I read the latest (final? I hope not, because I have some critical comments) draft of Tyler Cowen’s Stubborn Attachments, which he describes as follows:
I outline a true and objectively valid case for a free and prosperous society, and consider the importance of economic growth for political philosophy, how and why the political spectrum should be reconfigured, how we should think about existential risk, what is right and wrong in Parfit and Nozick and Singer and effective altruism, how to get around the Arrow Impossibility Theorem, to what extent individual rights can be absolute, how much to discount the future, when redistribution is justified, whether we must be agnostic about the distant future, and most of all why we need to “think big.”
One of the issues that Tyler raises that I think ought to be resolved somewhat differently is that of the role of rights in consequentialism. In a sense, basic rights, like property rights, dangle awkwardly in a consequentialist philosophy. If I can create more happiness by giving your corn to someone else, why should you have the right to keep it?
I am inclined to give a Hayekian account of why you should have the right to choose whether to eat, plant, trade, or donate your corn. That is, you are likely to know the best of use of your corn, including the best moral use of it, thanks to your local knowledge. Thus, the consequences are likely to best if you make the decision rather than I make the decision.
In fact, in cases where we think that you are not competent to make the decision (a child, or someone with severe mental deficiencies), we do not treat property rights as absolute. Thus, our intuition about rights is tied up with the issue of how much we respect the person’s local knowledge.
One view of moral philosophy is that our intuitions are basically right, and it is the philosopher’s job to come up with a system of thought that accounts for and perhaps codifies our intuitions. While I would not go to this extreme, it is always something to consider in moral philosophy.
On the other hand, if you told me that economists’ intuitions about what constitute high-quality research are basically right, and the job of economic epistemology is to come up with a system of thought that accounts for and perhaps codifies our intuitions, I would be inclined to object. But perhaps I am willing to say that it something to consider in economic epistemology.
WRT economic research: In biology, the techniques are usually pretty good and the statistical methods are good enough, though are always a ripe tare for criticism. We are having a little bit of an antibody crisis right now, but it doesn’t matter as much as the newsmags would love people to believe. We never give the audience enough credit. The people who really use the research know what is up. Nobody is going to fool themselves when they need to get their own project to work (the grant may be a different story). The real problem is all the extrapolation, interpretation and overselling to the marginal observers.
It is kind of a sad testament that I also think I understand enough about economics academia to think I understand why they go off the rails, but to think it doesn’t actually matter (that much). Just as there is no such world where we wave a magic wand and antibodies are suddenly as specific as people pretended to believe, I suspect any academia that marches a straight line towards truth cannot exist.
One Hayekian / meta-consequentialist justification for rigid, ‘deontological’-like rights is that without them there is no good way for individuals to plan while trusting in the long-term, reliable predictability of a set of basic rules that governs the way the state and ones compatriots will treat them, and this lack of confidence reduces incentives to engage in socially beneficial activity and increases inefficient expenditures of resources on hedging, security, evasion, and rent-seeking.
What appears to be a local, short term utilitarian transfer can also be at odds with the best way we have learned from experience of how to enable and incentivize long-term growth and human flourishing, given the intractable philosophical and practical complexity of making these kinds of welfare calculations and forecasts.
And the only way to make people really believe that these rules are stable enough and will be honored and maintained despite short term political temptations is to successfully propagate a belief that these rights are near-sacred and somehow transcend the domain of what is normally up for debate and reform.
Unfortunately the political incentive to attack such sacred principles in a democracy is irresistible, and so long as influential and prestigious elites are permitted the freedom to publicly critique those principles and lower their status, then the slide toward increasing state interference is inevitable.
Enthusiastic +1. I’ve always had trouble explaining that, while I’m a utilitarian not a deontological libertarian, there is a meta-utilitarian reason to have a modest set of near sacred individual freedoms. I will try to incorporate parts of your explanation.
I got four things from his essay:
1) Rich first world people shouldn’t have to take their cosmopolitan utilitarianism seriously enough to make any real personal sacrifices
2) However, they should take it seriously enough to flood their country with African immigrants and (partially?) gut the welfare state
3) This will *somehow* lead to higher sustainable economic growth on a multi-century timeline…
4) There are “near-universal” human rights that can override utilitarianism (but sort of reconcile on a long enough timeline?). Apparently that means “rights” that Cowen determines based on his whims, but they also have exceptions when Cowen determines…
Ultimately, if you want to increase sustainable long term growth the most important factors are political stability and eugenics. Immigration strongly undermines both in potentially catastrophic ways, and has few potential upsides due to the incompatibility and low human capital of the average immigrant.
You could argue that “rights” mean we need to do things that aren’t good for long term growth, but this right to virtually unfettered immigration doesn’t seem firmly rooted in any cultural, philosophic, or religious tradition. It’s just something a few rich people in the modern first world came up with, who happen to be getting rich off it, and have conveniently decided the same logic doesn’t require them to do anything against their interests though it requires massive sacrifices from their countrymen.
Nor should we conclude that giving up this idea of immigration as a “right” means we have to give up on other “rights”. Modern East Asia doesn’t recognize this “right to immigration”, and yet their societies still manage to maintain all sorts of modern individual rights. Many societies have recognized some rights and not others. In the end, I think immigration threatens many core “rights” as I expect immigration to create chaotic and impoverished societies full of antagonistic strife.
The longer a timeline one considers, the greater a crime immigration becomes. It is probably the greatest crime any of us are likely to see in our lifetimes, with the longest lasting and most devastating effects. Nearly all other issues being debated by our legislators today are mere child’s play (bills can be passed or overturned if we get it wrong). Immigration is forever. When I think about the majority NAM future our children will grow up with, I feel only dread. I’d do anything to stop it if some clear path to stopping it were visible.
I don’t want to rag on the whole thing, because I actually liked much of it. Most of us do mimic much of what Tyler writes in there when it comes to morality. There is just a huge blind spot on by far the most important issue of the day, and that ignorance is criminal.
Generous Cowen: “Since all moral systems descend into repugnant conclusions or other absurdity taken 100%, I use a grab bag based on 90% gut feel and 10% thinking it over a little. Honestly, this is pretty close to most people’s common sense, and the vast majority of people would be better off not overthinking things.”
Realistic Cowen: “When utilitarianism favors my interests and ethical biases, I’m a utilitarian. When not, I’m not. When rights ethics favor my interests and biases I’m a rights ethicists. When not, I’m not. When I need faith to justify myself I choose faith. When reason I use reason. Whatever I’m selling I use whatever moral club is at hand, then deny that same club to others who try to use it against me. My only defense is that everyone else has a bias to bullshit just the same, but I do feel guilty enough that I had to produce this word salad. After all, if we could all just go with common sense, why does anyone need me around. I’m a moral entrepreneur, people pay me for novelty, whether it’s a genuine improvement or snake oil.”
“Dangle awkwardly?” But isn’t your Hayekian account (suitably elaborated) fully adequate? Then there’s no awkwardness after all!
Here is my answer.
Try being fully consequentialist…now go!
The concept of “rights” faces the same epistemic problems as moral philosophy. Are “rights” mind-independent things we have specific access to (realism)? Or are they simply representative of mental states that describe the world how we wish it were (non-cognitivism)? Or is any rights-talk just hogwash and speaking in terms of “rights” is rather pointless (nihilism / error theory)
IMO, consequentialism is totally compatible with moral nihilism, and it’s probably best to just eliminate the use of rights-language, and probably moral language entirely. As much as I would like to say “property rights” to mean “a useful system of distributing property to productive uses”, I run the risk of a miscommunication with a right-realist who things “property rights” is some kind of unalienable thing that can’t be compromised on
I wouldn’t look at it as compromise. Compromise, as the joke goes, is two wolves and a rabbit compromising over dinner plans.
I’d try to look at it as a discovery process where we figure out through trial-and-error what exactly the rights are.
I’d rather figure out through trial and error what we want the world to look like and just start negotiating – rights language just stifles discussion
I want rights. Your turn.
@ asdf:
1) Most immediate personal sacrifices by the rich will be counter-productive in the long run, and so should not be made (by those who take their ethical obligations seriously).
2) The nationalist welfare state is morally unjustified. Free migration should be allowed from anywhere (not just from *Africa*), with the migrants mostly left to take care of themselves. (Note that the agency for this migration will lie with the immigrants, not with citizens of the target country, so the term ‘flooding’ is inappropriate.)
3) Yes, free migration will increase economic growth.
4) Yes, Tyler’s meta-ethical reflections are jejune.
1) I agree with caveats
2) There are lots of arguments for the welfare state. Even an unsentimental hard ass like Bismarck figured them out.
I see no reason to believe that immigration will eliminate the welfare state (or whatever parts you don’t like). Immigrants are generally dependents of the state and vote for leftists. Those leftists then increase the welfare state. This patron/client relationship is very easy to understand. Even if it broke down, it would likely be because our society was approaching bankruptcy.
3) No, it won’t. Immigrants are low IQ, clannish, and low trust. They lack the skills to contribute to the economy and their behavior creates numerous negative externalities. They are likely to become net liabilities to the state (take more then they give) and they are also likely to vote to expand their gives.
Quoting comparative advantage at me, which I imagine your gearing up to do right now, is also a very naive reading of the situation without much empirical backing.
Once you accept that low IQ thugs are unlikely to add value to society, immigration becomes a crime of epic proportions.
Comparative advantage doesn’t need “empirical backing”: it has adequate support *a priori*.
Lots of low IQ people have jobs where they earn the money they are paid: they are net contributors to society. (They would have the opportunity to contribute even more than they do now if they had freedom of movement.)
I’m not too worried about how poor immigrants would vote: my impression is that welfare programs have more support from the intelligentsia than from the poor.
If someone works for minimum wage they likely don’t pay enough in taxes to self fund the benefits the government provides them. The average Wal-Mart employee for instance soaks up several thousand dollars in direct government assistance. And those are employed working age people making an average of $11.83 per hour. These people aren’t going to pay in enough over their lifetimes to pay for their own benefits. It’s unlikely this wage could pay for unsubsidized healthcare for a family.
This doesn’t even account for the indirect (for instance, many poor school districts will rely entirely on state money for funding) or the amount of money we all pay to avoid such people (real estate prices, crime, etc). Baltimore City public schools spend more per pupil then Fairfax, VA schools ($17k vs $13k) but they only provide 20% of their own funding. The rest comes form the Fed and especially the State (white middle class suburban tax payers). This would’t count as “welfare” in most calculations, but it obviously is.
The math just doesn’t work out.
BTW, support for welfare is strongest amongst those that receive it:
http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/business/Earn%20vs%20Vote.png
http://www.demos.org/sites/default/files/imce/Fig.%205.png
It’s also strongest among non-whites.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/06/10/upshot/voting-habits-turnout-partisanship.html?_r=0
There is a tiny subset over extremely high earning liberals (Soros types) as well as state dependent professionals (academics) that also support welfare, but often they are skimming quite a bit off the top of it themselves.
For myself, I subscribe to Charles Taylors’ account of the role of philosophy/articulating frameworks: http://sweettalkconversation.com/2016/08/04/morality-is-and-ought-to-be-circular/
Also on Hayek and evaluation: http://sweettalkconversation.com/2016/07/24/evaluating-the-creative-powers-of-a-free-civilization/
What happens when local knowledge becomes inadequate if not completely misleading?
In that situation, you get even more local.
But seriously, in the example of public health, there is a role for information collection and dissemination. But then that aggregated information once disseminated must be co-mingled with the local information to make decisions.
What I’ve noticed is that people confuse the public good of information aggregation with the idea that you then have to have top-down decisions crammed down to the local level.
And it may not be so much of a confusion as the gangster strongarm tactic. In exchange for getting our information (tax dollars, etc) back, we have to accept the protection racket.
” (final? I hope not, because I have some critical comments) draft of Tyler Cowen’s Stubborn Attachments, which he describes as follows:”
” I outline a true and objectively valid case for a free and prosperous society”
He’s only been working on it for 15 years! Are we at the point where we really have to make a case for a prosperous society? In fact we are! I suspect that’s not the part you are critical of 😉
The “Free and Prosperous Society,” draft or final, should elict study, if, for no other reason, than it is likely to contain a form of digestation of, and perhaps ways of digesting of, a broad range of the thinking of others; perhaps similar, but in a different vein, to the work of Isaiah Berlin.