Race, collective failure, and collective responsibility

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

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?

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

• 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?

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.

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Update: Seems the audio is off for some reason.

An update photo for Mom

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

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.