When is a sense of entitlement justified?

I have been having a discussion with Jim Belshaw about the meaning of entitlement, stemming from my recent post ‘What are Australians angry about?’  On Saturday Jim wrote:

‘It seems to me that that word entitlements has become, to use an ugly but useful modern term, a code word for a much broader ideological debate. Entitlements used to mean the fact of having a right to something or the amount to which a person has a right. This is the neutral meaning. Now it has acquired a heavy semantic overload’.

I agree. When I wrote: ‘I think the problem is the growth of a sense of entitlement to be looked after by governments’, I was referring to growth in what I see as an unwarranted sense of entitlement. 

It seems to me that we have almost reached a stage where people say: ‘I’m unhappy, so what’s the government going to do about it?’ Governments seem only too willing to encourage this. A recent government intervention in Australia involves screening kids for mental illness at three years of age. No doubt doctors will discover that a lot of kids are unhappy and then ‘aorta politics’ will take over. We will soon hear a lot more people saying ‘aorta’ be doing more to help us. 

However, people are sometimes justified in expressing a sense of entitlement – or righteous indignation - when something they value is taken away from them. It would probably be reasonable to guess that moral intuitions about natural rights stem from the efforts of our tribal ancestors to protect their food supplies. (Incidentally, this doesn’t seem to be covered by Jon Haidt’s schema of moral foundations discussed in my last post.) A sense of entitlement is also related to our sense of fairness and our desire to punish people (including political leaders) who have shown themselves to be untrustworthy.

It seems to me that the central issue in considering whether a sense of entitlement is justified is whether the expectations involved are reasonable. It might be useful to attempt to rank expressions of entitlement in terms of the reasonableness of the expectations involved.

Property rights deserve high ranking in terms of the reasonableness of expectations that they will be protected. There is even a constitutional provision, as readers who have seen ‘The Castle’ would know, that when the Commonwealth acquires property compensation must be ‘on just terms’. Property rights are constrained in various ways. Land owners do not usually own the minerals beneath their land in this country, so it is hardly reasonable for them to expect to be able to prevent mining on their properties. But it is reasonable for them to expect compensation for the costs and inconveniences they experience when mining takes place. I would have thought land owners could have a reasonable expectation of being able to do what they wish with trees growing on their properties, but governments have taken a different view.

Another area deserving high ranking in terms of reasonableness of expectations concerns contractual obligations entered into by governments.  Australian governments have a good reputation of meeting interest and repayment obligations when they borrow money (despite Jack Lang's efforts to tarnish this reputation in the 1930s). Australians can have a reasonable expectation that governments in this country will meet obligations to employees. Until recently, Australian governments also had a pretty good record in not raising mineral royalty charges beyond levels agreed with mining companies prior to mining, but sovereign risk has escalated since the Commonwealth government has acted to appropriate an additional slice of mineral rents. In my view mining companies have justification for their sense of entitlement to the rents that have been taken from them. It is reasonable for households who have installed solar heating in response to excessively generous incentive programs to expect government agencies to meet their contractual obligations. In my view, householders in New South Wales had justification to be enraged the plans of the newly elected O’Farrell government to renege on those contracts.

Further down the ranking in terms of reasonableness of expectations - although still deserving fairly high ranking in my view - are the political obligations accepted by governments over many decades for provision of various social welfare programs. Age pensions are a prime example. It would be unreasonable, however, to expect that governments would never under any circumstances reduce the benefits provided under such programs. The assistance provided must be limited ultimately by what the community can afford.

Further down the ranking there are programs like the provision of tariff assistance to industries. This arose as a result of rent-seeking by industry, misguided government planning and a view fostered by governments over many decades that assistance would be provided to all industries on a ‘needs basis’. It is the best example of a government-fostered entitlement mentality that I can think of in Australia. Yet, it is understandable that many of those who benefited from this assistance would feel a sense of grievance when it was withdrawn. The assistance regime stayed in place for many decades with little complaint – except for a few people in efficient export industries that were adversely affected, some academics and civil servants, and one politician (Bert Kelly). When assistance was reduced, the culpability of governments in fostering the unreasonable expectation that ‘infant industry’ and ‘temporary’ protection could last forever was recognized by making reductions gradual (over about half a century in the case of the car industry) and providing adjustment assistance in some instances.

As we go further down the ranking of reasonable expectations we come to incentive programs of various kinds. One example that comes to mind is the provision of taxation benefits to encourage investment in private superannuation. I noted in 2010 that this had resulted in total government support for retirees being remarkably similar across a wide range of income levels, despite means testing of pensions. The taxation arrangements for superannuation provide perverse incentives for people to retire early, splurge lump sums and live off accumulated wealth until they become eligible for the aged pension. There is no basis for anyone to have a reasonable expectation that such rorts would be allowed to continue indefinitely. It seems to me that those complaining about recent government action to limit the tax concession are showing an unwarranted sense of entitlement.

Election promises are at the bottom of my ranking of reasonable expectations. However, some election promises do appear to encourage reasonable expectations of what a government might do or not do. For example, Julia Gillard’s promise that ‘there will be no carbon tax under a government I lead' did not sound like a ‘non-core promise’ (to use a phrase made famous by John Howard). At the very bottom of the ranking of reasonable expectations, in my view, are the expectations fostered by a statement by Barry O’Farrell that his party had ‘no plans’ to privatise various things. Rather than a promise, that form of words seems intended to convey a refusal to make a promise.

Having completed this ranking, I now wonder whether election promises deserve higher ranking. The ranking provided above is largely in terms of what seems reasonable to expect on the basis of experience. Political promises probably deserve higher ranking in terms of the standards it should be reasonable to expect of our politicians. I don’t think that people are displaying an unwarranted sense of entitlement when they express disgust with politicians who break promises. 

Does moral foundations theory support the concept of rational irrationality?

I think it does. And I think an understanding of why it does sheds some further light on the difficulty that democratic governments have in dealing with complex economic issues. So, if you don't already know about moral foundations theory and rational irrationality, you might be about to learn something worth knowing.

Jonathan Haidt explains moral foundations theory in ‘The Righteous Mind: Why good people are divided by politics and religion’, 2012.  His basic idea is that the virtues that are found in many cultures are related to adaptive challenges of social life that have been identified by evolutionary psychologists. While moral foundations are innate, they are expressed in differing ways and to differing extents in different cultures and by different political groups. Policy concerns of different political groups can be explained to a large extent in terms of the moral mentality of their members.

The concept of rational irrationality was developed by Bryan Caplan in ‘The Myth of the Rational Voter’, 2007. Caplan provides evidence that the views of voters on economic issues differ substantially from those of economists. He attributes this to irrationality. He argues that people actually have a demand for irrationality – that many have an almost religious attachment to irrational beliefs and tend to cling to them until the cost becomes too high. In the political arena an ongoing attachment to irrationality is a predictable response because the cost of clinging to irrational political beliefs is low. There is a miniscule probability that the vote of any individual will be decisive in changing the result of an election. For the individual, voting is likely choosing from a menu and getting the same dish whatever you order.

My reaction on this blog a few years ago was that I didn’t think ‘rational irrationality’ would provide as good an explanation of voter behaviour as some less extreme concepts, such as ‘bounded rationality’ used by Douglass North. My views have changed, however, since I started thinking seriously about moral foundations theory.

The idea of linking moral foundations theory and rational irrationality is not original. Christian Galgano, an undergraduate at the University of Virginia, has published an article entitled: ‘The Righteous Mind of the Irrational Voter: Why good people choose bad policies’, ‘The Oculus’, 10(1). Christian develops what he refers to as a Haidt-Caplan model to explain why voters are rationally irrational. I think he deserves high praise for linking these ideas.

I am not sure how pleased Jon Haidt would be that one of the messages people are taking from his book is that moral concerns lead people to cling to irrational policy positions. He wants readers to understand that we are all deeply intuitive creatures whose gut feelings tend to drive our political reasoning. His aim is that this understanding should help us all to recognize that our political opponents are good people whose beliefs flow from genuine moral concerns. I agree that that is desirable, but is unlikely by itself to result in better public policies.

So, how do moral concerns lead people to hold on to irrational political beliefs? First, as already noted, there is no incentive for individuals to go beyond sloppy intuitive thinking when their individual views are unlikely to be decisive in changing government policy. Second, as Jon Haidt argues, identification with groups tends to blind people to the wisdom of people outside those groups. Third, even when individuals expect to be held to account for their beliefs, this does not necessarily lead them to dispense with irrational beliefs. In this context, Haidt refers to research by Phil Tetlock about the effects of asking people to justify their beliefs to an audience. As might be expected, this makes individuals think more systematically, but often in a one-sided attempt to rationalize their existing views. They give a more even-handed consideration to alternative points of view only if they do not know the views of the audience and believe that it is well informed and interested in accuracy.

What does moral foundations theory suggest about potential sources of rational irrationality? Haidt identifies six moral foundations:

·         Care/harm makes us sensitive to signs of suffering and need.

·         Fairness/cheating is concerned with reciprocity. It makes us sensitive to issues relating to trustworthiness, opportunism and punishment.

·         Loyalty/betrayal makes us sensitive to group interests.

·         Authority/subversion makes us sensitive to issues relating to rank and status.

·         Liberty/oppression makes people notice and resent signs of attempted domination by bullies and tyrants.

·         Sanctity/degradation evolved to help us meet the challenge of living in a world of pathogens and parasites. It makes it possible to invest objects with irrational and extreme values, which in turn helps to bind groups together.

Irrational beliefs about sanctity seem to me play a large role in public opinion about economic policy in Australia. The collection of poll results posted by Possum Comitatus on Crikey a few days ago provides some good examples. For instance, the percentage of the population opposed to privatisation of Telstra, Qantas and the Commonwealth Bank still far exceeds the percentage in favour, many years after these ‘icons’ were sold. There also seems to be massive opposition to sale of Australian farm land to foreign companies.

What basis do I have to say that such positions are irrational? My only basis (apart from my disagreement with them) is that they are probably contrary to majority expert opinion. Furthermore, in my view, if you put a random sample of people in a situation where they were given the information they need to make informed decisions and ask them to justify their beliefs to an audience whom they could assume to be unbiased and interested in accuracy, then I think many of them would be likely to change their minds.

The main problem I have with moral foundations theory as presented by Jon Haidt is that it doesn’t seem to provide a basis for judging any particular moral feeling to be superior to any other. What basis do we have to say that it is silly for people to cling collectively to a set of irrational beliefs that is impoverishing them? What basis do we have to say that the sense of self-transcendence that a person might feel while engaging in meditation is superior to that which some other person might feel while taking part in a lynch mob? Haidt clearly doesn’t think all moral sentiments are equal, but there is nothing in his model that requires him to give calm philosophical reasoning a higher status than unprocessed emotions.

In my view, while social intuitionism tells us a great deal about morality, we should not disregard the importance of reason and rationality. In Steven Pinker’s discussion of these issues in ‘The Better Angels of Our Nature’ (pp 622 -642) he comes out in favour of Alan Fiske’s taxonomy which allows for a rational-legal  mode of social legitimation – a system of norms that is worked out by reason (utilitarianism plays an important role) and implemented by formal rules. Pinker argues that rational-legal reasoning can enable us to strategically deploy moral intuitions in benign ways.

The question that remains to be considered further is how we can employ our reasoning to deal more effectively with the problem of rational irrationality.

Postscript 1:

I have been having second thoughts about my statement that there is nothing in Haidt’s model that would cause him to give calm philosophical reasoning a higher status than unprocessed emotion. This might be an accurate statement, but it probably isn’t appropriate to criticize social psychology on the grounds that it doesn’t help people to make ethical judgements. I imagine that moral foundations theory might provide fairly accurate predictions of how different people would rank different self-transcendence experiences in terms of moral considerations. It also predicts that people are unlikely to cling to irrational beliefs that impoverish them when they have adequate incentives to seek the truth.

However, it seems to me that the role played by reason and rationality is sufficiently important for it to be recognized separately. Perhaps the evolutionary challenges faced in human evolution caused greater respect to be given to those who had a coherent set of moral intuitions, beliefs and behaviours (practical wisdom). There might be reproductive advantages in displaying practical wisdom (the virtue of prudence). In addition, tribes whose leaders showed greater practical wisdom might have adopted superior norms that would have given them an advantage in the struggle for survival. The story still remains essentially Humean or Hayekian, rather than a story about humans consciously constructing the building blocks of human progress.

Postscript 2:
I have also had further thoughts on the circumstances under which beliefs about sanctity could be said to be irrational.  The concept of irrationality seems to apply in relation to beliefs rather than personal values. For example, it might be possible for an individual to value a state-owned enterprise as a national icon without holding any irrational beliefs about it. 
However, Jon Haidt’s studies suggest that our values are likely to have a strong impact on our beliefs. People who view a state owned enterprise as a national icon would be more likely to hold irrational beliefs about what might happen if the enterprise is privatized. For example, they might over-estimate the potential for the enterprise to disappear once privatized, and under-estimate the potential net economic benefits arising from sale of the enterprise.


Some implications of moral foundations theory for social cooperation are discussed in a later post.

Do libertarians have a problem with empathy and disgust?

It seems to me that a high value should be placed on liberty because it enables people with different values to live in peace and to pursue their individual objectives in ways that are compatible and even mutually beneficial. This doesn’t make liberty the only ethical value that matters. It does mean, however, that the onus should rest squarely with those who seek to restrict liberty to show that this will result in net benefits in terms of human flourishing.

I would like to think those views make me a liberal, but that term has been hijacked by others (conservatives in Australia and egalitarians in the United States). I usually label myself as a libertarian, but if Walter Block’s discussion of whether Milton Friedman was a libertarian is definitive, then I definitely don’t qualify. I could not be described as an anarcho-capitalist or a minarchist (my spellchecker wanted to change that to monarchist, which would also be equally true, but beside the point). Perhaps my views could be described as ‘minarchism plus’, but the ‘plus’ involves a lot of things that Walter would consider to disqualify me from being classified as a libertarian. For example, I support government action to issue money that is not backed by gold, central bank control of monetary aggregates, some prudential regulation, a social welfare safety net providing for somewhat more than minimal subsistence needs, some environmental regulation, some anti-trust regulation and even democracy.

According to Walter Block’s classification that probably makes me a classical liberal rather than a libertarian, but I am not sure that Walter’s distinction between classical liberals and libertarians is widely accepted. Rather than attempting to define libertarianism from first principles it might be more appropriate to define it in terms of the values and beliefs of self-labelled libertarians.

Until recently I thought my values would be fairly consistent with those of most self-labelled libertarians. That was before I had read Jonathan Haidt’s book, ‘The Righteous Mind: Why good people are divided by politics and religion’ and competed some of the questionnaires on the YourMorals site. The research by Haidt and his colleagues shows, not surprisingly, that the view of fairness/reciprocity displayed by libertarians tends to place a high value on individual liberty. It also shows that libertarians tend to be much like conservatives in terms of issues related to harm/care and much like liberals on issues related to authority/respect and purity/sanctity. (A paper comparing the ethical values of libertarians with those of liberals and conservatives can be found here. The findings have been discussed by Ronald Bailey at reason.com.)

My values in relation to fairness/reciprocity seem to be similar to those of other libertarians, but I appear to be a bleeding heart liberal in terms of the harm/care foundation and a conservative in terms of purity/sanctity.  I think this may have to do with the difficulty of getting people to reveal their values, rather than a real difference in values. Many libertarians (and conservatives) may be reluctant to acknowledge that they feel sympathy for people suffering economic hardships because they are concerned that this might make them vulnerable to higher taxes. I don’t think it does. A decent safety net doesn’t have to involve high taxes if it is appropriately means tested and recipients of benefits are given appropriate incentives to look after themselves.

Something similar might apply in relation to purity/ sanctity. It is, of course, possible to view a behaviour as immoral and yet defend the right of an adult to choose to engage in it, provided that it doesn’t involve interference with the rights of other people. While completing the ‘Moral Foundations Questionnaire’, however, I felt some tension in acknowledging that some behaviour is immoral even though I felt disgusted by it. This makes me wonder whether libertarians (and other liberals) learn to cope with social conservatives who want to make immoral behaviours illegal by downplaying the link between imprudence and immorality. If you agree that disgusting behaviour is immoral, you know that social conservatives are likely to view such agreement as support for making the behaviours illegal. So it may seem to make sense to claim that the behaviour isn’t immoral because no-one is harmed except, perhaps, the person engaging in it.

I think the contraction of morality among liberals to issues relating to rights and obligations may be more apparent than real. Robert Skidelsky argued a couple of years ago that we (people in western societies) know ‘at some level’ that some things are ‘vile’, yet we no longer have ‘the authority and words to say so’. My response was that he had just said that a particular TV program was vile. There should be no problem in   anyone stating that they feel that a TV program, or anything else, is vile, disgusting or immoral. The problem is that some of us are reluctant to do this because social conservatives still want to make immorality illegal when no infringement of rights is involved.

I will return to a discussion of Jonathan Haidt’s book later. In my view it makes an important contribution to understanding of what is wrong with politics.

What are 'courts of common reason'?

‘Courts of Common Reason’ is the title of a book by Howard DeLong (Belcrest Press, second edition, 2011). The book has the subtitle: ‘Awakening the Spirit of 1776 to Form a More Perfect Union’.  DeLong argues that America’s political system falls short of the revolutionary democratic ideals of its founding fathers and suggests how current political practices could be revised to be consistent with those ideals.

The author proposes that a court of common reason be established to determine the ‘common reason of society’ - a phrase used by Thomas Jefferson. The term ‘court’ is used because the proposal involves establishing an advisory jury system, functioning in ‘a controlled setting typical of a court room with unbiased rules governing the presentation of evidence and arguments’ (p 172).

DeLong seems to me to do a good job of establishing that America’s founding fathers viewed democracy as involving more than just representative government. James Madison argued that ‘the cool and deliberate sense of the community ought, in all governments, and actually will, in all free governments, ultimately prevail over the views of its rulers’. He also asserted, however, that those to whom the people ‘intrust the management of their affairs’ should not be responsive ‘to every sudden breeze of passion, or to every transient impulse which the people may receive from the arts of men, who flatter their prejudices to betray their interests’. Madison would presumably be unimpressed by the tendency for modern politicians to pander to the breezes of passion reflected in public opinion polls.

DeLong’s main source of inspiration, however, is a proposal by Thomas Jefferson (in a letter to John Adams) for simultaneous meetings of wards (small political units within each county responsible for schools, police, roads etc.) to determine the common reason of society:

‘A general call of ward-meetings by their Wardens on the same day thro' the state would at any time produce the genuine sense of the people on any required point, and would enable the state to act in mass, as your people have so often done, and with so much effect, by their town meetings’.

The method which DeLong suggests for identifying the common reason of society would involve random selection of an advisory jury (comprising possibly 0.1% of the adult population) using methodology to mirror important population characteristics as accurately as possible. He envisages that the advisory jury would be divided into sub-juries, each consisting of 12 people, before listening to argument and deliberating. He suggests that the common reason of society would be revealed by the decisions of those sub-juries that achieve unanimity.

DeLong’s reason for proposing sub-juries of 12 people is to reduce the danger of groupthink or mob decision that he considers likely to pose a greater problem in large gatherings. His suggestion that sub-juries should be required to achieve unanimity for their view to be counted is intended to promote considered judgement. I can see merit in sub-juries small enough to enable all members to participate in the discussion, but it seems to me that the requirement for unanimity is too strong. As I see it, if 80% of sub-juries had 10 or more members in support of a proposition that would imply strong support, even if, say, only 50% of sub-juries were unanimous in their support. It would be unfortunate, however, to get bogged down at this point in the detail of how the proposal might be implemented, particularly since the author presents his proposals as a thought experiment.

The author bases his argument for institutional change on the view that the philosophy that common reason should have dominance is presupposed by the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution (including the Bill of Rights).  He suggests that readers ‘suppose, at least provisionally’ that that philosophy is ‘correct’ and asks: ‘What, then, ought we do to better embody that philosophy in our political practice?’

I am not entirely comfortable with that line of reasoning. What does ‘correct’ mean in this context? If it means that the people place high value on having governments serve the ‘common reason’ of society, then we should be asking what evidence there is that current practice falls short of that requirement. Relevant evidence could take two different forms: dissatisfaction with the extent to which democratic governments take account of public opinion in their decision-making processes; or the existence of a gap between public opinion and ‘common reason’ or ‘the cool and deliberate sense’ of the community.  It seems to me there is more evidence of a problem of the latter kind. If that is right, it means that the educative role of the courts of common reason would probably be more important than their role in bringing together information about the views of citizens.

DeLong seems to acknowledge that point when he writes:

‘ordinary polls hardly reveal the “cool and deliberate sense of the community” that should “ultimately prevail over the views of its rulers.” Most citizens have not even thought about many of the issues, much less reflected long and hard to determine their best judgement. What government officials need to know is: What would the American people think if they had the information, interest, time, and ability to consider political issues in a truly deliberative fashion’ (p 166).

I think the opportunity to participate in an advisory jury system that has a good chance of influencing the future directions of public policy would provide participants with incentives that would help overcome rational ignorance and the tendency for people to obtain their opinions from the 'tribes' they identify with. (See this article by Tom Harris for a discussion in the context of climate change policy). Payment for jury service would also help, but could make the exercise costly. DeLong leaves open the question of the length of jury service. There would be trade-offs involved in terms of acquisition of skills in deliberation on public policy issues, allowing participation by a larger proportion of the population and avoiding unnecessary disruption to lives and careers of citizens.

DeLong suggests that the questions and problems that might be put to advisory juries ‘are almost endless’. Examples he suggests include tax policy, medical malpractice liability, misleading advertising, pay rates for politicians, safety and environmental regulation, penalties for criminal offences, immigration policy and eminent domain policy. Towards the end of his book he also suggests that advisory juries could have a role in revision of the American constitution.

In my view Howard DeLong’s proposal for courts of common reason deserves serious consideration as a possible means of helping democracies to work better. It is obvious that the proposal requires more thought before it could be implemented, but it seems to me that people who are concerned about the current performance of democratic governments should be giving a great deal of thought to proposals such as this one.

What are Australians angry about?

In her recently published Quarterly Essay, ‘Great Expectations: Government, Entitlement and an Angry Nation’, Laura Tingle, political editor of the Financial Review, asserts that much of the culture and public discussion of Australians contains ‘some suspicion or assertion that we might be being ripped off, that someone else might be getting preferment’. I had two initial reactions. First, where is the evidence that Australians are more suspicious that they are being ripped off than are people in other countries with comparable living standards? Second, doesn’t Australia’s history of protectionism, crony capitalism and ongoing government support for anti-competitive union practices give us reason to be concerned that we might still be being ripped off?

However, Laura states her purpose as to explore ‘something wider’ than the reasons we have to be ‘underwhelmed by our politicians, by our institutions and by the quality of the services that government provides’. Her aim is to:

‘make the argument that as a nation, a polity, we have not sat down and worked out what exactly we expect “the government” – …  its administrative side, as well as the politicians of the day – to be and to do. We haven’t settled the idea of what we think we are “entitled” to get from government. The only things we seem to have been sure about over the years are that government has not met our great expectations that it will look after us, and that we are nonetheless entitled to be looked after’.

That reminded me of the message in ‘The Good Life and its Discontents’ by an American journalist, Robert Samuelson, published in the mid-1990s:

‘Responsibility poses choices, recognizes limits, and clarifies accountability. Entitlement denies choices, ignores limits, and muddles accountability. Properly construed, responsibility is a fundamental issue that all modern societies must answer in their own way. How much should people do for themselves and how much should government – that is, the people acting as a collective – do for them? What are the respective roles and competencies of individuals, families, social organizations, profit-making enterprises, and government? What answers best fit our traditions, values and common sense?’

Unfortunately, I don’t think the United States has taught us a great deal over the last couple of decades about how to answer those questions. The US still seems to be in the middle of what Samuelson described as ‘an ugly accommodation to reality’. (People who still see the US as characterized by small government may find this difficult to understand. They need to reconsider whether the US is actually characterized by small government. Size of government in the US is now greater than Australia. It would probably be more accurate to characterize the US as a country with inefficient government, rather than a country with small government.)

Much of Laura Tingle’s essay is designed to show that a sense of entitlement has played a strong role in Australia since its inception as a penal colony. The scarcity of labour in the colony apparently gave convict workers a great deal more power than slave labour would be expected to have. They were paid for finishing the job, rather than on the basis of hours worked and were allowed to earn private income when not at their government labours. Education was provided for the children of convicts. Emancipists had legal rights that ordinary people did not have in England at that time.

Laura also shows that disrespect for politicians has been a characteristic of Australia since the middle of the 19^th century when the franchise was extended to almost all adult males. She quotes John Hirst: ‘The people elected parliamentarians who could not look down on them and whom they did not have to look up to’.

The general picture that Laura presents of Australians tending to have an inherited sense of entitlement to be looked after by government is probably correct. Australia could certainly be viewed as an early starter in the ‘entitlement stakes’ – particularly welfare entitlements - and this may mean that more of us have a stronger sense of entitlement to middle class welfare than people in most other countries with comparable living standards.

Laura’s treatment of recent economic history suggests that if Australia is any better placed than any other countries in coming to terms with an entitlement culture this should be attributed to the efforts of the Hawke-Keating government i.e. the government in which Paul Keating was treasurer, rather than the later government in which he was prime minister.  Keating told Australians that they were living beyond their means and that reforms were needed to produce better outcomes for their kids and to provide economic security in the longer term.

Rather than painting a picture of the entire period of the Hawke-Keating and Howard-Costello governments as a reform era, Laura reminds us that the entitlement culture began to return while Keating was prime minister and was fuelled by the expansion of government spending under Howard and Costello. It was appropriate to be reminded that the Howard-Costello government was a big spending government - and only seems fiscally responsible in retrospect because of the strength of revenue growth associated with the mining boom at that time and the subsequent behaviour of the Rudd and Gillard governments.

So what does Laura have to say about Kevin Rudd:

‘Rudd was “Kevin from Queensland”, the bureaucratic nerd who was “here to help”. There was no more discussion about the withdrawal of the state. Government was not just here to give you hand-outs but, once again, to look after you properly. Rudd made public servants fashionable, even trendy. He spoke the incomprehensible language of bureaucracy, and for a time people found that engaging and endearing. Here was what we needed, someone who actually understood the system and could get it working for us’.

As Laura says, Kevin Rudd raised voters’ expectations to a risky degree. It wasn’t all that clear when he was elected in 2007, however, that this was happening. Some of his policies were certainly pie in the sky. It was stupid to propose a carbon trading scheme that was not conditional on action by other countries. The grocery watch and fuel watch schemes were obvious gimmicks. But there was some reason for hope that his ambitious proposals to sort out some of the problems associated with overlap of federal-state responsibilities might have worked. The main problem seemed to be that he turned out to be somewhat lacking in the management skills required of a prime minister.

Some people are angry that Rudd disappointed them. More seem to be angry that he was deposed by his party and that his successor seems incapable of keeping her own promises, let alone leading a government that is capable of living up to the inflated expectations created by Rudd. Some see Julia Gillard as acting like a puppet of the unions and the greens, while pretending to be an advocate of opportunity and responsibility. Laura suggests that there are other things Australians are angry about, including minority government and the uncertainty of the economic and political outlook. She writes:

‘It is wrong to see the anger of the last few years as a “one-off”, which might go away at the next election. The things we are angry about betray the changes that have been taking place over recent decades. As we have seen, politicians no longer control interest rates, the exchange rate, or wages … [etc.]. Voters are confused about what politicians can do for them in such a world. While the levers available to government to protect us have been removed, the expectation that we will still be protected has been fed by the failure of our politicians to explain their new impotence’.

I think Laura is about half right. People would still feel uncertain about the economic situation in Europe and the implications this might have for China and the Australian economy even if politicians still had control of all those ‘levers’. The security that government control of the ‘levers’ appeared to offer was just a mirage.  There are no levers that can enable governments to defy economic reality. And I don’t think uncertainty about the economic situation necessarily translates to anger with government. Good political leaders can win respect for government in uncertain times by taking the public into their confidence.

Laura is right about the need for political leaders to come clean and explain what governments are and are not capable of doing. It is a good sign that Joe Hockey, the shadow treasurer, has recently been making efforts to explain that we cannot have greater government services and more government involvement in our lives with significantly lower taxation. The big challenge posed by the entitlement culture that has developed in all high income countries, it seems to me, is in persuading middle-income earners that they should look after themselves rather than expect governments to accept responsibility for their happiness.

How should we assign weights to various aspects in the OECD's 'better life' index?

The second edition of the OECD’s ‘Better Life’ index is now available. As with the first edition, the index is presented in an interactive form.  Users are able to compare the quality of life in different OECD countries by assigning their own weights to a range of factors that are relevant to assessment of well-being.

When the first edition of the index came out I played around with it to see how different weighting systems and inclusion of additional information on factors, such as perceptions of freedom and corruption, might affect the comparisons. In order to make much difference I had to make some fairly extreme assumptions. My conclusion was that all well-being indicators tend to tell similar stories at a national level.

In this post I want to give some further consideration to the question of what weighting systems might be most appropriate. I want to allow for the possibility that because some of the factors included in the index measure similar aspects of well-being, there may be potential for users to inadvertently give excessive weight to the factors that seem important to them. For example, some people who assign a high weight to life satisfaction might also give high weight to factors that could be expected to have a strong influence on life satisfaction (e.g. jobs and work-life balance). That might mean that they end up giving excessive weight to factors that are strongly correlated with life satisfaction, at the expense of other factors (e.g. education and the environment).

The approach I have adopted in deciding on the weightings was to begin by giving highest weight (5/5) to safety (low crime), life satisfaction and the environment and then to assign weights to other factors depending on whether I consider their influence to be adequately reflected in the factors already covered. I have assigned a weight of 4/5 to income because I think high income adds to quality of life in ways that are not fully taken into account when people are asked whether they are satisfied with life (the value of the future security that a high income can provide). I have assigned a 4/5 weight to education because the contribution of education to quality of life may not be adequately reflected in either life satisfaction or income. Similar reasoning applies to community (covering support networks and volunteering). A weight of 3/5 is assigned to housing, jobs and health because these factors are already taken into account to a considerable extent in measures of life satisfaction and income. I have assigned a relatively low weighting (2/5) to civic engagement because important aspects of civic engagement are reflected in other factors (e.g. safety) and voter turnout seems to me to be a poor indicator of civic engagement in countries with compulsory voting. Finally, I have assigned a rating of 1/5 to work-life balance (rather than 0/5) because it might possibly cover some aspects of the quality of life that are not adequately reflected in other factors.

The ranking of countries according to the weights I have assigned can be found by clicking here. (The OECD offers a facility to embed it, but I am not clever enough to use it.)

The ranking according to my weights differs somewhat from the ranking if equal weights are assigned to all factors. The top five countries under my weights are: Australia, Switzerland, United States, Canada and Norway. With equal weighting, the top five countries are: Australia, Norway, United States, Sweden and Denmark.

However, this difference in rankings doesn’t mean a great deal because the difference in ratings of the top ranked countries is small. That doesn’t surprise me - all well-being indicators tend to tell similar stories at a national level! 

Are citizens' juries susceptible to groupthink?

In my last post I considered the question of whether citizens’ juries might help to lift public debate on issues which professional politicians find difficult to deal with. After looking at the process involved in a citizens’ jury on container deposit legislation, I concluded that it was likely to be particularly important for citizens’ juries to be asked the right questions.

The post provoked two different responses. Evan suggested that citizens’ juries could make a valuable input to policy, but there was a problem of legitimization i.e. the process required government backing. Anon (kvd) asked why it was necessary to place between ‘the people’ and their elected representatives a layer of ‘non-responsible, unelected, single-issue, unaccountable’ citizens’ juries. My response was that I agreed with both Evan and kvd, but what I meant was that both had raised good points. Citizens’ juries would certainly need to be seen to have legitimacy in order to have the desired effect on public debate. And the onus should certainly be on those who propose such innovations to show why they are necessary and are likely to succeed.

I think we should be looking for innovations to make the democratic systems work better because there is a tendency for democratic governments to over-reach – to raise public expectations of what they can achieve and to take on more responsibilities than they are able to cope with. This is reflected to some extent in the tendency for many governments to take on excessive debts, but I see the problem as much broader than that. I will write more about that at a later stage.

 I have had an interesting discussion with Shona (the person who suggested last year that it might be a good idea to think up a new political system) about the possibility that citizens’ juries might be susceptible to groupthink. The discussion arose because of the example in my last post of a citizens’ jury coming to a unanimous decision, while successive polls looking at the same issue found that support for the proposal diminished after provision of information to participants. Shona suggested that I should take a look at the relevant chapters of Stuart Sutherland’s book, ‘Irrationality’.

Sutherland makes the point that not only do people tend to conform to majority decisions but group attitudes tend also to be more extreme than those of individuals. Rather than the attitudes of each member of the group tending toward a mid-position, as members of the group interact they tend toward a more extreme position. One possible reason is that if the group attitude is tending in one direction, individual members may express more extreme views in order to gain approval from other members. Another possible reason is that the group is willing to take greater risks than its individual members because membership of the group spreads responsibility.

Research relating to legal juries suggests that conformity to majority views is common. For example, a US study by Nicole Waters and Valerie Hans indicates that while about 6 percent of criminal juries fail to reach unanimity over one-third of  jurors say that if the decision had been entirely up to them they would have voted against the jury’s decision.

The potential for members of citizens’ juries to conform to majority decisions and for group decisions to become polarised has been recognized by some researchers in this field. For example, R K Blamey, P McCarthy and R Smith of the ANU discussed these issues in their paper ‘Citizens’Juries and Small-group Decision-making’. The authors conclude that the fact that citizens’ juries are susceptible to biases does not necessarily mean that individual-based decision-making (e.g. via opinion surveys) should be preferred. They make various recommendations designed to minimize the weaknesses of group processes and to maximize their strengths.

There are some situations where the tendency of small groups to conform to majority decisions is desirable. For example, a fairly high degree of conformity to group decisions is required for a system of cabinet government to work effectively. It seems to me, however, that the tendencies for bias discussed above would pose substantial problems in using citizens’ juries in the manner I had contemplated. There is a good chance that the outcome of a citizens’ jury process would not be representatives of the views that a group of randomly chosen group of citizens would come to if they had the opportunity to consider an issue independently. 

What questions should citizen's juries be asked?

Since writing on the question of whether citizen’s juries might be better than focus groups I have been thinking more about the kinds of questions a randomly selected group of citizens could usefully deliberate upon. The answer probably depends on the objective of the process.

When Gordon Brown became prime minister of Britain in 2007 he announced citizen’s juries as his ‘new big idea’. It seems from his speech announcing the policy initiative that his aim was to improve communication between his government and the general public. His emphasis was on new ways of listening to people, consulting on new ideas and engaging in a dialogue and deliberation. He attended some of these citizen’s juries himself. An internet search indicates that the response at the time ranged from strong support to cynical suggestions that his motive might have to obtain more photo opportunities. Remarkably, within about a year the big new idea seems to have vanished without leaving a trace on the internet. I don’t know what happened. It is odd that there doesn’t seem to have been a public post mortem about what went wrong (or right) with the process. My guess is that the novelty of listening and consulting might have worn off.

It seems to me that the most useful objective of citizen’s juries would be to influence public opinion by providing a considered point of view that people might consider more trustworthy than the views of political leaders, interest groups or experts making judgements outside their areas of competence.  In other words, this process might help to address the combination of rational ignorance and hubris (or narcissism or whatever) that tends to lower the level of public debate on policy issues.

So, what types of questions might usefully be put to citizen’s juries? In my view the relevant questions would arise mainly from the issues that professional politicians find difficult to deal with because public opinion is ill-informed or unstable. Establishing citizen’s juries to look at such issues could be viewed as experiments to help a government to decide whether to take the political risks involved in introducing reforms.

I am not sure to what extent citizen’s juries have previously been viewed in that light. From the little I have read on the topic, the inclusion of unorganized citizens in policy processes is often seen as a desirable end in itself.

Greg Cutbush, a visiting economist at ANU Enterprise, responded to my last post by suggesting that before I get too enthusiastic about citizen’s juries I should take a look at a citizen’s forum on a proposal for a container deposit scheme in New South Wales.

In brief, the citizen’s forum was part of a review of container deposit legislation conducted by Stuart White of the Institute for Sustainable Futures at UTS in 2001. Other parts of the review included a cost benefit study of container deposit legislation (CDL), stakeholder and community consultations and a ‘televote’.  The ‘televote’ involved two polls, the second of which followed provision to respondents of ‘balanced written information on the various arguments in favour and against CDL’. The eleven members of the citizen’s forum were provided with essentially the same written information, presentations from government officials and independent CDL experts, as well as exposure to three days of deliberation.

As a result of the provision of information in the televote process, support for CDL fell from 71 percent to 59 percent. By contrast, the citizen’s forum unanimously agreed to the implementation of CDL. I wonder whether the emergence of consensus reflects the impact of three days of deliberation.

In the aftermath of the exercise one member of the project team, Carolyn Hendriks, commented:

‘The introduction of new players to the policy debate, particularly in terms of their representativeness and legitimacy, was one of the key concerns raised by the interest groups in a recent Australian citizens jury held on Container Deposit Legislation (CDL). There were two key issues here. Firstly, interest groups questioned the capacity of ordinary citizens to comprehend their arguments. Secondly, most of the CDL interest groups saw themselves as the only legitimate stakeholders. According to this viewpoint, citizens with an opinion or interest in the issue can only enter the policy debate via a valid group. Extending public participation to virtual stakeholders such as lay citizens appeared to insult interest groups because it down-played their expertise and their long-term investment in the issue.’

The problem she alludes to was the withdrawal of some stakeholders from making presentations to the citizen’s forum, which necessitated reliance on written material. It is not clear whether this had any impact on the outcome of the deliberation process.

However, I have doubts about the value of the whole exercise because it isn’t clear that participants in the forum were asked the most appropriate question. As pointed out by Access Economics, in its review of the White report, the question of how best can governments increase recycling rates requires a ranking of CDL against other feasible options rather than an a consideration of whether a CDL scheme might be better than the status quo.

If citizen’s juries are asked the wrong questions they might reach unanimity about matters that are not particularly relevant to the policy choices that governments have to make. 

Would a citizen's jury produce a better policy outcome than a focus group?

In an article published on his blog last Sunday Jim Belshaw argued that risk management by governments has come to focus too heavily on political risk avoidance because of concerns that a more balanced approach would be too difficult to sell to the public. As a generalization, I think the point is correct. It is possible to cite a few examples of recent Australian governments taking excessive risks (e.g. the infamous home insulation and school hall construction programs). In my view, however, the Hawke, Keating and Howard governments showed stronger leadership than those that have followed and were less prone to allow focus groups, polling and brainstorming on talk back radio and twitter to set the political agenda.

That is just a personal impression. It is difficult to cite hard evidence. Mike Steketee provided some examples in support of the view that poll-driven policies have become more common in an article in ‘The Australian’last year. In my view the strongest point he made, however, was to quote Rod Cameron, a veteran pollster, who has observed that politicians are now more inclined to accept the prejudice and narrow-minded bigotry coming out of focus groups as a basis for policy, rather than to seek to neutralize such views.

Irrespective of whether Australian governments have become more poll-driven in recent years, the temptation for governments to opt for politically safe options rather than those requiring courageous political leadership exists in all countries in which public opinion counts for anything. In many instances, of course, the politically safer option is much more risky in the longer term. In my view that makes it preferable to have a system of government in which it is clear which political parties are accountable for the decisions that are made or not made by governments, rather than proportional representation, in which responsibility is shared by the centre right and centre left - and the only parties that have clean hands are the extremists at either end of the political spectrum. I have in mind the situation in Greece, of course, but I am straying from the topic I want to write about.

Coming back to the importance of political leadership, I remember a conversation that I had with a wise person about 20 years ago. I made the point that Australia needed more courageous political leadership to pursue economic reforms. I expected the wise person to agree, but his response was that those who want governments to pursue economic reforms need to accept that governments don’t lead, they follow. The point he was making was that it is important to keep in mind that political leaders can never get far ahead of public opinion. The leader who prepares the ground for reform by attempting to raise the level of public discussion of an issue will often be more successful in promoting reform than the one who shows great courage in attempting to forge ahead ignoring ill-informed public opposition.

So, how should those who aspire to leadership seek to raise the level of public discussion of issues? One method that has had some success in Australia is the system of independent policy advice provided by the Productivity Commission and some of its predecessor organizations. The strength of that system - as Gary Banks, the chairman of the Commission, pointed out in a speech last year - has been the independence of the Commission, the process of public scrutiny of underlying research and analysis before the advice is submitted to government, and the educative role of the organization in helping to promote a broader understanding of issues and advocating initiatives to the public and parliament.

However, it has not been possible for the Productivity Commission to be as effective as it should be. In an interview with Alan Mitchell in the Australian Financial Review a couple of months ago (10 March) Bill Carmichael, member of the Tasman Transparency Group and former chairman of the Industries Assistance Commission, suggested that the Rudd and Gillard governments had sidelined the Productivity Commission as an independent advisor on microeconomic reform:

‘They have created a plethora of carefully selected inquiries and institutional arrangements designed to minimize bothersome critical analysis and produce outcomes more to their liking’.

The report of the interview ended with Bill Carmichael suggesting that political leadership is ‘a quality that has been missing from the present debate about economic reform’. An element of leadership is clearly required to move forward on difficult issues, even with the help of sensible public inquiry processes.

So, could citizen’s juries help to compensate for weak political leadership? According to Nick Gruen, in the transcript of an ABCbroadcast in which he spoke about ‘deepening democracy in the internet age’, a citizen’s jury or consensus conference is ‘a small jury-sized randomly selected group’ which ‘deliberates at length’ on policy issues. The body hears evidence from professional experts and advocates, and its conclusions are published.

It seems to me that the potential benefit of such a system would lie mainly in helping to lift the level of public debate on contentious issues, by providing members of the public with a point of view that they might consider more trustworthy than the partisan views of political leaders, or judgements of experts who might seem to be out of touch with the values of ordinary people. Citizen’s juries would certainly not be a substitute for sensible public inquiry processes, but they might help avoid policy development being placed at the mercy of focus groups and political point scoring. Citizen’s juries could perhaps be particularly helpful in development of policies that involve important value judgements e.g. deciding appropriate levels of immigration.

I will write more about citizen’s juries later.

What is the case for government funding of mitigation research?

I ended a recent post by suggesting that serious consideration should be given to Bjorn Lomborg’s view that mitigation of climate change is likely to require a substantial increase in government funding of relevant research.

   

That position is somewhat at odds with a view that I have held for a long time that governments should stay out of the business of trying to pick technological winners by funding research and development. I acknowledge the case for public funding of basic research on grounds that it is a public good that would not be adequately supplied via the normal operation of market forces. If someone suggests, however, that governments should become heavily involved in funding of research into alternative energy because the world is running out of cheap sources of fossil fuels, I would regard that as a fairly silly idea. When the world does start running out of cheap sources of fossil fuels the prices of those resources can be expected to rise, providing a strong market incentive for private sector investment in research into alternative energy sources.

So, what grounds are there to argue that carbon taxes and emissions trading schemes that impose a cost on carbon emissions will not have a similar effect on research incentives? I don’t see any. In both cases, as the production of energy through conventional use of fossil fuels becomes more expensive the market should provide adequate incentives for research.

The case for substantial government involvement in funding of research directed toward mitigation of climate change cannot rest on arguments that apply to equally to many other forms of research, even though some eminent economists may think it does. For example, Ross Garnaut argues (in Chapter 9 of his 2011 climate change report) that ‘the carbon price alone will not lead to adequate investment in research, development and commercialisation of new technologies, because the private investor can capture only part of the benefits’. Similar externalities apply, of course, to a wide range of research, development and commercialization activities throughout the economy. Perhaps the existence of such externalities warrants some government assistance to industry, such as allowing capital spending on research and innovation to be treated for tax purposes as a current rather than capital expenditure.  It might also warrant some government involvement in funding of development rather than just basic research, particularly since it is often difficult to draw a line between R and D. But it would be difficult to justify the large increase in tax – and associated economic costs – which would be required to embark on a major program of government funding of research, development and commercialization of new technologies in all sectors of the economy.

It seems to me that the case for substantial government involvement in funding of research directed toward mitigation of climate change must rest on a form of government failure (the difficulty of obtaining international agreement for concerted action) rather than on market failure (or externalities). If governments were able to agree to an appropriate carbon price the case for additional government funding of research would disappear.

Bjorn Lomborg seems to be on strong grounds in arguing that international agreements to invest in research and development are likely to have a greater chance of success than carbon-reduction negotiations. Wealthy countries are less likely to object to making greater research contributions. Agreements to fund more research may also be seen as likely to make it easier to negotiate future carbon reductions by reducing the cost margin between existing fossil fuel technologies and less polluting technologies.

However, there is potential for gradual mitigation to continue to occur even in the absence of international agreements. Governments of countries with high per capita emissions will continue to come under political pressure – from internal and external sources - to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Perhaps the most likely outcome is that the world will stumble on toward a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, relative to what would otherwise occur. The climate will nevertheless continue to change. This may impose high costs on some people (those faced with high adaptation costs relative to their current income levels) and benefits to some others. But the general story might be one of successful adaptation.

If that is the most likely scenario, it would make sense to view increased government involvement in research to mitigate climate change as a precautionary measure. It is probably worth doing even though it will, hopefully, not be necessary. Imagine a scenario where climate change accelerates and costs of adaptation begin to rise steeply. My guess is that in that situation, international agreement would be reached fairly quickly by the United States, China and Europe to cut emissions of greenhouse gases drastically and take steps to ensure that other countries do likewise. The economic cost of such reductions in emissions will be very high if there is still a substantial cost margin between energy generated using conventional fossil fuel technologies and cleaner technologies.

So, it seems to me that the case for substantial government involvement in funding of research to mitigate climate change is largely precautionary. It is in our interests to reduce the risk that will be posed to our standard of living if we have to make sharp reductions in greenhouse gas emissions at some later stage.

Can cyberbullying lead to mental health problems?

This is a guest post by Emily Isenberger.  Emily is associated with a website which provides resources for people interested in counselling, with a particular focus on how bullying and mental illness have been exacerbated by the Internet.

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can leave lasting scars. Once a fact of childhood, playground bullying has taken to the internet and social media networks. For a new generation, the advent of cyberbullying means that home, once a safe haven from a school environment, is just as dangerous, if not more so. Because cyberbullying can reach larger groups, be performed anonymously, and comments can last forever, those bullied have no escape hatch and school administrators have little power to punish perpetrators. This can lead to serious mental health consequences. 

Across the board, victims of cyberbullying demonstrate higher rates of depression, anxiety disorders, and withdrawal from school and other activities than their peers. Studies have shown that people who are bullied develop abnormalities in brain maturation. Specifically the corpus callosum, which binds the hemispheres of the brain together, lacks myelin when under stress, and therefore lessens the ability of the individual to deal with vision and memory. In other words, short-term bullying can have long-term effects on brain development.

Girls who are bullied produce less cortisol than girls who were not bullied; boys who are bullied produce more cortisol than boys who were not bullied. Because cortisol is the hormone secreted to help deal with stress, girls have a tendency towards shutting down completely, without the tools to process further stress. On the opposite hand, the fight or flight mechanism in boys triggers the former response, and boys have a tendency towards lashing out against their aggressors. Cortisol changes like this also depress the immune system, meaning that bullied students are likely to get sick more often than their classmates. 

Bullying affects more than just the victim. Families and other bystanders have higher incidence of depression, absence, and substance abuse addiction. Even the aggressors have a greater likelihood of domestic abuse, criminal violation, and alcoholism down the line. 

Cyberbullying can affect people of any age, race, or class, but if you want to study and research cyberbullying, Australian teenagers may unfortunately be the ideal subjects. Australian teenagers took the number one spot in Ipsos testing across 24 countries, and the results are in, just short of 90% of families in Australia have been affected by bullying. 

To prevent or overcome bullying, take the opportunity to talk to your children about their internet usage. If they’re feeling threatened by someone over the web, they do not have to sit quietly. Go over their options for privacy settings and talk about how to handle negative interactions with people over the internet. Currently, only one in three families use Internet-filtering software, and 40% restrict Internet usage to common areas. By putting blocks in place and monitoring how long your child can be on the web, you reduce not only his or her chance at being bullied, you reduce the chance that he or she will be the bully. 

Let your children know that you’re there to talk if they need you, but don’t push for more information than they’re willing to give. Above all, stay aware of changes in your child’s behavior. For more resources on counteracting cyberbullying, you may turn to the Jed Foundation’s website, which focuses on preventing suicide in bullied college students, but has information applicable to all age groups. 

Does it make sense to view human progress as a risk to the environment?

I don’t think so, for two reasons. First, human progress is about ‘leaving the world a better place’. That sounds a bit like motherhood, but motherhood statements are probably appropriate on Mother’s day. I particularly like the context in which Ralph Waldo Emerson used the phrase:

‘To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children...to leave the world a better place...to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.’ [It would have been more accurate to attribute the phrase to Bessie A Stanley. Please see  Postscript 2 below for further explanation.]

Second, the environment adapts to whatever we do to it. I like the way Mark Dangerfield makes that point in his little book, ‘Environmental Issues for Real’ (2012):

‘Our debate has been about how the environment is hurting, that we are to blame and only we can do something about it. Only the environment does not hurt, it just responds. Evolution has come about in spite of all the disturbances, atmospheric upheavals and changing climate. And evolution will be ongoing with or without us and the environment will always be there doing its thing’.

Mark makes the point that real environmental issues are about us. They are about ‘how we will cope with the notion that perhaps we are reaching the limit’. Environmental change will obviously be a problem for us if it means that our lifestyles are compromised. As I see it, values are also involved. I think most humans think that it is good to share the planet with a diverse range of other species. We see the lives of most other species as having value.

The idea that environmental issues are about us is consistent with the view that about 8000 years ago Earth entered into the Anthropocene – the new age of humans. This corresponds to the period in which humans have affected the environment through the development of agriculture and animal husbandry, urban centres and industrial activities. The Anthropocene coincides largely with the Holocene (the last 12,000 years).

Some people argue that we should be aiming to bring environmental conditions on Earth back to where they were at the beginning of the Holocene - on the grounds that the further the Earth’s systems get from those conditions the more likely we are to reach some kind of tipping point. The most common nightmare scenario is runaway global warming, ending up with and crocodiles in Greenland (if not a climate like that on Venus).

Few argue that such outcomes are likely any time soon, but they may not be beyond the bounds of possibility. The following view, in The Economist in May last year, seems to me to have merit:

‘In general, the goal of staying at or returning close to Holocene conditions seems judicious. It remains to be seen if it is practical. The Holocene never supported a civilisation of 10 billion reasonably rich people, as the Anthropocene must seek to do, and there is no proof that such a population can fit into a planetary pot so circumscribed. So it may be that a “good Anthropocene”, stable and productive for humans and other species they rely on, is one in which some aspects of the Earth system’s behaviour are lastingly changed’.

So, how much would we have to modify our view of human progress in order to ensure that we continue to have a good Anthropocene? Is a good Anthropocene consistent with ongoing expansion of economic opportunities? The Environmental Performance Index (EPI) - the result of a major collaborative project of research agencies associated with Yale and Colombia universities – does not seem to me to provide much support for rejection of the view that human progress can involve ongoing expansion of economic opportunities. In general, high income countries – those which have had most economic growth in the past – have higher EPI scores than low-income countries. Over the past decade, there have been substantial improvements in average scores (population weighted) for Environmental health objectives (i.e. environmental factors affecting human health) and even some improvement for Ecosystem vitality.  Most countries with poor performance on environmental health have improved substantially over the last decade. The performance in relation to ecosystem vitality has been mixed. There has been further decline among the worst performers, but some other relatively poor performers (e.g. USA and Singapore) have improved.

We need to take account of the possibility that the future may differ substantially from the recent past. Some physical resources will probably become scarcer. This is unlikely to stop economic growth, however, because the real story of economic growth is largely about productivity growth and technological progress rather than electricity generation and steel production.

What about the precautionary principle? I am usually in favour of taking precautions, but the use some people make of the precautionary principle is highly questionable. Jeff Bennett has discussed the issues in his recently published book, ‘Little Green Lies’.  He agrees with the general proposition that we should be careful in making decisions where future outcomes of those decisions are uncertain and potentially catastrophic.  He points out, however, that the way the precautionary principle is advocated often ignores the costs associated with protecting the environment and risks hobbling society in its request for improvement.

The most quoted statement of the precautionary principle is in the 1992 Rio Declaration. If I have correctly found my way through the double negatives in that definition, it is suggesting that ‘cost effective action’ to reduce greenhouse gas emissions should not be postponed just because we don’t have ‘full scientific certainty’ that greenhouse gas emissions are likely to cause ‘serious or irreversible damage’ to the environment.  

As a general proposition that seems to me to have some merit, but it raises the question of what actions are cost effective. The only kinds of policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that can possibly be cost effective for a small country acting alone are ‘no regret’ policies. In that context, I have previously argued that a carbon tax would have merit if the revenue was used to get rid of less efficient taxes. Unfortunately, those conditions don’t apply to the carbon tax currently being introduced in Australia.

Jeff Bennett applies the precautionary principle to climate change as follows:

‘Climate change poses a risk to society. That risk may or may not be due to human action, but it is a risk nonetheless. When confronted with the risk of a catastrophic outcome in the future, it is always worth contemplating taking out an insurance policy. In the climate context that can involve the adoption of adaptation policies. Essentially, those policies involve taking actions now that will protect society’s interests in the event of climate change causing a threat’.

Adaptation policies seem to be sensible for any single country acting alone. The problem is that adaptation would be massively expensive under the nightmare scenarios. In that context the issue arises of what international strategies have best prospects of success in actually addressing climate change. It seems to me that Bjorn Lomborg is correct in arguing that international agreements to invest in research and development are likely to have a greater chance of success than carbon-reduction negotiations.  Lomborg writes:

‘If we continue implementing policies to reduce emissions in the short term without any focus on developing the technology to achieve this, there is only one possible outcome: virtually no climate impact, but a significant dent in global economic growth, with more people in poverty, and the planet in a worse place than it could be’.

A lot of people seem to get upset whenever Lomborg’s name is mentioned. The question we need to address, however, is whether his diagnosis of the issues is right or wrong. If Lomborg is wrong, why is he wrong?

Postscript 1: 
The discussion of these issues is continued in a later post on the case for government funding of mitigation research.
Postscript 2:
Ooops! The quoted passage that I attributed to Emerson is actually not by Emerson. The original was apparently written by Bessie A Stanley. She wrote: 'He has achieved success ... who has left the world better than he found it ...'.The story is here. I am indebted to Howard DeLong for pointing out the error.