George Lakoff and the Three-Axes Model

Posted on February 11, 2013 by Arnold Kling

These ideas are placed into public discourse via a sophisticated conservative communications machine: think tanks, messaging experts,Grover Norquist’s weekly meetings at Americans for Tax Reform and across the country, training institutes, booking agencies, talk radio, Fox News, Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, chambers of commerce, bloggers and the rest. This network puts those words and their frames, both political and moral, into the brains of a huge number of our citizens.

In my forthcoming e-book, I point out that each political tribe puts forth a narrative that blames the existence of the other tribe on a conspiracy of this kind. Lakoff lists the standard villains from the progressive point of view. For conservatives, it is “Hollywood” and the “mainstream media” that are to blame for people’s false consciousness.

In fact, Lakoff is most famous for Moral Politics, in which he argues that the difference between conservatives and progressives is that conservatives use a “strict-father” morality to evaluate public policy and progressives use a “nurturant parent” model. Never does Lakoff recognize that equating government-citizen and parent-child is a mistake.

Libertarians think that the false consciousness of people comes from academics such as Lakoff. For decades, we have hoped to change the narrative within universities.

Ralph Raico and the Three-Axes Model

Posted on February 11, 2013 by Arnold Kling

Don Boudreaux offers an hour-long video of a talk by Ralph Raico in 1986. I found it well worth watching.

In three-axis terms, Raico begins his talk by saying that we consistently are taught to think of the role of government during the Industrial Revolution along the oppressor-oppressed axis. He ends his talk by saying that the welfare state’s origins in Germany should be viewed along the freedom-coercion axis.

In my forthcoming e-book on the three-axis model (not sure when it will appear, because I have just begun the process), I point out that every partisan blames the media for pushing the (false) narratives of the other side. Thus, it is quite typical for libertarians to complain about the false narrative of the Industrial Revolution and to try to supply the “true” narrative.

Having said that, and keep in mind that I put myself in the libertarian camp, I think that Raico makes a very good case, at least in the first half of the talk. That is, progressives tell a story in which whenever laissez-faire breaks out for a while, it has horrible consequences in terms of oppression, until government rescues the common man. A quarter-century after his talk, that is exactly how progressives tried to frame the financial crisis. Concerning the Industrial Revolution, this oppressor-oppressed narrative with government as savior is, as Raico points out, a baloney sandwich.

The Unintended Consequences of God

Posted on February 7, 2013 by Arnold Kling

In The Chosen Few, Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein offer an explanation for how Jews wound up in high-skilled, urban occupations. They argue (p. 95) that between 200 and 650 AD,

world Jewry became a small population of literate individuals (“the chosen few”). The unintended consequences of the religious ruling that required Jewish fathers to invest in their sons’ literacy and education fully displayed themselves

Jews became much more literate than other populations, but at a cost of numbers, as those who could not afford to educate their sons converted to other religions. Over this time period (p. 113)

the general population decreased by about 12 percent, whereas the Jewish population collapsed by roughly two-thirds

In those days, most people were farmers, for whom literacy’s costs generally outweighed its benefits. However, in an urbanized society with skilled occupations, literacy pays off. As urbanization gradually increased in the late Middle Ages, Jews came to fill high-skilled occupations. Botticini and Eckstein argue that literacy, rather than persecution, is what led Jews into these occupations.

Urbanization is a very important process in economic development. Jane Jacobs made that argument convincingly. So has Ed Glaeser. Specialization and trade take place in cities, by necessity and by convenience. Without modern transportation, rural areas are cut off from trade. Even today, city dwellers account for a disproportionate share of wealth.

This year’s Super Bowl commercial featured Paul Harvey speaking on the theme that God created the farmer. The commercial has a lot of overtones along the civilization-barbarism axis. If Harvey is correct, then God’s gift of the bible to the Jews had some unintended consequences. Ultimately, according to Botticini and Eckstein, the first monotheists embarked on a course that ultimately led them away from farms and into the urban world of specialization and trade.

The Three-Axis Model and Social Security

Posted on February 5, 2013 by Arnold Kling

A while back, John Goodman wrote,

No one questions why we provide help to people who are sick or disabled. Or why we provide benefits to people who are temporarily out of work and looking for a job. But why subsidize people who want to play golf?

The short answer is that the elderly are treated as an oppressed class. They receive “senior discounts,” for example. (To be fair, in some cases this is price discrimination, intended to maximize revenue.)

From a conservative point of view, Social Security undermines the incentive to work, and not just for seniors. It is funded by the payroll tax. It also undermines the incentive to save, because people count on Social Security instead. Thus, Social Security goes against an important value for civilization–deferred gratification.

Are the elderly today truly an oppressed class? I think it would be hard to argue that case. However, the same might be said for many of the oppressed classes as defined by the progressive model. All unionized workers, including public-sector workers making more than the median income? All women?

One issue that I have not addressed in the oppressor-oppressed axis is how these classes come to be defined.

The Three-Axis Model and Coalitions

Posted on February 3, 2013 by Arnold Kling

From a reader:

Does the three axis model help understand coalitions?…Are coalitions a kind of exchange where people accept each other’s position on the model?

My first thought is that coalitions are more likely to form on particular issues, with each group in the coalition using its preferred heuristic. This makes such coalitions fragile. For example, the biggest enthusiasts for the drug war probably were conservatives, who see drug abuse as barbaric. Progressives might side with conservatives to the extent that they views “pushers” as oppressors. However, as they grow to see imprisoned drug sellers more as oppressed than as oppressors, their support for the drug war weakens.

Does a coalition form because one group accepts another group’s model? I think this is less likely, and it is unlikely to last long. For example, perhaps immediately after 9/11, progressives accepted the civilization vs. barbarism narrative about terrorist groups. However, that has changed. Now, when a conservative uses the language of civilization vs. barbarism, he is likely to be labeled by progressives as an Islamophobe. Look at what happened to the film maker after the Benghazi incident.

I noticed that in the popular novel Kite Runner, the Taliban were portrayed as grown-up schoolyard bullies, which made it possible for progressives to process them by using the oppressed-oppressor narrative. Perhaps progressives favored the war in Afghanistan because they were persuaded to think of the Taliban as oppressors. President Bush attempted to make that case about Saddam Hussein in Iraq, but at that point progressives were not buying such a narrative. For that war, his coalition was smaller and quite fragile.

[I note in passing that Walter Russell Mead wrote last week,

Civilization is a hard won victory, and it must be constantly reclaimed in the face of barbarism.

He was talking about Mali.]

Concerning coalitions, I can imagine trying to include language in a bill that is intended to appeal to more than one dominant heuristic. For example, an immigration-reform measure could include language designed to emphasize border security and English as a national language in order to mollify conservatives that civilization is still valued.

Libertarians who try to get progressives on board with school choice are likely to emphasize it benefits for inner-city children, rather than talk up its benefits more broadly. I think that these attempts to frame issues in another group’s heuristic are more constructive than many other approaches for discussing politics. But these attempts will tend to fail nonetheless. As far as progressives are concerned, public education and teachers’ unions are automatically on the side of the oppressed, and that makes school choice a hard sell.

Ideas, Policy, Truth, and Rationalization

Posted on February 1, 2013 by Arnold Kling

From Russ Roberts.

Keynes saw economics ideas influencing policy. But maybe it is policy that influences economics. So as the world becomes more interventionist, the economists respond by finding arguments that rationalize that policy. (I am sure I’m not the first person to suggest this. Feel free to share references in the comments.)

…Obviously, this is not the whole story. Keynes was right–good ideas are powerful. Economists aren’t just affected by public opinion, they affect it in turn. But I do think our profession (like journalists) have a view of ourselves that is quite romantic–we see ourselves as truth-seekers. Well, yes, there is an element of truth-seeking in what we do. But it’s not the only factor.

I believe it helps to think in terms of two uses for reasoning. There is motivated reasoning, which is aimed at rationalizing one’s own actions and those of one’s favored group. And there is constructive reasoning, which is aimed at seeking the truth. The existence of motivated reasoning is well established in the literature on psychology and political beliefs. The existence of constructive reasoning is something that I take on faith.

It is tempting to say that I engage solely in constructive reasoning, while other people engage in motivated reasoning. Of course, the odds that this is the case are not very high.

In fact, I think that in contemporary America we are highly tribal in our political beliefs. Think of my three-axis model. If you make an argument that rationalizes the views of those who share your ideology and puts down the views of those with a different ideology, you raise your status within your tribe. If you do the opposite, you lower your status within your tribe. So once you become embedded in a tribe, your reasoning tends more and more toward motivated reasoning.

Still More on Political Authority

Posted on January 31, 2013 by Arnold Kling

In a comment on this post, “Ross” writes,

If I understand Arnold’s position correctly (I guess this response is to clarify it for interested parties), the prevailing reason for the belief in authority (offices, people, what have you), is rooted in the desire for a “rule of law” or, more concretely, predictable coercion over unpredictable coercion. This is at least what I understand when I read “people like those social conventions,” for what is a convention, but a more or less predictable and more or less stable system of rules, in this case, rules for the application of force.

I think this is why the distinction between “person” and “office” is rather important. An “office” is more than just a funny hat someone wears, but also a set of common expectations about what that hat means held by a great number of associates.

Huemer might be correct that any particular convention is morally arbitrary, but I believe Arnold is arguing that arbitrary or not, most humans have some “slot” in their minds for having some mediation of force. I guess a better analogy could be language. Our brains are wired for language, though just what kind of language can fill that slot is widely variable. If my neighbor began babbling in something he and his friends constructed, I might very well refuse to learn the babble and stick with English. Am I applying a double standard? It could very well also be the case that most of my associates submitting to this authority is a good reason for me to submit to it.

I think that Arnold’s criticism is that Huemer’s examples of individuals who spontaneously declare themselves to have new official powers only goes to show that one usually rejects governmental “innovation” (usually, because in the absence of government, innovations might be accepted). In that sense, we have a commonsense justification of a limited government, not anarcho-capitalism. [emphasis added]

That does capture my position. Let us try this formulation:

1. The way I see it, political authority (the right to coerce and the duty to obey) is a social convention that has evolved over time.

2. In the United States (and in other democracies), this authority is treated as residing in offices (positions that are recognized as carrying authority, such as policeman, judge, or legislator). The people holding those offices do not have the authority when they leave those offices.

3. The authority that resides in offices is partly formal. There exist documents, such as Constitutions or statutes, that describe the responsibilities, powers, and boundaries of the offices.

4. However, there is also an informal, “common law” component to authority. This evolves over time. (Not necessarily for the better, I might add.)

5. If you come at the issue with the belief that no one should have the right to coerce, then the social convention of political authority seems absurd. However, for most people, this social convention seems natural.

6. People see this social convention as natural because they believe that it makes coercion predictable and arguably benevolent. Few people can envision a coercion-free utopia. Instead, what most people expect in the absence of government is coercion that is malevolent and unpredictable.

7. The libertarian’s task of demonstrating the falsity of the ordinary person’ belief is quite difficult. There are few, if any, examples of successful societies that have done away with government. In fact, the ordinary person may have the sounder empirical model.

8. If we grant that the social convention of political authority is legitimate, we can still argue that the social convention has evolved in adverse ways. We have endowed offices with powers of coercion that are too broad and too readily abused. But that is a more painstaking case to make, and there is plenty of room for disagreement about where and how lines should be drawn.

9. It would be neater and cleaner to convince people that political authority is a moral absurdity, but that claim seems to be difficult to ground on assumptions that most people would share.

Michael Huemer Responds, I Reply, Bryan Caplan Rejoins, etc.

Posted on January 31, 2013 by Arnold Kling

Reacting to my essay, Huemer emails (my response follows his quote),

Dear Arnold,

Thanks for your blog post. There are several important points raised there. Here are a few comments; I cc Bryan [Caplan] in case he’s interested.

1. Did I identify the reason why most people believe in authority? You suggest that the real reasons are not well articulated by political philosophers.
I suspect that the real reasons are better covered by the chapter on psychology than by the philosophical chapters. I suspect that philosophical theories of authority are just rationalizations.
It sounded like maybe you thought there were other reasons, which might be real reasons and not just psychological causes, for most people’s belief in authority. So I’ll just express my skepticism that ordinary people have something more sophisticated or more rational in mind than anything that any of the experts have been able to come up with.

2. What is my view of human nature? Well, there are lots of different people with lots of different traits. With regard to any trait, there will be a variation, with some people having surprisingly high or low amounts of it. Hence, I would say that most people are basically prudent most of the time, but that there are a small number of people who are frequently reckless and violent; and also, ordinary people can be gotten to act in irrational ways in special circumstances. I hope these sound like uninteresting, banal remarks.
I really don’t think that disagreements about “human nature” are at the core of most political disagreements. I think people like to say that because it sounds profound. But I really didn’t arrive at any major views by contemplating “human nature”, except in fairly trivial, banal ways. In particular, I don’t think I disagree with liberals or conservatives because I have a different view of human nature. I think I have a different analysis of how *social systems* work.

3. Thus, you say progressives think the government needs to protect people from those with the ability to intimidate or manipulate others. And they think the government can nudge approximately-rational people in the right direction. Okay, I don’t think I disagree with the progressives about the frequency of manipulators, intimidators, or irrational people in the population. I think I just disagree with the claim that political institutions somehow screen out those people. I just think the manipulators, intimidators, and irrational people are at least as likely to be *in* the government as anywhere else, because I don’t see how our selection mechanisms prevent that. On the contrary, I think we have mechanisms that screen out honest and rational people.

4. But anyway, I think that’s all fairly irrelevant, because even if someone is rational and can protect you from bad people, that doesn’t give them authority. Take the vigilante example from the first chapter. The vigilante protected his neighbors from some vandals. That doesn’t give him authority over the neighbors. So again, what’s going on isn’t that the progressives have a special view about human nature that makes sense of their political position. What’s going on is that they are applying a moral double standard: they are exempting the state from the moral principles that they apply to everyone else.

5. If conservatives really think that the government is on the brink of collapse, such that one more person disobeying the law might cause it to collapse, then I think they’re just wildly irrational. I don’t know how many law-violations occur every year, but it’s definitely in the millions. Probably hundreds of millions. So the probability that we’re just now on the brink where one more violation causes a collapse … well, let’s just call it “negligible” and leave it at that.

6. You suggest that conservatives think the branches of government won’t cooperate in extending government power, because conservatives think people are just too prone to conflict. Well, I could see thinking that people will start conflicts *to gain something*. I can even see thinking that people will attack *the weak* purely to demonstrate their own power. But these conservatives would have to think that these government branches want to take up conflicts *with extremely powerful adversaries* (viz., each other), *where they have nothing to gain*, rather than preying on the ordinary people. I just can’t see that as a reasonable theory. (And then, incidentally, we have to hope that this conflict remains perpetually balanced at just the right point, rather than any side winning, or all sides preventing the others from carrying out their legitimate functions, etc.)

There’s a lot more that could be said in response to your comments, as you raised a lot of interesting issues, esp. about human nature. And I perhaps haven’t made my views about human nature entirely clear (mostly because I don’t have very detailed or specific views about it and don’t think we need such). But in the interests of time, I should leave it at that. Thanks again for your thoughts about my book.

My response (Bryan Caplan’s rejoinder in italics):

A. Go back to your point 3, where you say that you don’t think our political system is effective at screening out “manipulators, intimidators, and irrational people.” This is a very strong point. However, it is not a matter of simple moral intuition. It is a hypothesis concerning how political institutions work. [Of course. Mike never claimed that *everything* was based on moral intuition. In fact, the whole second part of the book is intended to answer the consequentialist critique of anarcho-capitalism.] I would argue that progressives have a different hypothesis, which is that it is possible within our political system for good to triumph. [Mike probably shares the hypothesis that this is “possible.” The question is whether it’s *likely*. Given progressives’ endless complaining, it’s not clear even they believe the latter.]

B. Similarly, on point 6, you may be right that the separation of powers fails to prevent government officials from acting in concert to the detriment of ordinary individuals. However, once again, this is not a moral intuition. It is a hypothesis about how political institutions work. [Mike isn’t claiming moral intuition is everything. He often combines moral intuition with factual claims.]

C. In point 4, you talk of the “double standard” that people apply to public officials and private vigilantes. However, ordinary people do not sense that they are guilty of a double standard. Barack Obama has authority that ordinary people do not have, but that is not because Barack Obama is judged differently from other men. It is because of the office that he holds. [An interesting point. But Mike’s critique still holds. Suppose your friends decide to create an “office” and select someone to run it. This person starts giving you orders and threatening to injure you if you don’t respect the “authority of his office.” Would this seem all right to normal people?] When he leaves that office, he will no longer have the authority to order drone strikes, change immigration enforcement procedures, threaten to veto budget legislation, etc.

In theory, any one of us could become a policeman, a legislator, a judge, or an official at a government agency. The authority resides in those offices, not in the individuals who hold those offices.

Most people find it intuitively appealing to have everyone around them ultimately subject to a single authority, rather than having competing authorities. To most people, having competing “protection agencies” and competing judiciaries is as inconceivable as two football teams playing a game without using the same rules and the same referees.

In fact, try making your double-standard argument in the context of the football metaphor. “We don’t let any ordinary fan run onto the field, blow the whistle to stop play, and call penalties. Why do we let referees do that?” Well, because that is what we want referees to do. [When pressed, wouldn’t the answer be, “Because the players and audience actually consented to follow the rules”? If a football team started playing in my backyard without my permission, the referee wouldn’t get to ignore my request to vacate in virtue of his office. And I think even football fans would admit this.] Unfortunately, the same holds for government, at least to some extent. A lot of people want government to do many things, and the scope of government reflects that. I wish it were not the case, but I do not think that there is any plain, philosophically intuitive argument that is going to make a difference. [“Make a difference” in the sense of actually persuading normal unreasonable sheeple? You’re right. “Make a difference” in the sense of persuading people of common sense and common decency? I say Mike’s case is overwhelming.]

[For those of you have read this far, I also recommend the comments on my earlier post.]

Huemer adds,

I was basically going to say what Bryan said. But there’s more to say.

I think what Arnold is responding to is my idea that the disagreement between libertarians and others turns on beliefs about authority. So you (Arnold) are trying to identify other beliefs that the disagreement (also?) depends on.

Okay, maybe progressives disagree with me about how the political system works. But I don’t think that’s the main disagreement. Because I also think that *even if politicians were wise, rational, and benevolent*, they still wouldn’t have authority. Compare: suppose I’m really wise, benevolent, and rational, and I’m issuing some commands that are similarly wise, etc. Does that mean that I get to demand money from you and use violence against you if you don’t pay?

A similar point goes for the conservatives: let’s say they’re right, and separation of powers prevents most abuses. (Aside: I’m pretty sure conservatives think that the government screws up a lot of things and oversteps its bounds, so they can’t think separation of powers is completely effective.) I still don’t think there would be authority. Compare: Suppose that Bryan and I start demanding money from you. But suppose that Bryan and I restrain each other from asking too much or abusing you too much. Does that mean that you’re now obligated to pay us? And that we can use violence against you if you don’t?

So again, I don’t think you can’t explain why leftists and rightists reject libertarianism except by appealing to their common belief in a special sort of authority for the state.

I certainly agree with the last sentence. That is, non-libertarians (and even minarchist libertarians) believe in the authority of the state.

I think that the intuitive theory of government legitimacy is that there are certain offices that can legitimately exercise authority. It is not because Obama is particularly wise, benevolent, and rational that he has authority. He has authority because he occupies the White House, and from a progressive point of view we hope that the occupant is as wise, benevolent, and rational as we can find.

How are these offices, in which authority is vested, created? To some philosophers, they are created formally, by a contract. However, I would argue that they emerge as a social convention. True, many countries have constitutions, which are attempts to formally define the expectations about authority. However, in my view, constitutions are merely one part of the collection of social conventions. Constitutions act like statutory law, but ultimately it is common law that rules.

What Huemer wants to argue against are the social conventions whereby we obey the laws and commands of people holding certain offices and whereby the people holding those offices are allowed to use force against those who do not obey. My claim is that most people like those social conventions, for the same reason that they like the social convention of having a referee for a football game. As I see it, the conservative argument for government is that having such a convention keeps people from descending into tribal barbarism (Lord of the Flies). The progressive argument is that it enables wise, benevolent leaders to emerge, overcoming what otherwise would be a world of oppression and individual folly.

I think that most people believe that without the social convention(s) of government they would be much worse off. Nearly everyone believes that without these social conventions, violent gangs would run around terrorizing the population. Influenced by progressives, many people believe that without these social conventions, their children would not be educated, their elderly parents would not have health care or adequate incomes, etc. Influenced by conservatives, many people believe that without these social conventions, barbaric foreigners would overrun our country.

Taking such beliefs as given, a libertarian gets nowhere by arguing that there is something morally wrong with allowing government officials to use coercion. Until you challenge those beliefs, you are making arguments that appeal only to those who already are inclined to agree with you.

Neo-Georgist?

Posted on January 30, 2013 by Arnold Kling

The proposed Commonwealth of Belle Isle (near Detroit).

There are three sources of revenue. The first is user fees, which apply primarily to the monorail. A 10% sales tax provides a second source. Importantly, sales taxes encourage thrift and are collected outside the cost structure of the products. Real estate taxes provide the third, but the system is radically different than that employed in the U.S. Only the raw land value is taxed, not what the owner builds on it. This follows the principle of government only receiving compensation for what it provides. Government didn’t pay to construct buildings on the owner’s land, nor does it bear the risk of loss. We encourage development of property, not discourage it.

With no offense meant to Paul Romer, Michael Strong, or other folks in the movement to establish a free city, I have always felt that the best qualification to execute this project is experience in real estate development. The main proponent behind this concept has such a background.

Tip from Tyler Cowen.

My Sense of Huemer