New Polis

Stuff I've been into for a while but haven't written about

2011-05-07T16:14:00.000-07:00

First- I think minimalist shoes are a revolution waiting to happen. I've been wearing Vibram Fivefingers (probably Chinese forgeries, but they work well), and Softstar RunAmocs. I'm pretty sure the arch of my foot has become much stronger and more pronounced since wearing these (about a year), and my posture has improved. I won't even wear conventional shoes any more. Highly recommended. Search "minimalist shoes" on Google to find more- this is a growing trend, and a very positive one, I think.

Next- I'm very interested in the free school movement. The most famous such school is the Sudbury Valley School. I'm less interested in the democratic aspect than in the freedom accorded to students. I am persuaded by Peter Gray's argument that our current paradigm of education is deeply coercive, and unnecessarily so. This especially true in China. The liberation of children, and with it, of the human imagination, will be a huge step toward a more just society.

Food and tea pairings

2011-04-19T22:29:00.000-07:00

Suggested to me by a Taiwanese tea merchant:
Aged, roasted oolong and pork belly braised in soy sauce (红烧肉）

My own discoveries:
Fenghuang Dancong （凤凰单从）and fresh grapefruit, preferably on a cool, rainy spring morning.
Aged raw Puer （普洱）and slowly boiled bamboo shoots and pork ribs, dabbed in soy sauce (I should say tamari- gluten is death!)

Testing

2011-04-19T22:02:00.001-07:00

testing

Thinking about the ethics of carnivory makes me think ontological ethics is doomed

2011-04-19T21:55:00.000-07:00

I need to think more about this, and I guess I'd need an argument that specifically addresses the weaknesses of ontology. But I think the issue of whether eating meat is ethical or not hinges on 1) deciding animals are worth considering as morally relevant and if we do 2) what actually will bring about the best result for all moral agents- human and animal alike. I don't think 1)can be answered through anything but a decision to do it- to decide that the suffering of animals matters. No argument will decide it.

To answer 2) will need a lot of knowledge of how the actions of billions over time impact many enormously complex systems. I don't think there's going to be one blanket proscription that is going to work for everyone everywhere. But I'm not totally sure about that.

All of this suggest to me that ethics for the real world is going to have to be much more bottom-up. It really always has been- professional philosophers just were mostly not paying attention.

Scattered thoughts again, but I don't want to stop myself from putting stuff out there. I can always go back and correct myself.

Bleg: The development of the modern parent-child relationship

2011-04-17T17:47:00.000-07:00

Here in China, parents still hold position of unquestioned authority for most people. This is true even for adults. I had one student, a man well into his fourties, still unmarried, who wanted to marry a woman who had adopted a child. His parents forbade it, threatening to disown him if he went through with it. He acquiesced and last I heard had married a woman more to his parents liking.

This seems completely inconceivable to most westerners, yet I believe this kind of practice was not always unique to China, India, or other cultures with which we associate filial piety; I'm pretty sure this was once the standard in the west as well. But we've moved away from it, just as we've moved away from other nasty things of the old days.

Gary Becker told a story of how the transition to industrialization created a more dynamic environment that made the knowledge of older generations much less useful. This seems very plausible to me, but I guess I'm looking for more of a history of ideas on this subject. What were people writing about the authority of parents during, say, the Enlightenment?

I'd be grateful for any knowledge any of you have on this topic.

Another round

2011-04-04T18:28:00.000-07:00

Naomi took the time to pen a response to my response, to which I, in turn, responded. Naomi:

That makes sense, thanks for clarifying, and for having an interesting discussion! Unfortunately, with the growing global demand for meat (trying to keep pace with American's consumption habits) I don't think we have the land, nor the farmland/grain for feed, to ethically raise number of animals required to meet current demand. Our meat eating habits will have to change if we want to ethically eat animals, and trying to convince people accustomed to regular meat consumption to eat less is going to be a hard sell. Before factory farming, eating meat was a treat, something for special occasions, not a daily (or mealy) occurrence. We need to return the ritual to our meat eating, and in doing so, show that we value the animals we consume. How to do this in a world of ubiquitous fast food seems overwhelming.

To which I wrote:

Hey Naomi,You have a good point, but I don't think it's totally right. Yes, ifeveryone in world wanted to eat as much meat as the typical American rightnow, and had the means to, that would probably be a disaster. I don't think anyone knows how much meat people would consume if all meat was produced in
the way we think is good- that would be a much different world. But a few points:

I think a lot of people have the egalitarian intuition that, if something
cannot be done by everyone, we shouldn't do it. But I think there are many
cases where following this rule is not desirable. Many new technologies
are prohibitively expensive at first, and consume a lot of resources. But I wouldn't say, therefore, that we shouldn't have them. I'd say to let people
with the money buy them, and, if these technologies hold a lot of promise, people will find a way to produce them more cheaply. This is good for
society overall, in my view (and I think most economists would agree, for
what that's worth).

So in the case of pastured meat, I'd say: buy as much as you think you can afford. This will encourage the development of those farms, and there are probably applications of technology that could drive down the cost, while maintaining the humaneness and environmental impact that we want. At least greater economies of scale will develop, which will bring the price down.
Yes, some people won't be able to afford as much as others, but, again, I
think it's a fallacy to suppose that such an outcome is bad, even by, say,
the Rawlsian maximin principle.

This, in my view, is why markets work well: prices will determine the distribution of resources in an efficient way, and provide incentives for innovation. Yes, factory farming is, to some extent, a result of such a
market, but this is where people can put their money where their values are,
and also, to some extent, the present situation is a result of government policy, for example in subsidizing corn. And there are probably good
argument for policies like banning use of hormones and/or antibiotics in
cattle. Anyway, if I'm right about all this, we can safely encourage people
to eat as much pastured (meaning fully grass-fed, in the case of cows andthe way we think is good- that would be a much different world. But a few points:

I think a lot of people have the egalitarian intuition that, if somethingcannot be done by everyone, we shouldn't do it. But I think there are manycases where following this rule is not desirable. Many new technologiesare prohibitively expensive at first, and consume a lot of resources. But I wouldn't say, therefore, that we shouldn't have them. I'd say to let peoplewith the money buy them, and, if these technologies hold a lot of promise, people will find a way to produce them more cheaply. This is good forsociety overall, in my view (and I think most economists would agree, forwhat that's worth).

So in the case of pastured meat, I'd say: buy as much as you think you can afford. This will encourage the development of those farms, and there are probably applications of technology that could drive down the cost, while maintaining the humaneness and environmental impact that we want. At least greater economies of scale will develop, which will bring the price down.Yes, some people won't be able to afford as much as others, but, again, Ithink it's a fallacy to suppose that such an outcome is bad, even by, say,the Rawlsian maximin principle.

This, in my view, is why markets work well: prices will determine the distribution of resources in an efficient way, and provide incentives for innovation. Yes, factory farming is, to some extent, a result of such amarket, but this is where people can put their money where their values are,and also, to some extent, the present situation is a result of government policy, for example in subsidizing corn. And there are probably goodargument for policies like banning use of hormones and/or antibiotics incattle. Anyway, if I'm right about all this, we can safely encourage peopleto eat as much pastured (meaning fully grass-fed, in the case of cows andsheep) meat as they please.

This is something I need to think more about. I should say many of the ideas I've expressed here are influenced by, or directly taken from Melissa McEwen and Amar Bhidé .

A comment on my last post, and my response

2011-04-04T15:42:00.000-07:00

My old classmate Naomi posted this comment on my last post on Facebook:

I am not sure what the vegan population is like in China, but in America, I get the sense that a lot of the vegan movement is a response to the industrial farming techniques of modern agriculture (even calling it "farming" and "agriculture" seems insincere and inaccurate, since what these words abstractly mean to most people is so far from the reality as to be completely unrelated and unrecognizable). I don't think there was a vegan movement before factory farms (the term was coined in 1944). Of course, vegetarian diets have been around for centuries, usually as part of a religious practice that advocates non-violence towards animals.

I don't think you can separate modern vegetarian and vegan culture from factory farming, and the key moral issues surrounding factory farming have to do with quality of life, humane practices and humane slaughter (not to mention serious environmental and infectious disease issues). Yes, vegetarians and vegans are often adamant in their denouncement of any use of animals for food, but I believe the core of their outrage is fueled by inhumane practices. I do not think that animal rights activists would deface, destroy, or kidnap from farms that practiced humane raising and slaughtering of animals.

This is why I think that the moral argument for vegan or vegetarian diet is stronger in America than in a nation that does not primarily rely on factory farming (sadly, there aren't many, if any, nations out there that don't). I don't think you can accurately separate what most ethical vegan idealists say their reasoning is from the moral issues surrounding factory farming.

I don't think you can separate modern vegetarian and vegan culture from factory farming, and the key moral issues surrounding factory farming have to do with quality of life, humane practices and humane slaughter (not to mention serious environmental and infectious disease issues). Yes, vegetarians and vegans are often adamant in their denouncement of any use of animals for food, but I believe the core of their outrage is fueled by inhumane practices. I do not think that animal rights activists would deface, destroy, or kidnap from farms that practiced humane raising and slaughtering of animals.

This is why I think that the moral argument for vegan or vegetarian diet is stronger in America than in a nation that does not primarily rely on factory farming (sadly, there aren't many, if any, nations out there that don't). I don't think you can accurately separate what most ethical vegan idealists say their reasoning is from the moral issues surrounding factory farming.

I posted this in response:

I agree that this is certainly what motivates many vegans, but it is also true, as you said, that many vegans reject ANY use of animals by humans- certainly for food. Also, there are many ethical arguments that support this conviction, and, in my view, they often rely on the error that I describe in my post. The post was really about this kind of error in ethical reasoning, not about veganism per se.

But I also don’t think I agree with you when you say. “ I don't think you can accurately separate what most ethical vegan idealists say their reasoning is from the moral issues surrounding factory farming.” For one, I think there are people motivated to be vegans by the kind of arguments I criticize. Now, if the only choices where to be an undiscerning carnivore or a vegan, this would be OK, since getting people to adopt veganism would be good. But there is a real alternative to those concerned about factory farming: to buy animals products from farms that treat animals more humanely. And there are many people who do this out of an ethical conviction that factory farming is cruel.

This alternative has become much more mainstream in recent years, and I think it’s a force for good. Given that this choice exists, I think it is important to do exactly what you say we can’t: separate ethical arguments for veganism from arguments for more conscientious carnivory. One reason for this is because many people will simply never opt for veganism, but are much more likely to opt for buying pastured, humanely raised meat. Another reason is because, to the best of my judgment, a vegan diet is not actually more humane or eco-friendly compared to this alternative; there are many cases where pasturing animals in the right way is much better for an ecosystem than agriculture (obviously most vegans would dispute this, but I think they’re wrong). Another reason is that, again to the best of my judgment, a whole foods diet that includes pastured meat is more health-promoting than veganism, at least for most people.

So, for all these reasons, I would like for ethical vegans to consider that conscientious omnivorism is a better alternative to what they’re doing. And there are actually many vegans who have been persuaded by this argument. I also think it’s important to make the typical, carnivorous American more aware of the evils (yes, I’d call it that) of factory farming, and get them to support more traditional, ecological, healthful, and humane methods of meat production. But, like I said, my concern in the post was more about a certain kind of ethical reasoning that I think we’d be better off abandoning. But your point is an important one, and I probably should have elaborated on my views to make the argument clearer, so thanks for your response! :-)

We need ethics for the real world

2011-04-02T17:12:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking about why I find ethical arguments for veganism unconvincing. I think it's for the same reason that I find many ethical views unconvincing: one begins with some ethical intuition that most people (but not all!) will accept, and from these abstract to all areas of human behavior. For the ethical vegan, killing humans is wrong because humans are sentient. Animals are also sentient, so it must be wrong to kill them, too. (I realize there are many arguments made for veganism, but this is a common one- of which there are many variations).

I think the mistake here is to assume that ethical principles must be justified by one essential principle. In the real world, ethics seems to result from a variety of human intuitions, along with a whole mess of social phenomena. It seems clear to me that we have taboos against killing people for many reasons- many of which do not apply to animals. One might argue that these reasons are flawed, but it seems to me that ethical vegans just insist that one criteria for what makes killing wrong is all that's relevant.

I happen to be more of a utilitarian, and I think carnivory can be justified on utilitarian grounds, even if non-human animals receive the same ethical weight as humans. But I see this as an open question- it really depends on many contingent facts about the world, many of which I don't know for certain. I also realize that most people are not strict utilitarians, and this is relevant for how I choose to live as an moral agent.

Even if you are completely convinced that veganism is a moral imperative, I think you have to contend with the fact that most people disagree with you, and try to really think about the practicalities of enforcing your belief. But maybe this is where I just deeply disagree with ethical vegans, and with all strong deontologists: I think ethics without consideration of many facts in the real world is just pointless.

You really should try cutting caffeine

2011-04-01T18:20:00.000-07:00

I've been caffeine free now for about five days. I had gone caffeine free for a week or so a few months back. Both times, I have experienced much better sleep (especially being able to far a sleep much more quickly), greater, much more even energy throughout the day, and improved mood.

Most Americans consume lots of coffee. I think many folks would benefit a lot from cutting it out for a while.

I am a lover of Chinese tea, and I cherish coffee-fueled philosophical conversations with good friends. After a month or so I'm going to try reintroducing it and see how I react. But it would only ever be a couple of times a week. I will compensate by drinking only really good tea.

Follow-up on collective responsibilty

2011-03-27T19:08:00.000-07:00

I think an advantage of the way of thinking about the concepts I discussed in this post is that it might allow us to find ways to improve societies without implying that the members of the society are to blame, or should feel ashamed for, their society's problems. At the same time, they may see it as their responsibility to act to change things.

This is a little idealistic. There clearly is a deep tribalist impulse, which often prevents people from looking at their own group clearly. But maybe one way of addressing this is to get use a conceptual framework that separates social failure from collective guilt. In my perfect world, people wouldn't feel pride based on group status, but that's really a long way off.

People don't know what their own traditions are

2011-03-24T18:46:00.000-07:00

One phenomenon I've noticed recently in China is that people have many inaccurate beliefs about what Chinese tradition actually is. For example, most Chinese people see it as the most Chinese thing ever to eat rice with every meal. But it this could not have been possible for the mass of Chinese people until perhaps 50 years ago, as white rice, without industrial husking and polishing techniques, was extremely labor-intensive, and would have been too expensive for most people to consume every day. People are slightly more aware that industrial seed oil is not a traditional Chinese thing, as its introduction is far more recent. Yet most people use it every day, partially because the false notion that these oils are healthy, and that animal fat is bad, has trickled in from the United States. (Melissa McEwen has noticed similar things among immigrant populations in Queens.)

In other cases, there seems to be blind adherence to traditions that seem to make very little sense, while embracing potentially harmful aspects of modernity. For example, women in China, after giving birth, typically spend a month at home, during which time they are not supposed to go outside, wash their hair, or brush their teeth. Meanwhile, the majority of births in China occur by C section, and there is increasing evidence that this can be harmful to both mother and child.

All of this leads me to suspect that there is a big problem with traditionalism as commonly practiced. Common practices seem to change without people even noticing. Even the most vehement followers of tradition always adopt some new things, and these small changes can make a big difference.

In the case of food, to be a traditionalist now requires one to actively avoid all kinds of foods, and seeking out the tiny quantities of foods that are produced in the traditional way. In some cases, you have to go back to find out what the traditions actually were. Basically, you have to be a scholar and researcher. It has to be a passion. I think, as innovation continues to accelerate, and the costs of new technologies accumulates*, we're going to see more and more people specializing in the re-remembering of lost traditions. The paleo movement is, perhaps, an example of this.

*I think the benefits of new technologies mostly outway the costs. But the costs they impose are new, and one way we make progress is by learning to deal with the problems that new technologies create. I owe this insight to Kevin Kelly.

Some initial thoughts on collective failure, responsibility, and guilt

2011-03-23T19:09:00.000-07:00

I'm sure the ideas I've been juggling in my head for a while are not new. It seems like an issue some philosopher must have grappled with. But at any rate it's something that itches at me often when I encounter arguments about the issues I list in the title of this post. I want to make this fairly quick, and build on it in the future, so I'm gonna keep it short and punchy.

Some definitions:

Collective failure
I understand collective failure as an outcome within a given group where all/most members of the group are made worse off (could we call that a Pareto decline?), and the outcome cannot be fully attributed to some exogenous forces, and each member of the group did something that was a necessary (but not, in itself, sufficient) to allow the outcome to happen. (That's too wordy!)

Collective failure may effect people outside the group. For example, if we imagine that the policies of communist China under Mao where responsible for suffering among all Chinese people, we may say this was the result of a collective failure- but not among ALL Chinese, but among, say, the political class, or the educated class, or whatever.

Collective responsibility
Most ethical theories, along with most folk's ethical intuitions, hold that a person is morally responsible for an action iff she could have done otherwise. While I see the usefulness of this way of thinking, I think it comes loaded with some metaphysical baggage; I don't think we ever really know if someone could have done otherwise from what he/she actually did do. OK, but let's say we can imagine, in some cases, that someone could have done otherwise. The role of this way of thinking may be to change future incentives in order to shift behavior at the margin in order to decrease socially costly behavior.

But in the case of collective responsibility, we seem to run into a problem: this way of thinking doesn't apply easily to groups. If you say a group could have done otherwise, it seems like you need a way to translate that into individual action. And here we have the real problem: it's obvious that many individual actions are only possible if others act a certain way. That is, someone could only have also differently if others had also acted differently. Now, there are cases where an individual could plausibly have been able to induce others to behave in this way, but there are also many cases where this isn't the case. In such cases, how can we attribute responsibility in a way that can be sensibly applied to all individuals in a group?

I think a plausible answer to this question goes something like this:
When we attribute responsibility for some outcome to some group, one thing we want to do is to induce that group to develop social practices that will make this outcome less likely in the future. Such practices may only be possible with widespread changes in behavior among all, or a sufficient number of members of the group. I think social norms that guide a lot of behavior are like this: they require most members to opt in. And I think perception of collective responsibility within a group may induce a change of behavior that can change social norms and, thus, social outcomes.

Collective guilt
In some usages, 'guilt' and 'responsibility' may be used interchangeably, but I want to argue that, in cases dealing with social outcomes, it is more useful to make a distinction. I think 'guilt' ought to be used only to apply to those we actually punish. Part of the reason for this is rhetorical and pragmatic. People seem to recoil at most suggestions of collective guilt, and probably rightly so. For one thing, guilt also has a connotation of exclusion; once we ascribe guilt, the common understanding is that those who aren't guilty are off the hook. It also has a connotation of finality; once we've found out who is guilty, we punish them, or make them give compensation, and then we're finished. With many social problems, however, thing are more complicated than this kind of thinking allows for.

Application and conclusion
Let me try to apply this thinking to a concrete case to make it clearer. Suppose we attribute the atrocities committed by the Japanese military and occupying authorities from 1932-1946 to a collective failure among the Japanese people at the time to curb the highly nationalistic and militaristic tendencies in Japanese society at that time.

We may say that those people who committed the atrocities, and those who ordered them, or even knowingly allowed them to occur, are clearly guilty in some sense. We may even hold guilty all Japanese who were of a certain age at that time- though in a different sense; we're not going to throw all of them in prison, but we may, say, want them to feel guilty in order to change their behavior in the future.

But it seems pretty absurd to hold most Japanese people alive today to be guilty for those crimes. After all, they weren't even alive at the time, or they were children.And assigning guilt in this way may fuel resentment among Japanese people, or bigotry against Japanese people.

But we may want to attribute some kind of collective responsibility- not for what happened then, but to do better in the future- to develop better social norms, institutions, and practices so that the Japanese military will never again act in such a way. After all, norms and institutions are sticky- they don't change overnight, and they depend on many bottom-up social phenomena- not only on policy or actions by leaders, but also on the actions of all people within the group.

Of course, we do a lot more than this. We also encourage policies, act in international diplomacy, etc. But this kind of assigning of responsibility is one of the things we may do.

I hope these ideas are useful in helping us understand some important problems we face in our society, and in addressing these problems. In the future, I plan to elaborate on these ideas.

Update

2011-03-21T17:51:00.000-07:00

Once again, a long time since I bothered to do a post here. My wireless router at home broke, and since then my VPN at home doesn't work. I got up early this morning, and I'm now at Starbucks sipping a cup of tea, so here I am.

My reading lately has been pointing my thinking increasingly toward a convergence of various ideas- Nassim Taleb, Richard Rorty, Seth Roberts and the various writers of paleo diet related blogs. It's all been getting me to think about the relationship between dynamism, coping with limited knowledge, the open society, and living well.

It's exciting to see the emergence of a strain of thought that seems to me so necessary for "our times". Let me try to lay out what I see going on here:

A distrust of theorizing, and an embracing of epistemological openness and tinkering
Both Rorty and Taleb offer convincing arguments against any theory as the final arbiter of Truth. Taleb suggests tinkering as a better paradigm. The smartest paleo writers seem to get this idea. Scientific evidence matters, but individuals need to be able to tinker around, see what works, and make new discoveries.

Embracing social dynamism
This follows to some extent from the latter. The smartest paleo writers understand that society flourishes when it allows a bottom-up discovery process to be the driver of social progress. It's refreshing to see more and more libertarians also fully embrace the implications of Hayek- there is never perfect knowledge, competition- indeed, perfect ANYTHING. The reason to embrace markets is because they allow for discovery, and keep the many failures that will occur along the way small. Government tends to push for one-size-fits-all solutions, and failures are massively damaging. But the smart libertarians understand that big business is often completely dependent on big government; social orders are dependent on each other.

Imperfect knowledge
The Chicago version of libertarianism is misleading. You don't need to believe in perfect competition, or perfect rationality, to support a greater role for markets. Indeed, the concept of the market, broadly understood, is just another way of saying something like 'a decentralized, bottom-up process of discovery'. We should also include in this what one might call 'the marketplace of ideas', and indeed most human interaction. We lack a good word for all of this. Ideas are just as important as production, even in 'the market' more narrowly construed.
The human body, like society, is a complex system, and we understand it very poorly. Overarching theories are very likely to miss something. We should proceed cautiously. Avoid the most clearly damaging things, and go with what works- don't worry too much about why. The convergence of evolutionary logic and scientific evidence can point us in the right direction, but don't wed yourself to any conclusion.

Never completely trust large institutions
The American government and it's corporate clients are not in the business of guarding the common good. I don't think there is deliberate intention to harm, but the net effect often is to harm the mass of people.
In the case of health, they continue to forward a hypothesis that appears weaker than ever. They have helped to destroy the knowledge embedded in traditional foodways- how many Americans know how to render lard?- and pushed deeply damaging alternatives.
The internet is empowering people to create social networks to help rebuild this knowledge. It's going to take some time, but many have already rebuilt their health.

This is all very scattered. If I ever get around to it, I'll try to better organize it and elaborate on some of these ideas.

Race, collective failure, and collective responsibility

2010-10-18T06:48:00.000-07:00

It was really hard to listen to this Bloggingheads episode, because the tone of the argument was pretty charged, and because this is an issue that goes down into the traumatized core of the American collective psyche. That sounds a bit too pseudo-literary and clichéd, but I think there's some truth to it; almost every American seems to have a strong opinion on this issue, and most seem to get pretty emotional when they talk about it.

I have thoughts about various aspects of Lowry and Wax's argument, and about their arguments.

I had a similar reaction to the tone and basic approach of both. Wax struck me as a bit overly eager to arrive at her conclusion, which is pretty typical for a lot of conservatives. This is, I'm speculating, why Lowry seemed to have a bit of adverse emotional reaction, which was both understandable and counterproductive.

Lowry's objection to Wax's analytical framework struck me as a little vague, but also pointing to something important- perhaps a fruitful line of inquiry. But as it stood I think it was hard for Wax to substantially respond to it, especially in an hour long dialog.

Lowry mentions that Wax's approach of diagnosing a cultural problem among blacks has political consequences- ones that, he intones, are problematic. I think it's not unfair to say that he suggests that this way of thinking leads to something like a racist political outcome. Lowry says that we should only be willing to go down that road if we're on very solid analytical footing, which, he suggests, Wax is not.

Wax defends against this attack mainly by saying that (1), cultural analysis is just hard to make analytically solid, at least given our current knowledge, and that (2) the data seem to overwhelmingly point to a black problem- that is, there are statistics, like crime rates, among blacks that can not be accounted for by any other variable. This is were a different tone would have been helpful, by the way. She seemed a bit too eager to push this point, and at some points seemed to suggest the ridiculous posture often taken by conservatives that being willing to talk about this stuff is in itself somehow courageous.

Anyway, this all got me thinking about about some conceptual (dare I say- philosophical?) issues I've thought about in the past about the nature of social or cultural failure, collective responsibility, and collective guilt.

It seems to me that there's a lot of conceptual blurring that happens in discussions involving these topics, perhaps because these discussions are often around emotionally charged topics, but also, I suspect, because something about the way we've evolved to think about moral responsibility tends to lead us into confusion when we get to this level of talking about it.

UPDATE: This post languished for about a month- I want to finish it, but I may write less than I had initially planned:

The confusion I mentioned above comes, I think, from ascribing responsibility to groups in the same way we do to individuals, and from the conflation of collective responsibility and collective guilt.

The problem is that we've developed the concept of individual guilt/responsibility because it incentivizes people to behave in a more pro-social way (I think most evolutionary psychologists would agree with this hypothesis, but I'm open to being corrected). This same concept has gotten applied to groups because it's easy for us to think of groups the same way we think as individuals. But the incentive effect doesn't work here and, worse, it ends up getting mixed up with intergroup conflict and goes against our intuitions of justice. (Does that make sense?)

In the case of the debate about blacks in America, people like Wax suggest that blacks have some kind of responsibility as a group to improve their situation. This gets interpreted as a kind of accusation of guilt, and as alleviating whites of any responsibility. And Wax's tone does nothing to assuage the concerns of anyone skeptical of her motives.

If I was going to make the kind of argument that Wax was making, I would put it something like this: There is such a thing as cultural failure. Culture is a pattern of behavior among individuals is any group that separates itself from others enough to be able to create and enforce internal norms. These patterns can be conducive to, or destructive of, individual flourishing. They develop through internal and external influences.

In the case of blacks, a culture destructive of individual flourishing has developed. We don't really know why. It's likely that the unique exploitation and oppression of blacks in America is one reason.

Whether or not that's true, it is simply a fact that improving the situation of blacks will require individuals within the black community to engage with the culture and change it. This says nothing about the ultimate moral responsibility for the current situation. It is probably true in some sense that there is broader moral responsibility to be assigned to American society, American politicians, etc.

I don't have much confidence in this argument. If I were making it, I would also add that I do think government policy has a role to play, especially abolishing the War on Drugs and taking steps to improve education. I think my preferred policy for the latter would be to abolish public education and provide financial resources to those who need them, but that isn't going to happen, and there are probably ways to make marginal improvements in the meantime.

I don't know if any of this makes much sense, but I wanted to get it out there. I appreciate any feedback!

Tim Lee on Liberaltarianism

2010-07-20T17:38:00.000-07:00

I want to associate myself with this post by fellow Minnesotan Tim Lee, on which I posted the following comment:

Sign me up for the emerging Lindsey-Lee-Sanchez-Wilkinson School of Libertarianism!
Will Wilkinson has it right that the liberaltarianism thing is best understood as a longer-term project- an effort to convince people with liberal impulses that a lot of libertarian insights are genuinely liberal, and to build a broader liberal coalition in years ahead. I think some progress has been made in this direction, insofar as people like Matt Yglesias seem to at least take libertarian arguments seriously. Remember, 40 years ago libertarians were MUCH MORE of a crazy fringe group.

My vision for the future is a worldwide coalition of pragmatic, bottom-up focused epistemologically cautious liberals who understand that markets are a force for progress.

What's a libertarian to do?

2010-07-13T22:57:00.000-07:00

Reason has an interesting debate on the topic "Where do libertarians belong?" featuring Brink Lindsey, Jonah Goldberg, and Matt Kibbe. I have a few thoughts (again, scattered):

Lindsey is seems to be making two arguments: one about political strategy and one about ideological affinity. These arguments overlap a bit, but I think they ought to be handled separately. I'll put it as a Q and A:

Will libertarians achieve more if we disassociate ourselves from the right?

I've never felt a particular affinity for the right. But Lindsey is probably addressing politically active/ influential libertarians, of which I am neither. I imagine he's also trying to push Cato a bit away from it's association with the Republican Party as well.

Anyway, I would answer "Yes", because I don't really see the point in blanket political alliances Lindsey's suggestion that libertarians should make alliances on a case-by-case basis seems obviously right. Associating yourself with a political party for it's own sake is stupid.

Are libertarians more ideologically affiliated with modern American liberals?

Depends on the libertarian and the liberal in question. Many libertarians are basically, to use Will Wilkinson's phrase, "liberals who like markets". But then there are the Randian leave me alone types, who, though I may agree with them on many specific policy issues, don't seem to care a lot about promoting human welfare (that's probably an overstatement).

But both of these put together represent maybe 5% of the American population. There are a lot of Americans with libertarian beliefs, but, in my experience, they have plenty other very non-libertarian beliefs.

I guess where this is leading me is that ideology as a way of categorizing a large group of people is a pretty big abstraction from reality. My feeling is that it would be enough for Lindsey to point out that republicans, and the Tea Partiers, have a lot of beliefs that libertarians probably disagree with. From there, individuals can make up their own minds. Isn't that the libertarian solution?

Not really related to the above, but I see this kind of debate as being largely about identity. A lot of libertarians may feel the need to associate themselves with other, larger movements or subcultures.

Scattered thoughts on morality

2010-07-13T17:33:00.000-07:00

We should face the difficult reality that there are no moral facts. The best we’re going to do is to reach consensus among a sufficient number of people. Luckily, there is a lot of room to achieve consensus.
One reason for this opportunity is the growth in opportunities for positive-sum interactions. There are more chances for people to get what they want, in a way that can benefit everyone.
Rising standards of living make people seek higher goals. This makes moral discourse- rather than rule of the strongest- possible.
There’s a lot of truth to economic determinism- a lot of social changes are emergent. Moral discourse is tinkering at the margin.
Taleb’s tinkering concept (as I understand it) suggests to me that we want differing moral viewpoints. They function to diversify social practices, making society more robust to unforeseen changes.
So we don’t want one all-encompassing moral vision for everyone. We do need some basic principles, but they should be minimal (a case for negative rights at the state level?). This minimalism allows for a diversity of moral convictions, positions and actions.
This does not rule out the possibility of irresolvable moral conflict, which may be inescapable under any circumstances. Some conflict is probably beneficial. We can hope to avoid the most destructive conflict (creative destruction, however, should be allowed to thrive).
We should clearly acknowledge the limits of our understanding. Tinkering and diversification are ways to deal with the ever-present possibility of error, as well as unforeseen changes

A vlog?

2010-06-22T03:05:00.000-07:00

I've been doing a video diary on and off for a week or so. So I thought I'd post today's entry here. If it works I'll put some of the past ones up.

Update: Seems the audio is off for some reason.

An update photo for Mom

2010-05-26T07:38:00.000-07:00

This is a little embarrassing, but my mom asked to see how I was doing losing weight on my new diet and lifestyle, and I couldn't upload it on Gmail. I guess it's good to get it out there, both for my body image and to have a public record of progress. Here you go, Mom!

Another comment on another Kling post

2010-05-19T19:41:00.000-07:00

The post is here. I commented (with a typo :-( )

I'm sure there are many reasonable small government types among them, but, as inquiring minds notes, nost of them seem to be driven by nationalism and other not very (classically) liberal sentiments.
I think Arnold wants to believe in the possibility of a populist libertarian movement, one that jives with his notion of the elites and progressives versus the common man, but I don't think that's really tenable. We have big government because that's what almost everyone wants. Many say they want small government but want to keep Soc Sec, medicare, and a massive military. Most probably favor the pork projects in their particular area, and one can see what that adds up to. Concentrated benefits, diffuse costs...
There won't be smaller government until the situation gets tangibly more dire or until the basic logic of politics changes, or more people become principled libertarians. I'm not holding my breath for the last two.

I don't understand Kling's attraction to the tea partiers. What are we going to get out of them? A Sarah Palin presidential nomination? Roll back Obama care but boost the military budget some more and spend billions on "securing the border"? I'm probably painting with too broad a brush here, but I do think that's more or less what we can expect.

Comment on a post by Arnold Kling

2010-05-19T05:06:00.000-07:00

The post is here. I commented:

I've said it before, and...
Arnold, I think you might be projecting your own hopes on the tea partiers bit. How many of them would seriously scale back the scale of government were they in control? Where were they during the Bush years? How many of them are motivated by the conviction that Obama is not an American?
Based on what I've been reading, I'd hardly feel more secure putting these people in charge. Send the Mexicans back to Mexico! Torture more people! Don't dare expand government involvement in health care, but don't dare touch Medicare and Soc Sec, and spend as much on the military as we "need"!
Ok, it's a bit of a caricature, but is it that much of one? I'm sympathetic to Arnold's distrust of elites, progs, etc, but are the TP's really the answer?
Yes I know they're a loose coalition, and I'd be happy to be proven wrong.
It's tempting to think that centralized power and its inevitable abuse can be curbed by these kind of populist movements, but I fear that such movements are often filled with internal contradictions, and they have no real alternatives to offer, so they just end of putting some other ass in power.

Responding to Matt Yglesias' response

2010-05-02T19:39:00.000-07:00

I'm a bit late on this, but I was absolutely thrilled to see Matt Yglesias respond to my query. It's short, so I'll paste it all here:

Here’s a query I got recently and thought was worth responding to:

Mr. Yglesias:

I’d like to make a suggestion: You have a lot of insightful and important things to say. Do you think it’s constructive to engage in as much snark as you do? It seems to me like it serves to rile up people who are on your ideological side, and I suppose I could see some constructive purpose in doing that. But I would suggest we’d all be better off if political discourse was based more on humane and rational conversation and a shared commitment to building consensus about justice and finding the truth. I see your point that the right often represents entrenched power, and it may be necessary to struggle against that. But what about people like me, basically of liberal sympathies but not allied to the left per se, who are turned off by this tone of discourse? What about thoughtful and humane conservatives that might actually be convinced to change their policy positions? I guess it seems to me like your considerable talents and moral decency might be better served in a more consensus building, persuading, and a less base-riling, partisan role. I’ll keep reading your blog, but the bitterness will often leave me a bit sad, and thinking you could be doing better.

For one thing, I think this message reflects a widespread confusion about what it is to be “partisan.” Find me someone who thinks Olympia Snowe is history’s greatest monster but Ben Nelson is a great man and I’ll show you a partisan. I’m just someone with political views that are more liberal than the views of most Americans.

As for the rest, I think humane and rational conversation is important and I like to think that plenty of the posts on this blog are dedicated to it. But there are also a lot of liars and idiots in the world and subjecting them to
scorn and mockery is part of what you’ve got to do in life.

I responded in the comments, but I don't think that (mine) was a very good response, so I'll try it again here.

Yglesias is certainly right that he's not a partisan in the sense that he describes, and 'partisan' was probably the wrong word to use. He regularly criticizes other lefties and democratic politicians. Indeed, the only reason I sent him that message was because basically not a partisan, but a highly intelligent and morally decent person who seems to be concerned with the truth.

But he does often take a fairly harsh- one might even say smug- tone when speaking of many conservatives. It was this tone I was objecting to. I think it doesn't have a purpose other than fueling the sense of self-superiority of many of his reader.

In an earlier post I gave some arguments for snark, and ended up kind of agnostic. But, as is often the case with my writing, my point is not to argue for positions that I'm really confident in, but rather to bring up points that strike me as reasonable but overlooked. In this case, I think Yglesias is probably overvaluing snark because it serves his interests to do so. This may sound like a serious accusation, but everyone has such blind spots. Part of the reason dialogue with those of differing opinions is so valuable is that it makes us more likely to find our own blind spots.

Excellent thoughts by Matt Yglesias

2010-04-27T00:31:00.000-07:00

If more folks on the left thought like this, I'd be much more likely to consider myself on the left- albeit with some serious disagreements. Call me an idiot, a reactionary, or whatever, but I still suspect that a lot of lefties are overemphasizing the importance of climate change, and tending to overlook the enormous humanitarian importance of economic development and immigration liberalization. Still, (liberal) libertarians ought to take folks like Matt Yglesias really seriously.

An email I sent to some of my students, as part of an ongoing conversation

2010-04-26T23:37:00.000-07:00

Hey Remy, Jack, et al,

Let me explain my (tentative) position that the notion of filial piety is irrational and evil. This is pretty strong language, I realize, so I think I ought to provide some reasons for it.

I believe one of the necessary steps toward improving society is for at least some people to escape the confines of traditional, parochial morality and embrace a more universalist morality. In my reading of history, substantial moral progress has been made through a minority of people who sought to expand the sphere of who counted as morally equal or relevant. Examples include Gandhi, the civil rights movement, and the anti-war movement. Connected with this idea, for me, is the idea of individual autonomy and recognition of supremacy of reason over authority.

In contrast, parochial morality always emphasizes the moral superiority of ones particular group, and by extension, tends to endow groups leaders with higher moral authority. I take filial piety to be a parochial and authoritarian way of thinking. I believe this method of thinking and social organization has several negative effects:

It allows some people to assert broad authority over others, thus limiting their freedom and, hence, their happiness. There is no place in Confucianism to really question authority, nor any official means to remedy abuse of authority. (Always remember the famous bit from Lord Acton: "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.")

It limits the moral imagination and individual reason, and thus makes people less likely to cooperate with and help more distant people, with all the benefits that can bring (expansion of trade, humanitarian work, etc.)

It tends to make people more conservative in their lifestyle and career choices (because they do what their parents tell them to), thus inhibiting economic and cultural innovation and diversification, which are key to a more prosperous, free society.

I think the forces of economic development tend to, fortunately for us, encourage more universalist and individualist morality. I think, however, that individual advocacy can still play an important role. So those of us who want to see more of this sort of morality and thinking ought to stand up for it.

I should make clear that this way of thinking in no way means that people shouldn't care at all about their families- there are many good reasons to do that, and I certainly do. The issue here is what we see morality as being, what purpose it serves, and where moral authority comes from. I suppose you could say I think we need more enlightenment morality and less Confucian morality.

To that point, it's a total falsity that the ideas of the Enlightenment are something you find only in the west. Confucianism is taken by most Chinese to represent "Chinese morality", but in Confucius' own time and thereafter there were, as you know, a many thinkers espousing a variety of ideas. It was only through the endorsement of the Han Dynasty that Confucianism became established as "Chinese morality" (though there of course was precedence in ancestor worship and other practices). I would encourage Chinese people to explore this heritage of diverse and rich ideas. Culture is a dynamic process, and just because a certain way of thinking predominated in the past does not mean that it must or ought to predominate in the future. Of course, being an anti-nationalist and individualist, I think you should take wisdom wherever you find it. :-)

Peace and Love,

Nicolas

My feeble attempts to promote civil discourse

2010-04-24T15:52:00.000-07:00

A message I sent this morning to Matthew Yglesias (or whoever looks at messages sent through his blog:
Mr. Yglesias,
I'd like to make a suggestion: You have a lot of insightful and important things to say. Do you think it's constructive to engage in as much snark as you do? It seems to me like it serves to rile up people who are on your ideological side, and I suppose I could see some constructive purpose in doing that. But I would suggest we'd all be better off if political discourse was based more on humane and rational conversation and a shared commitment to building consensus about justice and finding the truth. I see your point that the right often represents entrenched power, and it may be necessary to struggle against that. But what about people like me, basically of liberal sympathies but not allied to the left per se, who are turned off by this tone of discourse? What about thoughtful and humane conservatives that might actually be convinced to change their policy positions? I guess it seems to me like your considerable talents and moral decency might be better served in a more consensus building, persuading, and a less base-riling, partisan role. I'll keep reading your blog, but the bitterness will often leave me a bit sad, and thinking you could be doing better.
Regards,
Nico Dornemann

I also attempted to submit a comment on a Connor Friedersdorf post at The American Scene, but I closed the tab before hitting "submit". I'm an idiot sometimes.

The tribalism, jingoism, and nastiness that so often characterizes political discourse makes me sad. More important, I think it serves little constructive purpose- though I understand there are coherent arguments that it does. Shall I try to summarize them? OK.

One argument for partisan tribalism is that, given human nature, it's a good way to organize people into coalitions, which allows them to collectively reach goals. If people where more inclined to individualism, questioning their assumptions, always looking for new evidence, etc. they would not form coalitions and better organized, perhaps more sinister factions would get their way.

I guess that's the only argument I can think of right now (gotta get more sleep!!!). That strikes me as a plausible argument, and I can't say that it's wrong. I'd only submit that there are obvious costs to partisanship (group think, mob mentality, etc) and that there may be a possibility for an alternative strategy for liberal-minded folks, one that, in fact, many smart people seem to follow: Make arguments in good faith, don't be nasty to people, but always try to persuade them. If you think someone is acting in bad faith, first, give them the benefit of the doubt, then, if that fails, state clearly that you believe they aren't arguing in good faith, and continue to make your arguments to receptive audiences. If your views are correct, you will persuade people, and, in a reasonably democratic system (I would count the U.S. here), people will vote according to that view.

A possible counterargument is that some people will only vote out of anger, so, in order to piece together the coalition you need to win, you need to fuel the anger of these people. Again, I can't say that's wrong. I'd reply that you can win new converts by convincing people, and you'd be contributing to a culture of more civil discourse, which would ultimately benefit us all.

I suppose ideological coalitions actually contain people engaging in both strategies. So there are lefties who are paragons of civility, and those who sling mud with relish (ditto on the right, of course). It's possible that a coalition should want to have both types. So those who want all civility and no nastiness have to make the case that our model really is better by most folks' standards. Alas, Robin Hanson is probably right that politics isn't about policy, the we may first have to get more people to actually care about policy, or convince those who don't to focus on other status-based activities, such as World or Warcraft.

Why Bryan Caplan is (mostly) wrong

2010-04-13T06:15:00.000-07:00

...about this (followed up here). I say "mostly" because you could interpret what he says as saying that, while greater wealth and social freedom matter, from a libertarian perspective we have to define 'freedom' narrowly.

I see some merit to this argument, in so far as it's a response to the left, who, in the name of "freedom" encourage more and more government intervention, which often just benefits some at the expense of others, or worse. Still, though, I'd have to come down on the side that says that we should understand freedom broadly, and that, by such a conception, most people, certainly women, are more free than they were in 1880.

It's possible to make the case that freedom from oppressive social pressure is essential to a robust freedom, but that, in order to preserve other essential liberties, we're better off respecting freedom of speech and association in the law. At the same time, it's consistent with libertarian principles to act as a private citizen to influence the culture to make it more tolerant (indeed, my libertarian principles push me to do so). I suppose many libertarians won't go for this stance, but I also suspect, ala Will Wilkinson, that there are a lot of people with basically libertarian sensibilities who are turned off by the more conservative, rightish flavor of current "mainstream" libertarianism. As Caplan always says, truth comes first, but I'd suggest my take is closer to the truth.

P.S. I suppose Caplan could also agree with me on this- and I'm misunderstanding his point. He may just be talking about libertarian as a political agenda, and that a more limited negative rights conception of liberty is what fits into that agenda. I suppose that would make sense, though he seems to be talking about a broader, more philosophical libertarianism.

P.P.S. This makes me think about how we think about rights. I think it's only productive to think of rights in a narrow, institutional sense. That is, right are that which will maximize human flourishing if states recognize them as rights and act in the way that states normally do to protect rights (is that just obvious?). There are plenty of things that I consider essential to human flourishing, and I'd be pretty content to call them "rights" in a broad moral sense, but which we shouldn't try to enforce as institutionalized rights. In addition to freedom from certain kinds of social pressure, I'd also include a sense of one's life having meaning, and many others. Other things simply seem impossible to guarantee in a non-arbitrary way- health care comes to mind (How much health care are we entitled to? I haven't heard a satisfactory answer so far). Part of the problem is that people think of rights in terms of absolutes. But scarcity exists, so we have to think about how to allocate scarce resources at the margin to solve real problems. There is such a thing as devoting too many resources to protecting essential rights.

Teaching philosophy in China to non-philosophy students

2010-03-21T05:48:00.000-07:00

For the past year or so teaching in Ningbo I've tried to introduce some basic philosophical topics into my "social clubs", which are basically lecture classes whose content is entirely up to me. I think I've been getting better at making the ideas accessible and interesting. So far the students have been most interested in ethics and the good life.

My students come from a range of backgrounds. Some are professionals, some are university and high school students, and some are, as it were, full time students at Web who hope to find a job once they've improved their English. I have yet to meet one who has studied philosophy, and if I were to they would have mostly studied Marxist philosophy, taught as unquestionable truth. So this stuff, as far as I know, is completely new to all of them.

A few of the students have taken a particularly keen interest, and always have a lot to say. And what they say, while not as clever as what you'd hear in a philosophy class at Macalester, is often more insightful.

More and more I think philosophy in the west has gotten way off track. It ought to be a discussion of basic values and concepts that anyone can participate in. It's gotten so loaded with unnecessary jargon that one has to take hundreds of hours of courses and write hundred of pages before you are are seen as being able to converse in it intelligently. But a lot of this stuff is really not that hard, if you try to make it clear, rather than tossing in as many clauses and obscure references as possible.

In China the culture seems ready for honest, open discussion about social values. There's already a lot of it going on, especially online. This makes it an interesting place to be an amateur philosopher.

I'm Back!

2009-11-25T01:08:00.000-08:00

So the Chinese leadership, in it's infinite wisdom, decided that the content of blogs on Blogger were too threatening to its citizens, and so Blogger was "harmonized".

Thanks to the fine folks at the Tor Project, I've overcome this obstacle for now. Look for more to come!

A Partial Retraction From My Last Post and Other Thoughts

2009-05-06T19:21:00.000-07:00

On reading Patri Friedman's response to Will Wilkinson's post, I feel I was mistaken on how I, in my last post, characterized what likely is Peter Thiel's position.

I think Thiel really was just pointing out that most women aren't libertarians, and this is a problem for libertarians. Clearly he's not saying we ought to therefore repeal women's right to vote. That's not what I thought he was saying, but I think I perhaps read more democratophobia into it than made sense to.

I agree with Friedman than there ought to be more competition is systems of government. I doubt that seasteading is the way to accomplish that- all the same I hope it does succeed. But politics in the way we know it is for the time being inevitable, and until new frontiers open up, on the ocean, in space, or elsewhere, we're going to have to deal with the system we have. Again, this in no way means accepting all the results the system produces. It's just simple realism and pragmatism.

One the wonders of our dynamic, prosperous, and, yes, relatively free society is that people like Patri Friedman are free to pursue their Utopian visions, and more philosophically inclined folks can go about trying to change hearts and minds. These approaches may both bring benefits, and indeed seem to depend on each other.

Libertarianism and Voting Rights

2009-05-04T18:27:00.000-07:00

This post by Peter Thiel in last month's Cato Unbound generated a large reaction, mostly negative, as one might expect. Will Wilkinson offers a pretty good response, albeit one that insufficiently fleshes out the reasons why libertarians, or at least statist ones, ought to be unequivocally supportive of women's suffrage. I've got some thoughts on that, and some other scattered thoughts and voting rights.

The strongest reason for libertarians to support women's voting rights is that it seems likely that voting rights are part of a bundle of expanded freedoms that women have acquired, which almost all libertarians support. These include all kinds of social freedoms, and, perhaps most importantly, property rights fully equal to those of men. It's difficult to imagine having all of the latter without the former.

Thiels response is in a vein sadly typical of libertarians, which is to see freedom solely as the the absence of certain government government policies. Pre-progressive era America was a less free place than America today, because half of the population has drastically more freedom, and because oppressive social norms have lessened their grip on society (much to the regret of conservatives, although not really- most modern conservatives implicitly approve of many of these changes).

Will is right (as usual)- if you accept that there's going to be a government- in part because people disagree deeply about the nature of a just society, then you have to accept the endogenous elements of that system. And even if you reject the legitimacy of government, you should applaud, not mourn, the recognitions of more human beings as autonomous individuals.

I do, however, want to partially agree with the sentiment of Arnold Kling's response to Will, although I think he's almost completely wrong (Will's response in the comments is right on). It seems pretty clear to me that violations of freedom are bad whether or not the violation is a the result of democratically decided policy. You don't need to reject the democratic system as such to reject the legitimacy of that policy (that seems to me, for example, to have been the position of Martin Luther King Jr.).

I do agree with Kling, however, that we ought to be open to alternatives to our current form of government. When we do this, we ought not to see democracy as holy- it's just a means to an end of a liberal society. But if we take the tentative position that what we've got is the best we're going to have in the foreseeable future, than lamenting the existence of democracy doesn't seem very useful.

Libertarianism and Civic Engagement

2009-04-17T15:36:00.000-07:00

As always I've been following the conversation going on at Cato Unbound, this time on the prospect of the the prospects of projects like seasteading and the Free State Project. My reaction to these sort of projects is mixed.

I believe in wild experimentation, if only because it encourages people to entertain far out but good ideas. I hope Patri Friedman's seasteading project brings some benefit. I doubt they can hurt.

Yet I have pretty strong reservations. For one, I doubt these projects will succeed in their primary goals of creating free societies. As Jason Sorens alludes to, these kind of projects will tend to attract the most socially marginized of libertarians- that is to say, loonies. And there are a lot of libertarian loonies, many of whom have crazy, even repugnant, views (remember the Ron Paul campaign?). I have my doubts that these kind of folks will create a blossoming utopia, even if their actual policy preferences may be closer to mine in many ways than the average American voter. A flourishing and just society requires more than people who distrust government. It requires a certain kind of civic mindedness. Bigotted views like nationalism, homophobia, and xenophobia are socially destructive, whether or not they are specifically carried out in public policy. A lot of libertarians might be afraid to admit it, but it's pretty clear to me that a society with fairly libertarian political institutions filled with vicious homophobes or racists will likely be a less just society than a socially tolerant social democracy.

I also feel that libertarians, and others authentically interested in promoting human flourishing, can do real things to improve the lot of people by being engaged in mainstream society. Radley Balko at Reason has done a great deal to bring to problem of paramilitary police force in the U.S. to light, has exposed corruption in government, and may end up saving an innocent man from death row. There are lot of people who are suffering at the hands of the state, and most of them, at least in the short term, will not benefit from seasteading or the Free State Project. They often can be helped by passionate advocates like Balko.

I feel part of the problem here is that libertarians focus on the issues that their ideology highlights, especially in contrast to other ideologies, such as taxation and regulation (though conservatives tend to support lower taxes, they also tend to support hugely expensive ventures like the Iraq war). But its precicely on areas where there's potential for common ground with others that a lot of progress might be made. There is, for example, the possibility of a growing consensus on drug decriminilization in the U.S. Libertarians can do and have done a lot to bring the horrors of the War on Drugs to light. This is all to say that thoughtful, constructive civic engagement can improve the lives of many people, and this seems like something libertarians ought to be interested in.

Stop Questioning Motives and Start Convincing People

2009-04-09T22:00:00.000-07:00

Crookedtimber is a great blog with a lot of insightful writing. But there's also quite a bit of "Wow, look at how dumb and vicious conservatives are! Haha!" This post from John Holbo, about an editorial in National Review, is a good example:

What do the editors [of National Review], and Gallagher, really think? The
ick argument, I’ll wager. They want to stop same-sex marriage as a way of
sending a message of ‘ick’ to gays, and about gays. But they also don’t want to
be labeled homophobes. That is, although saying ‘gay marriage shouldn’t be
allowed because I believe gay sex is icky’ is actually a less terrible argument
than anything they’ve got – hey, it’s not flagrantly internally incoherent, it’s
basically honest (I’ll wager), and who doesn’t believe that on some level people
steer, morally, by emotional attraction-repulsion drive? – it’s considered
embarrassing. (Homophobia: the yuck that dare not speak its name.) And, even if
it weren’t embarrassing, it’s obviously not strong enough in the current
environment. So what do you do? You end up thoughtlessly backing into something
that’s frankly orders of magnitude worse than just saying gay sex is icky.
Namely, gays are un-persons, so far as the state is concerned.
What makes
these arguments so weird is the mildness of the underlying opposition to
homosexuals and homosexuality – the implicit inclination to be basically
tolerant. ‘C’mon, gays, you know you’re ok, and we know you’re ok, and you even
know that we know you’re ok, but we don’t like it, so can’t there be some way
that we can insist on us being a little better than you? It can be a small
thing. Symbolic, but slightly inconvenient for you, so people know it’s also
serious?’
I also like the sweet innocence of the assertion that “marriage is
by nature the union of a man and a woman.” My very own daughter is charming in
just the same way. Just the other day she was asking which boy cats the various
girl cats in the neighborhood are ‘married to’. There are kittens in our
neighborhood, you see.

Now, I strongly disagree with almost everything in the NR editorial, but this sort of snarky psychoanalysis only serves to pander to the sense of superiority of people who already agree with Holbo's view. Shouldn't we be trying to convince conservatives that their view is wrong, rather than antagonize them?

I doubt the editors of National Review will be ever be convinced, but I suspect that there are plenty of people with conservative sensibilities who can be convinced that there are conservative reasons to favor the expansion of marriage rights. Heck, based on some stuff that I've heard from him, George Will seems to have been quietly convinced by the patient, non-condescending, and careful arguments of Jonathan Rauch.

I hope that it will someday be seen as common sense that antagonizing people you disagree with almost never has any constructive purpose. People who recognize this should do more to point it out.

Just desert for me, please!

2009-04-08T13:16:00.000-07:00

I just finished listening to this bloggingheads episode with Will Wilkinson and Lew Daly. I haven't read Daly's book, so I can only address his argument as he presents it in the dialvlog (boy, I hate that word). I want to focus on what Daly's argument highlights for me about the deficiencies of a desert-based theory of distribution, and points to the necessity for more fruitful arguments for a system of individual desert and responsibility.

Will Wilkinson gives an excellent summary and refutation of Daly's argument. I find his argument pretty unconvincing, largely because, like Wilkinson, I don't really buy a pure desert-theory of distribution.

Daly claims to be making a political, as opposed to philosophical, argument. I can see what he's getting at. Most people who defend the existing distribution of wealth do so on the basis of desert. I think Daly is using this sort of logic against itself. This is fine, but I would take it more as a reductio of purely desert based arguments, not as an argument for radical redistribution, as Daly would seem to have it.

What this says to me is that libertarians ought to follow Hayek and abandon the desert based argument all together. The tricky part is, I think we should still argue for a desert and individual based ethic, but not on the basis that such an ethic has any sort of basis in fact, but rather because such an ethic is the most conducive to desirable social outcomes.

The problem with this kind of take is that it sets one up as having to sort of hold up a noble lie. I say "sort of" because I don't see as one. For me, its perfectly fine to say the ethic of personal responsibility is endogenous to a just system (to paraphrase DWAnderson, a particular astute commenter on Wilkinson's blog). But for many folks, this isn't going to cut it. People want to believe that their moral instincts have a deep reality behind them. This brings me to a cute way I came up with to describe this problem: Ethical inquiry tends to put us in a position of having to at once critique our culture and participate in it.

One of the Problems with Conservatism

2009-04-05T22:17:00.000-07:00

I have to say that, much as I try to avoid snark, this James Poulos post really makes me inclined to let some loose. Intead I'm gonna try to give some well reasoned and civil reactions.

Behind all of the academic sounding language there lurks the most fundamental, and wrong, conservative belief: Our culture is in a state of decay.

Smart conservatives like Poulos seem to me forced to revert to increasingly opaque arguments to make this point. This may be because there's so much to say against it.

If you think abortion is a great moral crime, I'll admit that there may be some reason to hold contempory society in low regard. But there's one consideration that conservatives seem to systematically ignore: Might it be that private behavior was not in any real sense more virtuous, but people just didn't talk about it? After living in conservative China for two years, I'm increasingly inclined to think this is correct. Given the past strong taboos surrounding talking about anything sexual, and the fact that clearly all kinds of nastiness was out in the open in the past, wouldn't this be the more parsimonious explanation?

It is probably true that teenagers are more sexually active than in the past, but again I want to suggest that there is a far simpler explanation than the standard conservative cultureal decay theories: More effective birth control has drastically reduced the cost of having sex.

It seems like Poulos wants to have a neat picture that views political correctness as not only inneffective, but also causing the kind of social decay that conservatives bemoan. But shouldn't one at least consider that social norms have simply responded to technological and economic changes, and that, on balance, these have been positive?

As an aside, I think this relates to Jonathan Haidt's ideas about morality. What we're seeing are sensibilities that are becoming more liberal, and less deferential to the sources of authority to try to regulate sexual behaviour, like religion. The thing is, society as a whole really does seem to have become more humane in ways that, I'm pretty sure, almost all smart and thoughtful conservatives like Poulos accept.

I suspect that Haidt is right and that conservatives just have different sensibilities that tends to make them regard sexual promiscuity as more than just imprudent or aesthetically unpleasing, but morally wrong. If you feel that way, you're going to be inclined to agree with Poulos that there is something valuable being eroded in today's society. But even if you accept that presupisition, this seems a bit silly:

"Yet the regulation of the sexual mores of the young, with or without condoms, continues to lose steam and confidence justified by any standard other than official gentleness — with all the efficiency value, as a constant in the risk-calculation factor of resource-allocation projections, that mass gentleness has for officialdom. But our public obsession with security and health parallels our ‘private’ tastes for risk and self-poisoning, and our loving, de-eroticized pieties concerning Respect for All grow apace with our beastly appetite for erotic impieties."

I think you could also read this through a Haidtist lense, as saying that liberal sensibilities neglect certain kinds of private sexual morality. But my basic reaction is still mostly, 'huh?'. There are just so many dubious and unsupported assertions about society here. Have we really become privately more attracted to risk and "self-poisining"? I mean, what's the reason to even suspect this other than being horrified watching E?

Even if we have ,what exactly does encouraging children not to call each other ‘retard’ or ‘faggot’ have to do with it? It certainly seems farfetched that there’s some kind of negative correlation between positive social norms and negative private ones. Rather, it seems more likely that people are more humane, in a liberal sense, both in public and in private, but perhaps more immoral by conservative standards. This may just be because sexual norms have changed along with many things in our society. If you have conservative sensibilities, you find some of these changes to be for the worse.

I guess what I’m getting at is that Poulos is saying nothing substantive here other than “Public and private norms have become more liberal. I’m a conservative, so I disapprove of liberal sexual norms.” I suspect he’s saying that private sexual behavior is somehow destructive beyond the conservative sexual purity sense, but then I’d want to know in what way and what that has to do with ideas about public morality.

The New Polis

2009-04-02T19:21:00.000-07:00

Hi folks,

Due to a mishap with my old Google account I was forced to to abandon the old blog and start a new one (there may well be a way to salvage it, but I'm lazy and mostly computer illiterate). So I'm taking it as an opportunity to blog more consistently, now that I have access to a PC at home. I'm also a little relieved to be able to divorce myself a bit from my previous writing. So consider this an attempt at a new start. Of course, it isn't clear that I'll actually do anything differently.