The Questioning Christian

Revisiting Rawls: Time to raise the veil of ignorance

I used to think that a successful life was available to anyone in this country who was willing to work hard, and if someone didn't succeed, it was his- or her own fault for making bad choices. But over the years I've seen how not everyone gets dealt as good a hand as I was, starting with one's "choices" of parents and upbringing. I've also seen how sometimes basically-good people can experience disappointments and even disasters that seemed hardly their fault, if at all. "Suck it up and accept your fate" is not an especially-satisfying response — particularly since evolution has programmed all of us higher-order animals to want what we see that others have (arguably, such programming is largely responsible for all human progress).

I've come to appreciate the wisdom of John Rawls's "veil of ignorance" in his book A Theory of Justice: We should try to set up our basic societal arrangements as though we didn't know what "ticket" we'd be handed in life's lottery. One simple example is the kids' technique for sharing a big cookie: You cut, but then I choose (which goes all the way back to the Book of Genesis, as it turns out).  To quote the Wikipedia article: "For example, in the imaginary society, one might or might not be intelligent, rich, or born into a preferred class. Since one may occupy any position in the society once the veil is lifted, the device forces the parties to consider society from the perspective of all members, including the worst-off and best-off members." The same article notes that "if [slave-owners] were forced through the veil of ignorance to imagine that they themselves may be slaves, then suddenly slavery may no longer seem justifiable."

Why income earning power isn't an acceptable measure of "fairness"

(From a Facebook discussion about income inequality:)  As I get older I get less and less enamored with using income as any kind of proxy measure of net human contribution, and by extension, of "fairness." Income is determined by the vicissitudes of whatever the marketplace happens to value at the moment, and markets are notoriously prone to short-term thinking and to encouraging participants to burden others with their "externalities," that is, with their side-effect costs such as emission of air- and water pollution. (Socialize the costs, privatize the profits.)

EXAMPLE: For several years I've volunteered a few hours a year in the Real Men Read program, reading "chapter books" to underprivileged elementary-school kids (I was recruited by a close family friend who's a teacher).  I can easily argue the case that in the long term, no one is more important to society than school teachers. Yet we pay even the best teacher a tiny fraction of, say, the income that Martin Shkreli has managed to capture.  The marketplace has highly valued his skills and has rewarded him accordingly. But his income is in no way a valid measure of his long-term contribution as a human being and thus of what's "fair" for him to get.

 

(In fairness to Skreli, I think he might well be mentally ill — or at least he's putting on a good show of it for his criminal trial — but my point remains.)

We just don't know enough about human motivation

In a Facebook thread, a conservative friend writes: "And yet, those economies where it was 'sink or swim' have thrived throughout history (in contradiction to those that were socialist)." I moved my response here.

That's an oversimplification. Sink or swim does provide a certain motivation, but humans generally aren't willing to just let others sink, even when the others' problems are their own "fault."

That's why we have laws requiring hospitals to treat emergency cases, even when the patients should have bought health insurance. That's why we have food stamps.

For that matter, that's why first responders and volunteers risk their lives to rescue people from their Harvey-flooded homes and streets, even though those people had [fouled] up by ignoring earlier warnings to evacuate.

We simply don't understand human psychology as well as we need to. In particular, we haven't developed a broadly-accepted, tested, general theory about what it takes to promote socially-desirable behavior.

Sure, we have various notions along those lines. A lot of those notions, though, are no more evidence-based than, say, bleeding a feverish patient to (supposedly) reduce the fever, as physicians used to do centuries ago.

In that vein, I thought this Kristof piece from a couple of months ago was quite thought-provoking:

... Consider baseball: Some teams pay players much more disparately than others do, and one might think that pay inequality creates incentives for better performance and more wins.

In fact, economists have crunched the data and found the opposite is true. Teams with greater equality did much better, perhaps because they were more cohesive.

What’s more, it turned out that even the stars did better when they were on teams with flatter pay. "Higher inequality seemed to undercut the superstar players it was meant to incentivize, which is what you would expect if you believed that the chief effect of pay inequality was to reduce cooperation and team cohesion," Payne notes.

Nicholas Kristof, What Monkeys Can Teach Us About Fairness (NYTimes.com June 3, 2017) (emphasis added).

This lack of a true understanding of human motivation, and how to apply that understanding to motivate "useful" behavior, is the basis of a lot of political disagreement. For example:

• Today's GOP leadership thinks that tax cuts for the wealthy are a panacea for the economy; they think that such cuts will supposedly incentivize the wealthy to create jobs. Sure, the Laffer curve ~sounded~ good back in the 1970s. But from what I've read, most non-right-wing economists have concluded that, at the very least, the Laffer curve has been taken too far. ("If a little is good, then more would be even better — right?")
• On the other side of the aisle, some leftists seem to think that we could solve all our social ills by imposing punitive taxes on the rich and giving everyone a universal basic income (UBI) and free health care. That strikes me as likely to be a fantasy, for several reasons I won't take the time to discuss.

In sum: We just don't know where the sweet spot is for getting people to do useful things. Hell, we don't even agree that much on what we mean by "useful." And in any case, the sweet spot is likely to move around over time, just as weather patterns do.

The best we can do, I submit, is to stay focused on seeking the best for others as we do for ourselves, and to face the facts as they are revealed to us.

Success: How much is due to effort, and how much to luck?

This is an interesting discussion thread about how success depends not just on our own efforts, but on luck, too — especially in our choices of parents and of upbringing — and so we ought to have plenty of sympathy for those who come up short in the luck category. Excerpt: "When once asked for the secret of financial success, he [the Duke of Westminster] replied it was to have an ancestor who had been a close friend of William the Conqueror."

 

 

Inequality can be good for society — until it isn't

I'd always accepted the assumption that a certain level of inequality was good for society because it helps to motivate less-well-off individuals to get busy and up their game. But studies seem to suggest that the "machinery" of a sports team, a company, a community, etc., can be thrown out of whack by too much inequality. It sounds like the way that the machinery of the human body can be thrown out of whack by too much salt, too much vitamin D, etc.

Here's an excerpt from a June 5 piece on this subject in the NY Times by Nicholas Kristof, What Monkeys Can Teach Us About Fairness:

... Consider baseball: Some teams pay players much more disparately than others do, and one might think that pay inequality creates incentives for better performance and more wins.

In fact, economists have crunched the data and found the opposite is true. Teams with greater equality did much better, perhaps because they were more cohesive.

What’s more, it turned out that even the stars did better when they were on teams with flatter pay. "Higher inequality seemed to undercut the superstar players it was meant to incentivize, which is what you would expect if you believed that the chief effect of pay inequality was to reduce cooperation and team cohesion," Payne notes.

This might well raise doubts whether laissez-faire, libertarian, free-market economics is really the best way to promote human progress.

What if Aurora moviegoers had rushed the shooter, together?

At mass shootings, many people seem either to cower, not knowing what to do, or to flee. Apart from a few who courageously try to protect others, for many it's either deer in the headlights or sauve qui peut, every man for himself. We've seen this going back at least as early as the 1991 Luby's massacre in Killeen, Texas, in which 23 were killed (and the shooter killed himself), plus 20 wounded.

Cowering or fleeing is a natural human reaction. (In cold economic terms, fleeing may be the extreme case of the free-rider problem: Let someone else take care of the problem.)

But ask yourself: At the Aurora theater shooting, what would have happened if a crowd of movie­goers had immediately rushed the shooter, despite the obvious risk, because "that's what we do" for each other?  

There's no denying that the shooter might well have shot one or more of his attackers. At the Luby's massacre, 71-year-old (!) Al Gratia rushed at the shooter and was fatally shot in the chest. (It's noteworthy that the selfless Gratia was a World War II veteran.)

But if lots of people had attacked at Luby's or at the Aurora theater, a lot of lives might have been saved:

• The shooter wouldn't have had time to get off so many shots before being overpowered.
• Nor would he have had as much time to take careful aim, so whomever he did manage to shoot might well have been wounded, not killed. 
• Conceivably the shooter, surprised at being attacked himself, might have 'frozen,' in which case he might not have shot anyone else. 

And would the Aurora shooter have proceeded if he knew in advance that he was going to be immediately attacked by the crowd?  He seems to have acted pretty "rationally," in a twisted sort of way. He had full body armor.  He was well-armed.  He had thought through his plan at least somewhat.  If he had known that he was going to be immediately tackled by the crowd, he might have proceeded with his plan anyway — but maybe not.

That's why (it's been said) a 9/11-style airplane hjacking will never happen again: terrorists know that the passengers will rush and overpower the hijackers. The terrorists might be able to blow up the plane, or to crash it, but they won't be able to use it as a fuel-laden guided missile to kill thousands of others.  Americans have learned from the heroic example of the passengers on United Flight 93, who stopped its hijackers from flying the plane into the White House or the Capitol. (Some­thing similar actually occurred in the case of the shoe bomber, who was overpowered by flight attendants and passengers.)

Let's be clear about a couple of things here.  First, I'm talking here about fighting back against a mass murderer like the guy in Aurora; I absolutely do not mean invoking a stand-your-ground law as an excuse to shoot somebody. Second, special cases exist: Let's say you're a parent with kids in tow (or in your arms); in that kind of situation, your first obligation is to protect your kids as best you can, and that will almost certainly call for a snap judgment call.

But otherwise, we Americans should commit ourselves to a higher stand­ard: If, God forbid, we ever find ourselves in a mass-shooting situation, then we will attack, immediately — and trust that we won't be alone — because we owe that to each other. The Department of Home­land Security says that attacking the shooter should be a last resort, but I think that's backwards. 

Would I personally react by rushing the shooter in an Aurora-type emergency? I wish I knew; I certainly hope so.

Why American government works better when neither party completely controls it

Here's an intriguing analysis from Jonathan Rauch that seems to explain a lot about the current state of U.S. politics. He says, in a nutshell, that things get bad when one party is in control not only of the White House but also of both houses of Congress. That's because the majority party's legislators know they can count on a steady diet of obstructionism from the minority party. That in turn means the majority has to placate its own hard-liners to have a hope of getting anything done, resulting in legislation that's more extreme than the country as a whole would like — that is, when the majority is able to enact any legislation at all.

... Today, almost all Democrats are to the left of all Republicans. The result is that the system behaves very differently when one party is in control than when they share.

So differently, in fact, that you can fairly say that the country has one Constitution with two distinct modes of operation.

In Mode 1 — unified government — the minority party in Washington, shut out of power, has every incentive to make the majority’s life difficult, and does so. Its partisans, with no stake in whether anything gets done in Washington, [DCT comment: and worried about drawing a primary challenge in the next election cycle from their party's radical wing] treat the government as if it were under control of an invading army.

The majority, lacking support from the out-of-power party, must govern on its own, which requires holding on to every element of its coalition, which means governing from the center of its party instead of the center of the country.

In other words, Democrats, when in total control, have little choice but to govern from the left. Republicans, who are even more conservative than Democrats are liberal, govern from the right. Policy is driven toward the edges, instead of the middle. ...

In Mode 2 — divided government — the dynamic is reversed. Both parties, responsible for governing, have a stake in success. Forced to negotiate and compromise, they drag policy toward the center, allowing moderates to feel represented instead of ignored.

Most important, the country itself becomes more governable and meaningful laws stand a likelier chance of passage, because neither side can easily blame the other for whatever is wrong and because any major legislation needs support from both parties to pass.

Jonathan Rauch, Divided We Thrive, NY Times, Nov. 6, 2010 (emphasis and extra paragraphing added).

The GOP Pledge to America: Abolishing "traffic laws"?

Give the GOP credit:  In offering the 2010 version of their 1994 Contract with America, dubbed the "Pledge to America," at least they're being clear about what they'd do if they regained control of Congress.  (I found a draft of the Pledge at Scribd and am working through its 21 pages.)   Some of the GOP proposals make sense; others, I'm not at all so sure about. 

The Pledge talks about cutting through job-killing government red tape. But if there's one thing we know about people of all stripes, it's that they can focus single-mindedly on the pursuit of what they want; they'd much prefer not to have to think about the possible side effects of their actions. (Economists call these side effects externalities.) That goes for two-year-olds, for tycoons, and for everyone in between.

Rodney Clapp put it well a couple of years ago in The Christian Century: "The theological rationale for the necessity (and the potential nobility) of government can be summarized in two words: original sin. Each and every person and institution is prone to self-deception and destructive self-interest. ... There is no such thing as sufficient self-regulation on Wall Street, on Main Street, in our churches or anywhere else. ..." (Emphasis added.)

It'd be wonderful if we didn't need traffic laws, and every driver could relentlessly put the pedal to the metal to get to her destination, oblivious to everything around her. But that would have been a bad idea even in the days of Model Ts and two-lane gravel roads; it'd be disastrous in this day of SUVs and high-speed interstate freeways (not to mention giant tractor-trailer truck rigs).

The "road" we share is both more crowded and more complex. It seems pretty silly to insist that the simple "traffic laws" of yesteryear are all we need.

Related posts:

• Sin as Evolutionary Side Effect
• Financial regulations can be like fire safety rules

World-renowned computer programmer Linus Torvalds becomes U.S. citizen - why it matters

See the oh-by-the-way comment in this posting by the world-renowned Finnish computer programmer Linus Torvalds, mentioning that he became a U.S. citizen last week (hat tip: Hacker News).

It's been said before: It seems that "foreigners" want to become Americans far more than the other way around, which suggests that as a nation we must not be doing that badly.

Big government is a necessary counterweight to big business, says The Christian Century

A mantra I've stressed in this blog is that the First Commandment calls us to face the facts, to live in the real world wrought by the Creator and not in some fantasy land of our own making.

One of the facts that must be faced is that people just don't always do what they're "supposed" to do. Perhaps as a side effect of natural selection, we can be relentlessly single-minded in our pursuit of what we want, to the point of inflicting harm on ourselves and others. This relentlessness can be seen in all areas of life, not least in some of the upper reaches of the business world.

Apropos of that, recently The Christian Century's editors nicely summed up why my politics have become a bit more liberal and a bit less laissez-faire than they used to be:

The Tea Party movement represents an effort to undo the 20th-century consensus of corporate liberalism, according to which Big Government is the necessary counterweight to Big Business, an arrangement that has offered a modicum of protection to the public while maintaining a stable political and economic environment for business.

Individual resistance to Big Anything is understandable. But in directing their libertarian passions at government alone, Tea Party activists fail to grasp the complexities and scale of modern life.

None of the major political challenges of our time—health care, environmental dangers, social security, the globalization of the economy and the immense power of banks and companies that become "too big to fail"—is addressed by the Tea Party's antitax, antigovernment ideology.

Tea Party's strange brew, The Christian Century, July 13, 2010, p. 7 (emphasis and extra paraagraphing added).