Ideas Matter

Steven Pinker - Evolutionary Forces Run Deep

I love to debate. But there is a handful of people in the world I wouldn't want to mix it up with. Steven Pinker is one. He hardly stutters or stammers. His words come out like an essay already edited. And I dare say he's good on his feet. In this discussion of nature and nurture, he argues not only that evolutionary forces are at work in human beings, but that it is possible to test associated hypotheses.

Some may be surprised to learn that Pinker is classical liberal in orientation. Many classical liberals rely on a tabula rasa or "blank slate" concept of the person. Under such a conception culture and experience 'write themselves' upon the person, who is -- for the most part -- malleable. But this is wrong. And if we think of culture and evolution working in tandem, we'll get a lot further -- not only in our thinking, but in our communication strategies.

For example, as we've discussed before, people have evolved political predilections. To deny these predilections is to suggest we can simply erase the slate and start over with better ideas. But this is a terrible approach to social change. Instead, we have to practice more audience segmentation, then start by appealing to what may be the predilections of that audince. Then we can leverage said predilections to make the classical liberal case. That's our best hope. Otherwise, we're awkwardly presenting what - to us - seem like rational arguments, but to others is hopelessly misguided from the start.

Ironically, Pinker may not have convinced the others in that clip of his evolutionary approach. Maybe he didn't practice what he preaches in terms of evolutionary theory as it intersects with a communications strategy. Hard to say from this clip. In any case, he's a blisteringly logical debater. And in his books he has the uncanny ability to employ metaphor and emotion in service of his arguments. That's where the the most effective communication happens. That's where Greeks had it right.

On Nozick: Consenting Adults

Robert Nozick was clever enough to make an analogy between love (or sex) and trade. As you can see, I've made it myself -- with all credit to Nozick:

But if we organized society today around the fact that you don’t like that someone has more of something than someone else, then we would not only “re-distribute” sexual partners, but require playboys and playgirls to remain celibate on odd days. Inequities in looks and charm, after all, create inequalities in what human beings really want (sex, of course, being one of Abraham Maslow’s “basic needs”). 

In this clip with Chris Freiman, it's strange to hear Freiman, much less Nozick, having to make the analogy at all. What it shows is that discourse about liberty and choice had, by 1974, become so fractured and distorted that academics needed to make make analogies between things already of a kind -- at least to the classical liberal mind. 

In other words, our readers will want to say "of course civil liberties are like economic liberties." Both are human exchanges requiring choice. Exchange is exchange is exchange -- between "consenting adults." When you think about it, the only thing that is interesting about the analogy is that we've come to think of economic choices as different kinds of things (probably because they are constantly being mediated). We're so used to third parties taxing, filtering, or regulating our economic decisions that we forget the analogy works because economic choices and personal choices are not different kinds of things. It's like wondering at the similaries between driving and flying. 

For this placing of human exchanges into different pots, I don't know whether to fault progressivism, postmodernism, or puritanism. Perhaps they're all equally to blame.

The Economy is Not a Machine (Final)

Carrying on our discussion of the machine metaphor from earlier this week, I thought I'd share this clip from an interview I did with Mitch Kokai over at the John Locke Foundation.

If you had any doubts that the machine metaphor is pervasive in technocratic language about economics and society, consider:

• A CNN headline reads: "Obama's priority: Fixing the economy."
• Paul Krugman says that what's interesting about the Bush Administration "is that there's no sign that anybody's actually thinking about 'well, how do we run this economy?'"
• Mark Ames of The Nation thinks hiring Larry Summers "to fix the economy makes as much sense as..."

And, of course, my favorite is Paul Krugman (again) say that the draw of economics for him was: “the beauty of pushing a button to solve problems.” Wow. What hubris.

This sort of simplistic, reductionist economic thinking will plague us for some time until we find new metaphors. My favorite is economy as ecosystem.

Shockingly, I Agree with Noam Chomsky

Noam Chomsky has done very good work in linguistics and cognitive science. When he gave that up to go into amateur political theory, he became more famous. But being good in one area doesn't mean you're going to be good in another. And it's not just that I disagree with Chomsky on almost everything. It's that his positions lack internal consistency and philosophical rigor. Indeed, there are people who have made better cases for anarchistic socialism (even though they're wrong too).

Still, Chomsky has decided to spend most of his time fomenting anti-capitalist sentiment and spinning conspiracy theories among hoards of adoring college kids who eventually grow out of it. His ignorance of economics is shocking. His refusal to drop the worst aspects of Marx -- theoretical and practical -- is disappointing given his IQ. Because he's become so passionate about politics, the fields of linguistics and cognitive science have lost a good mind.

Shockingly, however, I agree with almost all of this video.

Frances Fox Piven vs. Milton Friedman, Thomas Sowell

See the whole Free To Choose series at FreeToChoose.tv. Buy it here.

We don't generally do "news cycle" pieces here. But in the wake of the recent New York Times // Fox News (Glenn Beck) row, we thought it important to a) let our readers know who Frances Fox Piven is and what she believes, and b) share our classic footage of Milton Friedman's 1980 Free To Choose series.

In this segment, Frances Fox Piven clashes with Milton Friedman and Thomas Sowell. They are arguing about equality: What is best for society? Equality of opportunity or equality of outcome? The best answer to this question is probably most succinctly captured by Friedman with his famous line delivered in the opening sequence. That said, in the context of the debate, Thomas Sowell is solid on the point about the absurdity of considering "retrospective results at the finish line." (Stay tuned. In tomorrow's clip, the debate continues and Sowell is blistering.)

You'll notice Piven refer to "Marlene Dietrich's legs," an example Friedman uses in a segment of Free To Choose outside this clip. I'm sure Piven considers the reference sexist. Perhaps it is, perhaps not. But I think a sexual reference is apt, not only because attractive legs are attributes many people would like to have, but because the example exposes the absurdity of redistributing natural assets, sexual or otherwise.

In other words, if I am taxed when I choose to apply my natural assets to create value for others in exchange for money, that taxation is in some sense a means of redistributing my natural assets, whether a la John Rawls or  a la Karl Marx.

Note: Piven refers to Friedman as "Mr." at least twice -- which I think is intended to signal disrespect or worse.

The Taxation Paradox

This is a really interesting old clip posted by the folks over at the Free Liberal. In it, Jan Helfeld asks Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) probing questions about the coercive nature of taxation. And in the timeless tapdance of the politician, Reid insists that taxation is "voluntary" (in some postmodern sense, I guess). 

But the clip prompted deeper questions for me -- questions that challenge classical liberals of all stripes to think through their commitments:

• Is any taxation justified ever? If yes, then what forms and for what purposes?
• If no taxation is ever justified, is any government at all justified?
• If some minimal government is justified, how is that government to be funded?
• If that minimal government is to be funded, how - besides via taxation - can it avoid free rider problems?

Most libertarians and classical liberals are not anarchists. But certain answers to the questions above will zip one rather quickly to an anarchist position. I admit, there is a lot that is seductive about anarcho-capitalism. But it faces a lot of problems, which we will return to in subsequent posts.

In any case, it's easy to come away from this video with the reaction that Reid is silly and purposefully obfuscating the discussion in a way that defies common sense. "Taxation is voluntary" is a pretty stupid claim. But I would challenge libertarians to think about claims like "Taxation is theft" or "Government is coercion." While such rhetoric can be justified most of the time, you have to be prepared to think about what a taxation/theft-free world might look like and then be prepared to stick to your commitments. For as we suggest, if you do, you may very well be an anarchist, not a minarchist/libertarian.  

Justice as Fairness? Well, what do you mean?

I love this clip. Always have. I've hesitated to use it up to this point because it's long: 8 minutes. But there are a couple of really interesting lessons in here that Bart Wilson pulls out -- and manages to support -- with experimental economics.

Now, I would not claim that you can derive an "ought" from an "is" -- that is, normative from positive experimental economics. And neither would Wilson. So, because we learn something about human behavior and different (context-dependent) concepts of fairness, it doesn't follow that any of these behaviors are right or wrong, good or bad--or point to some moral truth. These behaviors just are. Muddled, human, influenced by language and triggered by genes. 

Nevertheless, the experiments do unpack some very different concepts of fairness that will turn out to be important in a functional sense of shaping an economic order. And, of course, this distinction appeals to my fetish for rules. Consider:

Richard Rorty: The End of Inquiry (for Classical Liberals?)

What is the "end of inquiry"? Richard Rorty doesn't even know what it would be like to reach such an end. To explain, Rorty draws a rather stark divide between Platonists and Pragmatists. Platonists are committed to truths and essences that can stand outside of time and context. Pragmatists think it's all about a continuous exchange of beliefs among fallible people in an uncertain world.

I think we can draw an analogy to similar positions in the classical liberal tradition:

• Platonist classical liberals are committed to: objective truth, moral certainty, natural rights.
• Pragmatist classical liberals are committed to: subjective valuation, civil evolution, institutions.

CL Platonists - as we have defined them - include:  Murray Rothbard, Ayn Rand (though she'd deny this) and John Locke. CL Pragmatists include: Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig von Mises and James Madison. These two very different approaches to arriving at classical liberal doctrine don't mean there isn't room for significant overlap. But the methodologies used by each to arrive at his or her commitments help to carve out their places in the tradition. 

Steven Pinker: Pathologies of Political Speech

With an election just on the horizon, I thought this video from the admirable Steven Pinker might fit nicely.

Pinker quickly breaks down not only the ways people use and abuse political language, but shows that blame for such language goes beyond the politicians--extending to the media and to the public.

I largely agree, but I think perhaps Pinker understates his point at the beginning--the one about the kind of linguistic ecosystem within which politicians have to maneuver to survive. This system is powerful. It's almost as if the system itself is most culpable for how we use language in the democratic process. 

In other words, what kinds of incentives to politicians and political operatives face? While I rarely want to defend politicians, I think these pathologies of discourse lie mostly with a system that includes a number of factors:

• A lot of voters are uneducated, rationally ignorant and rationally irrational. This is true across the political spectrum. So, if you're trying to have a meaningful debate about, say, healthcare, you're going to move to vagueries and talking points. (If I, a politician, have first to educate voters about, e.g., HSAs, refundable tax credits and tax treatment of insurance to win a debate, I'm going to lose.)
• People respond emotionally to language. Indeed, as Pinker points out, people want to read their own concepts of the good into the vacuous bromides of the politician. In the last election, this was tremendously effective. Such is a sad reflection on the state of critical thinking in America. But politicians operate within a system that rewards emotional resonance and personality cults.
• People demand gaff-hunting and the media supplies it. Why do people demand it? Schadenfreude. And that, of course, is because...
• People are coalitional--tribal even. Once you identify with a group, it becomes largely about team sports. It's can be as unreflective as a choice between the Redskins or the Cowboys. As the institutions that once defined America begin slowly to dissolve, the tribes grow farther apart. Inter-tribal warfare gets more and more vitriolic.
• The media, despite all purported efforts at "objectivity," have not only to satisfy tribal instincts of their markets, but cannot help but import the biases of their own clans.
• Politicians have to get votes and money from all these tribes and constituencies. They need the media despite themselves. Again, all this is a kind of ecosystem.

I could be accused of a kind of reductionism here, but I do think the system breeds this sort of discourse to the point that it's difficult for anyone to escape. I suppose we could all try to be be better citizens who resist tit-for-tat language within the political tug-o-war. But it is tit for tat. Those who fail to play that game may sit at home in sanctimony, embracing critical thinking and basking in the light of reasoned discourse. But their voice will be lost.

So if it's the system, what's to be done? We'll have to move away tug o' war politics. We'll have to move to a system in which parties are more like clubs--that is, groups people can join. But that's another conversation--one that, funnily enough, also involves Steven Pinker.