How can we choose between alternative futures?

I ended my last post (here) wondering how I would feel after I had finished reading Daniel Gilbert’s book, “Stumbling on happiness”. In particular, I wondered how I would feel if the author managed to persuade me that I was wrong in believing that individual humans have the capacity to look forward in order to choose the best future for themselves.

I need not have been concerned. This is a lively and interesting book, but it seems to me that Gilbert has not succeeded in demonstrating that we are unable to shop around among the different fates that might befall us. Perhaps he mis-stated his intention in the first chapter. His book certainly demonstrates that we experience illusions of foresight – more illusions than I had imagined we experience. It concludes, however, with a recommendation about how we can make more accurate predictions about our emotional futures. The author suggests that we can do this by observing how happy other people are in different circumstances rather than by trying to imagine how happy we would be in those circumstances in the future.

Gilbert acknowledges that because everyone is unique the emotional experience of others is an imperfect guide to how we might feel. He suggests, however, that we tend to make greater errors when we reject the lessens that the emotional experience of others has to teach us and rely exclusively on our attempts to imagine how we might feel in those circumstances.

It seems to me that by the end of his book Daniel Gilbert is acknowledging that humans do have the capacity to look forward in order to choose a better future for themselves and can improve their use of this capacity. In effect, this view is consistent with, economist, Gary Becker’s view (“Accounting for Tastes”, 1996, p11) that the capacity that people have to anticipate future utilities can be improved by developing “imagination capital”.

Ironically, Daniel Gilbert implies that if individuals were more effective in pursuing their own happiness this could have adverse consequences. The example he gives is having children. There is a common belief that children bring happiness, even though people who are married without children report being happier, on average, than those with children living at home. Gilbert suggests that “the belief that children are a source of happiness becomes part of our cultural wisdom simply because the opposite belief unravels the fabric of any society that holds it” (p244). He notes that the opposite belief would actually be self-terminating because people acting upon it would fail to reproduce.

It seems to me that this apparent conflict between pursuit of happiness and human flourishing stems from either too narrow a definition of happiness or failure to recognise that people pursue some objectives that are not encompassed by a narrow definition of happiness. Gilbert wants to reserve ‘happiness’ to refer to “that class of subjective emotional experiences that are vaguely described as enjoyable or pleasurable” (p 41). This corresponds to what Daniel Nettle describes as Level 1 happiness (“Happiness”, 2005). He suggests that when people say they are happy with their lives they are reporting Level 2 happiness: “They mean that upon reflection on the balance sheet of pleasures and pains, they feel the balance to be reasonably positive over the long term” (p17). Level 3 happiness involves “making judgements about what the good life consists of and the extent to which one’s life fulfils it” (p23). Thus the belief that “children are a source of happiness” may be linked to individuals’ conscious perceptions of the “good life” rather than just “part of our cultural wisdom”.

Is Daniel Gilbert’s book relevant to anyone who wants to pursue the “good life’ rather than Gilbert’s narrower perception of happiness? Yes. It seems to me that anyone seeking to choose between alternative futures could benefit from greater knowledge of the illusions of foresight discussed in this book.

Should career choices be taken out of our hands?

This question was raised in my mind by the first chapter of Daniel Gilbert’s book, “Stumbling on Happiness”(2007). The question that the author actually considers is: Why do humans make predictions about the future? He gives two answers:

• First, people make predictions about the future because “our brains want to control the experiences we are about to have”. People “find it gratifying” to exercise control.
• Second, “we are the apes that learned to look forward because doing so enables us to shop around among the many fates that might befall us and select the best one”.

The author managed to catch me by surprise by asserting that the first answer is right and the second answer is wrong. He then informed me that he intended to spend the rest of the book trying to convince me that the second answer is wrong.

This set me wondering whether there would be important implications for the relationship between freedom and human flourishing if we were not able to choose rationally between alternative futures.

Imagine a young person making a career choice. Perhaps she is weighing up whether to become a politician or courtesan. In thinking about which option would contribute most to her future happiness she would presumably consider such things as potential pecuniary benefits, the kind of people she would be working with, the respect she would have of herself, attitudes of family and friends and potential risks associated with the alternatives. Based on these considerations she might decide that there is not much to choose between these alternatives. (Just joking!)

Why would I object if this person’s career choice was taken out of her own hands and placed in the hands of a government-appointed expert who would assess her aptitude for a range of occupations and choose the one that would give her the best chance of having a happy life? I have four reasons:

1. My inner economist tells me that this person is probably in a better position to make such choices than any expert because she has better knowledge about herself and hence about how happy she would be likely to feel in different occupations.
2. She has a right to make these decisions herself. Even if she is thought likely to make the wrong choice, her right to choose should be respected.
3. Interference with her right to choose her occupation may have a net adverse effect on her happiness over a life-time, even if the expert is in a position to make a more-informed choice about her future happiness.
4. There is evidence that happiness is associated with the exercise of competence in the face of challenge. Competence comes from accepting responsibility for decisions and learning from mistakes.
   
   I concluded that I would be surprised but not devastated if Gilbert managed to persuade me that I was wrong in believing that individual humans have the capacity to look forward in order to choose the best future for themselves. I suggested that my inner economist might feel a little bruised, but I would remain a strong advocate of liberty.
   
   I suggested, however, that Daniel Gilbert would probably claim that my imaginings about how I might feel after I had finished reading his book were not likely to be reliable predictions of how I would actually feel. See my next post for the sequel.
   

Was Lao-tzu a libertarian?

Lao-tzu was a Chinese philosopher who lived in the early sixth century BC and served as a resident scholar at the royal court of the Shou. Taoism, the religion based on his teachings, spread over much of Asia.

Lao-tzu wrote:
“If I keep from meddling with people, they take care of themselves,
If I keep from commanding people, they behave themselves,
If I keep from preaching at people, they improve themselves,
If I keep from imposing on people, they become themselves.”

When I first read that last year I was surprised that such a liberal viewpoint had once been influential in China.

So I went looking for more of the writings of Lao-tzu and found the following:

If you want to be a great leader,
you must learn to follow the Tao.
Stop trying to control.
Let go of fixed plans and concepts,
and the world will govern itself.

The more prohibitions you have,
the less virtuous people will be.
The more weapons you have,
the less secure people will be.
The more subsidies you have,
the less self-reliant people will be.

Therefore the Master says:
I let go of the law,and people become honest.
I let go of economics,and people become prosperous.
I let go of religion,and people become serene.
I let go of all desire for the common good,
and the good becomes common as grass (Toa Te Ching, 57 (here).

When I looked further I found that some high ranking Chinese officials have recently called for the wisdom of ancient Taoism to be adopted to help build a harmonious society in China (here).

It seems to me that western political leaders could also learn a great deal from Lao-tzu.

Do we now have a new Australian settlement?

In his book, “The end of certainty”, published in 1994, Paul Kelly argued that the 1980s saw the collapse of an Australian political tradition that had been embraced nearly a century before. This tradition, which he termed the 'Australian settlement', was based on the white Australia policy, trade protectionism, the arbitration system (national wage regulation), government paternalism (extensive government intervention aimed to promote individual well-being) and the belief that Australian prosperity was underwritten by the British Empire.

Kelly suggests that the Australian settlement (also sometimes known as Fortress Australia) was bipartisan – an alliance between the conservative establishment and working class power (p 13).

It seems to me that the Australian settlement had begun to crumble by the late 1960s. By that time many people felt that racial discrimination in immigration was an embarrassment. By then the case for some reductions in protection was being seriously considered within government, even though few people were brave enough to advocate free trade. Faith in Empire had crumbled during the Second World War and had largely been replaced by the American alliance – which (as today) was coming under criticism as a result of poor leadership in Washington.

I think Kelly is correct, however, in pin-pointing the 1980s as the decade in which the greatest part of the Australian settlement collapsed, even though centralised wage fixation was still strong during that decade. Arguably, government paternalism is as strong as ever, even now.

Kelly ended his book by suggesting that the challenge for Australian leadership was “to create a synthesis between the free market rationalism needed for a stronger economy and the social democracy which inspired the original Australian Settlement ideals of justice and egalitarianism”(p 686).

More recently Paul Kelly has announced the arrival of a “new Australian settlement engineered by political leaders during the past generation and a half”. He suggests that “Australia's post-1983 progress is a direct function of national leadership. Hawke, Keating and Howard, despite their differences, are best understood in an historical continuum finding similar solutions to the same problems”. He notes that the policies of the major parties have converged. For example, economic policy has become more pro-market, foreign policy has converged on a strategic outlook of simultaneously deepening ties with East Asia and the US, and immigration policies have converged on acceptance of increased immigration accompanied by a deeper commitment to Australian citizenship (see here).

In a Financial Review article entitled ‘Merging into nothing’, a few weeks later (9 November) Mark Latham, former leader of the Australian Labor Party, took this argument about policy convergence somewhat further. He suggested that the policies that the major parties had put forward in the election campaign then being conducted were virtually indistinguishable. It seems to me that he was not suggesting that the situation could be otherwise – it was the result of an “economic revolution” that had “transformed the nature of politics”.

Latham argues that “the market-based reforms of the Hawke / Keating / Howard governments transformed Australia into an intensely materialistic society. For the first time, working class people were given easy access to finance and capital. They used these economic opportunities to climb the social ladder, leaving behind their working-class suburbs and values”.

I disagree with Latham on the question of whether society has become more materialistic. It seems to me that despite all the talk about the “fair go” ethos the Australian Settlement embodied a mean-spirited form of tribal materialism. The prevailing ethos was that in this country we look after our mates. The “fair go” ethos did not even extend as far the nation’s first inhabitants.

Latham does seem to be right, however, in suggesting that more people have adopted middle-class values over the last couple of decades. He states: “The chief middle-class demand on the political system is ... for more money. It wants governments to get out of the way: cutting taxes, cutting outlays to undeserving welfare recipients and freeing up more resources for the growth of private sector lifestyles”.

It seems to me that the policy convergence on middle class concerns, as identified by Mark Latham, provides the foundation for the new Australian settlement. Whereas the old Australian settlement left room for political battle over income distribution, this has now just about evaporated.

One of the few areas in which major policy divergence could open up within the framework of the new Australian settlement lies in the contradiction, noted by Latham, between middle class demands for lower taxes and for middle class welfare to be retained or increased. Hopefully, before too long, one of the major parties will begin to offer the electorate the choice of reducing middle class welfare in exchange for lower taxes.