Is it a fantasy that a happy life is all about pleasant experiences?

It seems to me that the view that a happy life is just about pleasant experiences is a fantasy. I’m not saying that it is not desirable to have a life full of pleasant experiences, just that a happy life involves more than that.

In his famous thought experiment, Robert Nozick asked readers to imagine an experience machine that would give them any experience they desired. They would be able to select experiences from a large library and the machine would be pre-programmed to give them those experiences while they spent the rest of their lives floating in a tank (‘Anarchy, State and Utopia’, 1971, pp 42-44).

Would you choose to spend the rest of your life hooked up to such a machine?

Nozick suggests that we learn that something matters to us other than experiences by imagining the experience machine and then realizing that we would not use it. He suggests three reasons why you probably wouldn’t use it. You want to do things, not just have the experience of doing them. You would not want to be a person floating in a tank – that is not consistent with how you see yourself. And the machine would limit you to man-made reality – ‘to a world no deeper or more important than that which people can construct’.

It might be reasonable to argue that people plugged into the experience machine would be happy – in the sense that their overall emotional condition would be positive. They might have peace of mind, confidence, inner freedom, and feelings of vitality, flow, joy and cheerfulness (to use terms in Dan Haybron’s definition of happiness, discussed on this blog some time ago). I see some merit in that definition of happiness, but it isn’t the definition of happiness that I have in mind when I assert that it is a fantasy that a happy life is all about experiences.

What I have in mind when I refer to a ‘happy life’ is ‘human flourishing’. I don’t have a huge problem with the idea that positive feelings are all about experiences. (Perhaps it might be better to talk in terms of perceptions of experiences - the meaning we attach to experiences must also come into the equation.) But I don’t see how anyone could argue that human flourishing is all about experiences. It seems obvious that a person who spent a life-time hooked up to an experience machine would not be flourishing.

What about motivation? Are those who define happiness as a positive emotional condition able to claim that happiness is the only motivator of human behaviour? One person who seems close to holding that position is the psychologist, Dan Gilbert. He certainly adopts the definition of happiness as a positive feeling and almost claims that it is the only motivator:

‘Everyone who has observed human behaviour for more than thirty continuous seconds seems to have noticed that people are strongly, perhaps even primarily, perhaps even single-mindedly, motivated to feel happy’ (‘Stumbling on Happiness’, 2006, p 36).

As an economist, I don’t have any difficulty in accepting that just about all human action is motivated by desires of some kind. But if people are strongly motivated by a desire to experience positive feelings, would they not view a life hooked up to the hypothetical experience machine - where positive feelings can be guaranteed - as desirable? Martin Seligman, the founder of positive psychology, says that most of the people to whom he has offered the hypothetical choice refuse it. His explanation: 

‘It is not just positive feelings we want, we want to be entitled to our positive feelings’ (‘Authentic Happiness’, 2002, p 8).

The main power of the experience machine metaphor seems to come from the life-time commitment involved. The nature of humans is such that few of us would view a life-time of virtual reality as a meaningful life.

However, it seems to me that the thought experiment can also help to clarify some issues if we relax the condition of life-time connection. The practical question can be raised of how much time we might be prepared to spend hooked up to a virtual reality machine as a form of entertainment. As virtual experiences become less easy to distinguish from real experiences, people may be tempted to spend more time enjoying virtual reality at the expense of other forms of entertainment, or even work. While many of us would see an hour or two of virtual reality now and then as harmless escapism, we would probably want to draw a line somewhere to ensure that we live meaningful lives. The issues involved are similar to those many of us have had to deal with in learning how to switch off the TV.

My point is that when we make such choices we take into account factors other than the positive feelings generated by different experiences. It is natural for us to think also about the objectives we have for our lives – the kinds of persons we want to become - and the extent to which different experiences might contribute to those goals.

Some people could suggest that it doesn’t make much difference in practice whether or not people believe the fantasy that a happy life is all about pleasant experiences. I think it might matter a great deal. For example, people who believe that fantasy might give less thought to what they could do to make their own lives meaningful. They might also be more inclined to neglect to help their children to develop the skills in self-direction that they need to have happy lives. 

Does actualization of potential take us beyond self-direction?

The main point I am making in the second chapter of the book I am writing is that the purpose of our lives is to flourish – to actualize our potential as individual humans - and that what flourishing means is ultimately a matter for each of us to discover for ourselves. As I see it, the reason we have to discover it for ourselves is that flourishing involves, among other things, developing skills in self-direction.

A correspondent has suggested to me that this formulation is excessively focused on individuals and does not recognize that individuals cannot flourish unless they see themselves as part of a community and are able to live harmoniously within it. My correspondent suggested that individual flourishing means transcending self-direction. She referred to Martin Seligman’s idea that living a meaningful life involves ‘belonging to and serving something bigger than the self’ (‘Flourish’, p 17). She also mentioned Jonathan Haidt’s view that we (human beings) are ‘conditional hive creatures’ with ‘the ability (under special circumstances) to transcend self-interest and lose ourselves (temporarily and ecstatically) in something larger than ourselves’ (‘The Righteous Mind’, p 244).

As it happens, I am a Seligman fan. I particularly like the final paragraph of ‘Authentic Happiness’:  

‘The good life consists of deriving happiness by using your signature strengths every day in the main realms of living. The meaningful life adds one more component, using these same strengths to forward knowledge, power, or goodness’ (p.260).

In the preceding paragraph, Seligman argues strongly that we get to choose the kinds of lives we live. His views are clearly consistent with self-direction. We might choose to serve goodness, for example, but we have to work out what this might mean in practical terms before we can do it.

I am also a Haidt fan. I accept that humans have evolved with a tendency to be groupish. As Haidt puts it:  

‘Hiving comes naturally, easily and joyfully to us. Its normal function is to bond dozens or at most hundreds of people together into communities of trust, cooperation, and even love’ (p 242).

I agree with Haidt that ‘a nation that is full of hives is a nation of happy and satisfied people’ and not a ‘promising target for takeover by a demagogue’. He is endorsing civil society. 

Jon Haidt's metaphor of the rider and the elephant, discussed in Chapter 3 of my book, suggest humans have some capacity for self-direction. Nevertheless, groupishness does appear to be somewhat in conflict with self-direction. If we obtain happiness and satisfaction from groups, does that not mean that we are surrendering autonomy?

At this point economics comes to the rescue – in the form of ‘identity economics’ - to provide a framework to consider whether groupishness trumps self-direction. The key idea of 'Identity Economics' - a book by George Akerlof and Rachel Kranton - is that people gain satisfaction when their actions conform to the norms and ideals of their identity, which is determined to a large extent by the groups to which they belong. (I have written about identity economics previously on this blog - here, for example.)

In the final chapter of their book Akerlof and Kranton have a brief discussion of choice of identity. The discussion covers the role of identity considerations in choices made by women to pursue careers, choices made by parents of whether to send children to private schools, and the choices of immigrants to integrate into their new countries.

It seems to me that the extent to which we are able to realize our potential depends to a large extent on the choices we make about the groups we belong to – choice of friends, further education, work, social groups, religious groups and so forth. We can choose to lose ourselves, waste ourselves, find ourselves, or whatever, in a range of different ways by bonding to different groups. The groups we join help determine our identities and our identities influence our future choices.

One of the wonderful things about modern society is that it provides ordinary people with a wide range of choice of groups to join, or not join, as they choose. We get to use our powers of self-direction to choose our identities by deciding which groups to join, or leave. I accept that actualization of potential requires us to transcend self-interest (as the term is normally understood) but, it seems to me, that it also requires ongoing development of skills in self-direction.

Could a powerful interest group form around the ideals of social cooperation?

Social cooperation is the means by which each of us can pursue our own ends to the greatest extent possible by engaging voluntarily in mutually beneficial activities with others. It requires respect for the rights of other people. (For a more complete explanation, see: Henry Hazlitt, ‘The Foundations of Morality’.)

 

One way to open up the question of whether a powerful interest group could form around the ideals of social cooperation is to think about the way people consider public policy issues in democracies. Different people are clearly motivated by a wide range of different considerations when they engage in discussion of public policy issues. Their motives are often not widely shared in the broader community. For example people are often motivated by self-interest (impacts on income, wealth, educational opportunities for children, availability of health services etc.) or by other special interests (religious beliefs, environmental concerns, helping the needy, prevention of animal cruelty, gay rights etc.). When their motives are not widely shared, individuals have an incentive to downplay them and to use arguments that might be persuasive to the public at large when presenting their views in public debate. For example, a person who wanted to argue for more help to the needy might put the argument that this is a desirable form of social insurance for everyone – that for the most part those in need are like everyone else except for the misfortunes in their lives.

Even though people come to the public discussion of issues with a wide range of different personal interests, the discussion tends to centre on social consequences i.e. the question of whether policy options are consistent with the kind of society they want to live in. The issue of social cooperation is viewed by all participants as being of fundamental importance – options are taken off the table if they are not consistent with respect for the rights of all citizens. There are differences of view about the weight that should be placed on different objectives, such as making opportunities more equal or providing greater economic security, but there is widespread acknowledgement of the validity of such objectives. Discussions about the appropriate means that should be used to pursue objectives are informed by expert advice. As a result of the public debate, opinion tends to coalesce around particular options and governments proceed to implement those options.

Yeah, right! You have probably realized that in the preceding paragraph I outlined how I think the political system should work, rather than how it actually works. For example, I have disregarded the obvious point that a large part of the contributions of interest groups to public discussion are aimed at marshalling the people they purport to represent in order to signal to political parties that their votes are at stake. The leaders of some interest groups might even see advantages in promoting a divisive debate to get the people they represent to identify more strongly with that group and less strongly with the interests of the broader community.

In casting their votes, citizens are often faced with a choice between identifying with a particular interest group or voting on the basis of broader considerations about policies that are most likely to promote the common good. If they are cynical about the democratic process and have come to view it as a power struggle between interest groups they are more likely to identify with a particular interest group. If an increasing proportion of citizens think that way and engage in the competitive struggle to obtain benefits at the expense of others, the benefits of social cooperation will tend to be increasingly overlooked, to the detriment of the wider community.

In order to consider whether a powerful interest group could form around the ideals of social cooperation we should look first at Mancur Olson’s theory of collective action. Olson suggests that the relative power of different interest groups can be explained in terms of their access to selective incentives. Selective incentives enable interest groups to provide rewards or punishments in order to encourage individuals to contribute to their collective efforts. For example, they may be in a position to provide services to members including opportunities for social interaction, or to threaten punishments such as ostracism or even violence (in some trade unions, for example). Encompassing groups, such as consumers and taxpayers, do not have as much access to selective incentives and hence tend to be less powerful than narrow interest groups.  (See: Mancur Olson, ‘The Rise and Decline of Nations’, 1982, chapter 2.)

Jonathan Haidt’s moral foundations theory (explained in ‘The Righteous Mind: Why good people are divided by politics and religion’, 2012) sheds further light on the relative power of different interest groups. As explained in an earlier post, the 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. Political parties and interest groups that are seeking your support strive to make their concerns trigger at least one of your moral foundations so that you will see yourself as belonging to their tribe.

Haidt identifies six moral foundations: care/harm; fairness/cheating; loyalty/betrayal; authority/subversion; liberty/oppression; and sanctity/degradation.  It seems to me that all of these foundations are often used by narrow interest groups in ways that are detrimental to social cooperation. The groups can appeal to your instincts to care for other people in your industry, occupation, community, religion etc., to seek retribution if you feel that you have been cheated, to maintain loyalty to the group, to respect group leaders, to overcome the oppression that the group is suffering as a result of ‘a corrupt system’, and to feel disgust at the ‘degrading’ behaviour of those who oppose the group’s interests.

However, if an interest group is able to trigger moral foundations, this suggests that it could be powerful even if it doesn’t have strong selective incentives available to it.

So, does moral foundations theory suggest that it might be possible for powerful interest groups to form around the concept of social cooperation? Social cooperation seems to me to involve all six moral foundations. The ideal of non-coercion - living in peace on the basis of respect for the rights of others - is clearly related to the care/harm module. The ideal of voluntary cooperation for mutual benefit involves reciprocity and trust, and is closely related to the fairness/cheating module. When people in western societies engage in acts that conflict with the ideals of social cooperation they are betraying the heritage that enables them to live in peace, with widespread opportunity and a degree of economic security beyond the dreams of their ancestors. The ideals of social cooperation are consistent with recognition of the authority of the leaders of organizations that individuals are free to join or leave. Social cooperation is all about liberty. In respecting the rights of others we can take comfort from knowing that we are respecting the sanctity of the golden rule to treat others as we would like to be treated ourselves.

   

In addition, the ideals of social cooperation seem to me to be supported by what Steven Pinker refers to (in ‘The Better Angels of Our Nature’, 2011) as ‘the escalator of reason’. He argues that the escalator of reason has provided a basis for taking intuitive moral foundations to a higher level as education levels have risen and skills in abstract reasoning have improved. As previously discussed on this blog, the escalator of reason involves ascending to the vantage point of an impartial spectator (i.e. detaching oneself from a parochial viewpoint). Pinker argues that a value system in which human flourishing is the ultimate good can be mutually agreed upon by any community of thinkers who value their own interests and are engaged in reasoned negotiation.

Despite all the above, some might argue that a powerful interest group could not form around the ideals of social cooperation because, like motherhood, it is commonly viewed as so obviously desirable that there does not seem to be any need to campaign for it. If we look back in history, however, we owe the benefits of social cooperation we now tend to take for granted to the activities of interest groups a few centuries ago (see this post for elaboration). When the basis for social cooperation is seen to be coming under threat, strong countervailing interest groups could be expected to form in order to defend it. 

Postscript: 
For elaboration of these views, please see my book Free to Flourish.

What did Milton Friedman have to say about human flourishing?

Who cares? I care for several reasons. Milton Friedman stands out as one of a small number of intellectuals who had a favourable influence on public policy in the 20^th century. Today – July 31, 2012 - is the 100^th anniversary of his birth.  This blog is about freedom and flourishing. And I am wondering how the (provisional) title of the book I am writing, ‘Free to Flourish’, might be perceived. It is a fairly obvious title given the content of the book, but I hope it might be viewed as an appropriate tribute to Milton Friedman, who with his wife, Rose, wrote a better book, entitled ‘Free to Choose’, which was first published in 1979.

I have not been able to find instances where Milton Friedman referred to human flourishing directly in his published works. His references to happiness seem to be mainly in the context of recognition that people have a right to pursue it as they see fit. He argued that the freedom of the individual should be seen as the ultimate goal in judging social arrangements and that a free society releases the energies and abilities of people to pursue their own objectives.It is reasonably clear that he thought the vast majority of people would be successful in pursuing their own objectives but he does not seem to have made specific claims to that effect. I expect he would probably have endorsed the sentiment of Friedrich Hayek that 'it may even be that liberty exercises its beneficial effects as much through the discipline it imposes on us as through the more visible opportunities it offers' (Constitution of Liberty, 1960:18). 

Friedman was certainly careful not to claim freedom as ‘an all-embracing ethic’:

‘Indeed, a major aim of the liberal is to leave the ethical problem for the individual to wrestle with. The “really” important ethical problems are those that face an individual in a free society – what he should do with his freedom’ (‘Capitalism and Freedom’, 1962: 12).

For the benefit of readers who have come to view the liberal label as signifying support for ever-greater government regulation, I should point out that Friedman was using the word liberalism ‘in its original sense – as the doctrines pertaining to a free man’.

Friedman was also mindful of the need to acknowledge a limited case for government action on paternalistic grounds. He wrote:

‘Freedom is a tenable objective only for responsible individuals. We do not believe in freedom for madmen or children’. He pondered the point deeply:

‘The paternalistic ground for government activity is in many ways the most troublesome to a liberal; for it involves the acceptance of a principle – that some shall decide for others – which he finds objectionable in most applications and which he rightly regards as a hallmark of his chief intellectual opponents, the proponents of collectivism in one or another of its guises, whether it be communism, socialism, or a welfare state. Yet there is no use pretending that problems are simpler than in fact they are. There is no avoiding the need for some measure of paternalism’ (‘Capitalism and Freedom’, p 33-4).

However, Friedman would have been alarmed by the modern tendency for all citizens to be treated like children - with the potential for a war on obesity (beginning perhaps with an assault on marketing of soft drinks) to be added to the war on drugs. He argued:

‘Insofar as the government has information not generally available about the merits or demerits of the items we ingest or the activities we engage in, let it give us the information. But let it leave us free to choose what chances we want to take with our own lives’ (‘Free to Choose’, p 227).

Friedman was particularly concerned about the adverse social effects of paternalistic welfare programs:

‘Their major evil is their effect on the fabric of society. They weaken the family; reduce the incentive to work, save and innovate; reduce the accumulation of capital; and limit our freedom’ (‘Free to Choose’, p 127).

It seems to me that one of the most important contributions that Friedman made was his support for efforts to measure economic freedom. In a discussion published in the preface to the 2002 ‘Economic Freedom of the World Report’, Friedman stressed the importance of measurement of economic freedom to development of a better understanding of the concept:

‘There's a phrase written on the entrance to one of the social sciences buildings at the University of Chicago: "When you cannot measure something, your knowledge is meager and unsatisfying." In the process of measuring, you find that measuring is a form of definition. It isn't just that there's economic freedom out there to be measured. In the process of measuring it, we're going to define what economic freedom is. We don't really know what we have, what economic freedom is, unless we've gotten to the point of trying to measure it and see what variables it consists of, and what each of those means. Over the course of time, we have gotten a much more sophisticated understanding of what we mean when we talk about economic freedom.’

In the same discussion he made a plea for economic freedom to be seen in the context of freedom more generally:

‘In looking to the future, I believe one has to be careful not to over-emphasize the role of economic freedom as a source of economic growth, as compared with the role of economic freedom as a part of freedom, of human freedom.

We've talked about economic and political freedom as if they were wholly separate things, which they are not. I think the next big task facing the economic freedom project will be to try to weld the two together and make a combined index of economic and political freedom, especially where they mesh with one another. Property rights are not only a source of economic freedom. They are also a source of political freedom. That's what really got us interested in economic freedom in the first place. Some of the elements in the Freedom House index seem to me to be inconsistent with some of the elements in our index, and it would seem to be useful to see how to reconcile those two and put them on the same philosophical basis.’

One of the features of Friedman’s writings is the importance he placed on political freedoms. His argument for economic freedom was based, in part, on the view that it is ‘an indispensable means toward the achievement of political freedom’. He saw political freedom – the absence of coercion of a man by his fellow men – as requiring the elimination of concentration of power to the greatest extent possible. He argued that competitive capitalism promotes political freedom because it disperses power – it separates economic power from political power and in this way enables the one to offset the other.

Friedman deserves the praise he has received for his academic accomplishments in economics, but he also deserves praise for his efforts to persuade his fellow citizens of his views about freedom. He knew that he had an important message to convey and he did his best to spread it as far as possible. In the final paragraph of ‘Capitalism and Freedom’ he wrote:

‘I believe we shall be able to preserve and extend freedom … . But we shall be able to do so only if we awake to the threat we face, only if we persuade our fellow men that free institutions offer a surer, if perhaps at times a slower, route to the ends they seek than the coercive power of the state.’

Milton Friedman put his faith in the ability of his followers to persuade their fellow citizens, rather than in his own ability to influence governments directly.

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The site:  www.freetochoose.tv is hosting a 24-hour "Friedman Freedom Festival" beginning 12:00 a.m. US Eastern Time July 31st and running until 12:00a.m. Aug. 1st. It will be a continuously playing list of Friedman talks, musicians from around the world and shorter clips of Friedman - most of which have rarely seen before.

Postscript 1:
Jim Belshaw has a post: 'Friedman, Freedom and Paternalism' in which he kindly refers to this post and some of the discussion below. Jim adopts a definition of paternalism as the state 'telling people what to do'. That is paternalistic, but I need to think more about the issue. My initial reaction is that wealth redistribution is also paternalistic - it is akin to a father taking toys off one child (on the grounds that she has too many) and giving them to her younger brother (who is deemed to have too few). I find it much easier to accept that it might be fair for a father (or mother) to make such a redistribution within their family (hopefully with the consent of the kids concerned) than to accept the validity of Wayne Swan's attempts to apply that ethic to the whole of society.

Jim also refers to a post by Lorenzo; 'Friedman's Century', which has links to several other sites with relevant comments.

Regarding my reference above to the obesity epidemic, Greg Dwyer has referred me to an excellent article entitled 'Sugar Sickness' by New Zealand medical doctor, MacDoctor, who points out the futility of proposals for governments to tax sugar etc. One day the paternalists (or are they nannies?) responsible for the wars against personal responsibility will realize that they are making matters worse.

Postscript 2:

Having looked at common usage of 'paternalism', I now think Jim and kvd are right. It entails limiting the liberty of some person or group in order to protect them.

Milton Friedman also seems to be right in his claim that the motivations of Bismark and the British Tories in creating the welfare state were paternalistic i.e. directed toward protecting people from harm. (Their motives were also political i.e. cutting the grounds from under their social democratic opponents). It is interesting that 'paternalistic' doesn't seem to imply that the action is against the will of the person being protected.

My supposition that Wayne Swan has paternalistic motives in arguing for wealth redistribution is probably wrong. His motives might be better described as egalitarian.

Should punishment be about retribution or deterrence?

One of the things I found particularly interesting in ‘Who’s in Charge?’ by Michael Gazzaniga, is experimental evidence suggesting that people who believe they have free will tend to be better behaved than those who believe in determinism. People who don’t believe they have free will are apparently less likely to control their impulses to act selfishly or aggressively. This might be an instance where a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.

The main point made by Gazzaniga – who is referred to as the father of cognitive neuroscience – is that individual responsibility is a dimension of life that cannot be illuminated by analysing single brains in isolation. In isolation, single brains seem to be governed by unconscious intentions – awareness comes after the event. Individual responsibility comes from social exchange. If we want to understand how individuals are responsible for their actions we need to look at the whole picture of a brain interacting with other brains.

Readers who are interested in a general overview of the book should read the review by Benedict Carey in the NYT.

Gazzaniga discusses the question of whether punishment should be retributive or utilitarian near the end of his book. Retributive justice is concerned primarily with giving criminals the punishment they deserve – the crucial variable is the degree of moral outrage the crime engenders. Utilitarian justice is concerned primarily with the future good of society. The author suggests that means it is concerned with deterrence, incapacitation (e.g. jailing criminals to prevent them from re-offending) and rehabilitation.

The interesting point is that although many people label themselves deterrists rather than retributivists, when it comes to actually handing out punishments self-labelling counts for little – people have a strong tendency to behave as retributivists. Irrespective of what they say, they tend to punish for harm done even when there is little likelihood that the person will re-offend in future.

Gazzaniga suggests that retributive justice has deep moral foundations in human evolution. We can use abstract consequentialist thinking when faced with abstract questions of public policy, but we resort to fairness judgements when faced with an individual who is to be punished.

For example, should harsh sentences be applied to minor offences to increase the deterrence effect? If you think about it in abstract terms, sending a person to prison for a relatively minor first offence (e.g. low range drink driving) might seem likely to increase the sum total of human happiness by deterring others from an anti-social behaviour that endangers human life. But would it be fair to hand out punishments that are disproportionate to the additional risks involved in particular instances?

Consider a more extreme example. Should judges make an example of celebrities by giving them greater punishment for minor offences? Since the punishment of celebrities would receive greater publicity it could be expected to have a greater deterrent effect, but in my view it would still be unfair.

Does utilitarianism necessarily imply that it is OK to impose unfair sacrifices on individuals for the future good of society? No. Some people who subscribe to utilitarianism, as a theory of normative ethics which views human happiness as the fundamental value judgement or ultimate criterion, consider the best test of actions or rules of action to be the extent to which they promote social cooperation. For example, Henry Hazlitt argued that ‘for each of us social cooperation is the great means of attaining nearly all our ends’. He noted that social cooperation ‘has the great advantage that no unanimity with regard to value judgements is required to make it work’. It enables the disparate goals of different individuals to be reconciled and harmonized. (‘The Foundations of Morality’: 35-36).

Leland Yeager has argued:

‘Regardless of just what plausible interpretation we give to happiness, social cooperation is prerequisite to its effective pursuit. Lying, cheating, and stealing subvert happiness because they subvert the prerequisite cooperation. Telling the truth, keeping promises, and respecting other people’s rights and property are conducive to cooperation. We come to believe propositions like these through factual and logical analysis of what conditions help individuals pursue their own diverse goals effectively’ (‘Ethics as Social Science’, 2001: 83).

Yeager also makes the point:

‘Emphasis on voluntary cooperation warns against imposing unfair sacrifices on individuals for the supposed greater good of a greater number’ (p. 82).

This line of reasoning suggests to me that if social cooperation is the objective we should be seeking retribution i.e. giving criminals the punishment that they deserve – even if we are sufficiently civilized not to seek pleasure from their suffering.

Michael Gazzaniga comes to a similar conclusion in looking at the issue from an evolutionary perspective. He suggests that humans have evolved to cooperate on a massive scale with unrelated others partly by punishing noncooperators. He leaves us to ponder: ‘If we don’t incapacitate the offenders, will the noncooperators take over and society fall apart?’

Postscript:
I was aware that I was being provocative in coming out in favour of retribution, when the point I was really trying to make is that justice should be primarily about fairness rather than deterrence. (As I acknowledge in response to a comment from kvd, however, there is an element of deterrence involved in fair punishment.) Retribution may mean giving people fair punishment but it can be mistaken for vengeance. Jim Belshaw had an interesting post yesterday about vengeance - which I largely agree with.

Comments from TBT (below) prompt me to acknowledge that I hope that evolution in public perceptions of fairness might enable able us to move further towards some kind of restorative system of justice. 

Can democracy protect liberty?

In January 2011 I wrote on this blog about my personal conviction that liberty is necessary to human flourishing because individual flourishing is an inherently self-directed process. That led me to ask where the greatest challenge to liberty comes from. I came to the conclusion that the greatest challenge to liberty comes from people who do not mean anyone any harm – people who live among us who want us all to have happier lives. These people threaten liberty because they use their democratic rights to support policies that involve governments acting as guardians of the well-being of citizens – even to the point of protecting individuals from making bad choices - rather than for protecting their right to live as they choose. I saw the political choices my fellow citizens were making as a threat to liberty.

Now, wind the clock forward to the beginning of this month, when I asked myself: ‘What is the greatest threat to human flourishing?’ My answer: the failure of democracy. In my view the greatest threat that people in high-income countries face over the next few decades is that democratic governments will not be able to cope with the increasing demands that seem likely to be placed upon them. In my view this would have adverse flow-on implications for human flourishing in other countries.

If I see current trends in democracies as a threat to liberty, why should I see risks to democracy as a threat to human flourishing?

When you start asking yourself questions like that it is probably time to read Robert Higgs’ new book, ‘Delusions of Power’ (synopsis here). Higgs encourages people to go back to first principles in thinking about the role of government. 

Here are some of the important points he makes:

• James Madison’s famous passage about neither government, nor external or internal controls on government, being necessary ‘if men were angels’ is an enormously seductive instance of question begging. Recognition of human fallibility does not establish that individuals would voluntarily choose to submit to the authority of the state rather than to remain in a stateless condition.
• Mancur Olson’s claim (in ‘Power and Prosperity’) that anarchy ‘increases the incentive to steal and to defend against theft, and thereby reduces the incentive to produce’ could be true relative to the ‘nirvana’ benchmark of ‘an appropriate peaceful order’. In the real world, however, there may actually be less incentive for productive effort under a state, because, to use Higgs’ words, it is ‘a standing invitation to (legal) theft for all who can gain a grip on any of its many levers of power’.
• The evidence of history shows that the belief that it is the role of the state to defend the individual’s right to life, liberty and property is closer to wishful thinking than a description of how states have actually functioned.
• Some major political decisions in the United States – such as involvement in the First World War and the expansion of federal government responsibilities during the great depression – were contrary to the political platforms of the presidents concerned in the preceding elections.
• During war times and other crises, governments are given strong public support to impose many restrictions on freedom that would not be tolerated during normal times. Having tolerated them, however, many people may come to regard them as normal or even desirable. This is the basis for a ratchet phenomenon where expansion of government during a crisis has not been fully reversed following a crisis.

It seems likely that some stateless societies that have existed in the past were relatively good places to live – that is, relative to other societies at the same time. So, why didn’t those relatively good societies thrive and evolve into libertarian utopias? The most obvious answer is that these societies were not able to survive invasion by neighbouring states, led by people like Henry VIII. Higgs acknowledges the point:

‘We also need to consider the likely outcome if our society has no state, but another society does, and that state has the capacity to harm us greatly and, for whatever reason, seeks to do so. I am not convinced that this particular problem is insoluble, and, indeed, I believe that the states defenders have blown it out of all proportion, but I do not dismiss it entirely’.

If I try hard enough I can imagine circumstances where coercion by the state might wither away so that, eventually, somewhere in the world, citizens will one day opt to establish some kind of libertarian utopia to replace democratic institutions. Perhaps experiments with charter cities might help this process. It would be possible, even in a modern society, for the useful functions of government to be performed by private contractors and voluntary organizations. I don’t know how such a society would overcome free-rider problems arising from provision of some public goods, but coercion associated with tax collection might not be an essential characteristic of all societies for all time to come.

So, why do I see the failure of democracy as a threat to human flourishing? The failure of democracy that I am concerned about seems unlikely to result in its replacement by superior institutions. In many instances, the institutions of representative government may actually remain in place, but they will have become completely meaningless. We can already see some signs of this failure beginning to emerge. Some political leaders seek to win popular support by using focus groups to help them develop nice-sounding but meaningless slogans, rather than seeking to gain support for policies to underpin future economic security. Governments that have already taken on more responsibilities than they can cope with are constantly pressured to accept additional responsibilities. The right to vote has already become hollow in some countries in Europe. It is difficult for voters to punish political parties for past errors when the major parties all share responsibility. All options available to voters become unpalatable when democratic governments are burdened by excessive debt.

In some countries the institutions of democracy are likely to come under threat as a result of rioting and other forms of public disorder. Democratic governments may be replaced by authoritarian regimes that have less regard to economic security or citizen’s rights. It is possible that members of such governments might have a greater interest in restoring economic freedom and expanding opportunities available to citizens than in self-enrichment, but there is no a priori reason to expect that to be so. The only certainty is that the new leaders will be more difficult to remove from office than democratically elected politicians.

In the end, it seems to me that there is no inconsistency between viewing recent trends in democracy as a threat to liberty and viewing the increasing risks to democracy as a threat to human flourishing. Some of the institutional changes that are needed to discourage democratic governments from taking on more responsibilities than they can cope with will also reduce the threat to liberty. I think Robert Higgs is on the right track in suggesting the need for changes in the machinery of government to make it more difficult for ill-considered and poorly justified measures to be adopted during a crisis. It would also be useful to consider what institutional changes might enable some future crises to be avoided. Perhaps democracy could protect liberty.

Can democracies adapt?

While reading Tim Harford’s book, ‘Adapt’, I was thinking about the implications for democracy of the theme running through the book. I have been thinking a lot about democracy recently.

The theme is what Harford refers to as Palchinsky’s principles:

1. Variation: seek out new ideas and experiment.
2. Survivability: ensure that the scale of experiments is not so big that failure leads to catastrophe.
3. Selection: seek feedback and learn from failures.

The theme is also captured fairly well by the books sub-title: ‘Why success always starts with failure’.

Peter Palchinsky was a talented engineer in the Soviet Union. He was arrested by the secret police in 1928 and never seen again. His main ‘crime’ seems to have been that he refused to recant after he had been denounced for objecting to looming technological disasters.

Harford applies Palchinsky’s principles to a wide range of things, including the management of the war in Iraq by the US miltary, the events leading to the design of the Spitfire in England prior to World War 2, provision of foreign aid, climate change mitigation, financial meltdowns, corporate strategy and self-management.

One of the points that came through strongly to me is that even hierarchical military organizations need to learn strategy from their experiences in the field. I knew that was true of big business organizations, but I had not previously thought of armies as having to experiment in order to find the best approach to adopt in different conflicts. It seems that senior people in the US military were not aware of that either during much of their occupation of Iraq.

Harford’s discussion of the global financial crisis seems sensible. He suggests that the failure of experiments with sub-prime mortgages would not have led to a major financial crisis in the absence of tight coupling in financial markets via credit default swaps. These appeared to provide the banks with a greater margin of safety, but actually linked their fortunes closely to insurance companies. As a consequence, the sub-prime mortgage problem was transmitted from insurance companies to banks (and then to governments). The solution is obvious with hindsight - decouple the system so that banks are less likely to fail and the failure of individual banks does not lead to system failure. I would add that governments should adopt a ‘no bailouts’ policy and back that up with a requirement for banks to guarantee immediate and automatic transfer of ownership of all assets to depositors and bond holders if they (the banks) are unable to meet their interest or repayment obligations.

The points about self-management were not new to me. But it didn’t hurt to be reminded of the importance of trying new things in a context where failure is survivable - and of being prepared to learn from failure. It helps to remember that the failure of our experiments does not necessarily reflect on our competence unless we fail to learn from them.

The closest Tim Harford comes to discussing democracy in this book is his discussion of charter cities. In his version, governments establish the rules of a new city as an experiment to see if citizens and business want to live there.  If the experiment succeeds it can be repeated elsewhere. If it fails, that failure is survivable.

 

In reading Tim Harford’s book I was reminded of a claim by Timothy Ferris:

‘A liberal democracy in action is an endlessly changing mosaic of experiments, most of which partially or entirely fail’ .

The claim is made in his book, ‘The Science of Liberty’ (2010). In my discussion I suggested that Ferris’ view of liberal democracy, as akin to scientific experimentation, was a desirable ideal rather than a description of how democratic systems actually work. I suggested that elections seemed to be a reasonably effective way for citizens to avoid being governed by despots, to get rid of politicians who are obviously corrupt and to experiment with new policies. However, democracy departs from the scientific ideal because the democratic process is not good at ending policy experiments that partially fail. The most radical reforms rarely involve more than a tweaking of failing policy experiments.

If we look at democracy in terms of Palchinsky’s principles there are problems all over the place. There are at least two problems relating to willingness to experiment. First, there is often a strong bias in favour of the status quo because of loss aversion. If there is potential for any politically influential group to be disadvantaged by a policy experiment then it is unlikely to be conducted.  Second, there is often a reluctance to conduct experiments unless they involve the whole of a jurisdiction - questions of fairness are often perceived to be involved.

There are problems relating to survivability. Social experiments are often entered into by governments without adequate consideration of longer term implications for system survival. For example, welfare assistance that is granted when it seems to be affordable is often difficult to withdraw when economic circumstances change for the worse. Some European democracies are currently faced with survivability problems as a result of excessively ambitious social experimentation in the past.

There are also problems in seeking feedback and learning from failures. As noted above, the democratic process is not good at ending policy experiments that partially fail. This reflects two problems. First, governments are often reluctant to accept policy failure because it may have electoral consequences. Second, those who benefit from failing policy experiments are reluctant to see them end and often have the political clout to prevent this from happening.

So, can democracies learn to adapt? We have natural experiments that help us to answer that question. The older democracies have so far shown a capacity to adapt. They have been able to learn from some of their mistakes by adopting institutional innovations to improve the effectiveness of government and, to a lesser extent, to contain the growth of government responsibilities.

There is also potential for the democracies to learn from the success and mistakes of other democracies. For example, there is probably a lot to be learned from the modern experience of democracy in Greece, as well as from ancient history. A recent article by Steve Horwitz makes the point very well.

The idea of learning from the mistakes of others has more general relevance. It might even be worth adding to Palchinsky’s principles. However, it is probably harder to learn from mistakes made by others than to learn from your own mistakes. When my father told me that I should learn from his mistakes, as he often did, my response was that it would be much more fun to make my own mistakes. Looking back now, though, I don’t think my father actually made many mistakes that I could learn from.

What implications does 'monitory democracy' have for the survival of democratic institutions?

I ended my last post promising to consider whether John Keane’s observation that we now have ‘monitory democracy’ has implications for the relationship between the responsibilities and effectiveness of government, and hence the survival of democratic institutions. Can monitory democracy be expected to move political systems towards or away from equilibrium between effectiveness of government and the responsibilities that government is expected to perform?

First, who is Keane and what does he mean by ‘monitory democracy’? John Keane is professor of politics at Sydney university and author of a major history of democracy, ‘The Life and Death of Democracy’ (2009), a book over 1,000 pages described by one reviewer as not ‘for the faint hearted’. (Unfortunately, I can’t claim to have read it.) In an article in the Griffith Review, Keane argues that from the middle of the 20^th Century representative democracy began to transform into monitory democracy – a new historical form described by ‘the rapid growth of many different kinds of extra-parliamentary, power-scrutinising mechanisms’.

Keane’s list of power-scrutinising mechanisms includes: advisory boards, focus groups, citizen juries, talk shows, think tanks, consensus conferences, teach‐ins, online petitions and chat rooms, public vigils, straw polls, summits, public planning exercises, public consultations, social forums and, of course, weblogs. About the only thing these inventions have in common is that they change the incentives faced by politicians and political parties. Keane suggests:

‘The central grip of elections, political parties and parliaments on the lives of citizens is weakening. Democracy is coming to mean more than elections, although nothing less. Within and outside states, independent monitors of power begin to have tangible effects. By putting politicians, parties and elected governments permanently on their toes, they complicate their lives, question their authority and force them to change their agendas …’

Monitory democracy is closely linked to the emergence of new communications media. In Keane’s terms, ‘monitory democracy and computerised media networks behave as if they are conjoined twins’. He observes:

‘The combination of monitory democracy and communicative abundance … produces permanent flux, an unending restlessness driven by complex combinations of different interacting players and institutions, permanently pushing and pulling, heaving and straining, sometimes working together, at other times in opposition to one another’.

In considering what implications monitory democracy might have for the survival of democratic institutions it seems to me to be worth recalling Joseph Schumpeter’s view, discussed here recently, that democracy is essentially a leadership contest in which the role of citizens ends after they have cast their votes.  The reality of democracy, as described by Keane, is light years away from Schumpeter’s view that democracy can only succeed if voters refrain from trying to tell politicians what to do after they have been elected.

How does monitory democracy actually impact on the balance between the responsibilities and effectiveness of governments?

Some of Keane’s comments suggest that monitory mechanisms might have a positive impact on the effectiveness of government. He points out that, ‘when they do their job well, monitory mechanisms have many positive effects, ranging from greater openness and justice within markets and blowing the whistle on foolish government decisions to the general enrichment of public deliberation and the empowerment of citizens and their chosen representatives through meaningful schemes of participation’. On the other hand, he suggests that nobody ‘should be kidded into thinking that the world of monitory democracy … is a level playing field – a paradise of equality of opportunity among all its citizens and their elected and unelected representatives’.

The combination of monitory democracy and communicative abundance is also likely to impact on voter rationality and the incentives for the major political parties to develop coherent policies to sell to the electorate. There is still a strong incentive for politicians to have regard to particular interests of voters, but it seems to me that their incentive to appeal to the reasoning powers of uncommitted voters may be diminishing. As Keane seems to imply, the new political environment may be discouraging uncommitted voters from taking an intelligent interest in policy issues:

‘Monitory democracy certainly feeds upon communicative abundance, but one of its more perverse effects is to encourage individuals to escape the great complexity of the world by sticking their heads, like ostriches, into the sands of wilful ignorance, or to float cynically upon the swirling tides and waves and eddies of fashion – to change their minds, to speak and act flippantly, to embrace or even celebrate opposites, to bid farewell to veracity, to slip into the arms of what some carefully call “bullshit”.’

This does not provide strong grounds for confidence that monitory democracy improves the effectiveness of government.

How does monitory democracy impact on the scope of responsibilities that governments are expected to perform? The discussion in a recent post about voter irrationality seems highly relevant. There is evidence that voters who say that politics is ‘not at all important’ to them are more likely than others to say that ‘the government should take more responsibility to ensure that everyone is provided for’.

On that basis, monitory democracy could be expected to thrust more responsibilities on governments than they can cope with effectively. This raises serious questions about the ability of democratic institutions to survive.

However, as more people perceive that existential threats are facing democratic institutions they might form new interest groups to foster norms of behaviour that might enable better outcomes to be achieved. Under favourable conditions monitory democracy might prove to be a system with self-correcting characteristics. If influential interest groups can form around the survival of some threatened species of animals, is it not reasonable to expect that stronger and more influential interest groups might form when social institutions that make a valued contribution to human well-being are seen to be threatened? 

Postscript:
I would like to draw attention to relevant comments by kvd and Jim Belshaw on Jim's blog. Jim now also has another relevant post: What would you nominate as the most asinine slogan?

In his comments below kvd has drawn attention to an article by Michael Pascoe entitled, 'Timid Governments Bow to Populism', SMH (9/7/2012). That article is well worth reading, as is the article by Thomas Friedman entitled 'The Rise of Popularism' NYT (23/6/2012) which is referred to by Pascoe. Please note the word used by Friedman is 'popularism'. It was only when my spell-checker objected that I understood why Friedman wrote: 'I heard a new word in London last week: “Popularism”.'

Neil Whitford is not faint hearted. He has read and reviewed 'The Life and Death of Democracy'. 

What determines the ability of democratic governments to cope with their responsibilities?

I ended my last post suggesting that the greatest threat to human progress over the next few decades is that democratic governments will not be able to cope with the increasing responsibilities that seem likely to be placed upon them, particularly in high-income countries.

The most straight forward aspect of this question is the economic effect of increases in government spending and taxation. (I have discussed this previously here and here). It is well known that the economic cost of taxation rises disproportionately with tax revenue because taxpayers substitute non-taxed goods (e.g. leisure) for taxed goods. (The economic cost is roughly proportional to the square of the tax rate.) There are also economic costs associated with government spending that inadvertently discourages participation in productive activity. These costs can be reduced to some extent by tax reforms (e.g. broadening the base in order to lower the rate) and various measures to reduce the disincentive effects associated with government spending. As the economic costs have risen, some countries with big governments (e.g. Sweden) have introduced various reforms that have had the effect of containing the growth of government spending and reducing marginal tax rates.

 

So, if the economic costs of big government become too high, governments can take action to reduce those costs. Where is the problem?

The problem is that countries differ greatly in their ability to cope with the problems of big government – in terms of both raising revenue and managing provision of services, and implementing tax reforms etc. if that becomes necessary. Sweden seems to be able to cope with government spending that is still around 50 per cent of GDP without too many problems, whereas Greece was on the way to becoming a basket case before its government spending reached that level.

The wide variation in the effectiveness of government in OECD countries with big governments is apparent from the chart below. Size of government is measured by OECD data on government spending (General Government Total Outlays) as a percentage of GDP averaged over the five years ending 2007. Government effectiveness is measured by the relevant World Bank governance indicator which reflects, among other things, perceptions of the quality of the civil service and its independence from political pressures, and the quality of policy formulation and the credibility of the government's policy commitments.

I chose the period prior to the global financial crisis (GFC) in making this comparison to see to what extent the indicator of government effectiveness predicts how countries have fared subsequently. It predicts that three of the PIIGS - Italy, Greece and Portugal - might have problems in coping, but that Ireland and Spain would be less likely to have problems. Failure to predict problems in Ireland and Spain could be attributed to deficiencies in both the indicator of government effectiveness and the indicator of size of government. In relation to effectiveness, it does not seem consistent with effective governance for bond holders of banks to be viewed as ‘consenting adults’ when the future looks rosy and then subsequently issued with guarantees when the future becomes uncertain. In relation to size of government, it could also be argued that government spending was a poor indicator prior to the GFC because it didn’t take account of the contingent liability associated with implicit guarantees for bond holders of banks. For example, in the case of Ireland, a better measure of the size of government might have anticipated in some way the subsequent increase in government spending from around 34 percent of GDP in 2006 to 67 percent in 2010.

Leaving measurement problems aside, it seems reasonable to argue that the ability of democratic governments to cope with the responsibilities being placed upon them will depend on the extent of those responsibilities and on the effectiveness of the governments concerned. The question that needs to be considered is whether democracies are changing in ways that are likely to contribute to or detract from the effectiveness of government, or add to or subtract from the responsibilities that are placed on government. If effectiveness is rising and responsibilities are contracting, the future of democracy looks rosy. If effectiveness is falling and responsibilities are expanding, democracies may be heading for collapse.

In my next post I will consider whether John Keane’s observation that we now have ‘monitory democracy’ has implications for the relationship between the responsibilities and effectiveness of government, and hence the survival of democratic institutions.

What is the greatest threat to human progress?

It seems pretentious to be posing this question for myself. But the question is difficult to avoid in the book I am writing. It might help me to take it out of the ‘too hard’ basket and get my ideas straight if I try to draft an answer here first.

The background is that the world has seen massive human progress over the last three centuries. Human societies have generally become much more peaceful; the opportunities for individuals to live lives that they value have expanded greatly in much of the world; and people in many countries now enjoy a great deal of economic security. From what we know about the drivers of this social progress it would be reasonable to expect this process to continue as long as conditions remain broadly favourable.

Whenever I read statements like ‘as long as conditions remain broadly favourable’ I begin thinking up reasons why conditions will not remain favourable. That response probably has something to do with being human. Loss aversion probably makes us sensitive to future threats to our quality of life, so that we can avoid them.

Matt Ridley suggests in ‘The Rational Optimist’ that loss aversion makes people ‘naturally gloomy’ about ‘the future of society and the human race’. He argues that for 200 years those preaching doom and gloom ‘have had all the headlines, even though optimists have far more often been right’. I think he overstates his case. I am old enough to remember what today seems like a naive faith in progress that seemed to pervade western society in the 1950s and ‘60s, despite a real risk of nuclear Armageddon during much of that period. Even today there is a fair amount of optimism in reporting of scientific progress. Slow progress is being made in treatment of cancer, for example, but press reports of breakthroughs often seem to paint an excessively optimistic picture.

I agree with Ridley that there has been a tendency to forecast the future on the assumption of no technological change and to find it dire. Ridley quotes Paul Romer: ‘We consistently fail to grasp how many ideas remain to be discovered’. Most gloomy prognostications about the world running out of resources and the potential for widespread famine should be heavily discounted on those grounds. Disease pandemics are a greater threat, but we have lived with this threat at least since the beginning of urbanization and scientific progress has been improving our ability to cope.

While optimists have generally been on a winning streak over the last few centuries that cannot be because perceived threats are always exaggerated by gloom and doom merchants. The threat of a major nuclear war is a case in point. As Ridley acknowledges: ‘There were very good reasons to be a nuclear pessimist during the Cold War’ (p 299). Everything that I have read about the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 suggests to me that this could easily have escalated to nuclear war, despite mutually assured destruction. Steven Pinker seems to me to make a strong case that a taboo against use of nuclear weapons emerged gradually as a result of pressure of public opinion rather than because military and political leaders decided spontaneously that use of such weapons of mass destruction would be futile (‘The Better Angels of Our Nature’, pp 268-271). In my view Gregg Easterbrook is right on target in his observation that ‘historians will view nuclear arms reduction as such an incredible accomplishment that it will seem bizarre in retrospect that so little attention was paid while it was happening’ (‘The Progress Paradox’, p 70).

It seems to me that the only known threat we face that could rival the threat of nuclear Armageddon in terms of severity of its impact is climate change. Even in that context, however, the threat of human-induced climate change seems likely to be much less severe than the aftermath of a major nuclear war (or infrequently occurring natural occurrences such as super-volcanoes and asteroids). I have written recently about human-induced climate change (here and here) so I will be very brief. The most likely outcome in my view is that the world will stumble on toward a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, relative to what would otherwise occur. This will not prevent climate change, but the general story is likely to be one of successful adaptation. It is within the bounds of possibility, however, that climate change could accelerate and the costs of adaptation could begin to rise steeply within the next few decades. It therefore makes sense for governments to take precautions by contributing substantially to funding of research to mitigate climate change.

There are other potential threats to the quality of life over the next few decades that apply particularly to high-income countries. Globalization and technological progress will continue to have the potential to raise overall living standards in these countries, but there seems to be a fair chance that the distribution of benefits will become more unequal and jobs will become less secure. There are some good reasons why the aphorism, ‘a rising tide lifts all boats’ should be questioned. The forces of globalization are likely to subject an increasing proportion of occupations, including some occupations requiring substantial skills, to increased international competition. It is also possible that technological progress will impact unevenly in ways that benefit some groups (e.g. successful innovators, owners of robots) and disadvantage others (e.g. those whose skills are becoming redundant). If that happens, expressions of collective guilt/responsibility, like this one by Jim Belshaw on his blog yesterday, are likely to become more common:

‘We talk about the need for management and people flexibility in that most basic area, secure employment. We say that a young person will follow multiple career paths in their lives. Yet we do nothing to address the most basic questions: how might this actually work? How do we create a world that might provide the desired business and personal flexibility? How do we give people a degree of certainty about their own lives in an unstable world?’

It seems likely that governments in high-income countries will come under increasing pressure to provide people with a greater degree of economic security. If we are to avoid a return of protectionism – protecting  existing jobs at the expense of new job opportunities - more adjustment assistance may need to be provided. This could involve more government assistance for retraining of people whose skills are becoming redundant and broadening social welfare safety nets that are already coming under increasing stress as a result more predictable developments such as the rising age structure of populations.

Some people are concerned about a rather different potential threat to the quality of life in high income countries. This is a concern that rising affluence brings with it epidemics of obesity, diabetes, depression, and other ills of modern life. (See for example Jeff Sach’s introductory chapter in ‘World Happiness Report’, 2012.) Such concerns seem likely, increasingly, to convert the problems that individuals and families have in making good use of the opportunities available to them into ‘social’ problems that governments are called upon to address. For example, some governments (including the Australian government) are already taking increasing responsibility for preventative health care, weakening the responsibility of individual adults to manage their own lives.

It seems to me that the greatest threat to human progress over the next few decades arises because threats to human progress seem to provide a compelling case for collective action - the threats to human progress discussed above give rise to greater demands on government. As I see it, the greatest threat we are faced with over the next few decades is that democratic governments in high-income countries will not be able to cope with the increasing demands that seem likely to be placed upon them.

I will write about that in my next post.

Postscript:
For a highly relevant recent discussion of effects of globalization and technological change on income distribution see: Jonathan Haskel, Robert Z. Lawrence, Edward E. Leamer and Matthew J. Slaughter,
'Globalization and U.S. Wages: Modifying Classic Theory to Explain Recent Facts', Journal of Economic Perspectives (26) 2, Spring 2012.

How does democracy manage to survive?

In recent posts I have been discussing the rational irrationality of voters – Bryan Caplan's concept explaining how it can be rational for people to cling to irrational beliefs on political issues because there is a miniscule probability that the vote of any individual will be decisive in changing the result of an election. In my last post I provided some evidence that voter irrationality tends to expand the role of government. People who say that politics is not at all important to them are more likely than others to say that ‘the government should take more responsibility to ensure that everyone is provided for’. Many of these people exercise their right to vote even when there is no compulsion for them to do so.

It is not surprising, therefore, that democratically elected governments have a tendency to take on responsibilities that they can’t cope with. When voters demand that governments take more responsibility to ensure that everyone is provided for politicians have an incentive to respond by increasing government spending and regulatory interventions to help the needy and to protect jobs. If governments don’t raise taxes to cover increased spending, their debts grow until they are eventually unable to meet interest and repayment obligations, or to pay any other bills. If governments keep on raising taxes or imposing additional regulation to ensure that everyone is provided for they must eventually dampen incentives for productive activity to such an extent that incomes (and tax revenues) begin to fall. In either eventuality it seems reasonable to expect voter irrationality to lead to economic collapse and eventually to the collapse of democratic government.

The scenario sketched out above occurs frequently enough, but not as often as might be expected. Democracy seems to have been a fairly robust form of government in many countries, despite the rational irrationality of voters. Why is it so?

There are several possible answers to this question but the one that Joseph Schumpeter gave about 40 years ago in ‘Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy’seems to me to deserve more attention.  Schumpeter suggested that democracy doesn’t actually exist. He provided a definition of democracy consistent with the way most people would think democracy should function and then proceeded to show that democracy doesn’t exist in those terms. He then redefined democracy in a manner more consistent with the way governments that have the ‘democratic’ label attached to them actually function.

Schumpeter’s first definition of democracy was:

‘that institutional arrangement for arriving at political decisions which realizes the common good by making the people itself decide issues through the election of individuals who are to assemble in order to carry out its will’.

That definition seems to me to capture the expectations that most people would have of the way democracy is meant to work. Democracy is often defined simply as ‘government by the people’, but if the people are to govern they must have a collective ‘will’ and a mechanism for this to be carried out to realize a ‘common good’.

 In showing that a democracy of that kind can’t exist Schumpeter made several points:

• There is no such thing as a common good that all people could agree upon. Differences of principle on questions involving ultimate values cannot be reconciled by rational argument.
• There is no common will; opinions differ on the means that should be used to pursue agreed objectives.
• The psychology of crowds and groupthink are opposed to rational consideration of issues. 
• Incentives for rational decision-making that discipline individuals in their daily life in the home and in business are absent in political decision-making.

Schumpeter placed a lot of emphasis on the final point, explaining that it gives rise to what we now refer to as rational irrationality:

‘All this goes to show that without the initiative that comes from immediate responsibility, ignorance will persist in the face of masses of information however complete and correct. It persists even in the face of the meritorious efforts that are being made to go beyond presenting information and to teach the use of it by means of lectures, classes, discussion groups. Results are not zero. But they are small. People cannot be carried up the ladder.

Thus the citizen drops down to a lower level of mental performance as soon as he enters the political field. He argues and analyses in a way which he would readily recognize as infantile within the sphere of his real interests. He becomes a primitive again’.

According to Schumpeter, citizens are prone to ‘extra rational or irrational prejudice and impulse’ in political matters. He argued that this made them particularly vulnerable to influence by interest groups. Citizens are more vulnerable to political persuasion than to commercial advertising because they have less opportunity to test the claims that are made.

Schumpeter’s second definition of democracy was:

‘that institutional arrangement for arriving at political decisions in which individuals acquire the power to decide by means of a competitive struggle for the people’s vote’.

This captures the idea that the central feature of democracy, as actually practiced, is a competition for leadership. Schumpeter argued that democracy could only succeed in those terms if it was constrained in various ways. In particular, he argued that the ‘effective range of political decision should not be extended too far’. He seems to have had in mind parliamentary rules, such as those that ensure the government (political leadership) retains a high degree of overall budgetary control, as well as ‘constitutional’ arrangements that remove aspects of policy administration requiring particular expertise (e.g. monetary policy) from the political arena.

It is interesting that the emergence of stagflation in the 1970s led to fears that democracy might not be able to survive in the longer term unless democratic politics was constrained. (I have in mind particularly the discussion by Friedrich Hayek in 'Law, Legislation and Liberty' Vol.3, Chapter 16.) The economic reforms introduced during the 1980s and 90s reduced such concerns in some countries by giving greater independence to central banks and making governments more accountable for budget outcomes. In Australia, such reforms have taken monetary policy largely out of the political arena and made failure to maintain budget balance a much greater political liability for governments. In my view, further moves should be made in this direction to shield economic policies from political pressures that exploit voter ignorance and irrationality.  For example, better government could be achieved by adoption of a convention that advice from the Productivity Commission will be sought as a matter of course prior to legislative changes in a range of policy areas. I don’t imagine that there would be much opposition from the community at large to adoption of such a convention.

However, in most democratic countries, including Australia, there would be a fairly widespread reluctance to accept Schumpeter's advice that democracy should be constrained to such an extent that the only involvement of citizens is participation in the election of a leader. It would probably be considered laughable these days for an economics professor to try to tell voters that ‘they must understand that, once they have elected an individual, political action is his business and not theirs’.

Joseph Schumpeter probably went too far in claiming that democracy can only succeed if voters refrain from telling politicians what to do after they have been elected. He would have been on safer ground in suggesting that democracy can only succeed if citizens are willing to show some respect for political leaders who take positions that are politically unpopular. It would also be fairly safe to argue, as suggested here a few weeks ago, that political leaders who prepare the ground for reform by attempting to raise the level of public discussion of issues will often be more successful than those who show great courage in attempting to forge ahead ignoring opposition. I doubt whether Paul Keating actually had much success in explaining the J curve to the Australian public (when he was Treasurer in the 1980s) but his attempt to do so probably won him some respect.

 Cartoon by Nicholson from “The Australian” newspaper: www.nicholsoncartoons.com.au