marching to the same drummer

In a debate over at Cato Unbound, Jonah Goldberg wrote:

A warning flag should go up when someone devises an argument in which the smartest political strategy, historical forces, and his own personal preferences happen to be in almost lockstep accord. In Against The Dead Hand, Brink chronicles in lucid detail and limpid prose how the very smartest experts of the early 20th century were absolutely convinced that their ideal social policies were confirmed by science, morality and History. There's a similar whiff of hubris coming off libertarians who are not only sure that theirs is the best path, but that it will also be the most successful path.

I think Goldberg is onto something here, but moves onto other issues. Any political philosophy - heck, any vision of the world - has to make an argument for what the world should be like. but what will the world be like?

To justify "devising an argument in which the smartest political strategy, historical forces, and his own personal preferences happen to be in almost lockstep accord," we then have two possible explanations, not mutually exclusive.

(1). the author invented the explanation of inevitability to persuade himself that his optimism was justified.

Ie, Optimism + "platform X is good" ----> "a course of events where platform X helps/comes about is inevitable."

A happy socialist must conclude that the world is inevitably headed toward socialism, no?

(2). The author cited inevitability as an argumentative tactic; ie, he did it to bring others to fight for platform X.

Inevitability is a powerful argument. If something is inevitable, why fight it? Thinkers from Mises, Hayek, and Popper to C.S. Lewis and J.K. Rowling have all recognized this.

But - and maybe Brink Lindsay makes this argument in Against the Dead Hand, I haven't read it - (1) is an equally powerful reason why such arguments of inevitability get made - self-deception.

I consider myself a libertarian/classical liberal partly because I'm an optimist, and Smithian classical liberalism reconciles what is and what should be. (Sorry, Rand, you weren't the first to bridge is and ought). People are self-interested, even selfish, but that is not bad per se. Choice both enables morality - for how can one be virtuous if one does not freely reject sin? - and prosperity.

So I'm a libertarian because it makes things fit together. And I also happen to be an optimist. Thus, Brink's argument that a more libertarian future is inevitable strikes a deep concord with me, and likely also with Brink. Especially because an optimistic libertarianism will likely believe our Utopia is stable once reached.

And the same is true with any other ideology.

On a more personal note, consider the decision to believe in a religion. I've been exploring a particular one recently, and am currently loosely contemplating conversion. Right now, it makes sense to me - all the doctrines fit together, together with my moral sensibilities. It doesn't, say, punish people who've never heard of the true religion with eternal damnation. But does that make it true? I don't know. I'd like to believe so.

But if the vision of some subjective pieces of information fitting together can lead to flights of fancy, perhaps we ought to be more cautious when we think we see the pieces fit. The Dan Brown genre should stay fiction in our minds.

UPDATE: David Friedman was here first too:

If I conclude that the rules that would be just are similar to both the rules that exist and the rules that would be efficient, that may simply be evidence that my moral judgments are ex post rationalizations of the world I live in or the conclusions of my economic analysis.

[originally posted 7/26/07]

digital Maoism

It was the first time that I had been utterly demolished in an intellectual argument.

Winter quarter, freshman year, I had innocently joined SLE and written my first paper on how, to (wincingly) quote myself, Paul advocates the “subordination of the individual to the larger Christian community in order to prevent sinfulness,” while Mark and John’s Jesus “preaches liberation of the individual from the repressive and unnecessary Mosaic law.” I was all proud of my argument, even if I had to shove aside a few impertinent details to make my case (“Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil” Matthew 5:17). Then Suzanne Greenberg, in typical Suzanne-Greenberg-style, completely obliterated me by arguing that the Biblical concept of the individual at the time was completely different from the way in which I used it.

How was I supposed to defend my thesis against that? Though by chance I had been briefly exposed to Focault-style genealogy of thought in the previous quarter (we read Discipline & Punish in my Soviet history class), I was completely at a loss for an answer.

And rightly so. Confusion about what constitutes individuals and collectives play seems to be an easy error to commit; it has crept into the essay “Digital Maoism” by Jaron Lainier, corrupting what is otherwise one of the most insightful essays of the year.

Lainier’s convincingly argued thesis is that certain institutions on the Internet, like Wikipedia and meta-sites, are designed in a way that perverts the Internet into a tool for facilitating a hive mind. “The beauty of the Internet is that it connects people,” writes Lainier. “The value is in the other people. If we start to believe that the Internet itself is an entity that has something to say, we're devaluing those people and making ourselves into idiots.”

Lainier points out that collectives do have important functions, but that these functions should work hand-in-hand with individuals. “A marketplace can't exist only on the basis of having prices determined by competition,” he writes. “It also needs entrepreneurs to come up with the products that are competing in the first place.” But while prices are a result of everyone having input, “when a collective designs a product, you get design by committee, which is a derogatory expression for a reason.” A turn of phrase that should warm the heart of any Rand fan.

Lainier, however, starts to get into logical hot water when he starts to, as I did, use phrases loosely. By a collective he means any body of people that come together to make a decision. But when he fails to make a decision between, for example, the market forces as collective and voting as collective, he misses an important distinction familiar to libertarians: process. If all collectives are equivalent, whence Robert’s Rules of Order? Or, how well would the market work if we all got together and voted on prices, or who gets how much of what good?

While phrased as such, these are not merely abstract questions. Lainier has some very interesting points to make about proper role of collectives: He argues that, for example, collectives function optimally when they don’t formulate their own question, when the quality of their result can easily be evaluated, and when quality-control mechanisms run by individuals are in place. “Under those circumstances, a collective can be smarter than a person,” Lainier writes. “Break any one of those conditions and the collective becomes unreliable or worse.”

But perhaps in a bow to traditional ideas about collectives, he is unable to turn a critical enough eye on them. Witness this passage:

“There are certain types of answers that ought not be provided by an individual. When a government bureaucrat sets a price, for instance, the result is often inferior to the answer that would come from a reasonably informed collective that is reasonably free of manipulation or runaway internal resonances.”

A government bureaucrat’s actions are a stereotypical example of individual behaviour? Only in the obvious sense, in that they were committed by a moral agent. As the fact that Nixon’s price-wage-freezes were approved by Congress should indicate, government decisions are every bit as “collective” as actions of the market. Or more, considering that government consists of people choosing for other people, while the market exemplifies people choosing for themselves.

I wouldn’t complain so much, except that the above quote also made it into the New York Times Magazine, and makes Lainier look a lot dumber than he is. Ideas have consequences, and oversimplification can be dangerous. “We have to be careful here,” as one of my professors loves to say. Beware.

**The piece can be found here: http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/lanier06/lanier06_index.html **

[imported from Sam's old blog. publication date: 12/15/06]

we know reality is complicated, thanks

A headline on 1A in today's New York Times: "Giuliani Boasts of Big Surplus; Reality is More Complicated."

I have one reply. Groan.

In television news, you might hear such things. But that's because 'cliche' goes with television news like milk with cookies. Despite desperate attempts..what went wrong when..he was a loving father; she was a loving mother...what started out as, escalated into..police were out in force today; firefighters responded to the scene.

If "reality is more complicated" appears in the story, it's often due to laziness. Searching the Grey Lady's website, I found the phrases "reality is more complicated" or "reality is more complex" appearing each about annually in the paper. (Of course, a standard leftist narrative painting opponents as dumb or simplistic sometimes propels Times stories too.)

We know reality is complex and pay journalists partly to simplify it. Still, twice a year in a paper doesn't seem so bad. But copy desks, which write headlines, are paid almost entirely to distill an already-distilled story down to a 50-character headline.

So "Giuliani Boasts of Big Surplus; Reality is More Complicated"? Give me a break, or at least something intelligent. Maybe "Giuliani Boasts of Big Surplus; Monitors Say That's Misleading." Though we could also go with "Giuliani Boasts of Big Surplus, First Time He Doesn't Mention 9/11," I like that better.

(the story is here, the web headline has been changed to "more complex")

An Ode to the Local Pub

My family can count themselves among the multitude of the merchants of death; they represent those of the alcohol battalion. My grandfather owns a pub that my mother, my uncle, my late-aunt, and myself work at, and it's a source of pride (and sometimes irritation) for me. My grandfather built his pub with the help of his friend Leo, a businessman who knew everyone in Detroit and was an owner of bars and seedy establishments himself. My grandfather really just wanted a place to drink with his bar buddies of the day, and for more than thirty-five years it has been doing just that.

Alas, all good things must come to pass, and this year will be the last year it will see its doors opened, at least under our banner. After my grandfather's own health problems and the untimely death of my aunt, we've all decided it would be best if it would go so that it's no longer the sinkhole it has become for us. It's not all woes though, because I have so many good memories of that bar. I've met Santa Claus there more times than anywhere else. I practically grew up in that bar. I bonded with my grandfather there. Those with an aversion to drinking or to bars won't really understand, but this is part of my culture. My brother and I caused enough calls from concerned parents about why our mother was taking us to a bar (though in its defense, its legally a restaurant and should be called, and is, a pub).

I got to know a lot of wonderful people through the place, and there were times when it was the only place I could really find any stimulating conversation. There truly is nothing like the local pub. When I was in Ireland, I checked out some of the trendier bars, but they couldn't compare to the local pubs I frequented up and down the land. I'm not the only one who feels this way about the spirit of the local pubs. Bruce Burrows of Modern Drunkard Magazine explored this spirit and wrote a wonderful article about it back in 2004.

Some gems:

"With the possible exception of the right to bear arms, the philosophies and rights laid out by the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence are best represented here. Under low light and neon signs, in the mumbled conversations during the one-hand lean at the urinal, what America was and should be is preserved

[...]

A good local bar tolerates nearly everything except intolerance of intolerance, as it were. Who killed Kennedy, why you should never see a doctor, the oil company’s conspiracy against hemp, what to drink for your sour stomach from the night before, why it’s better to smoke menthols instead of regular cigarettes. Go ahead, rant and pontificate; demagogues, revolutionaries, politicians, philosophers, welcome one and all.

[...]

Most important and peculiar to your neighborhood tavern is this fundamental precept of our history. Your past, your income, your social standing does not pass these doors. This is where janitors talk comfortably with vice presidents, where a District Attorney and the man he put away buy each other drinks. A man condemned to insignificance outside these walls can demonstrate Socratic wisdom in this sanctuary. If you plan to make a million dollars by the time you’re 25, great. If you work just enough to buy the next day’s drinks, we don’t care. In here our collective achievements and failures merge into a single shared understanding of why we are here."

It's true, and if you want to see a pluralistic America where people of all backgrounds come together, it can often be found in a local pub. It's the only place where I've seen businessmen, labor activists, church-goers, atheists, liberals, conservatives, libertarians, socialists, native-born citizens, immigrants, whites, blacks, Asians, Hispanics, and name whatever group you like, have come and all been tolerated. You can't say the same for college, business, or politics, at least not in my experience.