Conservatives and Free Speech

Welcome friends!

I had a little window into the conservative mindset the other day.  As a lark I looked at the blogger site names “liberal” and “liberalism” and I found to my surprise that there were blogs established under both names but they were both empty (and I’m talking about absolutely no content at all) and inactive since 2002 and 2004 respectively.  Seems Google doesn’t have a policy about releasing and recycling inactive site names so those particular site names are effectively out of circulation permanently.  That seemed a little weird.  Are there really no other liberals out there writing blogs?  Just joking.  No, clearly we have a couple of conservatives out there who are just trying to stifle the conversation as much as they can by taking certain site names out of circulation.  Just to be fair, I checked out the blogger site names “conservative” and “conservatism” and sure enough I found they were active blogs giving the conservative viewpoint.  Now, don’t get me wrong.  It’s not that I imagine there are many people out there looking for blogs to read by manually typing in blogger site names, but I thought it did show a sort of overall mindset that I associate with conservatives, which is that the free exchange of ideas is a horrible idea that can only confuse people and must be prevented whenever possible and by whatever means available.  

Now that I think about it, I seem to see this type of thing whenever I encounter conservative ideologues in action... Sorry but only selected archived (previous year) posts are currently available full text on this website.  All posts including this one are available in my annual anthology ebook series available at the Amazon Kindle Bookstore for a nominal fee.  Hey, we all need to make a buck somehow, right?  If you find my timeless jewels of wisdom amusing or perhaps even amusingly irritating throw me a bone now and then.  Thank you my friends!

The Problem of Islam

Welcome friends!

I guess I’ve been on a liberal kick the last few posts and have been neglecting the humanist side, so maybe this time we can talk a little bit about the problem of Islam.  Oh, don’t get me wrong now.  I’m no expert on theology, but as a liberal humanist atheist, I personally doubt there’s anything wrong with Islam that isn’t equally wrong with any of the other religions that have come out of the Middle East.  So I suppose I should really be talking about the problem of Middle Eastern religions in general.  It’s just that Islam seems to have all the typical problems of these religions in spades so I think it’s reasonable to take it up as a sort of special example.  (It may well be that religions from other regions of the world are just as prone to these problems as religions from the Middle East but I’m less familiar with them so I’d like to just set them aside for now.  In the following if I speak about religion in the abstract I mean the major world religions that have originated in the Middle East: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.) ... Sorry but only selected archived (previous year) posts are currently available full text on this website.  All posts including this one are available in my annual anthology ebook series available at the Amazon Kindle Bookstore for a nominal fee.  Hey, we all need to make a buck somehow, right?  If you find my timeless jewels of wisdom amusing or perhaps even amusingly irritating throw me a bone now and then.  Thank you my friends!

Liberals and Econ 101

Welcome friends!

Did you ever run across the idea that liberals just don’t understand basic economics?  That was the point of an op ed piece in the Wall Street Journal a few months ago that discussed the results of a little survey the authors believed established“the Left flunks Econ 101.”  I don’t really want to take up the issue of the survey itself except to say I don’t think it shows what the authors think it shows.  Basically, the survey asked a handful of questions with answers that appear (to me anyway) to be open to dispute or interpretation and then credited the more stereotypically conservative answers with showing a greater level of economic knowledge (or economic “enlightenment” as the authors somewhat fatuously put it).  In other words, I think what that particular survey actually showed is conservatives are more conservative than liberals, not that they are more knowledgeable about economics.

The more interesting issue to me about all this is the more general issue of what we mean when we talk about liberals and conservatives understanding economics.  Of course, there are many facets to the field of economics (empirical v theoretical, micro v macro, econometrics, game theory, etc.), but let’s just consider the case of standard (neoclassical) microeconomic theory.  My personal take on how well conservatives understand that theory is they may well understand the simplistic models and reasoning one finds in Econ 101 but they don’t necessarily understand the limitations or complexities of that theory that one might discuss in, say, Econ 401.

Let’s have an example.  You may recall one of the major conclusions of Econ 101 is that a perfectly competitive market system will lead to a socially optimal outcome in terms of maximizing “utility.”  This proposition is easy to demonstrate; you can do it with pictures.  (I should know, I taught it for a short while.)  So that would be Econ 101.  However, it turns out this superficial simplicity doesn’t really do justice to the issues raised by the concept of “utility” as it is used in economic theory.  That would be Econ 401.

Just to set the stage, let me tell you a funny story about one of my first economics classes.  The professor was trying to explain what “utility” means in the context of economic theory and when he got to the point about how one cannot measure utility and therefore cannot compare utility levels across different people (“interpersonal utility comparisons” in economic terms) he apparently found the class response a little exasperating.  (As I recall, it was a mixture of acute boredom and “if no one can measure it then why are we talking about it?”)  Anyway, he said something that struck me as rather paradoxical and hence interesting, which was that we didn’t seem to appreciate how important it is we can’t measure utility because if we could measure it, and we could compare utility levels across people, then we might find maximizing it quite distasteful.  Now that’s really a rather remarkable statement when you think about.  There we were, sitting in a class that was ostensibly all about how to maximize utility and the professor tells us, “Thank goodness we can’t measure utility because, if we could, then we might be able to really maximize it, and we wouldn’t want that!”

Well, after a bit more study I eventually came to realize this makes sense in a weird sort of way.  You see, economic theory uses a rather peculiar definition of utility, and it uses that definition for a very particular purpose.  At the most basic level, utility in economic theory supposedly means one’s subjective feelings of happiness or satisfaction.  This conceptualization of utility doesn’t cause any particular problems if you’re only talking about a single person in isolation.  In that context, you would maximize utility by allowing that person to do whatever he or she wants, and what that person wants would be revealed in his or her choices (“revealed preferences” in economic terms).  That is perfectly consistent with philosophical utilitarianism, which is after all just an elaboration of the idea it’s nice when people are happy.

Things start to get a bit more interesting when we have more than one person and each person has needs or desires that conflict with those of other people, which is the usual situation in the real world.  Now serious philosophical utilitarians faced with this type of situation will try to find some utilitarian basis on which to resolve this type of interpersonal conflict.  A subjective notion of utility won’t work because we can’t compare subjectives feelings of happiness between different people since we don’t have any interpersonally valid baseline or way to measure it (i.e., one person’s report of extreme happiness might correspond to another person’s report of mild happiness).  Therefore, they move on to developing theories about what they, themselves, think we should mean when we talk about making people happy, typically invoking some sort of hierarchy of needs or desires.  I don't really want to take up the variety of theories these people have generated.  My point is simply that the one conclusion serious philosophical utilitarians are not going to take is to throw up their hands and say, “Well, I don’t know.  Utility seems to be irrelevant in all the ethically complicated and interesting situations because I can’t measure it or compare it across different people.”  Saying something like that would obviously put one firmly in the non-utilitarian camp of moral philosophy.

Economists are entirely different in this respect.  Indeed, they don’t seem to be concerned at all about their ability to use the concept of utility to address these types of ethically controversial issues.  Instead, they simply start with a particular conceptualization of utility, as subjective happiness, and then work through the implications.  And if the implications happen to be that utility is irrelevant in a practical sense for resolving any ethically controversial issue, such as shedding light on how to resolve the thorny issue of reconciling the conflicting needs and desires of different people, then they’re perfectly fine with that.  In fact, they’re more than fine with that: as my old economics professor took pains to establish, they prefer it.  Why?  Well think about it.  If you start with idea utility is just one’s subjective feeling of happiness, and you had a way to actually measure it, then the implication of maximizing total utility would be if someone happened to be born who had a highly unusual capacity for feeling happy and generating utility then we should just assign all available resources to that person and basically tell everyone else to drop dead.  Now who in the world would find that a compelling ethical objective? Maximizing utility as it is defined in economics is only an acceptable objective if it is combined with the important caveat we cannot actually do it.

OK, so why play the role of a philosophical utilitarian and pretend to be interested in maximizing utility but then use a definition of utility no one would actually have any real interest in maximizing at all if they really could?  Well, that’s where things really get interesting in my opinion.  Basically, my impression is economists use that particular concept of utility precisely because it cannot be used to address any ethically controversial issues but they feel it can nonetheless be used to develop certain conclusions about optimal market structures and outcomes.  The basic idea seems to me to be that since maximizing this type of utility is not ethically controversial (i.e., it’s OK with most people in the single person case and one cannot apply it in the ethically controversial multi-person conflicting desires case because no one can measure it), then their conclusions about optimal market structures and outcomes are also ethically uncontroversial.

Now this general form of argument would actually be OK if economists restricted themselves to the non-controversial results of their theory when delivering their policy recommendations.  Unfortunately, that’s not usually the case.  Their general argument plays out something like this.  Using this relatively empty and ethically innocuous definition of utility we can show that any outcome that is not a perfectly competitive market outcome is inferior to some perfectly competitive market outcome.  Therefore, it is not ethically controversial to suggest regardless of what position we are in, we should always move toward a perfectly competitive market outcome.

The problem with this argument is that policies designed to move us from whatever position we happen to be in toward a perfectly competitive market outcome often preclude us from pursuing policies that move us toward other potential outcomes, and it turns out we cannot use utility to show that many of these other outcomes are inferior to either our current position or to whatever perfectly competitive market outcome we are currently pursuing or might achieve.  Significantly, this includes other outcomes that are themselves perfectly competitive market outcomes as well as outcomes that are not perfectly competitive market outcomes.  Thus, in the “real world,” one is not actually avoiding ethical controversy by simply supporting policies that move us toward a perfectly competitive market outcome.  One is simply ignoring the ethically controversial part of the issue.  (I say real world because this problem doesn’t really exist in the world of economic models.  In that world you can very well keep a perfectly competitive market and simply revise the starting distribution of resources with a stroke of the pen to arrive at whatever perfectly competitive market outcome you would like to achieve.  It’s like magic!  But try changing the distribution of the resources in the real world without encountering the objection you’re interfering with the free market.  See what I mean?)

This is all pretty obvious if you think about it.  It would be quite a trick if one could start with an uncontroversial ethical proposition about how to treat one person in isolation and through some logical manipulation and without adding any other value inputs arrive at a conclusion about the relatively controversial social issue of how we should resolve interpersonal conflicts of needs and desires through an economic system.  That’s roughly the philosophical equivalent of creating a perpetual motion machine.  (I have a slightly more detailed but economic jargony discussion in Appendix 1.)

So the conclusion I draw from all this is economists apparently only use the definition of utility they do so they can support real world policies that are consistent with their own personal value judgments about how we should resolve interpersonal conflicts of needs and desires while avoiding explicitly discussing those value judgments by using the conceit they have developed their policy recommendations using only a very ethically innocuous definition of utility.  That is why, rather than thinking of free market economists as a rather strange and anachronistic subspecies of philosophical utilitarian, I think it makes more sense to think of them as “status quoians,” that is, people who reject certain non-free market policies that might change the status quo resolution of interpersonal conflicts of needs and desires for unspecified ethical reasons.  And I think that is also why many conservatives are naturally drawn to the field of economics and tend to accept its conclusions a little more readily and uncritically than many liberals.

Of course, as I’ve said before (see my intro pieces for example), I believe economists should be free to do whatever they like.  No one ever said economics had to present a coherent system for evaluating economic outcomes or social structures, or economists had to be upfront about their value judgments, or people holding any perspective on economic fairness or justice should be comfortable with their policy conclusions and recommendations about “optimal” social outcomes.  But if I see something on a survey somewhere about the significance or desirability of moving toward some more perfectly competitive market outcome I might just think to myself, “Wow, that’s a tricky question,” and depending on the wording of the question I might just neglect to check the “Yes, we should always pursue policies that move us toward a perfectly competitive market outcome” box.  And that’s really my point.  I suppose that type of response would make me one more lefty who flunks Econ 101, but I’m just not sure I agree with the conservative idea of what that implies about my knowledge of economics.

Appendix 1

Here’s another explanation of what I’m talking about for readers with a bit more background in economics.  Neoclassical economic theory establishes that any market outcome that isn’t a perfectly competitive market outcome will be Pareto dominated by some outcome that is a perfectly competitive market outcome (i.e., there will be some perfectly competitive market outcome that will make at least one person better off and no one worse off), such that moving toward that particular perfectly competitive market outcome will increase total utility.  As we have seen, most people would agree maximizing the type of utility used in economic theory is an acceptable goal in practice because it doesn’t really contain much that is ethically controversial (with the important caveat that you can’t measure it and therefore can't apply it in the controversial interpersonal case), basically, we should allow people to make themselves happy when their needs and desires don’t conflict with anyone else.  (Well, OK, there is a bit of an issue about the difference between having a “potential” Pareto improvement and actually arranging things so everyone is indeed either better off or no worse off.  However, that isn’t my point right now, so let’s just sweep that one under the table for now.)  However, economic theory does not establish that any perfectly competitive outcome Pareto dominates any outcome that isn’t a perfectly competitive outcome, nor of course that any particular perfectly competitive outcome Pareto dominates any other such outcome.  That’s my point.  If your real world policy recommendation is to push for policies that would generate a perfectly competitive market then your recommendation will often preclude policies that would generate certain other outcomes that are not Pareto dominated by the perfectly competitive market outcome one would achieve by following your recommendation.  To be consistent with economic theory one should be indifferent between the two sets of policies because evaluating the resulting outcomes involves making interpersonal utility comparisons.  Nor does the idea that one’s policy recommendation would not change irrespective of the starting position render the policy recommendation neutral; it simply implies one’s determination to express an unjustified (within economic theory) preference for whatever distributional regime one happens to be operating under.

Properly considered, neoclassical economic theory has precious little to say about optimal social outcomes other than if you happen to find yourself with a distribution of resources you feel leads to an ethical resolution of interpersonal conflicts of needs and desires (based on some ethical theory that can support such a finding, which requires content beyond that found in the sort of utility discussed in economic theory), and you find you can actually maintain that distribution under a perfectly competitive market structure, then it is not ethically controversial to say you should do so.  Oh, I’m sorry, were you expecting something a little more?  Well, like a lot of things, you only get out of a logical / mathematical theory what you put into it.  And in this case, since we’re putting in precious little in terms of value premises, we should expect to get precious little out of it in terms of value judgements about optimal social structures.

Appendix 2

If you don’t find the implications of maximizing some particular conceptualization of utility to be ethically compelling, then guess what?  You should stop talking about it and try to think of something you would actually like to maximize.  Now, I’m no ethical philosopher but I would suggest the feature of the sort of subjective utility economists discuss that makes the hypothetical objective of maximizing it ethically unpalatable (that is, if you could measure it and hence really maximize it) is that it’s missing one half of Jeremy Bentham’s famous early formulation of the goal of utilitarianism as “the greatest happiness of the greatest number.”  It certainly captures the greatest happiness part, but what happened to the greatest number part?  I think if you’re going to have an ethically compelling formulation of utility, one you would actually want to maximize if you could, and you would want to use to address the ethically controversial issue of resolving interpersonal conflicts of needs or desires, then you probably have to conceptually set each person’s highest utility to be equal in some sense so what we mean by maximizing utility is bringing as many people as possible as far up their personal scale of utility as possible.  In practical terms, I suppose that would imply we should address basic wants first.  That is, before we worry about whether Mr. Fancypants can buy a second yacht we should worry about whether the guy living under the bridge can buy dinner.  And since people tend to address their own most pressing needs and desires first I guess that would carry some redistributive and egalitarian implications.  Of course, I’m not suggesting utility is the be all and end all of moral philosophy.  I can think of plenty of other ethical considerations we should probably consider.  But I think it’s something we might want to keep in mind, at least when no other ethical considerations come into play.  I guess I agree with the old utilitarians to some degree: it’s nice when people are happy.

Mugged by Paul Krugman

Welcome friends!

Did I ever mention I’m a huge fan of Paul Krugman?  I think he’s a great economist (well, OK, many people think that; he does have a Nobel Prize and all) and he’s a very entertaining writer as well.  He did a great job analyzing some of the weaker elements of President Obama’s presidency thus far in a recent piece entitled The Focus Hocus-Pocus, which appeared in the November 4, 2010 edition of the NY Times.  However, what I’d like to address this week is his suggestion in that article that government really needs to “engineer significant relief to homeowners.”  He previously wrote a bit more on this issue in the significantly named Mugged by the Moralizers, which published in the NY Times on October 31, 2010.  In the latter article he suggested that administration officials have been too timid in their mortgage modification programs to date because they are overly concerned that people might accuse them of helping the undeserving.  Basically, Mr. Krugman’s position seems to be that we shouldn’t worry so much about that type of thing because we all have a lot to gain from reducing homeowners’ debt from a macroeconomic perspective: it would get people spending again and help the economy, we would have more jobs, etc.

As a liberal I find this argument both disconcerting and disappointing.  It’s disconcerting because I partially agree... Sorry but only selected archived (previous year) posts are currently available full text on this website.  All posts including this one are available in my annual anthology ebook series available at the Amazon Kindle Bookstore for a nominal fee.  Hey, we all need to make a buck somehow, right?  If you find my timeless jewels of wisdom amusing or perhaps even amusingly irritating throw me a bone now and then.  Thank you my friends!

Spy Cam in NY

Welcome friends!

It’s old news of course but I would like to just revisit for a moment the tragic death of Mr. Tyler Clementi a few weeks ago.  You may recall the sad and rather peculiar story.  It seems that Tyler, by all accounts a nice, quiet young man (19 years old), an accomplished musician, and a student at Rutgers University, died after jumping off the George Washington Bridge into the Hudson River.  Apparently, Tyler’s college roommate, some kid from New Jersey named Dharun Ravi, had set up a spy cam in Tyler’s bedroom one night when Tyler was having company and broadcast Tyler’s intimate activities to the world over the internet.  This bizarre and no doubt entirely unexpected intrusion into his private life seems to have precipitated or at least played a significant role in Tyler’s subsequent decision to kill himself. 

Now why in the world would someone set up a spy cam in someone else’s bedroom? ... Sorry but only selected archived (previous year) posts are currently available full text on this website.  All posts including this one are available in my annual anthology ebook series available at the Amazon Kindle Bookstore for a nominal fee.  Hey, we all need to make a buck somehow, right?  If you find my timeless jewels of wisdom amusing or perhaps even amusingly irritating throw me a bone now and then.  Thank you my friends!

Tea Party Pooper

Welcome friends!

From what I’ve been reading the Tea Party is shaping up to be a real factor in the mid-term elections this year.  Which is a little weird when you think about it.  After the rather dismal if not downright frightening performance of the Republicans the last time they held the reins one wouldn’t immediately think to look to what is essentially the radical wing of the Republican Party as a likely source of answers, but it turns out that many conservatives are doing just that.  What’s all that about?

Well, it’s obviously a protest vote; not much question about that.  Like many of the rest of us the Tea Party folks are angry, but their anger seems to be leading them down a rather surreal path.  Now, confused liberal that I am, I would have thought that people might be a little angry because government regulators under the last Republican administration were asleep at the wheel and allowed dubious, risky, and apparently all but incomprehensible financial instruments to proliferate, which made a few people in the financial industry very, very wealthy, but which ultimately led to widespread bad investments in a hugely speculative real estate bubble that, when it finally burst, nearly sent us into a repeat of the Great Depression (and did, in fact, send us into a sort of Great Recession, which still has had very serious consequences for many, many people)... Sorry but only selected archived (previous year) posts are currently available full text on this website.  All posts including this one are available in my annual anthology ebook series available at the Amazon Kindle Bookstore for a nominal fee.  Hey, we all need to make a buck somehow, right?  If you find my timeless jewels of wisdom amusing or perhaps even amusingly irritating throw me a bone now and then.  Thank you my friends!

Republicans On The March

Welcome friends!

Well, looks like the mid-term elections are almost upon us.  According to the news reports the Republicans are sitting pretty this time around.  That’s a little surprising to me because, you know, the last time around they pretty much flushed the country down the proverbial toilet.  Now this wasn’t the result of some bizarre confluence of unforeseen events the likes of which we may never see again.  No, this was just the entirely predictable result of the Republicans implementing a few of the basic elements of their long-standing agenda.  And what would those be?

Well, first we have projecting US military power to the far regions of the world in a quixotic quest to sort out various dysfunctional third-world basket cases for reasons both noble and ... well ... let’s just say maybe not quite so noble.  A laudable idea in certain respects but also unfortunately rather violent, expensive, difficult, frustrating, and slow. ... Sorry but only selected archived (previous year) posts are currently available full text on this website.  All posts including this one are available in my annual anthology ebook series available at the Amazon Kindle Bookstore for a nominal fee.  Hey, we all need to make a buck somehow, right?  If you find my timeless jewels of wisdom amusing or perhaps even amusingly irritating throw me a bone now and then.  Thank you my friends!

Introduction, Part II

Welcome friends!

Last time I discussed what I consider to be some of the fundamental elements of my own liberal value system.  Today I would like to conclude my short two-part introduction with my impressions of some other common American political perspectives and a short discussion of how I feel they differ from liberalism.

Conservatives

Conservatism comes in two distinct forms, so I will discuss them separately.

Social Conservatives

Social conservatives disagree rather strongly with the liberal meta-value that one should be free to do as one likes as long as one’s behavior does not significantly impinge on the welfare of other people, which I suggested last time was important for preserving as much space for individual liberty as possible.  Instead, social conservatives believe society would be better off if we all held the same values in addition to the same meta-values.  As a result, social conservatives tend to exhibit what many liberals feel is an inordinate interest in other people’s private affairs.  How does this differ from the liberal meta-value supporting freedom of thought and speech?  Shouldn’t we be free to discuss and debate about other people’s private behavior and beliefs?  Of course.  But in the case of social conservatives we’re not talking about people simply explaining what they think other people should be doing with the understanding that at the end of the day it’s really none of their business.  No, social conservatives really believe your business is actually also their business.  They really want you to behave in a way that’s consistent with their own values, and many are willing to go well beyond friendly and reasonable discussion in appropriate contexts to bring that about.  Specifically, many social conservatives resort to religious hate speech and intimidation, often in the most inappropriate contexts, and many even see no problem at all with using government police powers to get their way.  To many social conservatives, liberty is mostly about their freedom to express their religious views, which unfortunately often entails using any means necessary to control those with different views.

I’ve noticed an interesting variety of rationales social conservatives use to insert themselves into other people’s business.  Probably the most benign is the paternalistic idea that one has a moral duty to look after the spiritual welfare of other people, and if other people are making unfortunate personal choices, well then one has a duty to intervene and sort them out.  Then we have the idea that there is really no such thing as a private sphere of life, that even one’s ostensibly private life affects other people in a variety of indirect and ill-defined but potentially significant ways, say by setting the overall tenor of a society or by providing examples of unacceptable behavior to impressionable or weak minded third parties.  However, my personal favorite is the notion that other people’s private behavior is, in fact, directly linked to one’s own welfare via supernatural entities.  Some relatively recent examples of this remarkable bit of claptrap that made it into the news include Pastor John Hagee’s proclamation that Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans because God was angry about a gay parade and Islamic cleric Mr. Hojjat ol-eslam Kazen Sediqi’s theory that the cause of some earthquakes in Iran was that God was angry about women who wear revealing clothing and behave promiscuously.  (The beauty of the argument is that it really works with anything.  Did your well go dry?  Did your cow die?  Well then, you need to get into your neighbor’s private affairs and sort them out right away!)  Obviously, if one accepts any of these types of arguments then one’s business is never merely one’s own business: it’s everyone’s business.

Nor are social conservatives particularly at ease with democratic political solutions to situations involving interpersonal conflicts, that is, situations in which one person’s behavior significantly impinges on the welfare of another person.  You see, social conservatives aren’t really very concerned about working out some sort of compromise between people with different values so we can all manage to live together.  No, social conservatives have a rather more grandiose agenda.  Essentially, they believe they have the answers.  All other people have to do is listen and obey.  And their agenda is mostly about appeasing otherworldly spirits and such; it’s not about making a world in which we can all have space to live.  Indeed, social conservatives are always ill at ease in a freedom loving democracy because their philosophy really has no place for diversity of either thought or action, which I suppose is the main reason there are always so many cranky social conservatives about.

Of course, all joking aside, I can see the obvious superficial appeal of social conservatism.  It’s certainly always easier and more comfortable to deal with people who share your values.  (Yes, it’s fine and dandy to share a few higher level meta-values but it’s even nicer to share all of one’s values.)  Unfortunately, this type of uniformity of values comes at a rather steep price: it creates an oppressive society perpetually challenged and threatened by the diversity in individual thought and behavior that is the natural result of a free society.  Indeed, I would suggest in a free society social conservatism inevitably breeds coercion, conflict, resentment, and eventually social upheaval.  As a case in point, many of us remember the relatively socially conservative 1950s and early 1960s.  Yes, it was rather nice in some ways.  But let’s be realistic for a moment and take off the rose colored glasses, shall we?  That uniformity, and the stratagems required to enforce it, created significant social tensions that eventually erupted and took years of social and intellectual conflict to resolve (and undoubtedly destroyed or impaired many lives in the process).  I, for one, would not care to relive that particular epoch.  And let’s just take a quick look at some other socially conservative countries around the world.  I mean places like Russia, Iran, China.  Are those the types of places in which any of us would really like to live?  So, to the social conservatives among us, all I can say is I can see where you’re coming from and I appreciate your concerns.  I truly hope you find a way to surround yourself with like-minded people and be at ease.  But can we also keep the social contract and our commitment to individual liberty as well?  Maybe I’m an idealist, but I think with a bit of work you might be able to find a way to have it both ways.

Economic Conservatives

Economic conservatives are all about the relative merits of government and markets.  The basic motivating beliefs of economic conservatives are existing markets can never do wrong, everything worth doing can be done best by a market, and one can or should never evaluate or reassess (or really even discuss) distributional issues because they’ve already all been handled in a way that eliminates all potential issues.  These beliefs lead to the logical conclusion that democratic government is largely unnecessary, can only do wrong, and should therefore be minimized, and indeed that the entire democratic enterprise is little more than an unfortunate and misguided opportunity to mess about with the much more meaningful and desirable social decisions achieved via markets.

Many economic conservatives are social conservatives.  I suppose the underlying link in this case may be the notion that people should simply accept traditional mores and social structures as they are and not try to modify or improve upon them.  Interestingly, however, many other economic conservatives are not social conservatives at all but actually hold quite liberal beliefs about the importance of personal liberty.  Indeed, historically, an interest in free markets was often framed in terms of individual liberty and early economic conservatives were often characterized as liberals.  This is a tricky area I will probably take up in future posts, but I think the main distinction between liberals and economic conservatives when it comes to thinking about personal liberty is that liberals tend to think of economic relationships and markets as social structures we have formed through political processes to address conflicting material needs and desires.  From this perspective, the economic sphere is firmly rooted in the public sphere, and discussing and possibly modifying economic arrangements through democratic political processes, when necessary, is entirely appropriate.  Indeed, from this perspective, discussing existing economic arrangements in terms of one’s personal liberty would imply that the economic arrangements that affect one person have no significant effect on other people, which is patent nonsense.  Economic conservatives, on the other hand, tend to want to view existing economic arrangements as privileged or special in some way and to consider any discussion about potential revisions as an affront to their individual liberty.  Indeed, some economic conservatives would like to remove the hand of man entirely from existing market arrangements.  They prefer to think of our current system of economic relationships as having issued forth from the heavens as a sort of natural law or as something akin to the immutable laws of mathematics.

Economic conservatism has two disparate bases of support: 1) people who are doing very well and who either don’t care much about other people or who believe anyone having difficulties is just getting what he or she deserves (and people on their payroll, of course), and 2) people who may have studied a bit of economics and understand the potential advantages of certain market arrangement very well but unfortunately do not recognize or understand any of the potential problems (and people who listen to them on the radio).  The interaction between these two groups, and especially their financial arrangements, has sometimes led some liberals to suggest the latter are merely the paid lap dogs of the former.  However, I don’t think that’s being entirely fair. Although some conservative pundits and policy wonks are indeed probably just following the gravy train, there seem to be many rank-and-file economic conservatives who are so enamored of existing markets arrangements or so soured on democratic government they continue to support conservative economic policies that are demonstrably impoverishing them.  So it is hardly fair to say they are simply following the easy path of elite patronage and support.

Now, as someone with some exposure to academic economics I must admit I have a bit of a soft spot for economic conservatives.  I think it would be rather lovely if the world actually worked in the manner they believe.  I want to believe too, I really do.  Alas, I have personally never found any rational basis for economic conservatives’ unshakable confidence in the infallibility of markets (and their corollary belief in the inevitable corruption and ineffectiveness of government) in either theory, history, or my own personal experience.  Indeed, it is rather astonishing to me that even after the near meltdown of our entire economic system, due by all accounts primarily to shady dealings by private actors in the financial and real estate markets, economic conservatives have come right back with what appears to be their sole policy prescription, apparently suitable for any and all occasions: reduce government!  I wonder what it would take to make these people suspect some markets might work more effectively if properly regulated?  It makes one suspect perhaps another link between social and economic conservatism is that the tenets of economic conservatism form a sort of simple creed, rather like a religious theory, that appears to be entirely immune from the influence of actual experience.

And by the way, on a more practical note, yes, I want other people to keep their hands off my stack too, the same as anyone else.  And of course, just like anyone else who is doing OK, I feel I am very special and quite possibly uniquely worthy of everything that has come my way.  But let’s just be honest with ourselves for a moment, shall we?  Our market structures do not actually derive from the immutable laws of the cosmos: they are social structures we have created to produce and allocate goods, and as such it is perfectly reasonable to want to assess how good a job they’re doing, not just for me, personally, or for me and you, but for everyone in our society.  And I might also point out no man is really an island when it comes to economic success however much it may appeal to one’s ego to think so.  (For my part, I’m thankful to all the people who have helped me along the way and also to my lucky stars for my innate talents and all the other circumstance that were beyond my control but that have contributed to where I am today.)  So, if we find we need to rearrange things a bit from time to time to help some deserving people stay afloat and to keep our system stable and roughly in balance, well I’m sorry but that doesn’t really seem like the end of the world to me.

Libertarians

Libertarians are extreme economic conservatives who are not social conservatives and who tend to use overblown antigovernment rhetoric that may remind one of anarchists.

Tea Partiers

As far as I can tell, Tea Partiers are extreme conservatives who are angry.

Anarchists

Three types of people seem to me to be attracted to anarchism: 1) silly people who actually believe in the utopian pipe dream of a peaceful and prosperous society with no government, who I suppose one might also reasonably call extreme libertarians, 2) criminal types who dream of a world where they can kick some butt and grab some booty with no legal consequences, and 3) kids who are tired of their parents telling them what to do.

References

Hagee Repeats Charge that Katrina Result of Gay "Sin."

www.npr.org/blogs/news/2008/04/hagee_repeats_charge_that_katr.html

Iranian cleric blames quakes on promiscuous women.  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8631775.stm

Next Time: Let the topical madness begin!

Introduction, Part I

Welcome friends!

This is the first entry in what I hope will be an ongoing blog in which I provide a liberal, secular humanist, man-in-the-street commentary on some topical issues from my own personal perspective.  I say man-in-the-street because I am not a pundit, an academic, a policy wonk, or any of those various sorts of people who find themselves able to follow, research, and debate issues to their heart’s content.  Nor am I any sort of authority on liberalism with a capital L.  I am simply a man who considers himself to be a liberal and a secular humanist who has a bit of free time to jot down some thoughts and ideas.  My humble hope is that a few of my fellow liberals might stumble across my site and something I’ve written may occasionally stimulate a thought or conversation.  A modest secondary objective is simply to represent one man’s understanding of liberalism to those who have no liberal acquaintances of their own.  I intend to avoid the common tendency among bloggers to simply repeat and amplify the partisan bickering one finds in the media.  Instead, I would like to keep the discussion at a very fundamental and personal level, and I hope a reasonably friendly and welcoming one as well.  And I really must apologize at the outset for the verbiage.  I know it’s not the modern way, but you see I believe it takes time to say some things correctly, and I’m not in a hurry.  So, if you’re just browsing for a few glib lines or bon mots to back up your opinion (or to throw rocks at) then I’m afraid you’ve arrived at the wrong site.

To begin, I’ve noticed labels for political perspectives are rather variable, imprecise, and idiosyncratic.  I suspect there are probably as many definitions of liberalism as there are liberals (or conservatives for that matter).  Therefore, for my initial offering, I’d like to just spend a few minutes talking about some of the fundamental values I personally associate with being a liberal, values that will inevitably inform and underlie my later and more topical postings.  Incidentally, I make no claims for this list in terms of its originality, accuracy, or completeness, and I may certainly revise it in future postings.  Nevertheless, for whatever it’s worth, here are six important values or beliefs I have come to associate with liberalism and I think help distinguish liberalism from some other common political viewpoints (a point I hope to establish in my later postings).

Individual liberty is paramount as long as it doesn’t impinge in a serious way on other people, at which point political, legal, and moral principles come to the fore.

Democracy represents the best and most stable form of social decision-making; it is not the poor cousin of a meritocracy or a pay-to-vote free market system.

Intellectual freedom and freedom of speech (in appropriate venues) are absolutely crucial to society.

The separation of church and state is very important for maintaining individual liberty and promoting a stable society.

Government has an important role to play in society and should play as big a role as necessary, but no bigger.

The free market is great for some things in some situations, not so much for other things in other situations.

Again, one or more of these values will probably underlie most of my later postings so there’s really no need to go into a lot of detail now.  All will be revealed in time.

Next Time: A liberal’s impressions of some other common political perspectives and how they differ from liberalism.

Appendix

That’s really all I intended to say today.  However, for those with a little more time on their hands I’ve jotted down a few more introductory remarks about these values.  If you prefer to just see them in action rather than thinking about them in abstract terms you may prefer to simply wait for later postings.

Individual liberty is paramount as long as it doesn’t impinge in a serious way on other people, at which point political, legal, and moral principles come to the fore.

Individual liberty is great!  People are happy when they do what they want and we all save resources when we don’t try to control one another.  However, if one’s actions have a significant impact on other people then unfortunately we have a conflict that must be resolved in some way.  In these types of conflict situations invocations of personal liberty may be tempting but are not particularly helpful because both parties have a claim to liberty — one to do what he or she likes, and the other to go about his or her business without being seriously impinged upon by someone else.  I use the words “serious” and “significant” when describing the type of impingement I’m talking about because if one takes a sufficiently expansive view of what constitutes impinging on one’s welfare then one can leave precious little room for other people to express their own individual liberty.  Of course, drawing the line between what is merely irritating or offensive to one’s beliefs or sensibilities and what constitutes a significant impingement upon one’s welfare is the tricky part and will no doubt feature prominently in some of my later postings.  However, the general perspective I think I share with most liberals is that one should at least try to be as selective as possible with respect to what one considers to significantly impinge upon one’s welfare so we can all have as much space as possible to live freely.  As a case in point, I don’t believe government has any business posing as some sort of guardian of public morality except insofar as it involves resolving conflicts involving someone infringing in a serious way on someone else.

One potentially useful way of thinking about this issue, which I must have read about somewhere, is to draw a distinction between one’s “values” and what one might call one’s “meta-values,” that is, general higher level values that govern how one expresses one’s values in a social setting and how one responds and reacts to the values of other people.  For example, the belief that one should allow other people space to do what they want if they’re not significantly impinging on the welfare of other people can be considered a meta-value.  It doesn’t necessarily mean one will approve of what a particular person happens to choose to do nor does it imply one would choose to do the same thing oneself.  I believe a successful society needs consensus on some basic meta-values to function effectively although in other respects a diversity of values does no harm and may even provide society some benefit.

Democracy represents the best and most stable form of social decision-making; it is not the poor cousin of a meritocracy or a pay-to-vote free market.

I believe there are two great virtues associated with democracy: 1) it provides a relative stable framework for accommodating social change, and 2) it channels political energy into more or less sensible debate and discussion rather than overt conflict.  This is not to suggest that democracy will necessarily lead to an optimal outcome at any given time on any given issue.  In the end it’s just the opinion of some random people who may or may not have the faintest idea what they’re talking about and who may or may not share one’s values or beliefs.  However, it does provide a basis for at least some degree of general acceptance of policy decisions and it does ensure that those who don’t approve of particular policies will at least have their say about it and a recurring chance to win other people over to their side.  (Which is not to say democratic decision making on its own is enough for a successful civil society.  It seems pretty clear that one also needs an independent judiciary to look after the important issue of protecting the rights of minorities against the tyranny of the majority.  A pure majority rule democracy could become very ugly very quickly indeed.)

Our current version of democracy with one person one vote regardless of that person’s wealth, education, intelligence, knowledge, reasonableness, wisdom, etc., is a distinctive form of social decision making I believe generates benefits quite different from other potential forms of social decision making such as a meritocracy of experts or market outcomes based on the ability and willingness to pay.  I believe one of the great underlying problems of American society is that we have largely failed to articulate and impress upon the young any sense of the beauty and power of our political system.  The unfortunate result is that many people today seem to support democracy only to the extent it gets them what they want when they want it and who imagine and ascribe to our system all manner of fatal deficiencies when it does not, which is clearly a very dangerous and troublesome place for us to be, as a society, for any extended period of time.

Intellectual freedom and freedom of speech in appropriate venues are absolutely crucial to society.

We need intellectual freedom and freedom of speech if we’re going to have a functioning democratic society.  Indeed, one might say the entire democratic enterprise is predicated on free enquiry, discussion, and debate.  And I believe this certainly applies to things like other people’s beliefs including especially their ethical and religious beliefs.  As such, I believe support for intellectual freedom and free speech should qualify as meta-values we all can share regardless of the differences in the particular values we wish to discuss and express.

As a case in point, I believe a great deal of harm is done to our society by our tendency to give privileged status to religion-based discourse so that religious people are generally presumed free to use offensive, outrageous, and threatening language toward other people under the guise of expressing their religious beliefs while other people, including their targets, are discouraged from responding in kind because it might offend the other person’s religious sensibilities, thus qualifying as a sort of hate speech.  This type of distortion or imbalance in the normal flow of intellectual discourse leads inevitably to resentments, misunderstandings, and conflict.  Just to be clear, saying you hate someone because they believe (or don’t believe) X is clearly a form of hate speech.  However, saying that in your opinion X is the biggest load of BS the world has ever yet heard is not.  (It may not be the most mature or sensible way to make one’s point, and we would all prefer a somewhat more elevated form of discourse, but that’s really beside the point here; we need to work with what we have.)  So what’s the difference between the two?  The first statement is about people.  The second statement is about ideas.  In a free society we must be able to criticize and debate ideas, beliefs, and values without the implication that by doing so we are insulting those who happen to hold those ideas, beliefs, and values.

The separation of church and state is very important for maintaining individual liberty and promoting a stable society.

I think the main problem with failing to separate church and state is that religions frequently deal with behaviors that do not impinge significantly on the welfare of other people and should, therefore, remain in the realm of individual choice and liberty rather than in the realm of politics and government.  In terms of the distinction I suggested earlier about values and meta-values: religions seem to be peculiarly unsuited to distinguishing values from meta-values.  In most religions, what’s wrong for me as an adherent of the religion is also wrong for you, never mind you are not a member of the religion or you have your own ideas about what you ought to be doing.  And in the same way I am morally obligated to act in a certain way in my personal life by my religious beliefs I am also morally obligated to try to force you to act in a certain way in your personal life.  Thus, religious people typically end up being bullies at one level or another, well meaning perhaps, but bullies nonetheless.  Indeed, I don’t think it’s any exaggeration at all to say linking religion and government is probably the surest way yet conceived of eroding personal liberty and generating civil conflict.  Of course, I suppose I may be a little more sensitive to this particular issue than your average American because I happen to be a secular humanist and atheist while the vast majority of Americans, both liberals and conservatives, consider themselves religious.  Despite my clearly minority view on the subject I do intend to take up in future postings what I see as the often baleful and divisive influence of religion on society.

Government has an important role to play in society and should play as big a role as necessary, but no bigger.

I don’t believe government is inherently good or bad or any more or less efficient or effective than any private company.  The great virtues of government are 1) it provides a mechanism for directing collective effort in addition to those provided by the market and voluntary associations, and 2) it is at least theoretically accountable to those it serves in a way private companies and even voluntary associations are not.  From my perspective, I feel it’s fairly obvious there are some things best addressed by government and some things best addressed by markets and voluntary associations.  Deciding which is which is the tricky part and will no doubt provide plenty to think about in future postings.  Like many liberals, I tend to have little patience for abstract pronouncements about minimizing the role of government or dogmatic assertions about the supposed evils of government.  I would suggest determining whether a particular government program or policy is advisable requires a good cost benefit analysis and an open-minded discussion of the pros and cons, not anti-government dogma and demagoguery.  And may I just add that in terms of my own personal experiences I have found that the federal, state, and local governments generally do a pretty good job of keeping things going in as unobtrusive a way as possible.  Yes, there are a few bad policies and a few bad actors out there we need to address but in general I think our system actually works pretty well.  So, no, I’m afraid I don’t really agree at all with the view of many of my conservative friends that living in the US today is tantamount to living in some sort of soviet gulag.  (In fact, I sometimes have to wonder what the heck these people are doing that brings them into such dire and continual conflict with the government.  I’m just saying.)

The free market is great for some things in some situations, not so much for other things in other situations.

Having spent perhaps a little too much time studying academic economics in my youth I should start out by saying I have a deep appreciation for the beauty and simplicity of the theoretical model of the perfectly competitive free market.  And in broader terms there’s certainly something attractive about the idea of setting up market institutions (property rights, contracts, etc.) and then sitting back and letting all manner of wonderful things happen like so much clockwork.  Nevertheless, I find myself rather more ambivalent about the outcomes of some real world markets.  (A humorous aside: One of my economics professors once asked my class with more than a bit of irritation, “What is this real world everyone keeps talking about?”  He wasn’t joking.  He really wanted to know.)  And, of course, quite aside from the attractiveness of economic theories and models it’s obviously always easier and cheaper to just let particular markets do what they do rather than getting in there and mucking up the works.  Nevertheless, I believe real markets sometimes need a little help if they are going to generate what I would consider optimal outcomes, both in terms of particular markets and in a broader macroeconomic or system wide context.

This is obviously another big topic that will no doubt feature in future postings.  However, in the spirit of an opening salvo to set the tone, I see two basic types of potential problems with real world markets.  The first and I would say most general potential problem is that market outcomes depend crucially on the distribution of resources (i.e., money, economic power) within a society, so if one sees any issues with how resources are being distributed then those issues will naturally affect one’s assessment of the resulting market outcomes.  Of course, the distribution of resources is based partially on the labor market, which in some ways is simply another market like any other.  And indeed, many conservatives tend to think of “the market” as one vast system that governs both the production and distribution of resources.  However, I would suggest the labor market has some characteristics that make it a bit different from many other markets in certain respects and consequently make it rather difficult for me to conceive of the labor market as simply an element of one big free market system.  For example, there seems to me to be a potential normative or value element to wages and working conditions that doesn’t necessarily apply to the types of products traded in other types of markets.  That is to say, I think we are sometimes concerned (and I believe rightly) with issues such as whether working people are making a living wage, whether their working conditions are safe, whether they are being compensated fairly relative to other people, whether they are old enough or too old to be working, etc.  And we have the interesting issue that most people cannot simply opt out of the labor market because they don’t like what they see in the same way they can opt out of participating in many other markets.  And then there are some concerns about how workers can realistically respond to market signals: opportunities for retraining and relocating may vary with the ability of people to pay for additional training, or their innate abilities or talents, or their previous educational opportunities and choices, etc.  I could go on, but perhaps that is enough to suggest there may be some distinctive features of the labor market that make it a little tricky to simply include the labor market as one element of some abstract all encompassing free market system.  And relative to the point I made about the labor market expressing values, we also have the fact that the labor market does not simply reward behaviors we find laudable such as hard work or a willingness to do what is actually required in a particular economy; it also rewards somewhat more questionable things such as childhood circumstances, family wealth and connections, innate talents and abilities, health status, luck, etc.  Nor is the labor market even the sole mechanism at work: we also have inheritances, taxes, lotteries, crime, and who knows what else.  So what’s the point?  Simply that I believe some issues may plausibly arise from time to time with respect to how resources are distributed in our society that may, in turn, be transmitted to an assessment of market outcomes.

Now I appreciate this sort of talk sets academic economists and their followers on edge because most economists are trained specifically to suspend judgment on distributional issues and to think about the optimality of markets in the restricted terms of concepts like “Pareto optimality” (briefly, the best one can do without making judgments about distributional issues).  Although this is perfectly fine for academic economists, who can certainly limit their attention to whatever they like, I find it rather absurd in any broader intellectual context.  Thinking about the optimality of a system of producing and allocating goods without worrying about who is getting what, who needs what, who deserves what, who gets the most value from what, etc., is like thinking about war while setting aside the issue that some people may end up killing some other people.  Of course, academic economists are fond of pointing out if one has concerns about the distribution of resources then it is generally more efficient to simply address that issue directly rather than attempting to make up for any perceived shortcomings by messing about with product markets themselves.  I actually find these arguments pretty persuasive.  Allocating resources in some way and then trying to “fix” it later in the context of particular markets can be quite costly and cumbersome.  Unfortunately, in the real world it is not a simple matter to simply change how resources are distributed or even to discuss distributional issues in any sensible way, so that option is generally not available.  Again, this is a big issue I will no doubt address in future postings.  However, I would suggest the fact that we in the US are largely unable or unwilling to have any serious discussion about distributional issues is probably associated with some of the more distinctive features of our particular version of a market economy, notably the increasing concentration of resources in the hands of a relatively few people (and the social pathologies that go along with that) and the need to generate economic activity by fabricating new and increasingly trivial wants for a relatively wealthy few rather than addressing the arguably more pressing needs of the relatively poor (and the social pathologies that go along with that).  Of course, we’re certainly not the first country to go down this road, and I suppose students of history may have some idea about where this type of thing tends to end up if it goes on long enough, but that’s a story for another day.

And the second basic type of potential problem with real markets I mentioned earlier?  Simply that actual markets always differ more or less dramatically from the theoretical model of a perfectly competitive market ranging from situations in which unregulated markets don’t work very well even on paper (monopolies, oligopolies, public goods, externalities, etc.) to situations in which maybe they work well enough and maybe they don’t (imperfect information, non-rational behavior, etc.)  I don’t mean to suggest these are minor details.  As we have seen in the last few years, market failures in certain sectors such as in financial markets or real estate can have truly spectacular macroeconomic effects that can generate huge and long standing changes in our economic well being.

So, to make a long story short, I tend to have little patience for sweeping generalizations about real world market systems.  Yes, markets make a lot of sense in many cases, and they are always a relatively cheap way to go in terms of public expenditures.  However, unregulated markets do not actually always lead to optimal results.  In the end, one must be willing to get in there and think critically about what is happening in particular market systems and, if one does see some sort of problem worth fixing (and not all problems are), to think about the particular interventions best suited to the job.  When it comes to people’s economic welfare and livelihoods I think there is really no place for simplistic doctrines or ideological claptrap about The Free Market.