:00.000-04:00

Frank Ramsey was a philosopher and economist who accomplished more in his 27 years than most people do in a lifetime, including the first English translation of the Tractatus logico-philosophicus.

His work is too technical for me to understand, with the exception of a speech he gave, appropriately, about how every subject is too technical for most people to understand. That speech was delivered to the Cambridge Apostles, an elite discussion group whose members have included Henry Sidgwick, Alfred Whitehead, John Maynard Keynes, and Amartya Sen. The speech can found in the epilogue to Ramsey's Foundations of Mathematics. Hopefully the link to Google Books works!

You should read the whole thing. Don't worry if the first paragraph makes no sense to you, but worry a great deal if the last paragraph doesn't either.

Ramsey thinks that only experts can fruitfully discuss "science, philosophy, history and politics", but he thinks that "psychology and aesthetics", are not possible subjects of discussion either. According to Ramsey, for one thing, aesthetics reduces to psychology and when we discuss psychology, we're simply "comparing notes on our experiences", and that discussing aesthetics, (e.g. discussing a novel) is really just expressing how we feel about the work.

Is it worthwhile to "compare notes on our experiences"? This question is more important than it sounds, so keep it in mind. Ramsey is skeptical about comparing such notes, because his experiences with psychoanalysis convinced him that we just don't understand ourselves. Today, psychoanalysis is more the province of film critics than psychologists, but contemporary psychology suggests an even more radical image because of

(1) Evidence that we are "dumbfounded" when asked for justification of some moral judgments: When researchers asked subjects why it's wrong to, for instance, clean their toilet with a national flag, people didn't respond with reasoning or principles, but rather bald assertions ("Because it's wrong!") or just silence.

(2) Evidence from Michael Gazzaniga's celebrated results with split-brain patients: People with intractable epilepsy are sometimes treated by having their corpus callosum surgically severed, separating the left and right sides of their neocortex. These patients, under controlled circumstances, act as if they have two minds, largely unaware of the other. Importantly, when research subjects are confronted about their behavior, they'll rationalize it, rather than admit that they don't know why they are behaving so strangely.

(3) Evidence from Korsakoff's syndome, and its associated behavior. People with certain kinds of brain damage suffer from anterograde amnesia, like the guy in Memento, except they don't know that they're amnesic. That might sound paradoxical. After all, how could you not know that you don't remember something? People with Korsakoff's syndrome solve this paradox by simply making things up!

(4) Evidence that we are radically wrong about what will make us happy. For instance, lottery winners are no happier than the average person, and amputees are no less happy than the average person. In the language of psychology, we aren't very good at "affective forecasting".

(I don't have references, because I'm lazy, but you can find information about (1) in the works of Jonathan Haidt, and you can find information about (4) in the work of Daniel Gilbert, if you're interested. Other, more mundane examples can be found in popular books about psychology, such as the work of Oliver Sacks.)

Together this evidence suggests a picture of human experience that I'd like to call the Ignorance-and-Confabulation thesis. To wit, proponents of this thesis believe that we are ignorant about our own mental life, and that we confabulate when asked to account for our thoughts, judgments and experiences. We are just like the pathological cases, except we're better at rationalizing, and better at confabulating. Again, I'd like to emphasize that the modern incarnation of the Ignorance-and-Confabulation thesis echoes psychoanalysis in many of its implications; even if you reject psychoanalysis, Ramsey's concerns still resonate.

The Ignorance-and-Confabulation thesis, of course, implies that "comparing notes on our experience" is a waste of time. We just bullshit ourselves, and then let people know about our bullshit, so they can imagine we said some other bullshit. To be specific, our views about morality, aesthetics, and the trajectory and meaning of our lives is just a bunch of bullshit.

It strikes me as a pretty depressing view. Ramsey's view is slightly different, but mostly in affect. He thinks we can share our feelings, and that it's good to be happy, and that philosophy, as an activity, can cure us of our unhappiness. I read the end of his essay as an exuberant attempt to make explicit what Wittgenstein tried to show, but your results may vary.

If the modern Ignorance-and-Confabulation view is correct, it's unlikely we can even share our feelings, which casts a pall over Ramsey's exuberance anyway.

Ignorance-and-Confabulation is an appealing picture for those who seek an austere, properly scientific worldview, and it's an even more appealing picture for those who've rejected religion, and are looking for more things to reject.*

But I think it's a picture we should resist.

I don't think we should resist it because it's depressing. If anything, proponents probably find it more compelling because it's depressing.

If I wanted to take a cheap shot, I'd point out that scientific knowledge relies on the kind of informal, non-scientific thinking that Ignorance-and-Confabulation rejects. But you could bite the bullet and say that informal, non-scientific thinking is only useful insofar as it historically undergirded the rise of science. That would be a shaky argument, but it wouldn't dispel the Ignorance-and-Confabulation picture when the evidence feels so suggestive.

But that evidence isn't definitive.

(1) The apparent dumbfounding in the face of moral confusion should certainly make us skeptical about whether we should trust moral judgments that are purely motivated by disgust. But these experiments only succeed in strange cases. In regular cases, people are perfectly capable of reasoning and applying principles in their moral judgments. Those judgments might be preceded by activation of regions of the brain responsible for feeling, rather than thinking, but would anyone think that it's impossible after serious, conscious deliberation to overrule or change their feelings?

(2) and (3) are certainly interesting, and I think they tell us something about what it is to be a normally functioning person—not because we are reflected in these pathological cases, but because we are not. That tells us that our ability to accurately describe our own behavior depends on certain kinds of mental functioning and anatomy.

(4) is an interesting example, because it is non-technical enough that it's become common knowledge among educated people, to the point where it's a a caveat in most advice. I think this shows that there isn't a perfect delineation between scientific and non-scientific knowledge. (4) is an example of how scientific knowledge can be superior to non-scientific knowledge, but it's also an example of how scientific knowledge can inform informal discussions.

So I don't think Ignorance-and-Confabulation provides an accurate picture of human experience, and obviously, I don't think psychoanalysis does either.

And I think that's a very good thing, because I think some kinds of knowledge are best nurtured by experiencing life, falling in love, working, reading Shakespeare, cultivating friendships, and eating well—all while exchanging notes with the people around you.

*If you think I'm creating a straw man, check out the philosopher Alex Rosenberg. More pertinently, I feel this view is worth addressing because I myself feel its pull.

Houses Divided in Canada, America and the United Kingdom

2014-03-04T18:39:00.000-05:00

In the latest New York Review of books, Jonathan Freedland has an article explaining the upcoming vote on Scottish independence to an American audience. It's worth reading the whole thing, but I'd like to focus on one issue. According to Freedland, the Scottish independence movement is not based on "The Braveheart notion of Scottish nationalism—spear-carriers, faces painted in woad, crying freedom against the English oppressor", but rather on a civic nationalism that is increasingly different from England's finance-driven, elitist, liberal democratic politics:

For the Nationalists, Scotland has become a land of social democratic consensus, one that believes it has more in common with the high-tax, high-spend northern neighbors of Scandinavia than it does with the turbo-capitalism of the City of London. “There is a strong sense that the UK is evolving towards the US model, where you can never give enough to the top one percent,”

I couldn't help but think of differences in political culture that I'm more familiar with. Namely, the differences in Quebec, and in the southern United States, specifically.

Let's start with a quote from dreamy Liberal Party leader Justin Trudeau.

“There is a way of viewing social responsibility, openness to others, a cultural pride here in Quebec that is necessary to Canada,” he told talk show host Franco Nuovo, a well-known Quebec nationalist writer. “And I always say that if I ever believed Canada was really the Canada of Stephen Harper and we were going against abortion and going against gay marriage, and we were going backward in 10,000 different ways, maybe I’d think of wanting to make Quebec a country.”

Trudeau's quote, if anything, underplays the difference between Quebec and the Rest of Canada. Quebec plays an interesting role in Canadian politics because public opinion in Quebec usually pulls the ROC in a social-democratic direction. Thus, it's easy to think that Quebec is simply more left-wing than the ROC, in the same way that Alberta is simply more right-wing than most of Canada. In other words, Quebec doesn't differ from Canada qualitatively.

I don't think that's correct. Quebec leans more towards continental laïcité and dirigisme than Anglosphere secularism and liberalism. The controversy over Quebec's secular charter is a great example of this. As Andrew Potter argues: it's easy to dismiss supporters of the charter as bigots, but a more charitable and nuanced explanation is that Quebec, and especially Francophone Quebec, has a different conception of secularism than the Rest of Canada. That doesn't mean the charter isn't racist. It is. But racism is often more complex than bigotry, and there's plenty of bigotry to go around in Canada, but only one secular charter.

The 2012 tuition protests are another example of Quebec's different political culture. It would be one thing if students in Ontario or Alberta had protested against tuition, but acquiesced due to lack of power or will. But that isn't what happened: analogous movements just don't exist outside of Quebec.

These issues make Quebec's political culture look more like France than the Rest of Canada.

Quebec fits the continental social market model better than Canada, and Scotland fits the Scandinavian social-democratic model better than the UK. It's not as easy to sum up the South; The former Confederacy is possibly unique in the world in its combination of traditionalism, its culture of honor and its particularly enduring legacy of slavery.

I have less to say about the United States because I have trouble writing about the politics of the South charitably, because I share everyone's outrage over the Zimmerman trial, bewilderment at David Duke's near-miss in his Louisiana gubernatorial campaign, and contempt for Republican lies, ignorance and nihilism.

Fortunately, so does much of the United States. Including, increasingly, North Carolina and Virginia.

The interesting thing is that these schisms have played out so differently in American and Canadian political institutions. In my lifetime, Quebec has gone from supporting a weakly federalist conservative party, to a separatist party (note that I don't say a left-wing separatist party, I wouldn't accuse Lucien Bouchard of being a left-winger), and now a weakly federalist social democratic party. In parts of anglophone Canada, that instability is chalked up to Quebec voters being crazy or ignorant. But that's ridiculous: Quebec just didn't fit easily into an Anglophone liberal democracy.

The American South is quite different. In my lifetime, the South has completed its transformation from the "solid south" of frankly white-supremacist conservative Democrats, to a stronghold for conservative Republicans, continually in fear of primary challenges. But in both cases, southern politicians have relied on parliamentary procedure to hold power despite only holding a minority of public support. In the past, that meant senior conservative Democrats would prevent legislation from leaving committee. Today it means Republican senators deploy any and all procedural tactics to slow down Senate business and prevent the functioning of the government insofar as it might hurt favored industries or redistribute income to "those people".

Quebec and the South both manage to hold some power despite their minority status, albeit through very different means.

So what does this all mean for Scotland? Scotland probably isn't big enough to swing Canadian elections like Quebec, and the United Kingdom's parliamentary system won't allow Scotland to game the system like the South. So I can understand the drive for independence. But the Euro crisis should make Scotland wary of separation nonetheless.

At one point, it looked like the EU could provide a technocratic umbrella for every ethnolinguistic group in Europe to be independent, from Flanders to Catalonia. To extend the metaphor, it's turned out that the EU's technocratic umbrella is a shitty umbrella that sucks. The European Central Bank has failed spectacularly in its duties to the Eurozone economy, but it faced a difficult challenge. The ECB has had to manage the diverse Eurozone economy without the benefit of fiscal transfers that the United States, Canada and the UK rely on. Even worse, Germany's dominance and inflation-phobia has meant that the ECB has had the impossible task of keeping weaker Eurozone countries afloat while holding German inflation to under 2%. The parallels to Scotland should be obvious. Scottish nationalists want to stay on the pound, but the rump United Kingdom will have little interest in fiscal transfers to an independent Scotland, nor would an independent Scotland top the Bank of England's list of concerns. And even if Scotland could join the Euro, why would they?

That's all to say that the Scottish referendum presents a bind between political culture and policy concerns. Scotland will have to navigate carefully towards what we in Canada have joked about Quebec: An independent Scotland as part of the United Kingdom.

Canada has prospered despite its unpredictable party system, and the United States is struggling along despite congressional intransigence. We'll see what happens in Scotland.

Another Reason I Want Obamacare To Succeed

2013-10-30T10:58:00.000-04:00

Obamacare falling, by http://www.flickr.com/photos/charlesfettinger/

Under the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare, people who lack health insurance have to sign up for insurance on health insurance exchanges, which opened up on October 1st. Unfortunately, the exchanges haven't worked so far. If you're curious about why, Sarah Kliff made a video explaining the exchanges' technical problems.

At this point it isn't clear whether Obamacare is just facing a few bumps in the road, or if it's a disaster in both politics and policy. If the latter is true, millions of people could lose their health insurance.

But I think there's a longer-term danger as well. If Obamacare is a disaster, it could discredit government in general in the eyes of Americans. And the American welfare state could use some visible successes. Many government programs are extremely popular, particularly Social Security and Medicare for the elderly, but a substantial minority of recipients don't even know that they're both government programs.

Obamacare, on the other hand, is quite conspicuously known as a government program. If the most conspicuous government program doesn't work, people will think government doesn't work. Citizens who expect less from their government don't expect high-quality government programs, and they don't demand them either, which makes government programs worse, which lowers expectations, et cetera.

And that's bad.

It's bad with regard to healthcare because managing healthcare costs, and improving outcomes, in the United States will most likely require more government involvement, not less. It's bad because government spending on redistribution, infrastructure, science, the arts and education are all important. And frankly, it's bad because a functioning government can use money much more effectively than rich people can.

Before anyone says it: Yes, Obamacare's problems could be avoided in a single-payer system. And no, that wasn't going to happen.

Links and a Nice Song for Sunday, April 14th

2013-04-14T10:24:00.000-04:00

I'm digging this Miguel guy. Listen to this song and you'll experience what Ludacris experiences when he listens to "Fantasy". I mean his "Fantasy", but it's true of the Mariah Carey song too.

-When did the IMF become so reasonable? Seriously, if anyone knows, please send me an email.

-Felix Salmon wrote a great piece on long-term deficits in Europe and in America. If you find yourself agreeing with Wolfgang Schaüble or the Washington Post editorial board on any occasion, please re-read this.

-Joe Stiglitz is pumped about Shinzo Abe's economic reforms in Japan.

-Robert Solow is worth listening to on banks, shadow banks, central banks, et cetera.

-Rick Perlstein provides some historical perspective on divides in the Democratic Party

-Jonathan Bernstein tries to figure out exactly what went wrong with the Republican Party

-Kenneth Roth has some ideas about how to rein in the drone program.

Take care of yourselves.

Bitcoin And The State

2013-04-14T10:21:00.000-04:00

I lost all of my money on Bitcoin, so I hope you enjoy copyright-free images.

Bitcoin, a decentralized digital currency, has been markedly unstable lately. After it hit a high of $266 on Thursday, it dropped down to $105 the same day. As of this writing, it's still trading for $100 on the largest Bitcoin exchange. Bitcoin's evaporation has inspired a lot of schadenfreude, and its volatility over the past few days has really illustrated the technocratic advantages of central banking. These issues have been covered extensively, but I think the political issues surrounding Bitcoin are more interesting. Specifically, I'm interested in whether Bitcoin is relevant to emancipation as a political project.

Bitcoin is an alternative to the the centralized currencies that are essential to modern capitalism. And it's a criticism of capitalism that makes people enthusiastic about Bitcoin in the first place, even though it's hard to pin down exactly what that criticism is. Since almost everyone is uncomfortable with modern capitalism in one way or another, Bitcoin attracts a motley collection of fans.

A few years ago, a friend of mine posted an article on Facebook about a hilarious Tea Party themed summer camp in Tampa Bay. Every activity at the camp sounds surreal (sitting quietly in an "austere room" represents Europe?), but one activity stood out to me.

Children will win hard, wrapped candies to use as currency for a store, symbolizing the gold standard. On the second day, the "banker" will issue paper money instead. Over time, students will realize their paper money buys less and less, while the candies retain their value.

I hope those kids enjoy their crippling deflation when they eat the candy!

Florida man holds foolish ideas about money.

Seriously though, candy isn't a bad analogy for gold, and combined with a lesson about supply and demand, that activity wouldn't be a bad way to teach kids about currency. Candy is more concrete than gold, and it doesn't have the same baggage. In the same way, gold is a great analogy for Bitcoin, and it's more straight-forward to talk about an alternative currency when our minds aren't clouded by the novelty and technical elegance of Bitcoin.

Gold plays an important part in a certain right-wing viewpoint because of what it says about capitalism, specifically, that it is prior to the state, historically and politically. As a history of money, this is pretty dubious, and as it's pretty dubious politics too—although that is a more complicated argument.¹

Of course, no one would claim that Bitcoin is historically prior to the state, but Bitcoin's decentralized, anonymous character severs the umbilical cord from the state so that the unconstrained market can function as it does naturally. I don't find this to be particularly compelling.

Do we really want to separate market exchanges from the state just because Bitcoin is a interesting new alternative? That isn't what makes a society free, and it doesn't help solve any of the problems of modern capitalism, if anything it exacerbates them.²Bitcoin's independence from the state isn't a feature, it's a bug.

That's not to say that politics motivates everyone who is interested in Bitcoin. Some people want a simple way to make make international exchanges, and some people just want to gamble on Bitcoin's future value. There's still a problem with using Bitcoin. Namely, when you use Bitcoin, you're free-riding on the rest of society's taxation and regulation in the rest of the economy.

There is still one plausible reason to support Bitcoin: it makes it easier for people to get illegal drugs, and you might think that's essential to freedom. But there's a difference between being free to use drugs and a more generalized freedom to engage in market exchanges outside of the purview of the state.

In conclusion: capitalism isn't natural and you should use drugs. Tell your kids.

1 I subscribe to the view that the state helps solve collective action problems. By enforcing contracts, the state makes complex systems of trade possible. If you allow state coercion for the sake of a market economy, it's irrational to forbid the state from using coercion to solve collective action problems involving involving, for instance, health insurance. This is one of the arguments in the excellent book Filthy Lucre, by Joseph Heath.

2 By "it", I mean the view that markets are a natural phenomena, in the thick sense of the word "natural". This is different from thinking that market forces are a good tool in particular circumstances. It's also different from the thinking that market forces are the correct tool for every circumstance, for that matter.

Links And A Nice Song For Sunday, December the 23rd

2012-12-09T09:00:00.000-05:00

I've always thought this was a very nice song; I hope you're all opening your hearts to your loved ones this Christmas.

-Noah Smith explains how risky mortgages didn't cause the financial crisis. Mispriced risky mortgages caused the financial crisis.

-Andrew Potter has a neat piece on naive and cynical views on politics.

-"M.S." makes the case for cynicism, at least about the relationship between Congress and the public.

-Jonathan Bernstein, my favorite cynic, explains why term limits are a terrible idea.

-Jeffrey Simpson celebrates the 50th anniversary of medicare in Canada.

Links And A Nice Song For Sunday, December The 2nd

2012-12-02T09:00:00.000-05:00

I'm not a huge fan of the production on Angst in My Pants, but this is one of the nicest songs I've ever heard:

-Robert Solow on how Friedrich von Hayek and Milton Friedman lowered the level of debate about economics. Solow is a another good antidote to the idea that big-name economists are all myopic libertarians.

-Andre Picard on B.C.'s success in slowing the spread of HIV by expanding access to antiretrovirals.

-Gerald Caplan excoriates the Conservatives for voting down a bill to reform the Canadian Access to Medicines Regime―again. It was an evil thing to do.

-Barack Obama's opening bid in the fiscal cliff negotiation seems pretty okay to me. As I noted, I expect that the Democrats will probably cave on extending the Bush tax cuts.

-Speaking of austerity and stimulus: this was really cool and arts spending should be on the agenda the next time Canada has to engage in expansionary fiscal policy.

-Ta-Nehisi Coates has been writing some great stuff about Lincoln. He also had a good response to arguments that Jefferson's monstrousness doesn't matter.

Go see Lincoln, and have yourself a nice week.

Links and the Nicest Song for Sunday, November the 25th

2012-11-25T09:00:00.000-05:00

If you're anything like me, the winter is starting to violently wear you down. And the awfulness of the news and the combativeness of politics probably isn't helping. But there are some concrete things you can do that will help.

-See a friend. Or better yet, tell a friend how much you appreciate them and give them a hug.

-Try writing about your feelings.

-Keep a regular sleep schedule to the extent that you can, and try to get some exercise.

-Think positive thoughts instead beating yourself up or ruminating about your problems. If you're really worried about something, set aside some time to think of a solution instead of letting it take over your life. And don't be afraid to ask someone for help.

-Pay attention to your self-talk. When you're criticizing yourself, ask yourself if you would ever speak to someone else that way.

-Watch a movie or a TV show that makes you laugh.

-Check out a website like my friend Paisley's dog tumblr or my ape tumblr.

-If you like absurdist humor, check out Something Awful's bizarre, extended riff on a horrible webcomic. It makes me laugh like nothing else.

-I've always found that The Onion can cheer me up. I'll always enjoy their stuff on Joe Biden in particular. Here's some other articles of theirs that make me laugh:

Gay Teen Worries He Might Be Christian

Casual Friday Claims the Lives of 13-Nuclear Waste Disposal Technicians

Five or Six Dudes Jump Out of Nowhere and Just Start Waling on this Guy

Black Man Given Nation's Worst Job

Archaeological Dig Uncovers Ancient Race of Skeleton People

"I Am Under 18" Button Clicked for First Time in History

CIA Realizes It's Been Using Black Highlighters All These Years

"I Would Make a Bad President" Says Barack Obama in Huge Campaign Blunder

Members of Twisted Sister Now Willing to Take It

Pitchfork Gives Music 6.8

Perky Canada Has Own Government, Laws

April 16, 1912: World's Largest Metaphor Hits Iceberg

Apple Announces New iPhone With N-word On Back Knowing Customers Will Buy It Anyway

Jews To Celebrate Rosh Hashanah or Something

Powerful 'His And Hers' Towel Lobby Stalls Gay Marriage Legislation

Georgia Adds Swastika, Middle Finger To State Flag

Standard Deviation Not Enough for Perverted Statistician

Pharmaceutical Company Says Its New Antidepressant is "Worthless and Dumb"

Miranda July Called Before Congress To Explain Exactly What Her Whole Thing Is

Egyptian Woman Wishes Screaming Protester Husband Would Go Bonkers For Her Once In A While

NRA Lobby Warns Congress Not To Try Anything Stupid

Society For Creative Anachronism Seizes Control Of Russia

And of course:

Nation Shudders at Large Block of Uninterrupted Text

If you've got a link that cheers you up when you're down, share it in the comments, or e-mail it to me!

Take care of yourselves. I mean that as advice, rather than a pleasantry.

Links and a Nice Song for Sunday, November the 18th

2012-11-18T09:00:00.000-05:00

The story behind this song isn't very nice, and Serge Gainsbourg wasn't a nice man. I still think the song is nice.

-Doug Henwood has some smart criticisms of the new "Strike Debt" campaign to buy up cheap consumer debt.

-Robert Rubin stands up for a progressive causes and makes some really good arguments for raising marginal tax rates. And I've always wondered what it's like to get hate mail, so I thought I should try writing "Robert Rubin stands up for progressive causes".

-Andrew Coyne tries to stamp out fear mongering about China.

-Richard Posner defends the electoral college.

-Rick Perlstein writes about the intersection of the conservative movement and straight-up con-men.

-Hussein Ibish explains internal Hamas politics.

-Nathan Thrall's interview in Tablet was pretty illuminating too.

I hope you all have a nice week, and I hope there isn't a ground invasion of Gaza.

The Fiscal Cliff, Leverage, Taxes, and Public Goods

2012-11-12T16:19:00.002-05:00

Josh Barro knows what's up on the fiscal cliff ¹: Republicans won't budge on top marginal tax rates, and they don't have to―at least not yet.

Judging from the Republicans' past behavior, minimizing top-marginal tax rates is their number-one priority. Judging from Obama's past behavior, his number one priority in these negotiations has been to maximize economic stimulus and to maintain leverage over the Republicans.

I can't type the word "leverage" without thinking about this movie.

If that's correct, then I think the most likely scenario is a short-term extension of the Bush tax cuts, as well as an extension of the payroll tax cut, and an increase in the debt ceiling.² Republicans get their low taxes on the rich, and Obama avoids a recession and maintains the option of raising taxes later. The self-appointed democratic base will lose their shit, but Obama was perfectly happy to to ignore them in 2010, so why would it matter now?

But that still leaves some issues up in the air for the negotiations around the fiscal cliff. Namely:

-Stimulus in the form of infrastructure spending, aid to the needy, or aid to the states.

-Defense cuts

-Domestic discretionary spending

-Tax reform

I have no idea what will happen with regard to any of the above. But I fear that Obama won't make an effort to save domestic discretionary spending. And a lot of important stuff falls under that category: public health, scientific research, disaster response, infrastructure, et cetera.

Obama has said in the past that he thinks that long-term debt reduction will give Democrats room to spend money on those priorities, but I hope he doesn't really believe that. The Republican party is currently dedicated to low taxes combined with high spending on the military and the elderly. If they come to power, any "long-term" deal on the deficit is out the window, and so is domestic discretionary spending.

And this stuff is important. Would anyone seriously argue that the United States―or the world―needs less funding for the NIH?

Activists need to make this a priority. We're talking about a comparatively small amount of money, but there needs to be a vocal constituency within the Democratic Party, and within the electorate, to hold onto that funding. We can't just deal with the deficit and hope it takes care of itself

1 I think the media has done a pretty lousy job explaining the fiscal cliff, so I'll try to summarize the details, and the potential consequences.
On January 2nd, the Bush tax cuts will expire, Medicare will cut physician reimbursements by more than a quarter, there will be steep cuts to defense spending and domestic discretionary spending. The tax cuts and the increases in unemployment benefits and food stamps from Obama's stimulus will also expire.

If those changes are not eventually reversed, the United States' economy will fall into a recession, and the deficit will vanish. Think of it as a gigantic anti-stimulus package, or think of it as the United States implementing the kind of austerity that has helped to ruin lives and economies throughout Europe.

It's worth noting that the risk from the fiscal cliff is that the deficit will go down, i.e.:the United States will have less debt.

Any change will require the assent of the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, the Democratic-controlled Senate, and the Islamofascist-controlled President. ^↩

2 I don't want to waste people's time with unfounded, unreliable, and pointless political predictions. So I'll follow up on this prediction on April 15th, or whenever a deal is reached, and write a mea culpa if I'm wrong. ^↩

Links and a Nice Song for Sunday, November the 11th

2012-11-11T09:00:00.000-05:00

Here's a nice song!

-Dylan Matthews interviewed Sasha Issenberg about innovations in Get Out The Vote operations, and why the Democrats have more success than Republicans. This is what people are talking about when they say that Obama had a better "ground game". One thing really stood out in this interview: political scientists want to work with Democrats, and that's a concrete disadvantage for Republicans. There are consequences to disdaining the work of eggheads.

-Matt Yglesias has some interesting things to say about the relationship between racial politics and the welfare state.

-John Cook at Gawker makes a good point about demographic analyses of the election. American politics will change as demographics change, but "minority votes" are an exercise of agency, just like any vote.

-Jon Chait and Jonathan Bernstein both love democratic politics. I wanted to highlight those posts because I think that their writing illustrates something important: loving democratic politics isn't the same thing as wanting to make the world a better place, and it certainly isn't the same thing as being interested in the nuts and bolts of good policy or a vibrant, tolerant culture.

Cynics are repelled by that kind of love for democracy, and idealists are disgusted by it.

But when you love democratic politics as it is, as a messy clash of interest groups, you understand how you can engage in political action through interest groups that care about making the world a better place, implementing good policy, and maintaining a vibrant, tolerant culture.

I hope you all have a good Remembrance Day

Links and a Nice Song for Sunday, November the 4th

2012-11-04T09:00:00.000-05:00

I know Yo La Tengo are a punchline to some people, but this is a really nice song!

-Conor Friedersdorf reaches out to liberals.

-This makes up for all of the time I've wasted on twitter.

-Dan Shaviro on the moral and political philosophy of Mitt Romney.

-"This is where I see the world and myself in relation to it, as the years of my eighth decade wind down."

-Neil Sinhababu's unique brand of political commentary is more and more appropriate every day.

-The FT has a good interview with Gary Gorton. I think he makes a pretty compelling case that shadow bank runs were the ultimate cause of the financial crisis, but I'll wait for the book. The article might require a registration. I can email you a PDF if that's too onerous and you're interested.

Hope you remembered to turn your clock back!

Links and a Spooky Song for Sunday, October the 28th

2012-10-28T09:00:00.000-04:00

Since it's halloween in a few days, here's a slightly darker song. But it's still very nice!

-Andre Picard on how the government has stood up for the interests of the beef industry rather than consumers.

-Josh Barro on the lunacy of Gary Johnson.

-The Des Moines Register has an interview with Obama that he didn't originally want released. Here's a summary: Obama is perfectly willing to bullshit about biofuels, he has a more-or-less plausible defence of his economic policies but he's focusing too much on the deficit, he understands the dynamics of Republican opposition but he's still interested in "bipartisanship", and he doesn't mention drones.

-Speaking of which...

Have a happy Halloween!

Links and A Nice Song for Sunday, October the 21st

2012-10-21T09:00:00.000-04:00

Here's a song from a band that's called Feel Alright, so of course, it's very nice:

-Mike Moffatt brings in some hard data to correct stereotypes about economists being right-wingers and not caring about the environment.

-Dean Baker on how to improve quality of life in the United States, given that productivity and growth are very poorly understood.

-Lindsay Beyerstein on Reddit, creepshots, and anonymity.

-Jonathan Bernstein on how Romney's lie about Libya during the debate illustrates the broader problems of the Republican media bubble.

-David S. Bernstein points out that the "binders full of women" remark wasn't just bizarre sounding, it was also based on a lie. That isn't huge news, but it says something that "binders full of women" has become an internet meme indepently of concerns about truthfulness―when Romney lies about basic facts, it's totally unremarkable.

-Irin Carmon catches up with the woman who asked about pay equity, who helpfully clarifies that she is not a feminist(‽)

-Matt Yglesias digs into Romney on women in the workplace.

-Dan Gardner on world hunger and why we shouldn't let ourselves be driven to pessimism.

-Dan Arnold snarks about Liberal Leadership Gossip

Have a wonderful week everyone!

Links and a Nice Song for Sunday, October the 14th

2012-10-14T09:00:00.000-04:00

Here's some legitimately nice new music. Well, maybe it's nice: I don't listen to lyrics.

-Yglesias fights the good fight on protecting kids from lead―even though they only have confusing and terrible jobs to look forward to.

-Jonathan Bernstein on what Conor Friedersdorf doesn't get about politics, as well as some caveats

-Dani Rodrik reminds everyone that you might want democracy, sovereignty, and globalization, but you only get to pick two

-The Hulk on the death of cinema.

-Amelia Lester has a nice write-up about Julia Gillard's evisceration of Tony Abbott

-Martin Wolf on how "fiscal famine and monetary necrophilia" screwed up interwar Britain, and it'll screw up Spain. If that sounds like hyperbole, it's just a poetic way of saying "austerity and deflation", which will screw up a country up.

-Adam Serwer drops some real talk about the Libyan embassy attacks.

-Jon Chait teases out the implications of the Republican advantage in the House.

Good luck with the week ahead, everybody!

More Like The Ignobel's, Am I Right?

2012-10-12T16:08:00.001-04:00

I have to write a paper for school, so I might have to postpone writing more about socialism—you'll have to find fascinating, thought-provoking content somewhere else. I'll post the paper, which is about Milton Friedman's view on corporate social responsibility, if people are interested.

But I did want to comment quickly on some really stupid sounding news: the European Union has won the Nobel Peace Prize, which apparently was "announced to audible gasps from a roomful of journalists in Oslo".

So the EU is totally terrible and doesn't live up to a lot of basic democratic and technocratic expectations. In particular, the European Central Bank seems actively hostile to both democracy and technical expertise. And the future of the Eurozone is tenuous, to put it mildly.

On the face of it, giving the EU the Nobel is totally ridiculous and makes no sense, much like rewarding Obama with the Nobel peace prize made no sense.

But the charitable interpretation of Obama's Nobel was not they were trying to reward Obama; everyone knows he didn't deserve it. They were trying to influence Obama to promote peace, and to influence American voters by showing their distaste for the ostensibly more bellicose Republicans.

Obama did however, deserve his Grammy, and even though he's too old to play serious basketball, he has hustle.

In the same way, I think the Nobel committee may be trying to push Europeans to renew their commitments to European unification, and that's a very good idea. It's true that the EU isn't an ideal institution, and adopting a common currency for reasons of political symbolism, rather than economic utility, has really exploded in everyone's faces.

But it's easy to forget, when you're here in North America, that we're currently experiencing the longest period of peace along the Rhine since the beginning of the Roman Empire. Europeans are brutal barbarians, and unification has tempered that. And the possibility of EU membership was a really effective carrot to get candidate countries to improve their governance. I don't think it's crazy for the Nobel committee to remind everyone of that.

That's not to say it'll work. I'm not sure anyone would argue that Obama's Nobel achieved anything, either in influencing American opinion-makers or the Obama administration to be less bloodthirsty.

But even if the Nobel committee is completely wrong about the EU, and I don't think that's clear, it's worth understanding their actions.And we don't interpret people charitably just because it's a nice thing to do; charity is what makes understanding possible.

Or maybe the Nobel committee just decides these things by throwing darts at Newsweek covers. That would explain some things too.

"Young man, you have the bravery of a hero and breath as fresh as a summer ham."

Update: Dylan Matthews wrote about the advantages of European integration with much more detail over at wonkblog.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Socialism

2012-10-10T23:24:00.003-04:00

Lately I've been trying to break out of my political bubble and expose myself to views other than those of technocratic, center-left, American bloggers. A good friend recommended Jacobin, a new academic-ish radical journal. It's a kind of Dissent for our generation.

It's exactly what I needed to break out of that bubble, and the latest issue has been spinning around in my head for the past few days, especially this provocative and disorienting essay by James Livingston, a historian at Rutgers.

Livingston thinks the transition from capitalism to socialism will be a gradual change, rather than an upheaval―like the transition from feudalism to capitalism―and he enlists a lot of heavy hitters to make that point, citing Gramsci and Capital: Volume III, a tremendous advantage, given that no one has ever read Capital: Volume III. Specifically, he brings in Gramsci to argue that revolution is a matter of cultural hegemony, rather than seizing state power. And he brings in Marx to argue that modern capitalism, in the form of publicly traded limited liability corporations, is fundamentally different from the capitalism that came before. There's some other junk too about patents and the internet, but I'll have more to say about all of this later.

Most importantly, Livingston is willing to look for socialism in unintuitive places like the U.S. Military and the writings of Irving Kristol because he think that socialism is hiding in plain sight.

Aside from the fact that Livingston is being deliberately provocative, there's one major weakness in Livingston's essay: Livingston thinks that "socialism is our desire" because it's always out of reach, and calling yourself a socialist allows you to categorically reject any ethic of responsibility.

To say you're a socialist is to place yourself at the margin, beyond the pale, on the run, off the reservation, or at sea: you're a mariner, a renegade, a castaway, you march to a different drummer, you're above all a dissenter from the political mainstream.

I can't tell if this is mockery or not; I'd guess that it is not. But counter-culture thinking is a bit like religious fundamentalism, it's hard to tell if it's a joke.

"Why do we want socialism?" strikes me as a strange question. I'm not particularly interested in dismissing socialists as holy fools; A more charitable assumption is that socialists want socialism because they think that it is good and right, regardless of the scowls of anti-humanist Marxists.

Luckily, there's a substantial literature on what is good and right, and Joseph Heath wrote a very good paper on how, and why, both Habermas and the Analytical Marxists have tried to provide Marxism with ethical foundations. I like this paper a lot, so get ready for a long quote!

Purists who denounce analytical Marxists for “selling out” the faith in their move toward liberal egalitarianism have generally failed to consider the possibility that Rawls might have already “sold out” liberalism, by accepting the Marxian critique of early modern social contract theory. The original Marxist objection to social contract theory is that it provided only formal equality in the public sphere, in a way that masked the substantive inequality that was systematically reproduced through the institutional structures of the private sphere, such as the economy, or the family, or the educational system. The standard Marxist strategy of social critique was therefore to take any given social institution and analyze it in terms of its distributive consequences. (Thus, for example, “Marxist feminism” analyzed patriarchy in terms of the exploitation generated by the gendered division of labour.) Rawls however starts out A Theory of Justice by essentially accepting the Marxist analysis of social institutions, arguing that every system of cooperation generates both a common interest (in ensuring that each does better than he or she could do acting alone) and a conflict of interest (because the parties are not indifferent as to how the benefits of cooperation are distributed). If one thinks of "cooperation” in Rawls's view as a correlate of “social labour” in classical Marxism, it is easy to see the parallel. Every social institution, according to this analysis, is going to contain a set of rules that (implicitly or explicitly) determine, not only how much is to be produced, but who gets what portion of the social product. As a result, with Rawls's framework, every institution in the “basic structure” of society can be criticized from the standpoint of distributive justice.

Here we see many of the same contradictions as in Livingstone's essay. It isn't totally clear where bourgeois individualism ends, and where socialist emancipation begins.

There's much more to Heath's essay, but suffice it to say that focusing on the specifically moral deficiencies of capitalism leads to an indictment of inequality, rather than a bald declaration that the abolition of the market is historically inevitable.

And if the abolition of the market is not historically inevitable, it can be evaluated, and we may have reasons to keep markets around.

I think an account of morality makes Livingston's ideas more plausible and coherent, but this kind of account raises the question of whether we're still talking about socialism, i.e: worker's control of the means of production.

I'll try to have an update soonish with an answer, including a scintillating history of central banking.

You can Bank On It.

Bide your time with my hilarious great ape tumblr!

Private Healthcare: What's the Point?

2012-10-08T12:44:00.001-04:00

I'm pretty late to the scene, but Shouldice Hospital in Thornhill, is being purchased by Centric Health Corp. The usual suspects are unhappy, but Andre Picard is taking his traditional stance, scorning the guardians of Canada's healthcare system for their sanctimony, and looking down at them from his calm, collected, nonpartisan perch at Canada's newspaper of record.

Picard is right that opponents of private healthcare use somewhat catastrophic rhetoric about private healthcare delivery. Our cherished public health insurance is precisely that: insurance. Canadian healthcare doesn't follow the Beveridge Model common to the UK and Scandinavia, where doctors work directly for the government. We only receive health insurance through the government, the single-payer for healthcare. The really egregious horror stories from the States center around private insurance, rather than private delivery. The American system of private health insurance really is a clusterfuck―at least until 2014― and Canadians are right to reject it.

A private company running a hospital isn't worth losing your shit over on quite the same level.But Picard is wrong to dismiss concerns about who owns the Shouldice Hospital.

Much of the furor surrounding the sale of the Shouldice depends on the fact that Centric Health Crop. is publically traded, although it isn't immediately clear what's troubling about that, given that the Shouldice is already a for-profit institution.

Keep on hustling for that paper

The hospital wouldn't necessarily change under the ownership of a public company; it isn't exactly true that a public company is required to maximize profit, anymore than a privately held, for-profit company is required to maximize profit. But I do think there's a risk of physicians' professional ethic weakening, and being replaced by an ethic of profit maximization, as Atul Gawande described in his New Yorker piece on the galloping price of care in McAllen, Texas. If you don't want to trudge through thousands of words of the New Yorker, take a quick look at this asshole's website: he's an anesthesiologist and the C.E.O. of a doctor-owned for-profit hospital. I wouldn't want this guy putting me under.

That's not because the miasma of capitalism leads to surgical complications, it's because a doctor-patient relationship is just about the worst information asymmetry imaginable, and a doctor's professionalism is the only thing stopping her from robbing you, or any insurer.

The differences between publicly traded, privately held, and non-profit organizations is less stark than political rhetoric might suggest, but it makes sense to organize healthcare differently than public companies, and it makes sense for healthcare professionals to speak a different language than for-profit companies. It shows a commitment to rejecting profit-maximization. And that commitment is meaningful and important. When an ethical system dies out, it can be very hard to revive it, and regulation can't replace it, given that a doctor will always understand specific situations better than any regulator, and can game regulations as easily as a patient.

So there are definite downsides to allowing an expansion of private medicine, and I've yet to hear any plausible benefit. Conservatives often confuse markets with private ownership, but profits won't sprinkle magic private-sector fairy dust on an institution, and private ownership won't make healthcare markets less messy. So I've gotta ask: what the hell is the point?

At best, the real action in improving outcomes and lowering costs is orthogonal to debates about private versus public care.

Still, public insurance is more important than public delivery, so if you take one lesson from this blog post, it should be that it's fucking insane that public health insurance doesn't cover prescriptions. You kind of need those sometimes.

President Evil

2012-10-08T00:12:00.003-04:00

Jill! This nailery is dangerous!

Henry Wiencek's article on the horrors of Monticello really shocked me (h/t Lindsay Beyerstein); I didn't realize the extent to which southern slavery intersected with industrial, and even financial, capitalism. Jefferson's slaves worked in his―very profitable―nail factory, and he used his slaves as collateral for loans. That is to say, he produced nails using brutal violence, and he borrowed money using brutal violence. I have no illusions about the treatment of household slaves in the antebellum South, but the sheer scale of human suffering at Monticello is sickening.

I never understood why Yankee abolitionists focused on how slavery affects the slaveholder, rather than focusing on the injustice of slavery. I figured that even abolitionists were relying on an impoverished morality, because they still failed to recognize blacks as full human beings―and I still think that's true. But it's hard to read about Monticello without the visceral feeling that Jefferson was an evil man, especially in light of Washington's example.

Did Jefferson's experiences of industry and finance, on the backs of slaves, influence his agrarian fantasies? I always figured that it was the other way around: first, a desire for the life of a landed gentleman, along with a distaste for modern capitalism, and a subsequent acceptance of slavery. But the combination of slavery and capitalism sullies both.

Cognitive Illusions and the Study of Philosophy

2012-10-08T00:06:00.002-04:00

I recently read Predictably Irrational and the Upside of Irrationality, two books by Dan Ariely, a behavioral economist. They're both worth reading, and I enjoyed the bits of autobiography—Ariely was disfigured in a fireworks accident as a young man and he writes compellingly and insightfully about his rehabilitation and about how his injuries have affected his life and his work.

Ariely's academic work is similar to that of Daniel Kahneman, a psychologist who won the Nobel Prize for his pioneering work in behavioral economics. Kahneman's recently published Thinking, Fast and Slow, which was excellent. Both of their experiments typically illustrate how human thinking and behavior deviate from the "homo economicus" of Econ 101. And more disturbingly, some of their experiments show that we sometimes deviate from any standard of reasonableness.

You prefer your ideas to other people's ideas, right? That makes sense. But one of Ariely's experiments suggests that you don't like your ideas because they fit your worldview; you like your ideas simply because they're your ideas. Specifically, in a recent study he asked participants to read questions like, "What innovative change could be made to an alarm clock to make it more effective?", and the participants rated potential answers. The control group rated answers from Ariely and his team, while the experimental group were given a list of fifty words and asked to construct their own answers and then rate them.

The trick was that the experimental group constructed the same answers as Ariely, because of the limitations of their lists. And the experimental group liked "their own" answers more than the control group―even though the answers were identical. The participants even rated Ariely's answers higher when they were presented with the words in random order, so that they had to unscramble the answers. In other words, even when it's obvious that the answers are forced upon them, people prefer an idea that they have worked to create.

It's your idea, dude.

"friends it blog this tell your Read and about" is an excellent idea, isn't it? But how do you feel after unscrambling something like this:

"Understanding is, to speak generally, the faculty Of cognitions. These consist in the determined relation of given representation to an object. But an object is that, in the conception of which the manifold in a given intuition is united. Now all union of representations requires unity of consciousness in the synthesis of them. Consequently, it is the unity of consciousness alone that constitutes the possibility of representations relating to an object, and therefore of their objective validity, and of their becoming cognitions, and consequently, the possibility of the existence of the understanding itself."

That's from the transcendental deduction, the thorniest chapter of The Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant. The Critique is easily the most difficult book I have ever read. But on a "big-picture" level, I found it to be convincing. However, I'm not sure that Kant's system makes any sense: what the hell does it even mean that the empirical world is shaped by the necessary forms of experience?

It's not only that I'm suspicious of my own opinion of Kant: I doubt that anyone can judge Kant fairly. It just isn't possible to figure out what Kant is saying without "unscrambling" it. Even if you were to read the―admirably clear―Routledge guidebook you'd still have to sort out the material conceptually. And every expert on Kant has gone through the same experience; their judgments are equally suspect.

It's quite a bind for someone new to philosophy: do you want to put in the time and effort required to understand a difficult book, when everyone who understands it is biased in its favor—and you too will be biased after reading it?

I have a few heuristics independent of expert opinion for breaking out of that bind: I look for obvious contempt for readers (e.g.: Lacan's claim that the structure of consciousness is literally a rhombus along with his refusal to elaborate) or I look for gratuitous misrepresentations of a subject that I'm familiar with. But heuristics are just inaccurate shortcuts, and it troubles me to think that I'll only see a difficult work of philosophy through rose-colored glasses.