Are values opposed to virtues?

In an article recently published in “The Australian”, Peter Kurti, a senior research fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies, noted:

“Unease is growing in Australia that something has changed for the worse in our live-and-let-live culture”.

The context of his comment is the “opprobrium and venom” that dissent from “prevailing new orthodoxies” about gender and sexual orientation seems to attract. The author suggests this has contributed to “the sense that the common bonds of civility that helped to build mutual trust in our society are under strain”.

I concur with those sentiments. They are consistent with views recently expressed on this blog: Does Israel Folau deserve support from advocates of free speech?

However, the headline of Kurti’s article “Israel Folau: Moral compass all askew as virtue is eclipsed by values” seems to me to be codswallop. Unfortunately, the headline accurately reflects Kurti’s explanation for the fracturing of our culture in terms of what he describes as “the eclipse of virtue by values”.

It is difficult to see how values can be opposed to virtues in terms of common usage of those terms in discussions of ethics. The Concise Oxford defines the terms as follows:

Virtue: “moral excellence, uprightness, goodness”; “the seven cardinal virtues”.

Value: “one’s principles or standards, one’s judgement of what is valuable or important in life”.

Kurti makes values appear to be opposed to virtues by claiming that values “are simply emotional statements about personal beliefs, feelings or attitudes”. He claims that values “cannot be normative because it is impossible to erect any shared meaning on the foundation of something that is personal and subjective”.

Those claims are clearly incorrect. For example, when Friedrich Hayek writes about the “values of a free civilization” he is not referring merely to emotional statements about personal beliefs, feelings or attitudes. What Hayek and others have written about shared values is clearly closely related to norms of behaviour.

Kurti doesn’t seem to recognise the existence of shared values. His constructivist perspective, evident in use of the term “erect” when discussing the possibility of shared meaning, has apparently made it impossible for him to comprehend that the common values of an open and free society could evolve spontaneously as individuals pursue what is important in their lives.

Perhaps what Kurti was intending to convey is that the common bonds of civility are fracturing because people are increasingly adopting personal beliefs, feelings and attitudes that are inconsistent with common bonds of civility. So, why does he seek to discredit values language?

I was hoping that question might be answered by reading Kurti’s recently published CIS paper, entitled Cracking Up? Culture and the Displacement of Virtue. No such luck! In that paper, Gertrude Himmelfarb and Iain Benson are quoted as asserting that values language rejects the idea of shared moral goods, but they are no less wrong about that than Peter Kurti.

I agree with much of what Kurti writes about the importance of the traditional virtues. However, when Kurti refers to virtues he is referring only to the traditional virtues. I think that poses a problem for him. He claims “prevailing new orthodoxies” exist, so he must surely acknowledge that the people who subscribe to those new orthodoxies see political correctness as a virtue.

In my view it is probably an overstatement to claim that the new orthodoxies are “prevailing”. But it is impossible to deny that there has been a shift in what many people perceive to be virtuous that is inextricably linked to a shift in their values.

There is a more fundamental problem is asserting that cracks appearing in our live-and-let-live culture can be mended by appealing to the traditional virtues. The traditional virtues have been acknowledged for thousands of years, but our live-and-let-live culture has only recently evolved.  Freedom of religion has had a firm legal basis in only a few countries for only a couple of centuries. The idea that members of minority religions should not be discriminated against has been a widely shared value and accepted norm of behaviour for less than a century in most western countries, including Australia. Our live-and-let-live culture, with harmonious collaboration between people of different religions, ethnic backgrounds and gender in work and community organisations, has only been in existence for a few decades, despite the lip service paid to civility in earlier times. Live-and-let-live has been inclusive of LGBT people for an even shorter period.

The shared values underlying our live-and-let-live culture include freedom of expression, tolerance and politeness.  The norms of behaviour associated with these shared values enable people to obtain mutual benefit from working, playing sport and socializing with people whose attitudes and behaviours they disagree with, and in some instances may even consider to be immoral.

The main threat to our live-and-let-live culture comes from those who insist that to enhance social harmony people should exercise much greater restraint in what they say and publish to avoid the possibility of giving offence to members of the religious, ethnic, gender and LGBT groups pandered to by identity politics. This gives rise to the potential for a return to tribal values as members of an increasing number of individual groups abandon shared values and threaten social disharmony in order to redress perceived disadvantages or to obtain advantages over others. 

The most obvious and straight forward way to avoid a return to tribal values is for supporters of our live-and-let-live culture to make their views heard whenever the shared values of that culture come under threat from those who take offence unreasonably. A return to tribal values can be avoided if enough people of goodwill continue to support the rights of others to express views they disagree with.  

How can we compare climate change and public debt risks?

It seems to me that, over the next 20 years or so, people in Western democracies are likely to suffer to a greater extent from the consequences of an explosion in public debt than from climate change. At the same time, I acknowledge that climate change could possibly pose a serious threat to civilization and perhaps human survival. The chart shown above is my attempt to illustrate how those risks might be compared.

I make no claim to expertise in assessment of climate change risks. My reading on the topic suggests that the theory that increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are contributing to climate change is widely accepted by scientists. However, people with relevant expertise obviously have different views about the rate at which climate change is likely to occur, the contribution of human activity, the political feasibility of various forms of remedial action, and the adaptability of humans and other living creatures.

In my view, too little attention has been given to “tail risk” associated with climate change – the low probability that climate change will result in a great deal of human misery, as shown in the chart above. As I have written here previously, if you are concerned about climate change, you (like me) are likely to be more concerned about the remote possibility that your great grandchildren might suffer from having to live with potentially catastrophic climate change outcomes than about the more probable outcome that climate change might cause their incomes to be somewhat lower than economic modelling suggests they would be otherwise. I have also previously expressed agreement with Nassim Taleb that there are some risks we should avoid if possible, even though there is a low probability that they will occur at any point in time. In order to flourish, future generations need to be able to survive.

The reasoning behind the rest of the chart requires more explanation. Why do I think there is a 95% probability that the citizens of western democracies will suffer as much or more over the next 20 years from an explosion in public debt than from climate change? Since I don’t have either the inclination or expertise to weigh up the technical evidence on climate change for myself, I tend to rely on the IPCC’s assessments. I suspect the authors of IPCC reports are still somewhat biased toward attempting to present a view favouring urgent international action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Nevertheless, after they have been modified in the light of expert public scrutiny, the IPCC reports are probably the most authoritative source of independent assessments of the relevant evidence.

The IPCC’s assessment of likely climate change outcomes in Chapter 3 of its recent special report, Global Warming of 1.5 ºC, implies that we can expect some fairly serious adverse consequences over the next few decades:

“The impacts of climate change are being felt in every inhabited continent and in the oceans. However, they are not spread uniformly across the globe, and different parts of the world experience impacts differently. An average warming of 1.5°C across the whole globe raises the risk of heatwaves and heavy rainfall events, amongst many other potential impacts. Limiting warming to 1.5°C rather than 2°C can help reduce these risks, but the impacts the world experiences will depend on the specific greenhouse gas emissions ‘pathway’ taken. The consequences of temporarily overshooting 1.5°C of warming and returning to this level later in the century, for example, could be larger than if temperature stabilizes below 1.5°C. The size and duration of an overshoot will also affect future impacts.”

However, a recent OECD report on Greece, which is fairly optimistic about the future of that economy, seems to me to illustrate that public debt crises are likely to result in much more human misery than climate change over the next few decades:

“Despite these positive developments, challenges abound. GDP per capita is still 25% below its pre-crisis level. The public debt is still high and a source of significant vulnerability. Poverty rose sharply during the crisis, especially among the young and families with children. Though poverty has stabilised, it remains near a record high. Skill mismatch is also high and investment remains depressed. This contributes to low productivity – which has fallen further behind other OECD countries – and low wages – resulting in high in-work poverty. Though improving, female labour participation is among the lowest across OECD countries. The recovery in investment is held back by a dearth of finance – due in part to high levels of non-performing loans and to capital controls – high cost of capital relative to wages, cumbersome regulations and low demand. These problems weigh on people’s well-being”. 

As I explained in a recent post, there are strong reasons to expect that the failure of governments in most OECD countries to restrain the growth of government spending is likely to cause debt servicing to become a more widespread problem in the decades ahead.  I think the most likely outcomes in most western democracies will probably be much worse that the outcomes of climate change, although not be as bad as the experience of Greece over the last decade. The chart above is drawn to acknowledge that there is some possibility that democratic governments will lift their performance, or world interest rates will remain low, so debt servicing may not be a problem.

The modest adverse outcomes depicted on the right side of the chart might well be offset by positive factors. There is a good chance that over the longer term the positive impacts of technological advances will be sufficient to offset the negative impacts of both public debt accumulation and climate change, but it would be excessively optimistic to expect rapid technological progress and productivity growth in western democracies over the next 20 years.

Some readers may object to my attempt to compare the risks associated with climate change and public debt explosion on the ground that these are very different risks when viewed at a national public policy perspective. There obviously isn’t much the government of any country can do to reduce climate change risk by acting alone.

However, I have drawn the chart with individual well-being in mind. From an individual’s perspective, the risks surrounding climate change and public debt are quite similar. Nothing that individuals do by themselves will make much difference to national or global outcomes. Voting might appear to provide an avenue for individuals to influence national outcomes but, as others have observed, voting in a national election is like ordering a meal from the menu in a restaurant and being served the same meal irrespective of what you order.  

There are options that individuals can consider to reduce their exposure to both climate change and public debt risks. For example, consideration of climate change risk might influence decisions about housing location and construction, and consideration of public debt risks might cause individuals to reduce the extent that their families rely on government for health services, education and retirement incomes.

It strikes me that climate change and the risks of public debt explosion also pose similar ethical issues for individuals. Does the fact that an individual’s actions, considered in isolation, has a negligible impact on global and national problems absolve him or her of an obligation to moderate his or her contributions to those problems? I think not, but I will leave consideration of the issue for another time.  

Is human flourishing primarily about psychological health, capability or opportunity?

This question is not just an intellectual puzzle. The way we answer it has important practical implications. The main point I want to make is that the appropriate answer if we are thinking about the flourishing of a close relative, friend or acquaintance is not appropriate if we are thinking about public policy.

Before attempting to answer the question, I need to outline the three different approaches.

The psychological health approach:  Martin Seligman is a leading exponent of this approach. In his book, ‘Flourish’, Seligman suggests that well-being theory ‘is essentially a theory of uncoerced choice, and its five elements comprise what free people will choose for their own sake’. The five elements he identifies are summarised as PERMA: positive emotion (pleasant experiences, happiness and life satisfaction); engagement (the flow state); relationships (positive relations with other people); meaning (belonging to and serving something bigger than yourself); and accomplishment (success, achievement, mastery).

In an earlier post I suggested that Seligman has missed another important element that people seek for its own sake, namely control over their own lives.

A more fundamental weakness of this approach is that it ignores all elements of well-being other than psychological well-being. For example, it seems reasonable to suppose that free people would usually choose to be wealthy rather than poor, even if their wealth made no contribution to their psychological well-being.

The capability approach: This approach was developed by Amartya Sen, an economist. Sen argues that a person’s capability reflects the alternative combination of functionings the person can attain and from which he or she can choose one collection. Functionings include objective criteria as being adequately nourished and being in good health as well as a range of other factors such as achieving self-respect and being socially integrated. In his contribution to ‘Capabilities and Happiness’ (2008, edited by Luigino Bruni et al) Sen noted that individuals may differ a good deal from each other in the weights they attach to different functionings. He seemed unwilling, however, to leave the weighting exercise to the individuals concerned. He suggested that ‘the weighting exercise has to be done in terms of explicit valuations, drawing on the prevailing values in a given society’.

The opportunity approach: The concept of opportunity proposed by Robert Sugden, also an economist, rests on “an understanding of persons as responsible rather than rational agents”. According to this view, individuals may sometimes act foolishly but nevertheless accept responsibility for the consequences of their actions. The term “opportunity as mutual advantage” expresses the idea that “one person’s opportunities cannot be specified independently of other people’s desires”. Sugden implies that an economic system that generates a great deal of individual opportunity is a system that rewards individuals for finding ways to benefit others. (‘Opportunity as mutual advantage’, Economics and Philosophy (26)). Sugden's opportunity criterion is also explained in The Community of Advantage, which I have reviewed on this blog.

If we were discussing the measurement of flourishing, I would add life satisfaction to this list of approaches. As discussed in another post, it has become common for life satisfaction ratings to be used to measure the extent that people are thriving or flourishing. Life satisfaction is measured by surveys asking individuals to give a simple numerical rating to their satisfaction with their lives. The countries with highest life satisfaction ratings tend to be those with highest ratings in terms of psychological flourishing and opportunity. Nevertheless, it would be difficult to argue that life satisfaction provides an ideal measure of any of the three aspects of human flourishing identified above.

So, what aspects of flourishing are most relevant if we are considering the extent to which relatives, friends and acquaintances are flourishing. In that context it seems reasonable to argue that psychological health, capability and opportunity are all relevant. For example, you might be able to think of individuals who would score highly in terms of PERMA even though they have limited capability and limited opportunities. You might be able to think of others who may have a fairly low PERMA score, even though they have had superior opportunities in life and seem to be functioning at a high level in many aspects of their work and family life. You might be able to think of people who have weak capabilities because they have wasted the opportunities available to them, and of others who have strong capabilities despite limited opportunities.

When we are assessing the extent that an individual is flourishing, it makes sense to consider the opportunities they have had, their current capabilities and their emotional well-being. It seems to me that an assessment would obviously be incomplete if it focused on only one of those aspects.

However, if we are looking at human flourishing from a public policy perspective, we need to have in mind what aspects of human flourishing public policy could, or should, be attempting to influence.

It doesn’t make sense for governments to accept responsibility for raising PERMA scores, because PERMA scores depend on factors that are largely outside the influence of governments. That is why the role of governments in relation to mental health has traditionally been focused on protecting community members and protecting the mentally ill from those who might seek to harm them. As options for treatment of mental illness have improved, the role of government in funding treatment has become more like its role in relation to other forms of illness. The main difference arises in relation to compulsory hospitalisation/treatment of people who are a danger to the community or themselves.

It seems to make more sense for governments to accept greater responsibility for raising the capability of citizens, but that is not without problems. Governments of wealthy countries have arguably played a role in enhancing the capability of many citizens through their involvement in funding of education and healthcare. However, it seems to me to be more accurate to describe those government interventions as attempting to promote more equal opportunities, rather than raising capabilities. Opportunities provided in education, for example, do not always end up raising the capability of students to earn an income after graduation.

The role played by governments in promoting more equal opportunities seems to me to be rather like a parent intervening in a card game to take good cards from some children to give to others, or to take out of the game. Despite the redistribution of opportunities, the scores throughout the game still depend largely on how well individuals play the cards in their hands. Further paternalistic intervention to nudge the weaker players might improve their scores, but is also likely to weaken their incentive to enhance their capabilities.

In my view, from a public policy perspective, human flourishing should be primarily about enabling opportunities to grow, rather than about redistributing the available opportunities. It makes sense for governments to accept responsibility for facilitating growth in opportunity because government policies impinge greatly – often negatively – on growth of opportunity. Although the growth of opportunity is often uneven, we have seen with the history of economic growth since the industrial enlightenment, that as some people take advantage of new opportunities – for example as a result of technological innovations - additional opportunities are created for others. The growth of opportunity has also provided the wherewithal for individual and collective efforts to improve economic security for those who are not capable of providing for themselves.

Growth of opportunity is not identical to economic growth as conventionally measured. Growing opportunities for people to live the kinds of lives that they aspire to have obviously encompasses considerations of environmental quality and all the other important things that are excluded form GDP measures. As noted in a recent post, the objective of growing opportunity amounts to the same thing as the Wealth Plus objective advocated by Tyler Cowan in his recent book, Stubborn Attachments.

Summing up, considerations of psychological health and capability are highly relevant to assessment of the extent that individuals are flourishing, but the primary focus of public policy should be facilitating growth in the opportunities for people to live the kinds of lives they aspire to have.   

Why don't all sides of politics agree to pursue Wealth Plus?

It would be great if the major political parties in all countries of the world were to pursue Wealth Plus as a national objective. However, I don’t think that is likely to happen soon, even in the wealthy countries that have implicitly pursued similar objectives in the past.

Wealth Plus is the objective advocated by Tyler Cowan, in his recently published book, Stubborn Attachments: A vision for a society of free, prosperous, and responsible individuals. Tyler defines Wealth Plus as:

‘The total amount of value produced over a certain time period. This includes the traditional measures of economic value found in GDP statistics, but also includes measures of leisure time, household production, and environmental amenities, as summed up in a relevant measure of wealth."

Tyler also suggests that we should aim to “maximize the rate of sustainable economic growth, defined in terms of a concept such as Wealth Plus”. He suggests that we should think more broadly about economic growth as an ongoing self-sustaining process that produces goods that contribute to human welfare, rather than in terms of growth in GDP as conventionally measured.

I think the objective that Tyler is writing about could better be described in terms of pursuing growth in opportunities for human flourishing – growing opportunities for people to live the lives that they aspire to have. I prefer that terminology partly because it fits neatly with the view I expressed in Free to Flourish that good societies are characterised by widespread opportunities for human flourishing. In my view, progress is movement toward better societies, with growing opportunities for human flourishing.

An emphasis on human flourishing raises a question, touched on in an appendix, of why human flourishing should be prioritized above the flourishing of non-human lives. One good reason is that flourishing humans show greater consideration for non-human lives than do humans who are struggling to survive. Discussion about what constitutes ethical behaviour toward non-human lives is a feature of modern life in prosperous countries. More fundamentally, if ethical behaviour is intrinsic to human flourishing – as Aristotle argued persuasively long before modern psychologists took up the idea - then human flourishing must encompass ethical behaviour toward all other living creatures.

Tyler makes a strong case that we should care about the well-being of people in the distant future just about as much as we care about the well-being of the current generation. His argument is based partly around the implications of discounting the value of future human lives. Under any positive discount rate, one life today could appear to be worth as much as the entire subsequent survival of humanity if we use a long enough time horizon for the calculation.

The argument for using a low discount rate seems to me to have considerable force when we are considering the benefits of public investments to protect future generations from potential catastrophes. As previously discussed on this blog, that argument is pertinent in considering what discount rates should be used for public investments to avert or mitigate climate change risks.

I am not persuaded by Tyler’s argument that the well-being of future generations isn’t adequately considered today in the choices “we” are making about “how rapidly to boost future wealth”. The “we” Tyler is referring to is the collective “we” that makes public policy choices. As I have previously suggested, the argument that positive externalities cause free markets to produce too little economic growth does not appear to have any more merit than the argument that negative externalities cause free markets to produce too much economic growth. Tyler hasn’t persuaded me that government intervention can improve on the growth outcomes of the savings and investment decisions made by individuals and families in a free market.  

In any case, the choices that governments make about “how rapidly to boost future growth” seem to be largely implicit rather than explicit. Boosting economic growth may be a motive for public investment in research and some forms of education, but I can’t think of many other examples. Perhaps what Tyler has in mind are the choices that governments make that unintentionally reduce the rate of economic growth. For example, he notes that when government spending is cut, investment spending is often the first area to go while entitlements for the elderly remain intact.

Tyler is on firm ground in arguing that the strengthening of good institutions today can be expected to provide benefits for centuries into the future. There is strong historical support for the view that growth promoting institutions and a history of prosperity tend to have enduring effects.

Tyler suggests that three key questions should be elevated in their political and philosophical importance, namely:

1.       What can we do to boost the rate of economic growth?

2.       What can we do to make our civilization more stable?

3.       How should we deal with environmental problems?

He goes on to observe:

“The first of these is commonly considered a right-wing or libertarian concern, the second a conservative preoccupation, and the third, especially in the United States, is most commonly associated with left-wing perspectives. Yet these questions should be central, rather than peripheral, to every political body. We can see right away how the political spectrum must be reshaped to adequately address these concerns. Politics should be about finding the best means to achieve these ends, rather than disputing the importance of these ends."

I agree that is what politics should about, but I am not optimistic that political leaders can pursue those ends diligently, even if they can be persuaded to embrace them. Liberal democracy has been weakened in recent decades by widespread failure to adhere to the norms of self-reliance and reciprocity that underpin it. As predicted by James Buchanan (see this post for explanation) failure of the liberal democracy is becoming increasingly likely as a higher proportion of the population becomes dependent on government, and voters increasingly seek to use the political process to obtain benefits at the expense of others.  

It is difficult to escape the conclusion that we are heading toward a tragedy of democracy. When interest groups view the coercive power of the state as a common pool resource to be used for the benefits of their members, the adverse impact of tax and regulation on incentives for productive activity produce outcomes that a detrimental to just about everyone. The process seems to be intensifying with the fragmentation of broad interest groups supporting the centre left and centre right of politics.

As Henry Ergas has noted recently, with particular reference to Australia, it has become “increasingly difficult for “catch-all” parties — as both our main parties have been — to position themselves in such a way as to aggregate a winning coalition. The concept of the ‘average’ or ‘median’ voter, which used to help orient the parties’ choices, has lost its substance, as has the notion of ‘the centre’. (“The Australian”, 25 Oct. 2018).

Similar problems are evident in other mature democracies. The process of fragmentation of broad interest groups has accelerated in many countries over the last decade or so as innovations in the social media have greatly increased the power of the rabid sports fans of politics - aptly referred to by Jason Brennan as Hooligans. Hooligans tend to seek out information that confirms their pre-existing political opinions and ignore or reject information that contradicts those opinions. They tend to communicate in echo chambers that reinforce their outrage when the leadership of the major parties is unresponsive to their concerns.

In some countries we are seeing ill-informed Hooligans taking over major parties and the reins of government. In other countries splinter parties comprised of Hooligans are attracting supporters away from major parties and making it more difficult for them to pursue coherent policy agendas. No matter which way it is happening, the growing political influence of the Hooligans makes it increasingly difficult for political leaders to pursue Wealth Plus, or any goals relating to the future well-being of the broader communities who elect them.

As more people come to recognize that liberal democracy is confronted by deep problems, perhaps some of them will attempt to make concerted efforts to reform political institutions so that they produce better outcomes. However, it is not obvious what reforms would stop the rot or how reforms could be achieved. A major economic crisis might help to focus the minds of responsible political leaders, but it could just as easily further strengthen the hands of the Hooligans.

I now think the best hope for future generations lies in the potential for new technology to enable people to circumvent the obstacles created by the Hooligans of national politics. As Max Borders has suggested (see discussion on this blog here and here) technological innovations provide us with the potential to “reweave the latticework of human interaction to create a great reconciliation between private interest and community good". The social singularity has potential to enable people to enjoy growing opportunities to live the lives that they aspire to have.

Why read a book providing advice to radicals?

I doubt whether many people would consider me to be a radical, even though I look forward to the withering away of the state as the social singularity subverts government activities. My views about politics have been most strongly influenced by people who were once considered to be radicals, including John Locke and Adam Smith, but these days people who hold such views are more likely to be described as conservatives. Following Friedrich Hayek, I reject the conservative label because I am strongly opposed to the use of the powers of government to resist spontaneous social change.

I have been reading Derek Wall’s book: Elinor Ostrom’s Rules for Radicals: Cooperative alternatives beyond markets and states. My main reason for reading the book was my previous advocacy, on this blog, of Elinor Ostrom’s approach to discussion of economic and social issues as a means of promoting dialogue across ideological divides. Elinor Ostrom argued that instead of presuming that individuals sharing common pool resources will inevitably experience the tragedy of the commons, we should leave ideology aside and seek to learn from experience why some efforts to solve commons problems have succeeded while others have failed. I suggested that if we apply Elinor Ostrom’s research methodology to national politics we should also seek to learn from experience why some countries have been more successful than others in coping with the tendency of interest group activity to have wealth-destroying impacts that are analogous to over-fishing.

Derek Wall describes himself as a “left-wing member of a Green Party”. When I started reading the book I didn’t expect to be able to endorse it as suitable reading for anyone other than people who self-identify as having radical views, or have some desire to be able to have a dialogue with radicals. The fact that I endorse it as worthwhile reading for a wider audience illustrates the potential for Elinor Ostrom’s views to have wide appeal across the ideological spectrum. The nonpolemical tone of the book is a credit to the author. The deep impression that Elinor Ostrom’s views have had on Derek Wall will be obvious to everyone who reads the book.

The rules for radicals that Derek Wall has derived from Elinor Ostrom’s writings are listed below, with some brief explanation summarised from the book:

1. Think about institutions. Economic activity is shaped by institutional rules. Formal rules are less important than the “dos and don’t that one learns on the ground that may not exist in any written document”.

2. Pose social change as problem solving. Those who look at politics and economics in an abstract way often fail to deal effectively with particular issues.

3. Embrace diversity. Polycentricism promotes good decision-making. The idea of a god-like leader or committee with perfect information is a myth.

4. Be specific. Move from slogans to analysis. Keep asking what can we specifically do in a specific context.

5. Listen to the people. People who participate in commons may be more likely to have good ideas about solving problems than outside experts.

6. Self-government is possible. The Ostrom approach of promoting self-government at a local level provides an attractive alternative to both top-down bureaucratic management and exercise of power by populist politicians.

7. Everything changes. Evolution happens. Technological change is creating new opportunities for collective economic activity e.g. Wikipedia.

8. Map power. If you can map flows of power, you are in a better position to change the flows.

9. Collective ownership can work. It is not always utopian and unrealistic.

10. Human beings are part of nature too.  Ecological problems are profoundly political. The politics of humanity has an influence on the rest of nature.

11. All institutions are constructed, so can be constructed differently. Communities need to keep adapting and reinventing institutions. Institutional development should occur constantly and engage all citizens.  

12. No panaceas. Imperfect humans cannot design utopia. If we attempt to construct institutional blueprints failure is likely.

13. Complexity does not mean chaos. Polycentricism and overlapping jurisdictions can be more efficient than hierarchical structures with linear chains of command.

It seems to me that most of those rules are as relevant to conservatives as to radicals. In all modern democracies conservatives and radicals seem to share the misconception that all economic and social problems can be solved if they can win and hold on to power at a national level.

Should we look forward to the Social Singularity?

The social singularity should not be confused with the technological singularity, which Wikipedia defines as the hypothesis that invention of artificial superintelligence will abruptly trigger runaway technological growth, resulting in unfathomable change to human civilization.

The Social Singularity, as described by Max Borders in his recently published book of that name, relates to the way we (humans) organise ourselves in relation to each other. Max’s hypothesis is that at some point social organisation will be completely transformed as a result of mass adoption of secure networking technologies. When that happens some existing mediating structures will become obsolete, new forms of coordination will emerge and we will collaborate as never before.

What does that mean in terms that you and I can understand? The best place to begin is with the concept of subversive innovation. You might think it is tedious to begin an explanation by introducing another concept, but I promise to provide some concrete examples before long.

These days just about everyone knows what an innovation is. Most readers will be familiar with disruptive innovations that are making many goods more accessible and affordable. Subversive innovations “are those that have the potential to replace long-accepted mediating structures of society”. The mediating structures that Max is writing about include: hierarchical firms; group-think practices among the scientific establishment that have led to widespread acceptance of numerous findings that cannot be replicated; centralised education which views students as having “heads like buckets to be filled with information curated by central elites”; long-standing practices of financial intermediaries; mainstream media that once generated social coherence; and national governments.

Readers will already be familiar with some of the subversive innovations that are occurring. Some firms are replacing hierarchical command and control structures with decentralised systems in which self-directed individuals create order by establishing networks to achieve common purposes. The Internet has enabled informal networks of people, often including amateurs, who question scientific dogma e.g. the paleo-diet movement. Disruptive innovation has begun in primary, secondary and tertiary education. Long-established practices of financial institutions are being challenged by block chain technologies, and cryptocurrencies are enabling people to transact without using national currencies or financial intermediaries. The Internet has disrupted the role of mainstream media in generating social coherence - making it possible for populists to challenge political orthodoxy, but also reducing the potential for views to coalesce around a deeply flawed narrative.

The potential for subversive innovations to displace centralised government is in my view the most interesting idea in the book. We can already see this happening to some extent as innovating firms search out the weak joints in government regulation, particularly the regulatory barriers to competition that have enabled incumbents in various industries to prosper at the expense of the rest of the community. Think of how Uber’s ridesharing innovations circumvented regulations protecting incumbents in the taxi industry.

Max suggests that the potential for subversive innovations to displace centralised government will be enhanced by the advent of smart contracts in which a host of humans can act together to achieve a common goal without middlemen. The coordinating mechanism of smart contracts involves distributed ledgers, programmable incentives and blockchain secured tokens. Tokens can align the interests of producers, consumers and investors in ways that may have potential to enable many types of public goods to be produced privately by profit-seeking entrepreneurs. It doesn’t seem possible at this stage to provide a concrete example of how this might work. Perhaps it can be thought of as crowdsourcing on steroids.

Where might this take us? Max suggests that the potential for people to forge real social contracts - contracts they choose to enter voluntarily rather than the hypothetical social contracts of political theory - “could become the killer app of politics”:

"Communities of tomorrow will form entire systems of mutual aid through digital compacts that have nothing to do with borders or accidents of birth. … Humanity will upload important commitments into social contracts. Cosmopolitan communities of practice will form in the electronic ether. What remains on the ground—goods, services, and the relationships of flesh-and-blood neighbors—will be a far more localized phenomenon. The days of outsourcing our civic responsibilities to distant capitals are numbered."

What Max has in mind is polyarchy – competitive provision of goods that have been provided collectively. The basic idea is that if there is nothing intrinsically territorial about a system that provides goods like health insurance or education, you should be allowed to exit one system and join another without moving to a different system’s territory. You could take resources you were once required to pay in taxation and use them to pay for membership of another community or multiple other communities.

So, what reason do we have to think that governments might one day be willing to recognize the right of exit required to make polyarchy a reality?

Max notes that new constituencies are forming around the benefits of the sharing economy:

"Special interests that once squeaked to get the oil are confronted by battalions bearing smartphones. Citizens, fed up with leaving their prayers in the voting booth, are voting more with their dollars and their devices. Free association is now ensured by design, not by statute."

The Social Singularity mixes the author’s views on how things ought to evolve and how he expects them to evolve. Max acknowledges that he does this. The book offers readers an appealing vision of how the future could evolve and invites them to help make that vision a reality.

The book contains much that I haven’t written about in this short review. I should mention the link between the social singularity and spiral dynamics. Now I have mentioned it, I want to write more about it. Perhaps later!

I should also note before concluding that the title of the book, as presented on the title page, is The Social Singularity: A Decentralist Manifesto. Decentralization is a theme of the book. Max begins his chapter on the future of governance by quoting Vincent Ostrom:

“The fashioning of a truly free world depends on building fundamental infrastructures that enable different peoples to become self-governing”.

 In a post I wrote a few months ago I mused about how Ostrom’s vision of decentralisation of politics could eventually become a reality. If I ever write on that topic again there will be a reference to Max Borders and the concept of subversive innovations will feature prominently.

The Social Singularity deserves to be read widely and thought about deeply.

Postscript

1. You might also be interested in a follow-up post on how human values may change as we approach the social singularity.

2. Simon Saval has drawn my attention to his excellent hand-illustrated guides for Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, and Ethereum which have been designed to help beginners understand the technology. If you are interested, please follow the link.

What should be done about echo chambers in the social media?

Why bother reading a book by Cass Sunstein which suggests that echo chambers in the social media are becoming a problem for democracy and that something should be done about them? That was a question I had to ask myself before deciding to read Sunstein’s recently published book, Republic: Divided Democracy in the Age of Social Media.

The people who are likely to be most enthusiastic about reading this book will be concerned about echo chambers already, and be fans of Sunstein. I was already concerned about echo chambers before reading the book, but reading other books by Sunstein did not induce me to join his fan club. From his interview about this book with Russ Roberts on Econ Talk, I thought some of the views presented would be challenging. 

I was in no hurry to read the book.

That illustrates a problem with echo chambers. Many of us have a tendency to avoid being challenged even when there is potential to learn something useful from people who have opposing viewpoints. I only read the book because I have recently been thinking and writing about the potential benefits of listening to opposing viewpoints.

The book was worth reading to help me clarify my own views. In summary, Sunstein suggests: 

“to the extent that people are using social media to create echo chambers, and wall themselves off from topics and opinions that they would prefer to avoid, they are creating serious dangers. And if we believe that a system of free expression calls for unrestricted choices by individual consumers, we will not even understand the dangers as such”.

The serious dangers that Sunstein is referring to include group polarisation, the spreading of falsehoods within echo chambers, a high degree of social fragmentation and greater difficulty of mutual understanding.

The author doesn’t claim that this is currently the general pattern, or that group polarisation and cybercascades are always bad. He recognizes that it is sometimes good for a perception or point of view to spread rapidly among a group of like-minded people. His claim is that group polarisation can, nevertheless, be a significant risk even if only a small number of people choose to listen and speak solely with those who are like-minded. Enclave deliberation can cause members of groups to move to positions that lack merit e.g. terrorist agendas. “In the extreme case, enclave deliberation may even put social stability at risk”.

Turning to the second part of the quoted passage, readers may wonder how Sunstein can argue that a system of free expression can be consistent with regulation of consumer choices.  His argument seems to rest on two propositions:

·         First, free speech is not an absolute – despite the free speech guarantee in the U.S. constitution, government is permitted to restrict speech in various ways e.g. attempted bribery, criminal conspiracy, child pornography.

·         Second, the free speech principle should be read in light of the commitment to democratic deliberation rather than consumer sovereignty. From the perspective of supporting democratic deliberation, regulation of television, radio and the Internet may be permissible to promote democratic goals.

I’m uneasy about the second proposition. The U.S. Supreme Court would presumably disallow legislation which purported to support democratic deliberation in a manner that conflicted seriously with fundamental freedoms. In parliamentary systems that have no constitutional guarantees of liberty, however, legislative action to support democratic deliberation could be far-reaching and ideological. For example,  it could mandate coverage in school curriculums of the foundations of democracy in the history of western civilization, or alternatively, its foundation in the history of protest movements and revolutions.

The purpose for which Sunstein seeks government action to support democratic deliberation is to ensure a measure of social integration by promoting exposure of people to issues and views that might otherwise escape their attention. He writes:

“A society with general-interest intermediaries, like a society with a robust set of public forums, promotes a shared set of experiences at the same time that it exposes countless people to information and opinions that they would not have sought out in advance. These features of a well-functioning system of free expression might well be compromised when individuals personalize their own communications packages—and certainly if they personalize in a way that narrows their horizons”.

I support those sentiments  but I am wary of government intervention in support of them.  Seemingly benign government action in support of public forums can be counterproductive. I have in mind particularly the Q&A program of Australia’s public broadcaster. This is a taxpayer funded public forum which exposes people to opinions they would not seek to be exposed to. On issues that have become politicized, the people watching the show might be entertained by the antics of those presenting opposing views but are unlikely to have gained a better understanding of the issues.  

There are already many public forums on the Internet. If people choose to join forums that don’t welcome dissent from prevailing views that is akin to people avoiding public places where public demonstrations are held. That choice should be respected. 

If a growing proportion of the population chooses to spend an increasing proportion of their time echo chambers rather than open forums, that is a cultural problem with potential implications for democratic deliberation.  it should be dealt with as a cultural problem rather than a public policy problem.

Those of us who are concerned that echo chambers are becoming more prevalent should remember that sectarian echo chambers have warped democratic deliberation in the past. How were those religion-based echo chambers dismantled? I can’t claim to know much about the history, but I doubt that government intervention played a significant role. It was a cultural shift. It was presumably led by influential people within some factional forums who took a stand in favour of allowing dissenting voices to be heard. Influential people outside the echo chambers must also been active in encouraging individuals to think for themselves rather than to parrot the views of church leaders and sectarian politicians. In many organisations, tolerance of dissent came to be viewed as the norm and thinking for one’s self came to be viewed as a virtue.

Could that happen again?

What is to be gained by listening to opposing viewpoints?

It is comforting to listen to people espouse views like our own. Perhaps it makes us feel that our views are being validated.

Listening to an opposing viewpoint can feel challenging. There are several reasons for that. There may be times when we are not in the mood for the intellectual stimulation involved in considering the merits and demerits of an opposing viewpoint.

A more deep-seated reason for feeling challenged arises when we identify strongly with views that are being attacked. We may even feel offended. That has traditionally been seen to be likely when views on politics, religion and sex are being criticized. Ethnicity and culture should be added to that list. People also tend to be highly offended if anyone casts aspersions on the sporting teams they support.

However, taking offence is optional. Many Collingwood supporters, and many people of Irish and Scottish descent even seem to be able to see the humour in some of the jokes made at their expense.

From my childhood memories, in the farming community in which our family lived in the 1950s, there seemed to be greater willingness to listen to opposing political viewpoints than exists anywhere today. There seemed to be widespread acceptance that you need to listen to opposing political viewpoints if you want to argue against them effectively. People steered clear of discussion of religious differences and if anyone had views about sex and marriage that were at variance with conventional morality they didn’t discuss them openly.

The civility of the participants is obviously an important determinant of the amount of heat generated when contentious political issues are discussed. From my own experience, and limited discussions with others, I have the impression that in the 1950s people were generally more intent than they are now on maintaining civility when participating in political discussions. It seemed common for discussions to end in a meeting of minds on some points and respectful disagreement on others. Occasionally, when one of the main participants was intent on giving offence, discussions would end in an exchange of insults, or worse.

Have people become more open to listening to opposing views on other contentious issues since the 1950s?  A few years ago, I would have argued that the shibboleths had diminished as the major religions had become more tolerant of each other and a revolution in attitudes had caused many people to moderate their views of sexual morality.

It now seems that the old shibboleths have been replaced as new issues have become politicised. When issues become politicised it now seems to be much more common for people to parrot the views of the leaders of their political tribe and to refuse to consider opposing viewpoints. The art of listening seems to be disappearing from the public realm.

Steven Pinker has an interesting discussion of the politicization of issues in his recent book, Enlightenment Now: The case for reason, science, humanism and progress. He refers to research by the Dan Kahan, a legal scholar, who argues that bitter public disputes over science are now “the exception rather than the rule”. The exception arises when certain beliefs become symbols of cultural allegiance. To help make this point Kahan refers to recent U.S. history regarding vaccines for Hepatitis B and the HPV virus (a major cause of cervical cancer). Both vaccines prevent sexually transmitted diseases. Hep B vaccination has apparently been accepted without much opposition, but HPV vaccination has become a political firestorm because of fears that it would encourage teenage promiscuity. Kahan suggests that the difference stems from the way the two vaccines were introduced.  Hep B vaccination was treated as a routine public health matter, but the manufacturers of the HPV vaccine lobbied state legislatures to make vaccination of adolescent girls mandatory. Kahan’s view is supported by Australian experience of a voluntary HPV vaccination program being introduced successfully without the issue becoming politicised.

Issues often become politicized when they are taken up by political leaders. For example, it seems likely that by politicising the global warming debate, Al Gore’s documentary An Inconvenient Truth made it more difficult for conservatives to acknowledge the merits of any proposed policy action on climate change.

The media also plays a role in politicising issues by converting disagreement on public policy into a spectator sport.  In my view Australia’s public broadcaster, the ABC, is a major offender. The ABC’s charter requires it to inform and entertain, but unfortunately does not require it to encourage the reasoned debate and respectful disagreement necessary for liberal democracy to function effectively. In particular, the Q&A program seems to me to be designed to politicize policy debate. It entertains viewers by providing a forum for activist and conservative tribes to clash on totemic issues. Although some panellists and audience participants do their best to engage in reasoned debate, it would be difficult for any viewers to obtain a better understanding of alternative viewpoints from this program.

How can we have a useful exchange of views on issues that have become politicised? In a recent article on this blog I suggested that people who approach issues from different ideological perspectives would be able to have more useful policy discussions if they could turn their attention to what they can learn from the actual experiences of people in different institutional and policy settings. That is rarely straight forward, of course, because interpretation of experience is not immune to ideological bias. But it is still good advice!

It can also be useful to ask people to explain views you disagree with, rather than asserting that they are talking nonsense. Steven Pinker notes that when people are asked to explain an opinion they often realize that they don’t know what they are talking about and become more open to counter-arguments. That is more likely to occur when they are aware that someone is listening intently to the answer they are giving.

This view is consistent with Leah Goldrick’s conclusion in a recent article about the know-it-all syndrome. On her blog, Common Sense Ethics, Leah writes:

“Thinking is fundamentally driven by questions, not answers. This is why doubt, not certainty, is so important. Doubt is the starting place that leads us to question the assumptions that have lead us to a particular conclusion, and doubt is what drives us to learn more if we will humble ourselves enough to consider that we may be wrong. Constant learning, from a place of humble confidence, rather than a place of arrogance, is the antidote to know-it-all syndrome”.

You are more likely to have useful exchanges of view if you “assume that the person you are listening to might know something you don’t”. That is one of the rules that Jordan Peterson lists in his recent book, 12 Rules for Life (recently reviewed on this blog). Peterson suggests that we remain threatened by disease, self-deception, unhappiness and many other causes of suffering because we are too ignorant to protect ourselves. There is always potential for us to improve our own lives if we respect the personal experience of our conversational partners.

Some of my readers may be wondering whether there is any organisation they could joint to help cultivate a listening culture and improved communication in the community in which they live. A few weeks ago, the realisation dawned on me that for the past 16 years I have been a member of an organisation whose founder believed that “in bringing improvement in the way of better thinking, better listening, better speaking to individuals we are contributing to the improvement of the society which is made up of these individuals”. The quote is from an article by Ralph Smedley, founder of Toastmasters International, which appeared in the February 1958 issue of The Toastmaster. (The article, entitled, ‘The Toastmasters Club … Its Meaning and Values’, has been reproduced in Personally Speaking: Selections from the Writings of Dr Ralph C Smedley.)

The mission of Toastmasters is to develop communication and leadership skills of individual members so that they can achieve greater self-confidence and personal growth. The benefits that can bring to the lives of individual members are obvious but, as Ralph Smedley maintained, members of Toastmasters - now numbering more than 352,00 – also have an opportunity to contribute to “the building of a better society made up of individuals who must act in groups”.

Is John Locke responsible for the failings of liberal democracy?

The liberalism that Patrick Deneen writes about in his recent book, Why Liberalism Failed, is the set of principles upon which liberal democracies are built. This set of principles encompasses the classical liberalism favoured by many who would like to reduce the dependence of citizens on government, as well as the progressive liberalism of those who see a role for government in supporting emancipative values.

In my view Deneen makes many good points. Having just finished reading and writing about The Meaning of Democracy by Vincent Ostrom I welcome Deneen’s further reminder that citizens of the United States (and other liberal democracies) no longer display the intense commitment toward democratic citizenship at a local level observed by Alexis de Tocqueville when he visited America in the 1830s. I welcome Deneen’s view that “politics and human community must percolate from the bottom up, from experience and practice”. I welcome his support for practices “that sustain culture within communities, the fostering of household economics, and ‘polis life’, or forms of self-governance that arise from shared civic participation”. I welcome his acceptance that the achievements of liberalism “must be acknowledged” and that we “must build on those achievements”. I also welcome that Deneen’s book is much easier to read than Ostom’s book.

Unfortunately, Deneen’s book is based on a monstrous error. The error I refer to is not directly linked to his criticism of globalization and technological progress, his forecast of growing inequality, or his fears about “rapacious exploitation of resources”. Some of what he writes on those topics is in error, but in my view those errors are balanced to a large extent by insightful comments about education and politics, and his acknowledgement that “there can be no going back”. (Deneen’s negativity about the modern world leaves me with a strong desire for an antidote. My desire to read Enlightenment Now, Steven Pinker’s latest book, has suddenly become more urgent.)

Deneen’s monstrous error stems from his mis-reading of John Locke:

“Both Hobbes and Locke—but especially Locke—understand that liberty in our prepolitical condition is limited not only by the lawless competition of other individuals but by our recalcitrant and hostile natures. A main goal of Locke’s philosophy is to expand the prospects for our liberty—defined as the capacity to satisfy our appetites—through the auspices of the state. Law is not a discipline for self-government but the means for expanding personal freedom: ‘The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom’.” (p 47-48).

Deneen has taken the quoted sentence about the “end of law” from John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government. However, in the paragraph from which the quoted sentence is taken, Locke was actually writing about the discipline of self-government rather than law provided “through the auspices of the state”. The paragraph begins:

“The law, that was to govern Adam, was the same that was to govern all his posterity, the law of reason”.

Locke goes on to imply that everyone has to learn “the use of reason” before they can know where their “proper interest” lies. It is in the context of writing about “the law of reason” that Locke notes:

“the end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom: for in all the states of created beings capable of laws, ‘where there is no law, there is no freedom’ for liberty is to be free from restraint and violence from others”.

Locke implies that “the law of reason” is linked to norms of reciprocity: “for who could be free, when every other man’s humour might domineer over him”. See: Second Treatise of Government, para 57.

In The Nature and Purposes of Government: a Lockean View, Linda Raeder has carefully noted the vast difference between Hobbesian and Lockean views of the state of nature. While Hobbes saw the state of nature as a “war of all against all”, Locke saw it as being governed by natural law. Linda Raeder notes that Locke’s particular formulation of the law of nature “carried forward a longstanding tradition that ascribes an intrinsic moral dimension to human nature”.  According to that view all humans “possess an inherent ability to distinguish between right and wrong” and “every human being knows, as Locke says, that he is obliged, ‘as much as he can, to preserve the rest of mankind’.” (Raeder, loc 465)

Why do I view Deneen’s mis-reading of John Locke a monstrous error? If Deneen had read Locke more carefully he could not claim:

“Liberalism rejects the ancient conception of liberty as the learned capacity of human beings to conquer the slavish pursuit of base and hedonistic desires” (p 37).

Nor could he claim:

“Liberalism’s ascent and triumph required sustained efforts to undermine the classical and Christian understanding of liberty, the disassembling of widespread norms, traditions, and practices, and perhaps above all the reconceptualization of primacy of the individual defined in isolation from arbitrary accidents of birth, with the state as the main protector of individual rights and liberty” (p 27).

If Deneen had not misread Locke his central thesis about the contradictions inherent within classical liberalism would fall apart. He could not claim:

“Liberalism has failed—not because it fell short, but because it was true to itself. It has failed because it has succeeded. As liberalism has “become more fully itself,” as its inner logic has become more evident and its self-contradictions manifest, it has generated pathologies that are at once deformations of its claims yet realizations of liberal ideology” (p 3).

If we want to understand why liberal democracy is becoming “a war of all against all” we need to understand why the norms underlying it are breaking down, despite the efforts of classical liberals to uphold them. Why is it that people now exercise less restraint in the demands that they make on others through the political process? Why is it that those whose tax payments fund transfers through the political process increasingly consider themselves to be exploited? We can’t blame John Locke, or his classical liberal followers for the failings of liberal democracy.

Despite my misgivings about Why Liberalism Failed I am grateful to Patrick Deneen for drawing attention to the importance of the exit rights advocated by classical liberals. In discussing how self-governing communities might emerge, he writes:

“For a time, such practices will be developed within intentional communities that will benefit from the openness of liberal society. They will be regarded as ‘options’ within the liberal frame, and while suspect in the broader culture, largely permitted to exist so long as they are nonthreatening to the liberal order’s main business” (p 179).

That is hardly a ringing endorsement for the exit rights that Locke and Jefferson helped to have recognized as core values of western civilization. Nevertheless, I am grateful for the opportunity to note that the author is pointing to a means whereby liberalism could transform itself rather than fail.