The Righteous Mind - The Self-Righteous Mind

Jonathan Haidt begins his book, The Righteous Mind, with the late Rodney King’s famous quote, “Why can’t we all get along?” Haidt then goes on to explain quite the opposite phenomenon; the uniquely human capacity for people to form large non-kin groups and work together in more or less harmony to achieve common goals.

According to Haidt the key that unlock this capacity for cooperation are humankind’s evolved ability to create moral systems which he defines as “interlocking sets of values, virtues, norms, practices, identities, institutions, and technologies that mesh well with evolved psychological mechanisms and thereby enable the community to suppress or regulate selfishness and make cooperation possible.” Humans have evolved a set of intuitive moral reflexes or appetites that help us to jointly protect our mutual and individual interests so we can get along in groups and collectively protect ourselves from other groups. There are three aspects to this theory.

First, moral judgments arise from innate instinctive reflexes; they are not derived from reason.  In fact reason is almost always used to create post hoc rationales for the moral decision we have already made.

Second, these innate moral intuitions or appetites seem to fall into six categories, care/harm, fairness/cheating, freedom/subjugation, community/anarchy, authority/insubordination, and sanctity/degradation.  Different groups tend to value these moral appetites differently. Haidt points out that, universally, liberals put far more weight on the appetites of care and fairness whereas conservatives give more balanced weight to all six appetites.

Third, moral appetites evolved not only to motivate individuals to protect self-interest, but also to motivate individuals to respond to threats and protect group interests. Haidt calls institutions that support these moral appetites moral capital.   They are particularly morally compelling because they give us the opportunity to become part of something bigger than ourselves. They almost exclusively fall into the category of community (Support the troops), authority (Respect the president), and sanctity (respect the flag). 

Haidt acknowledges that conflict can arise within groups (liberal vs. conservative Americans) or between groups (secular humanist west vs. Islamist middle east), but, for the most part, he attributes these conflicts to differences in emphasis on the various moral appetites.  He implies that if we understood these differences more completely we could all get along a lot better. He concludes the book with the following hopeful advise.

“We are deeply intuitive creatures whose gut feelings drive our strategic reasoning.  This makes it difficult – but not impossible – to connect with those who live in other (moral) matrices which are often built on different configurations of the available moral foundations.

So the next time you find yourself seated beside someone from another (moral) matrix, give it a try. Don’t just jump right in. Don’t bring up morality until you’ve found a few points of commonality or in some other way established a bit of trust.  And when you do bring up issues of morality, try to start with some praise, or with a sincere expression of interest.

We’re all stuck here for a while, so let’s try to work it out.”

However, if one looks a little more closely at conflicts both within and between groups these conflicts are far more intransigent and morality is precisely the problem.

Alexis de Tocqueville pointed out in Of honor in the United States and in democratic communities from volume II of Democracy in America that conflicting values can arise within groups when a set of rules is implemented as a means of suppressing one group to advance the interest of another. He doesn’t call this a moral code but instead uses the term honor which he defines as, “ . . . the aggregate of those rules by the aid of which . . . esteem, glory, or reverence is obtained.” 

In aristocratic, that is hierarchical societies a small group of people at the top of the hierarchy had to maintain power over those they ruled. They created this particular form of morality so that their class could maintain power over all others.

As de Tocqueville puts it, “A class which has succeeded in placing itself above all others, and which makes perpetual exertions to maintain this lofty position, must especially honor those virtues which are conspicuous for their dignity and splendor and which may be easily combined with pride and the love of power. “

De Tocqueville sees morality in more conventional liberal terms. The basic function of this system is to bring people together and is based on care and fairness. “It is the general and permanent interest of mankind that men should not kill each other . . .” He further notes that  “It often happens that these two standards differ; they sometimes conflict” as when;

“Some actions have been held to be at the same time virtuous and dishonorable; a refusal to fight a duel is an instance. “

“To debauch a woman of color scarcely injures the reputation of an American; to marry her dishonors him.”

Nonetheless, this honor code “at the periods of its greatest power sways the will more than the belief of men . . .” That is, it precisely fits Haidt’s definition of moral thought; it is a . . . deeply intuitive . . . gut feeling that drives strategic thinking.”

If what de Tocqueville calls honor then is a value system evoking the same emotions and the same neural pathways as morality, then what it really is is morality by another name but used for other purposes, namely as a means to separate people for the purpose exerting power over them.

DeToqueville believed that as society became more egalitarian this brand of morality would gradually disappear and this for the most part is true.

However, this same dynamic takes place when we consider conflicts between groups.  Furthermore, it is probably far older, stronger (hardwired), and more prevalent today than the moral conventions that separate class. Where this value system has been rampant throughout history is in religion.  It is in fact codified in western monotheistic religions where Jews, Christians, and Muslims have some variation of, “Love thy neighbor as thy self.” (Binding Morality) and “Though shalt have no other God but mine.” (Honor/Separating Morality)

As a result, you love your neighbor as long as they do or don’t believe in the pope, do or don’t believe God gave the land to you, or do or don’t ever print pictures of the prophet. In all those cases you kill your neighbor. 

While religion has been the conventional system for creating lethal group distinctions for most of human history, eliminating God doesn’t solve the problem and the lack of a God may only exacerbate the problem.  Nazi’s killed millions and communists killed 10’s of millions in the name of racial and ideological purity respectively.

Where a value system is invoked to separate rather than bring people together the moral stand is one that is based on either authority or purity and very occasionally community. The point of invoking this value system is to exert power over another person or group.  I can harm you, cheat you, take away your freedom, or exclude you from my group because you are immoral on grounds of either authority (who you do or don’t revere) or purity (you don’t adhere to rituals that defines my group).

However, eliminating moral appetites based on authority and purity would be both impossible (like eliminating taste and touch) and harmful. As Haidt points out in the third part of his book it is in the cultivation moral capital that man finds meaning in shared group practices.  It gives man the opportunity to become part of something bigger than himself and can motivate him to some of mankind’s highest endeavors. Gandhi, Mother Theresa, and Martin Luther King created meaning for themselves and the world, motivated by their adherence to their values of authority and religious ritual (purity).

On the other hand the quest for meaning through adherence to exclusionary authority and ritual can lead to the worst excesses of human depravity. We see it today when thousands young men and women, sensing the culture they live in bankrupt of moral capital, leave their comfortable lives in the west and travel to the middle east to commit the most heinous moral atrocities in the name of well - morality.

As Haidt comprehensively makes the case, morality is the answer to why we can get along at all.

Unfortunately, it is also the answer to the question, “Why can’t we all get along?”

Geoffrey Berg MD

References:

The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion,

Jonathan Haidt First Vintage Books 01/2013

 

Democracy in America Volume II section 3 Chapter XVIII Of honor in the United States and in democratic communities Alexis de Tocqueville,

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/DETOC/ch3_18.htm

A summary of Food for Thought up to now

My previous entries have fallen into the following four categories:

1.     Caveats

2.     Economies and Government

3.     Capitalism and democracy

4.     The modern world blessing or curse

Caveats

I started on a cautionary note about what we know and why we accept what we know.  Often what we profess to be true we believe to be true because “they” said it.  In addition and probably more importantly we believe certain things because of our emotional predisposition.

The take home is to be humble (as he dishes out platitudes) about what we think we know and why we are so willing to accept those “facts”. As an example of this, in a recent book discussion, I, being a hopeless romantic, came to a very optimistic view of the prospects of the protagonist at the end of the book. Another reader who is well known to be a hopeless, heartless cynic came to a very different conclusion.  My first reaction was to dismiss that person’s view because of course it was distorted. However, after further consideration of that point of view and realizing my own propensities, I changed my view to one that was much more guarded.  By taking a minute to consider the point from a different predisposition I got a fuller understanding of the reading.

Economies and government

Economies start when people barter and trade. As soon as that happens they have make/buy decisions. As economies mature people decide to buy much more than they decide to make.

Governments start as a means of protecting property.  Property is life liberty and physical possessions. When people form governments they trade freedom to (do as they please with their life liberty and physical possessions) for freedom from threats to their life liberty and physical possessions by others.

At first those “others” are people in other groups but as groups get bigger they need protection for their life liberty and physical possessions from people within the group. As a result laws, standards, and regulations are promulgated to protect property from others in the group.

The take home is that as labor divides and each person becomes more specialized, we overwhelmingly make buy decisions over make decisions.  As the system fosters this specialization we resort to a massive regulatory system to give us freedom from having to decide if the transactions we are making are fair – from the weight of a loaf of bread to the safety of the toaster we use. Subjecting ourselves to (and paying for) the laws, standards, and regulations of government we liberate ourselves to use our life liberty and physical possessions as we see fit within those constraints.

Capitalism and democracy

The economy is the game we all play and government makes the rules by which we play. At the current moment of history capitalism is the name of our game and democracy is the structure of the government that does the rule making. Most public policy debates revolve around how strictly should government call the game. Since its democracy, we all have a say in who gets to decide and enforce the rules. 

The take home here first is capitalism is not the problem.  Capitalism is descriptive of how people respond to property as soon as they start to barter and trade. Capitalism is never unbridled because it always operates within the constraints of government.

Problems arise when certain players either make the rules or can pay people to make the rules to favor them. Hereditary governments and communism are both inherently flawed in this respect because the rule makers are always in a position to make rules that favor themselves.  Democracy should theoretically be able to solve that problem because at least theoretically we all ought to have equal opportunity to make the rules or influence the selection of the people who will be making the rules for us.  Unfortunately, as it is practiced in the United States, the process is flawed because the more money you have the more you can pay to have the game called in your favor.

The modern world blessing or curse

In the last 250 years there has been an exponential spread and growth in the material wealth of mankind with most of this coming since the last half of the 20^th century.  This is clearly the result of capitalism providing markets for new technologies powered almost exclusively by fossil fuels.  This has created unprecedented wealth for unprecedented portions of the world’s population. In addition, because we no longer have to earn our bread by the sweat of another man’s brow or in most cases by anyone’s sweat, slavery and male gender domination are no longer normative behavior as they have been for most of human history.

For all the prosperity and refinements civilization has to offer, we feel something is oddly amiss.  In the time before history when we lived as hunter/gatherers we were more connected to our clan and to nature although we were much more likely to be at war with the clan or tribe that lived nearby.  We had a sense of agency that everything we did made a difference and the differences mattered because they were often the difference between life and death.  It has been suggested that since this is the way we had lived for most of mankind’s existence, perhaps the epidemic of depression, suicide, drug addiction, and child abuse we find ourselves in today is because we have not evolved as quickly as our cultural patterns have changed.

For most of human history man evolved while living on the brink.  Surviving on the brink gives man a sense of meaning even today.  According to Victor Frankl the search for meaning is man’s principle driving instinct.  And where did Dr. Frankl come to this revelation; living on the brink in Hitler’s concentration camps for more than four years.

“Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. It undergoes continual changes; it is barbarous, it is civilized, it is christianized, it is rich, it is scientific; but this change is not amelioration. For every thing that is given, something is taken. Society acquires new arts, and loses old instincts.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson Self-Reliance

The take home is that we have spent the last ten millennia moving away from the brink and we have in the last 2 centuries been wildly successful at it and we are not going back in large numbers, voluntarily, any time soon.  If for no other reason moving from the brink promotes survival with which we have also been wildly successful. That said meaning is important if not essential to life and finding it in the midst of our prosperity can be difficult and may explain some of the bizarre choices we see people in civilized society making.  

Paradise Lost?

So was there a golden age before history when man lived as a noble savage in relative equanimity with his neighbor?

Well maybe yes. In his book Tribe Sebastian Junger points out that, 250 years ago for those who were immersed in it, the life of the hunter/gatherer was surprisingly appealing. He notes an experiment went on when western European style society lived in close proximity to the culture of hunter/gatherers i.e. the American Indians. The peoples of both cultures, usually captured in war, ended up living for extended periods of time in the other culture.  Almost invariably whites who lived with the Indians would refuse to return or were forced to return against their will, whereas in contrast, the Indians would, at the first opportunity, go back to their tribe.  He quotes Franklin on both accounts.

Regarding Indians he says, “When an Indian child has been brought up among us . . . and habituated to our customs . . .yet if he goes to see his relations and makes one Indian ramble with them, there is no persuading him ever to return.” [1]

Regarding whites living with Indians Franklin says, “Tho’ ransomed by their friends, and treated with all imaginable tenderness to prevail with them to stay among the English, yet in short time they become disgusted with our manor of life . . .and take the first good opportunity of escaping again into the woods.”[2]

So if this life style is so appealing why aren’t we forsaking our comforts, our cars, our computers and racing back to a simpler golden age that is more compatible with our fundamental nature? Why isn’t the Unabomber Manifesto a siren call to all of us to dismantle civilization and return to our roots? Are we all missing a golden time before history when the social structure matched our inner nature and all was right with the world?  I would say the answer is almost undoubtedly no and it all has to do with the brink.

We have spent the last ten millennia moving as far as we can from the brink. We like drinkable water at our fingertips: we like our waste flushed safely away; we like a secure roof over our heads and food on our plates; we like the nearly virtual certainty that our children will reach adulthood.

As I said, Wright notes that none of the anthropologists who have chronicled the many advantages that seem to inherently suit the human psyche would buy a one-way ticket back to the hunter/gatherer cultures they studied. Nor, I dare say, would any of us.  The opportunity to join hunter/gatherers is out there or we can start our own, but again there is no rush to civilization’s exit. Furthermore, and perhaps more fundamentally . . .

“We were happiest then,” she said, “and we laughed more.”[3]

This is a quote from a survivor twenty years after the siege of Sarajevo from the chapter in Tribe ironically titled “War makes you an animal.”* To be clear this was a place and time where people would walk into no man’s land to be shot by snipers as a means of committing suicide. This was a place where people truly lived on the brink.

And this is the point that Junger makes in this chapter; that when disaster strikes whether natural as an earthquake or more commonly manmade as with war everyone is equal and all pull together to promote the common good.  He cites example after example where not only the common good is promoted, but also individual mental health improves under these most stressful of conditions. And these are the conditions under which our pre-historic ancestors lived - in close proximity to famine, pestilence, and probably most commonly war.

“If there are phrases that characterize the life of our early ancestors, “community of sufferers” and “brotherhood of pain” surely must come close.”[4] It is precisely this living on the edge that makes the life of the society of mankind before history so mentally and emotionally satisfying - for those that survived.  Everyone was of necessity part of something bigger than themselves. That said, “Community of sufferers” and “brotherhood of pain” which may indeed characterize that social structure is hardly descriptive for something we would consider to be a “Golden Age”.

Of the age we live in Junger notes, “The beauty and the tragedy of the modern world is that it eliminates many situations that require** people to demonstrate commitment to the collective good . . . What would you risk dying for – and for whom – is perhaps the most profound question a person can ask themselves. The vast majority of people in modern society are able to pass their entire lives without ever having to answer that question, which is both an enormous blessing and a significant loss.”

Very few of us feel we are living in a golden age, but then I would submit we never have. That said, perhaps we can learn from those earlier ages as suggested by Wright and Junger, or suffer the consequences as foretold by Ted Kaczynski.

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[1] Tribe Sebastion Junger Tribe p. 3

[2] Ibid p. 3

[3] Ibid p. 70

[4] Ibid p. 55

·      I thought this was an ironic title for this chapter since it seemed the whole point of the chapter was to show how war made people more human.

** Italics are mine.

. . . and its Discontents

In my last entry I made the case that after millennia of slow progress in human productivity, in the last 250 years there has been an exponential growth of that productivity. As a direct result of that growth in productivity mankind has finally made the commitment to universal human equality. Never in the course of human history has mankind been both more free from want as well as fear.

That’s my story of human history and I’m sticking to it; but what about man before history. After all mankind has been around for at least 200,000 years (and according to recent findings perhaps 350,000 years[1]) and history has been here for less than 10,000. Three authors make the point that life before history was a lot different. I will begin with a quote from one of them.

"[I] attribute the social and psychological problems of modern society to the fact that society requires people to live under conditions radically different from those under which the human race evolved ..." --The Unabomber

And so also begins Robert Wright’s essay, The Evolution of Despair that appeared in Time Magazine in August 1995. In that essay Wright a writer whose area of interest is evolutionary psychology makes the case that for most of human pre-history, humans lived as hunter/gatherers and he emphasizes the social structure was far more communal than society is today or has been for a long time.  Looking at the hunter/gatherer societies that still exist today he notes that people live “in close contact with roughly the same array of several dozen friends and relatives for decades.”[2] All this is healthy for everyone involved.  Depression, child abuse, and suicide rates are all vanishingly small or non-existent in these societies.

In 2016 Sebastian Junger in his book Tribe revisits this problem of how we live now and how mankind lived for most of its existence.  He notes the salutary effect of the communal nature of these societies.  An additional point of emphasis he makes is that these societies were much more egalitarian. People, men and women, shared responsibility and authority in almost equal measure. There was little disparity in wealth and property was very much communally shared. However, with the advent of first agriculture then industry the structure of society changed to one that is hierarchical and patriarchal where one’s rank in society was a measure of his how much property he owned.

How does all this compare to modern society? I think if we are honest with ourselves we come to the same conclusions for the most part that Wright does. He notes that modern society is rife with social isolation. At the time of his writing he states that the 25% of Americans were living alone compared with 8% in 1940 and we are often strangers to our neighbors. Our family relations spread out across the country and even the world so just from shear distance family bonds are stretched to the breaking point.

Wright goes on to note that technology plays a significant role in fostering this social isolation.  He makes the case that the automobile allowed for the development of suburbia where every man’s home is truly his solitary citadel. The town square, where we transacted our social, civic, and commercial interests, was replaced first by the shopping mall and now by Amazon and Facebook.

He quaintly notes the isolating effect of television and the VCR where he notes that the average American was spending 28 hours a week in front of the TV. How much more screen time do we have today with TIVO, computers and smart phones.

As an evolutionary psychologist Wright makes the case that we are not wired to live this way and it is taking a toll in the rates of child abuse, depression, suicide and the dysphoric zeitgeist we all perhaps feel at least a little.

“In America I saw the freest and most enlightened men placed in the happiest circumstances that the world affords, it seemed to me as if a cloud habitually hung upon their brow, and I thought them serious and almost sad, even in their pleasures.”[3]

One might think that democracy would have a mitigating effect on this dysphoria but de Tocqueville felt quite the opposite was true. In his chapter Why The Americans Are So Restless In The Midst Of Their Prosperity he notes even or especially at this relatively egalitarian stage of American history that there are three concurrent reasons for this restlessness.  

As each individual is responsible for their own destiny they have an insatiable desire to maximize that destiny. At the time de Tocqueville wrote this it meant acquiring property which since the dawn of history was the measure of a man.

Since everyone is allowed to compete we are all vying with virtually everyone (or to be honest, at the time, white males) so it is with great difficulty to break away from the pack.

If everyone is relatively equal, when one does compare oneself to one’s neighbor, one tends to notice those who are slightly ahead so one gets the impression they are always a little bit behind.

To all this I would add my own theory as to what fuels our discontent in the midst of so much abundance. Throughout my early entries I kept reapplying de Tocqueville’s term salutary servitude that he used for dogma.

We have the salutary servitude of the markets that allow us to get paid sometimes handsomely for the most highly specialized service and then have the ability to purchase virtually any good or service that is our pleasure. However, how frustrating is it when the car wont start, or the computer freezes, or the freezer doesn’t, and they are just too complicated for us to manage so we have to pay someone else to fix or replace them.

We have the salutary servitude of government that provides a regulatory framework to, as much as possible, ensure smooth transactions throughout the marketplace. However, how frustrating is it when every time you turn around you need a permit for this or a zoning easement for that. And don’t get me started when some bureaucrat in Washington (or even Providence) thinks they know how to practice medicine (or law or education or architecting) better than I (we) do.

Finally, we have the salutary servitude of representative democracy where we select public servants to represent our interests thoroughly, thoughtfully, and selflessly. Let’s just say human nature being what it is this could be a lot more perfect than it is. As a result we feel the servitude more than we feel the salutary.

Each of these is extremely salutary in that they promote our health, safety, material wellbeing, and as I pointed out in my last posting underwrite our moral principles. But it is still servitude.  We lose our sense of agency. We are in fact wholly dependent on others for much of our existence. Perhaps the “Don’t Tread on Me” flags that have sprouted up across this country are an unconscious rebellion against precisely this “benevolent” servitude.

In addition we lose our sense of urgency.  If the refrigerator goes down and the contents spoil we just go out and replace both the refrigerator and its contents. There is no do or starve. Mankind has worked hard to get away from that brink but something is lost for having done that.

As Wright points out, no one is buying a one-way ticket back to pre-history.  There are some legitimate reasons for that which I will get into in my next entry.  Nonetheless, I think it is worth pondering what is lost with what is gained and considering how individually and, perhaps more importantly, communally we might recapture at least some of what we have lost.

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[1] http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-40194150

[2] Robert Wright The Evolution of Despair Time Magazine August 1995.

[3] Democracy in America Volume II Section 2 Chapter XIII Why The Americans Are So Restless In The Midst Of Their Prosperity Alexis de Tocqueville

Civilization

I recently went to a talk on slavery in my hometown of Warren Rhode Island where the slave population like the rest of Rhode Island was 10% of the population before the Revolutionary War. Since the rate in Massachusetts was 2% and Connecticut was 3% Rhode Island was the hotbed for slavery in New England.  What to me is astounding is not that the rate was so high in Rhode Island but that it was so low in the rest of New England. The fact that it was so low elsewhere amazes me because for all of human history up to that point slavery in some form was normative behavior. If you consider colonialism as a means of offshoring the institution then slavery really didn’t become universally institutionally condemned until the last half of the last century.[1]

I don’t think this happened due solely or even principally as a result of a great moral awakening but was largely the product of new technologies, abundant cheap energy sources (i.e. fossil fuels) and capitalism. 

Paul Kennedy, in the introduction to his book, The Rise and Fall of Great Powers, makes the case that Europeans and their descendants became the world leaders for at least the last 250 years because they lived in a system where relatively small nation states were constantly competing culturally, militarily, and perhaps most importantly economically. As a result in this hyper-competitive environment, virtually every significant technological and engineering advance from the steam engine to the microchip originated in Europe or the United States. These engineering marvels allowed man to replace manpower with brainpower and fossil fuels. At this point mankind could finally afford to see that slavery (at least when it is right next door) is morally repugnant. *

As with slavery the liberation of the “weaker” sex has only come as a universally acceptable standard in the last 50 to 100 years.[2] Prior to that for most of human history, societies were heavily patriarchal and dominated by men. I would maintain that when the value of brainpower exceeded that of brawn both actually as well as symbolically women were allowed for the most part to take their rightful place in the world. Women are taking full advantage of this. Colleges and profession, that were almost or actually exclusively men only clubs, (My alma mater and profession) are now majority female.

To be sure, indentured servitude and slavery as well as gender bias still exist in the world but civilized mankind universally condemns them.   We are not perfect but, in the spirit of the founding fathers, we are more perfect.

And the driving force behind all this liberating creativity is capitalism.  It is capitalism that unleashes the creative spirit of inventors and artists and entrepreneurs to continually come up with services and products that increase human productivity and make the enslavement of our fellow man obsolete.

During the 20th century mankind ran an experiment. For most of the first half capitalism competed with communism (not socialism). Communism failed and in the process killed more people in absolute numbers and perhaps as a  % of mankind than any other institution** in human history. After the collapse of the communist economic system and the more or less the universal embrace of capitalism throughout the world more people have been raised out of poverty both as an absolute number and as a percentage of mankind than any time in human history. 

For most all of human history the problems of mankind were problems of “not enough,” not enough food, water, shelter.  Today for all those who have escaped poverty in the last three or four decades those are no longer problems. Another way of looking at this is that the maldistribution of wealth has improved more in the last 4 decades than any time in human history.

Yes our over abundant life style causes us problems. This also is unique in human history. We have too much trash in our landfills, we put too much CO2 into our atmosphere, and perhaps we have too many of us. If we have to have problems these are the kind of problems we want to have. They are solvable collectively (see Paris Climate Agreement) but also we have the freedom to make choices around them individually. We can choose how much trash we create, how much carbon we use, how many kids we have.

On the one hand I think we take for granted the blessings of the abundance that surround us. Furthermore, it relies on a vast complex interconnected set of systems, institutions, and relationships to function. It is not clear to me exactly how fragile the system is. Certainly when large air carriers are grounded world wide because their computer system goes down, this is a hint at how fragile the system might be. War, pestilence, or environmental upheaval could upset the system on a global scale and send us back to an earlier darker age.

On the other hand there is a darker side to the present age we live in as it is.  There is a feeling in all our abundance that something is not quite right with the world we are living in.  There are a lot of ideas of just exactly why we feel that way.  In my next blog I will touch on a few of them.

* de Tocqueville notes that in Athens their were 20,000 citizens in a population of more than 350,000; the rest were slaves. [3] I am not sure the treasures of Archimedes ***, Aristotle, or Aeschylus would have been there to pass down to us if they had day jobs. So while we have assigned, hopefully permanently, slavery in all its forms to the dustbin of history, I would like to acknowledge a profound sense of gratitude to the servile classes who for eons were the engine that propelled civilization forward. They gave the leisure class the time to enrich themselves, admittedly, first but then all of us to the point that we could forgo their exertions in favor of more humane means of production and a more abundant lifestyle for all of us.

**Genghis Khan may be responsible for a higher percentage of deaths but the data on this is hard to find.

*** Yes, Archimedes lived in Syracuse not Athens but the principle is the same and I couldn’t forgo the alliteration.

Addendum: Last Tuesday I attended a lecture at Brown titled What Money can Buy; Entrepreneurship, Ethics, and Human Flourishing by Peter Boettke, professor of Economics and Philosophy at George Mason University. Over the course of his lecture he made many of the same points I have above, of course in a much more learned and erudite manner. Two points he made I would like to reiterate here.

The first is graphically illustrated below.  Around 1950 there is a flex point where the number of people not living in poverty accelerates (probably coincident with recovery from World War II). Then around 1980 there is a steep and persistent plunge in the number of people living in absolute poverty (probably coincident with the end of communism). The result is that the number of people living in absolute poverty has gone from more than 90% of the world’s population to less than 10% with most of that change occurring in the last 50 years.

The other point that he made was that while life as Hobbes described it may be ugly brutish and short mankind’s propensity to barter and trade as Smith said gives mankind the opportunity to build lasting trusting relations with non-related peoples on the other side of the river, on the other side of the border, on the other side of the world. Boettke suggests that capitalism is not only the wellspring of unprecedented prosperity it has the salutary effect of fostering what peace we currently have.

Geoff Berg

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[1] Universal Declaration of Human Rights Article 4

[2] Universal Declaration of Human Rights Article 1

[3] Democracy in America Volume II Section 1 Chapter XV The Study Of Greek And Latin Literature Peculiarly Useful In Democratic Communities

Capitalism the game we play; Choosing the Refs

Disinterested : free of any interest especially of a pecuniary nature :  impartial

 

Capitalism is the game we play and government creates and enforces the rules. Money (capital) is the marker by which we keep score in the game. As much as possible we want the rule makers and enforcers to be impartial and free of any interest especially of a pecuniary nature. We want our politicians disinterested. 

Now if the people who are writing and enforcing the rules are playing the game that is communism where government owns the means of production (capital). That is one of the minor reasons why it ultimately failed but the principle reason why it wasn’t fair. 

On the other hand, if the people who are playing the game pay the people to make rules and call it the way they need it that’s bribery but for many people across the political spectrum that is also campaign finance in its current state.  While campaign contributions don’t go directly into the pockets of the politicians, if there livelihood is proportionally dependent on the largesse of their contributors then they are not free of any pecuniary interest and are no longer disinterested. Whether it is the lament of this influence of the 1% or the cries to “Drain the Swamp!” people across the political spectrum recognize a problem.

Free:    1) Made or done as a matter of choice and right: not compelled or restricted

One of the hurdles, and rightfully so, in crafting meaningful campaign finance reform is the first amendment. “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech . . .”

Free     2) Not costing or charging anything

Free speech is a sine qua non of democracy and this is most especially true of political free speech. That said when it comes to campaign financing its not the speech that is being paid for but the airtime or print space to make it accessible. So is “free speech” really free if it cost money? Do the Koch brothers or George Soros really have more free speech than I do just because they have more money? I think most readers from across the political spectrum feel that the answer to the last question should be no.

So is there a way to get money out of the political process at least in terms of campaign finance and still protect free speech? I have some ideas about this but at least for the time being I am not going to be prescriptive. What I would like to do instead is suggest a process for arriving at the solution to this problem. The process is not mine so I am going to give a little history of how this idea came about and then discuss the solution or more correctly the framework for a solution.

I am quite certain none of you know who Frank MacConnell was.  He owned a sports shop in Claremont New Hampshire. In June 1995 newly elected Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and President Clinton met in an open town hall type meeting taking questions from the audience for nearly an hour.  Mr. MacConnell asked the first question (It is at about the 11 minute mark of the youtube video cited.)[1] He asked the then two most powerful people in the country if they would support the idea of a commission based on the military base closing commission that in a non-partisan (disinterested) manner come up with comprehensive campaign finance reform that congress and the president could only vote up or down on without change or amendment.

Both politicians agreed on the spot to support such a plan. However, once they got back to Washington they backed away or did little to support the plan. Of course, it never did go anywhere and Frank MacConnell died the following year at the age of 61 a disappointed man.

The reason why it died and is not likely to come to fruition anytime soon is that the incumbents got their livelihoods playing the game as it is currently constructed. On this matter, probably more than any matter they vote on, they are not disinterested.  For that very reason the solution to campaign finance should be put in the hands of those who are disinterested. *

A few years ago Gordon Wood professor of history at Brown and a Pulitzer Prize winning author of a book on the founding fathers noted that the singular characteristic that distinguished all of them was that they went about the serious and profound work of creating our Republic as disinterested participants in the process.  

In democracy we have surrendered to the salutary servitude of representative government. As much as possible we need the people who make and enforce the rules to be disinterested. If they are not then we don’t have representative government because those who are chosen don’t represent us.

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[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1x_eyDddlYE

* The Base Realignment and Closure Act of 1990 is one of the most successful pieces of legislation I have seen in my lifetime. Instead of the pork barrel politics of “I’ll save your base if you save mine” a disinterested commission decides what is essential to the efficient maintenance of the armed forces. While this solution is most appropriate for campaign finance reform this format could be used for almost any type of legislative initiative. For instance, congress could appoint a commission and set a dollar amount and time frame for infrastructure repair. Instead of bridges to nowhere, the paying public would get the most critical jobs attended to without a lot or any pork.

Capitalism the game we play; Goverment the referee Part II

"The best government is that which governs least"*

John L. O'Sullivan editor of The Democratic Review

“The best government is that which governs best.”

                        Geoffrey Berg editor of the Food for Thought Blog

The first question that arises in this framework from the previous posts is how close do you want the game to be called. Do you want to “Just let them play.” or do want instant replay on every call?  That is do you want a minimal regulatory environment where it is up to the individual “player” to look out for his or her own interest (freedom to) or do you want a strict regulatory environment where each play is scrutinized to make sure that the game is scrupulously fair (freedom from).

Again, from the previous posts, how you feel about this, generally, starts with your emotional predisposition.  If you are a libertarian your response is “Let ‘em play!” If you are liberal you want to make sure no one is cheating so you want plenty of oversight of the action. Some level of oversight is needed so that the game doesn’t deteriorate into anarchy. On the other hand instant replay on every play would bring the action to a grinding halt.

“Given that you play by the rules, the object of the game is to win.”

                                                                                                            Joel Truman

However, since we are all players, we want to win the game. And since we choose democracy we all have a say in what rules we want, how and by whom we want them made and how we want them enforced. And, while we may be predisposed to one particular end of this continuum, when we are engaged in the game, which we are daily, the specific interaction may move us to a different place on that continuum.

Since we are in the game and we want to win, that can’t help but influence how we want the game to be called.  We may say we want them to call them the way they see them but what we really want is to call them the way we need them. The strike zone is always too small for our pitcher and too big for theirs. They are always charging on offense and blocking on defense. It was the temperature not the ball boy who deflated the footballs (or vice versa depending on who you are rooting for).

When we don’t have much skin in a particular part of the game we are somewhat agnostic if not mildly favorable toward a well-regulated industry.

For instance, most of us are quite comfortable with our highly regulated drug industry. Except for a few die-hard libertarians like Ron Paul, nobody wants to abolish the FDA and leave it to the good intentions of the pharmaceutical industry to give us safe effective medication. We don’t have the time knowledge or expertise to make rational judgments about the safety and effectiveness of medicine. 

On the other hand a pharmaceutical executive will want to loosen the regulatory framework that everyone else is comfortable with because it is impeding his ability to maximize his profits. His argument is that this over regulation is the moral equivalent of too much instant replay. He takes this position not because he is conservative but because it is in his immediate interest.

One can imagine that the “natural” herbalist would chafe at being subjected to the same regulatory environment that the pharmaceutical industry faces. In his game it is “Let us play!” On this particular issue the new age liberal is probably on the same point of the freedom from/freedom to continuum as the buttoned down Republican pharmaceutical executive.

"The best government is that which governs least" is really no government at all and otherwise known as anarchy (A position espoused, I would say somewhat disingenuously, by Thoreau). However, for the rest of us “The best government is that which governs best,” where best is in the eye of the beholder. We all have different views of what is best and what shapes our vision of best are our predispositions and our self-interest.

However, what we all have in common is that we want the game to be fair (Another concept that is in the eye of the beholder) because that is in our self-interest.

So when it comes to our relationship to government I am suggesting we take a look at how our predispositions and self-interest or lack thereof shape our views or blind us to the views of others.

Now we all have opinions on what the rules should be and how they should be enforced. However, we don’t make the rules or enforce them. It would be too cumbersome for us to have direct democracy in anything beyond the size of a small town, ** so we select people to represent us. (Perhaps another form of salutary servitude.)  Selecting the people who represent us is yet another game within the game.  We may select people who see things the way we do or even call them the way we need them.  However, since this is such a crucial part of the game this above all else is where the game should be fair.  It my next post I will take a look at that.

   

* This was paraphrased by Henry David Thoreau in the opening of “Civil Disobedience” as "That government is best which governs least."

** One of my favorite quotes is on this subject.  In Federalist Paper 55, a discussion on the size of the legislature, Hamilton or Madison say, “In all very numerous assemblies, of whatever character composed, passion never fails to wrest the sceptre from reason. Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob.”