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The Persistence of Poverty
...paying the first bill in a stack of overdue bills does little to relieve a guilty conscience.
That is from Charles Karelis's truly intriguing The Persistence of Poverty: Why the Economics of the Well-Off Can't Help the Poor.
If your car has lots of scratches and dents, getting rid of just one doesn't help much either.
More generally, if pains and troubles are high enough, extra pain and trouble just isn't so bad. You hardly notice it. But that overturns standard economic assumptions of diminishing marginal utility, and the rest of Karelis's model follows directly.
Poor enough people will accept risk in the downward direction rather than smoothing consumption, so they buy lots of lottery tickets. They also commit more crime, so they can have at least some joyous times, and they take lots of "stupid" chances. Yet the poor are not irrational or necessarily dysfunctional in terms of procedural rationality, but rather they are optimizing given constraints. They are taking the Friedman-Savage model very very seriously.
"Getting tough" with the poor through policy is more likely to backfire than succeed, as it just encourages more mean-reducing, risk-taking behavior. At some level the marginal utility of consumption for the poor fits the standard model, so income effects will more likely bring normal behavior than will substitution effects. That's one reason why the EITC works relatively well.
The more the poor regard themselves as lagging the rich (rather than doing better than, say, their peers back home in Gujarat), the more stupid risks they will take. That's why poor immigrants are more value-maximizing than the poor that have lived in America a long time and adapted to American norms and expectations. The immigrants don't regard their burdens as insuperable and they are on standard downward-sloping marginal utility curves.
It can make more sense to give money to people on the verge of leaving poverty, rather than people deeply mired in poverty. The former transfer will get people onto "normal" marginal utility curves, but the deeply poor will just squander their new wealth, as it doesn't much alleviate their unhappiness.
This short book is a wild ride. The absence of traditional evidence makes it hard to evaluate these hypotheses, but it is one of the more valuable and stimulating contributions of the year.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on August 7, 2007 at 06:16 AM in Economics | Permalink
Comments
Fantastic post!
Posted by: Andrew Flowers at Aug 7, 2007 7:08:17 AM
Very interesting. This also suggests value in subsidizing high school study abroads to developing countries for poor native-born Americans. For example, I wonder if there is a difference in performance for poor evangelicals who go on missions to developing countries. Although if the limitation on mobility for native born poor is in part IQ (as opposed to immigrant poor from Gujarat) such study abroads may have limited value.
Posted by: Hopefully Anonymous at Aug 7, 2007 8:20:43 AM
Come to Baltimore. Stubborn crime and poverty. In this case, one cannot even blame it on Republicans, as the state (and city) is overwhelmingly run by Democrats, and is one of the wealthiest state's in the US.
Posted by: mcwop at Aug 7, 2007 8:23:06 AM
As Mark Twain said, "Interesting, if true. And interesting, anyway!"
Posted by: pawnking at Aug 7, 2007 9:17:39 AM
If you define poverty in relative terms (such as bottom 10% of income), then you cannot make someone "leave poverty" without pushing someone else into it. And if you define it in absolute terms (PPP adjusted), then what about the folks in Gujarat (or 19th century for the matter)?
Posted by: Giedrius at Aug 7, 2007 9:22:28 AM
If your income << c(0), a marginal increase doesn't have an effect. (Throwing the starfish closer to the water doesn't save its life.)
I had thought this was well known in economics, if not in the teaching of it. Perhaps I was mistaken.
Posted by: Ken Houghton at Aug 7, 2007 9:51:45 AM
So then, if your neighbors, your friends, people you see on TV are noticeably richer than you, and you can see no way to get to their level, you're pretty likely to give up, rather than taking steps to be more like 'that nice family down the street'?
Well, that explains rap.
Posted by: shawn at Aug 7, 2007 10:10:11 AM
Isn't the thesis rather like saying that writing the first chapter of a book is no good, because it doesn't make you a published author? Any positive change can have a follow-on effect if it's allowed to.
Posted by: Robert Speirs at Aug 7, 2007 10:12:45 AM
"That explains rap"? I really wonder if a musicologist would arrive at the same ignorant, dismissive, and likely bigoted, conclusion.
Posted by: irtisaam at Aug 7, 2007 10:58:26 AM
Addendum to the Baltimore reference:
Baltimore supposedly had (has) around 60,000 heroin addicts, out of a population of about 650,000.
Baltimore has around 300 murders annually (although this declined slightly in recent years), the vast majority related to the drug/gang activity in the city.
If Levitt's calculations about low wages in Chicago's gangs translates to other big cities, then it seems that the poor of Baltimore certainly fit this risk-taking, crime committing, brutal-living model.
Posted by: Jim Outen at Aug 7, 2007 11:00:13 AM
Sounds interesting. I like the strategy of analyzing the behavior of people as if they were rational. It's not true, but it should work as well for the poor as for hedge fund managers.
Posted by: Bill Harshaw at Aug 7, 2007 11:04:44 AM
My mind is running slow today.
but isn't their a conflict between these two paragraphs:
"Getting tough" with the poor through policy is more likely to backfire than succeed, as it just encourages more mean-reducing, risk-taking behavior. At some level the marginal utility of consumption for the poor fits the standard model, so income effects will more likely bring normal behavior than will substitution effects. That's one reason why the EITC works relatively well."
AND
"It can make more sense to give money to people on the verge of leaving poverty, rather than people deeply mired in poverty. The former transfer will get people onto "normal" marginal utility curves, but the deeply poor will just squander their new wealth, as it doesn't much alleviate their unhappiness."
The first paragraph supports a redistribution of wealth through the EITC while the second says that any such effort is ultimately useless. right???
Posted by: hmmm at Aug 7, 2007 11:26:55 AM
Might someone dismiss the 'that explains rap' comment as racist? Perhaps. Might someone believe that the prevalent ‘rob to get ahead, and as the only way to get ahead’ theme in rap is related to these very themes of "a too-scratched car" and "commit more crime, so they can have at least some joyous times"? More likely.
Or, is any criticism of a form racism?
Posted by: shawn at Aug 7, 2007 11:47:08 AM
@hmmm...I was confused about that for a minute, too...but I think that the point is that AT SOME POINT, a "redistribution of wealth" (as you're phrasing it...I don't think that's the only way it would happen, but nonetheless) would be effective in moving someone out of poverty, where below that point, they'll only squander the money.
Posted by: shawn at Aug 7, 2007 11:50:50 AM
where below that point, they'll only squander the money
Where "squander," I guess, means "buy something one needs, rather than paying one of the 100-odd debts one owes."
I don't think you can talk about poverty meaningfully while still using words like "squander." Indeed, I had thought that was one of the points of the book under discussion.
Posted by: Anderson at Aug 7, 2007 11:57:14 AM
Hmmm:
Correct me if I am wrong about the EITC, but it seems in line with both paragraphs. If you earn nothing, you get nothing. If you earn a bit but are still in poverty, you get some. If you earn enough to stay out of poverty, you get nothing. It has triage built in, paying the middle portion to nudge it into normal behavior. It may not be perfectly targeted for that (as in where it kicks in and leaves off), but the idea seems complementary.
Posted by: Zubon at Aug 7, 2007 11:58:04 AM
hmmm:
The EITC affects a large fraction of the workforce. Depending on family size, one can earn $30K per year and still be getting something from the EITC. Also, EITC disbursements are increasing in income until a nontrivial earingings threshold (It's on the order of $10-15K depending on family size*), afterwards there is a phase-out region. Thus the two paragraphs make sense if people earning $15K or so per year can be said to be "on the verge of leaving poverty."
*See http://www.econ.ucdavis.edu/faculty/hoynes/working_papers/TaxPolicyEconomy_ConferenceDraft.pdf page 22.
Posted by: hrh at Aug 7, 2007 12:00:03 PM
...buying lottery tickets and other forms of gambling would count more as squandering than 'buying something one needs', wouldn't it? buying beer rather than food would also count as squandering. IF it's the case that those kinds of, as Tyler couches them, "stupid" decisions occur more readily at a minor or major windfall of cash below a certain level of poverty, then that's the interesting and useful thing here, I think.
I agree that that word is probably overly pejorative, and it has an inherent value judgment...not sure which other phrase works better.
Posted by: shawn at Aug 7, 2007 12:01:37 PM
If impatient, self destructive behavior is rational, I guess everything is rational. Discipline, hard work, that's a preference, like preferring the color blue over green.
Posted by: eric at Aug 7, 2007 12:11:09 PM
So let's see we have:
1. Blame the victims
2. Victims don't have to eat or educate their kids or have health care so there is no point in giving them public assistance
3. Consider only macro policies and ignore the fact the the public is made out of people.
Perhaps studying the attitudes of those caught in the poverty trap might be instructive here is a good place to start:
The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood
I hate to break it to all those who do their pontificating from 30,000 feet, but policies must help real people not averages.
By the way, I'm willing to state that the US can currently afford to eliminate all those living a sub-standard life style. That we chose not to is a function of our Puritan heritage, and the Calvinist pursuit of material wealth.
I have an essay on this on my web site, I won't give the link because most commentators prefer to criticize without actually doing any reading. You can find it easily enough if you wish to. It concerns poverty.
Posted by: robertdfeinman at Aug 7, 2007 12:43:31 PM
The worst problem with being poor in America today is not that you can't afford to buy enough stuff but that you can't afford to get away from other poor people.
Posted by: Steve Sailer at Aug 7, 2007 12:46:48 PM
ok, i get it now. thanks for the assistance. I didn't quite understand the dynamics of EITC. and this sentence,
"At some level the marginal utility of consumption for the poor fits the standard model, so income effects will more likely bring normal behavior than will substitution effects"
doesn't cover those in extreme poverty, as tyler points out at the second to last paragraph. This sadly rings true from my experience.
Posted by: hmmm at Aug 7, 2007 12:48:11 PM
Anyone who objects to the use of the term "squander" to refer to how many poor people spend windfalls and other extra money needs to spend more time with actual poor people. I've never seen so much drinking, smoking, and marijuana use than in the homes of poor people living off of welfare and/or disability, housing assistance, and food stamps.
Another great example: A woman who used to work with me complained frequently about her teeth and how they hurt and blamed them for why she couldn't eat healthy food and thus was morbidly obese. She also had difficultly getting to work reliably because her car had broken down and she didn't have the money to fix it. When she received a large year-end bonus she spent it on buying a set of very fancy bowling balls instead of on going to the dentist or fixing her car. Also, she complained that she couldn't afford to buy health insurance, but she seemed to have plenty of money for parties, fireworks, her cell phone, and getting new tattoos.
Posted by: Jacqueline at Aug 7, 2007 1:36:45 PM
Jacqueline:
Now perhaps you would like to apply your moral principles to the $7000 shower curtain or the $1 million birthday party?
How about the new Tuscan winery that is charging about $700 for a bottle of recent vintage wine?
Many poor people spend on "foolish" things because they know that this may be one of the few times in their lives that they can live beyond their means. Middle class people think that the wise thing to do is to save up for the future, but these people's lives are so marginal that they will never be able to save enough to make a difference to their standard of living. So they live for the present.
It is a sorry reflection on our society that we can't care for or have compassion for such people, but must seek to demonize them.
Posted by: robertdfeinman at Aug 7, 2007 1:47:31 PM
Good article,
"Consider only macro policies and ignore the fact the public is made out of people."
My mother thinks I'm a heartless b*****d since I sided with my dad's employer when they modernized, causing my dad to loose his job. I was trying to explain to her that society was now better off because the plant's economic output, per unit of labor input, had gone up. The workers who lost their jobs (and they did receive a modest buyout packages) were now free to work elsewhere with no loss in production at the plant. Any additional work they did decide to do translated into a net, per capita, increase in economic output for society. She didn't appreciate my analysis.
Posted by: Richard at Aug 7, 2007 1:59:36 PM
Tyler states: "Yet the poor are not irrational or necessarily dysfunctional in terms of procedural rationality, but rather they are optimizing given constraints. They are taking the Friedman-Savage model very very seriously."
I'm having difficulties understanding how the Friedman Savage model applies to Charles Karelis conception of poverty. Didn't Friedman and Savage claim that most people are risk adverse at lower incomes.
Posted by: thehova at Aug 7, 2007 2:10:50 PM
robertdfeinman: "By the way, I'm willing to state that the US can currently afford to eliminate all those living a sub-standard life style."
How do you propose we do that, Robert?
We've been redistributing wealth to the poor for at least 40 years now. And we've successfully created a culture of dependency. We failed when we took charity out of the local institutions and created state and federal programs.
Posted by: John Dewey at Aug 7, 2007 2:14:25 PM
I thought that truly depressed and hopeless people commit suicide, not street crime.
True, you get a "rush" from stealing a television set or drinking a large amount of alcohol, but wouldn't rational people that think their lives will be nothing but pain and sufferng just kill themselves? I can be happy when I steal, but being happy for a little while now won't be much consolation during decades of misery.
Perhaps I'm somewhat confused and missing something in my analysis. My opinion is that the impoverished are still misreading their chances for success in the future if they merely take a few courses of action.
Posted by: Robert at Aug 7, 2007 2:37:04 PM
In a long term non scientific study, i.e. looking at the kids I grew up with in the fifties, I find that the impulsive, aggressive, and not too bright haven't done as well as the good kids. Being bright was a bonus to some of the good kids but, being a good kid and average was enough for a successful life.
Posted by: Fred at Aug 7, 2007 2:39:19 PM
John Dewey:
Your choice of alias (I assume it is an alias) is somewhat ironic. You do realize that Dewey was a big proponent of better education to make better citizens. He also felt that better citizens were needed to have a functioning democracy.
If we had a functioning democracy in this country those at the bottom would be represented in government in proportion to their numbers and the necessary programs would be in place. Instead what we have is a situation where only the well off can afford to run and most of them need large financial contributions to pay for their campaigns. In general this means business interests (labor unions no longer have the clout that they once did). So the result is that government policies tend to favor the interests of the better off and the business classes.
You said:
"And we've successfully created a culture of dependency. "
I'm sure many would disagree with you. It is not the government handouts that prevent people from doing better it is the limits on their prospects. Newt Gingrich (of all people) said the other day: "If you are a black man living in the inner city, you have I higher probability of going to jail than college".
Blacks are something like four times as likely to go to prison as whites and the majority of these are for low level drug offenses. This is a societal decision. Lindsay Lohan goes to rehab while Malcolm goes to jail.
If you feel that the public assistance is a waste of money what do you propose instead? Shall we let these people starve or live on the street as they do in India? Or perhaps you would prefer we make them into indentured servants again? How about slavery, would that do?
Posted by: robertdfeinman at Aug 7, 2007 2:52:02 PM
Robertdfeinman,
Not too many things really piss me off. But one of them is the way liberal idiots try to assume they have some right to the name my parents gave me - just because some long-dead philosopher that no one cares about happened to have the same name.
My last name has been owned by my ancestors for at least 300 years and probably much longer. There are tens of thousands of people with that same last name.
My first and middle names were given to me to honor my two uncles. These men were pilots in World War II who gave their lives in defense of their country - so that even liberal do-gooders such as you can continue speaking your mind.
If it offends you that my name - which honors two dead patriots and generations of my family - is the same as some useless hero of yours, well, sir, you can kiss my A**.
Posted by: John Dewey at Aug 7, 2007 3:11:35 PM
Isn't slavery the end result of all income redistribution programs for everybody involved? All handout programs are involuntary servitude wrapped up in a nice candy coating. I resent being a slave.
Posted by: jacob at Aug 7, 2007 3:13:02 PM
Cowen (or Karelis) is close to some of the stuff Becker/Murphy and Becker/Mulligan have done, but not quite as stringent.
1. The first part is about convex utility functions. I think this is what Cowen means where he writes they understand Friedman-Savage too well. Obviously an F-S utility function can be convex, we only assume it’s usually not. You could explain a lot of poor people behavior by assuming they have convex utility in the relevant regions, even rationally so.
It is completely wrong to think “If your income << c(0), a marginal increase doesn't have an effect”, in a world where you have uncertainly. However below E(c(0)) the rational agent will become risk loving (convex preference function). This is by the way known from evolutionary biology. An animal that is starving should and does tend to go for 10% chance of killing a pig pray instead of a 100% chance of killing a small pray that will not last him until the next hunt.
The implication is not that the poor will stop caring altogether, only that they go for the small probability-life altering get quick rich track, instead of the more positive expected value decision. That includes both lotteries AND as someone pointed out the rap culture (“Get rich or die trying”).
http://ideas.repec.org/p/fth/chices/160.html
http://ideas.repec.org/a/ucp/jpolec/v113y2005i2p282-310.html
2. While much of the behavior fits the theory the application to American poor is actually wrong.
The poor do act as if they have convex utility functions, but not because it makes sense for them (it doesn’t), but due to bad norms, weak cognitive abilities and a high discount rate.
http://ideas.repec.org/p/fth/chices/98.html
In fact poor Americans are not starving, and easily could drag themselves out of poverty, if they wanted to. The “rationally risk-loving” poor behavior may be true for people who are starving or who have no reasonable chance to improve their lives in time through work and savings. This is not true for unskilled American poor, who have a reasonable chance of earning 15-20.000 dollars per year, more than enough for a decent life compared to 80% of the planet.
Paying the first overdue bill seems meaningless to some people because of low consciousness, they can’t imagine and take into account the future, or follow norm-based rules that act as a proxy. Hardwiring the rule “always pay your bills” into your preference function is pretty important for low skilled people who can’t rely on their abstract rationality.
But the poor today have had these bourgeois norms eradicated. With the norms transmitted by peers (as Sailor points to) the poor re-inforce each other’s bad behavior and bad priorities.
3. “Yet the poor are not irrational or necessarily dysfunctional in terms of procedural rationality, but rather they are optimizing given constraints.”
The problem here is that this constraint is not external, but endogenous. The poor can be taught to be rational and not just maximizing. Giving them incentives to work is a good start. “Getting tough” can very well work, since the problem was never the low income to begin with, but the short time horizon and bad preferences.
What Cowen also ignores is this: the poor are NOT below zero utility. Starvation is not the margin they are behaving idiotic around. They are doing it somewhere above industrial country subsistence level and middle class incomes (say between 10.000 and 40.000 k per year).
Very few people buy lotteries if they are hungry. They buy lotteries instead of paying the phone bill after they have paid for food, some housing and other minimal requirements.
4. “That's why poor immigrants are more value-maximizing than the poor that have lived in America a long time and adapted to American norms and expectations.”
Wrong wrong wrong. It was never the low consumption level or comparison with the rich that caused the bad norms among American poor. The bad norms caused poverty.
The 10% or so poor in the US are a self-selected group, that couldn’t make it despite external opportunity due to bad norms, weak character or low IQ (obviously the three enforce each other). The poor from India are really the opposite, those with particularly good norms. The behavior and mobility of poor immigrants *shows* material povery is in itself not self-reinforcing (unlike povery of value).
Let me use another example: Americans 100 years ago. They were materially poor, and yet quickly rose from poverty through hard steady improvements, the method that works the best. The income inequality was higher back than, and they were hardly comparing themselves with Indians (remember 90% were US born).
5.
“The absence of traditional evidence makes it hard to evaluate these hypotheses,”
You should look at economic and psychological experiments regarding self-command. The poor/low IQ tend to have the postpone small consumption even briefly for small rewards. This indicated the convex utility function theory is wrong (waiting for another candy-bar will not make you rich, so it can’t explain 50% discount rate per day).
Posted by: Shirkuh at Aug 7, 2007 3:18:22 PM
Many poor people spend on "foolish" things because they know that this may be one of the few times in their lives that they can live beyond their means. Middle class people think that the wise thing to do is to save up for the future, but these people's lives are so marginal that they will never be able to save enough to make a difference to their standard of living. So they live for the present.
LOL. All you did was reword this:
Poor enough people will accept risk in the downward direction rather than smoothing consumption, so they buy lots of lottery tickets. They also commit more crime, so they can have at least some joyous times, and they take lots of "stupid" chances. Yet the poor are not irrational or necessarily dysfunctional in terms of procedural rationality, but rather they are optimizing given constraints.
Posted by: Bob Montgomery at Aug 7, 2007 3:44:03 PM
the US can currently afford to eliminate all those living a sub-standard life style
Now, *that* would be harsh. And probably unconstitutional.
Posted by: Anderson at Aug 7, 2007 3:52:12 PM
But the poor today have had these bourgeois norms eradicated.
What silliness. I'm as bourgeois as they come, and was poor for several years (grad school & some time thereafter). I had plenty of bills I couldn't pay, and while I could have paid one or two bills here & there, what was the point? I was still sufficiently in debt that my credit rating tanked; I didn't dare file for bankruptcy; there was no way that "$15-$20K a year" was going to give me enough to live on AND pay my bills. So why pay bills when doing so made no difference, and the alternative was getting to eat 3 times a day instead of twice?
Poverty is a complicated problem, including but not limited to bad choices by the poor, and anyone who says "poor people could fix everything themselves if they just wanted to" is just not taking the issue seriously, but rather reassuring themselves of the universal wisdom of their own particular ideology.
Posted by: Anderson at Aug 7, 2007 4:00:09 PM
I noticed that too, Anderson :). An unfortunate slip, there. Honestly, I'd just like to see decent healthcare, a better minimum wage and an end to the war on black people(drugs). And hopefully not by elimination. If we could get those, well, then we'll see.
Posted by: mpowell at Aug 7, 2007 4:06:19 PM
John Dewey:
I wasn't making fun of your name, but since many people around here use screen names I guessed that you might have as well. In fact I commend you for using your real name, I think people should be willing to own up to their opinions and not hide behind anonymity.
As for the other John Dewey being "some long-dead philosopher that no one cares about" I think you are wrong.
John Dewey was probably the most important philosopher in the 20th Century (at least in terms of educational policy). The reason that people tend not mention him as much any more is because the ideas he put forward have become the accepted norm.
Before him most teaching was by rote and by appeals to authority. He promoted the idea of learning by doing and letting children find out for themselves. In fact this model of education is so pervasive in the US that when we still see the older style being practiced (as in Pakistani Madrassas) we condemn them for their "brainwashing" of the students.
I suggest you read one of his more accessible works "Democracy and Education" seems to be available online:
http://www.worldwideschool.org/library/books/socl/education/DemocracyandEducation/toc.html
Posted by: robertdfeinman at Aug 7, 2007 4:16:05 PM
John Dewey does not strike me as being too liberal.
he belonged to a small group of intellectuals who actually took a firm stand against communism.
and although Hegel and even Marx fascinated him, at heart, he was a Lockean.
Posted by: thehova at Aug 7, 2007 4:34:48 PM
If we had a functioning democracy in this country those at the bottom would be represented in government in proportion to their numbers
What are you talking about? Women make up the majority, and they sure aren't represented in proportion to their numbers. That isn't because women are disenfranchised either. I think you need to start citing some studies on elections to back up your point rather than asserting "rather than one-man one-vote we have one-dollar one-vote".
Posted by: TGGP at Aug 7, 2007 5:02:03 PM
robertdfeinman: "I suggest you read one of his more accessible works "Democracy and Education""
I suggest you read Thomas Sowell's "Race and Economics" or "The Vision of the Annointed", and get a real education. Perhaps you may realize somewhere along the way that being a talented artist doesn't make your condescending suggestions any more welcome.
Posted by: John Dewey at Aug 7, 2007 5:36:39 PM
John:
It must be unpleasant to go through life angry. My condolences to your family.
thehova:
John Dewey was a complex person and changed his mind several times throughout his life. For example he was a big supporter of WWI and the Wilsonian idea of "making the world safe for democracy". He later became very outspoken against war and wrote just strongly on the other side. Being able to learn as you get older is something to be commended. To bad it happens so seldom.
TGGP:
Do you not understand why women aren't 50% of elected officials? How about as the heads of major firms? Perhaps you (I assume you are male) should talk to some business women and ask them what has been holding them back.
Posted by: robertdfeinman at Aug 7, 2007 6:07:09 PM
"the prevalent ‘rob to get ahead, and as the only way to get ahead’ theme in rap is related to these very themes of "a too-scratched car" and "commit more crime, so they can have at least some joyous times"? More likely."
Don't listen to much hip-hop, do you? Most of it is about getting laid and getting respect, sort of like the music of Elvis and Johnny Cash. Course, they were white. . .
Posted by: sidereal at Aug 7, 2007 6:35:58 PM
"John: It must be unpleasant to go through life angry. My condolences to your family."
Oh, Mr. Feinman, that was uncalled for. If you are hoping that I'll now leave you alone, don't worry. You've apologized for assuming I had adopted the name of which I am so proud. I have no further interest in you or your socialist "Goals for the 21st Century".
Posted by: John Dewey at Aug 7, 2007 6:59:06 PM
John: Thanks for taking the time to read my goals essays, but I don't support socialism. I don't know what would make you think that. Government regulation of markets is not socialism which is government ownership.
I don't consider programs like Social Security and Medicare as government owned. I consider them as government-administered. The money is collected from special taxes, put into a special fund and reserved for a specific purpose. How it is paid out is determined by the enabling legislation. The government just performs the clerical tasks of collection and disbursement.
I favor entrepreneurship in a democratic society. Only entrepreneurs (or those acting like them) innovate. Established firms only innovate in response to competition, otherwise they prefer to try and control the market to maximize their profit.
Only democracy allows people to control their own destiny. This permits mistakes, but I can't think of a better approach. The philosopher-king hasn't worked out too well in practice.
Having said all that, I still think that the world will need to transition away form the capitalist/consumerist/growth model currently in favor. I don't know what the new model should or would look like, but I don't think it is out of place to hold discussions about the topic.
Posted by: robertdfeinman at Aug 7, 2007 7:44:11 PM
@John Dewey: Relax. It's just a name which happens to be yours.
Posted by: JSK at Aug 7, 2007 8:17:22 PM
@robert
Not Socialism. That is a sad joke, and its even sadder still if you believe it. Tell me when do I get to choose to contribute or not? Oh wait I don't. I get robbed, and compelled against my will to fund someone elses life. How is that not socialism? If it isnt socialism, how about government sponsored slavery. We tax labor in america. Labor is the life I lease to someone else. So Social security STEALS MY LIFE, the very time I am born with. Its the most hateful crime against humanity outside of full bondage. Instead we just graze off the top just enough. Its not even slavery, slavery does not do it justice. Its human agriculture.
Posted by: jacob at Aug 7, 2007 9:18:41 PM
Can you enlighten me regarding the stupid risks taken by Gujratis in the US? For those who don’t know, Gujratis are from the state of Gujrat in India. They are one of the richest and most entrepreneurial people in India. As far as I know, they have replicated their success in the US. Some of them may be poor, but I have never heard them accused of stupid risks or violent crimes in this country. FYI, I am not a Gujarti.
The author seems to be worldly-wise, then why mention only Gujratis – soft targets? Am I being too sensitive?
Posted by: avd1 at Aug 7, 2007 9:25:02 PM
Here is an essay by the author:
http://www.susanohanian.org/show_atrocities.html?id=7323
Posted by: joeo at Aug 7, 2007 9:37:25 PM
robertdfeinman, I agree. John Dewey did not hesitate to both change his opinions and speak out on world events.
John Dewey is a neglected thinker. its a shame that so many US philosophy departments consider Pragmaticism to be inferior to both analytical philosophy and/or German/French existentialism.
Posted by: thehova at Aug 7, 2007 10:04:38 PM
JSK: "@John Dewey: Relax. It's just a name which happens to be yours."
Yeah, well I guess I did overreact. I don't care that much about the undesirable name association. I just really get irritated with do-gooder liberals who want to take my hard-earned money and give it to some "disadvantaged" drug addict - especially when such a liberal directs a sentence toward me that starts "You do realize ...".
Posted by: John Dewey at Aug 8, 2007 12:19:13 AM
Well, two large flaws in Tyler's reasoning show up, though it may only be a matter of too much to explain in a short space.
People that are the existing poor in America are for the most part, poor because of their actions. Failure to save, failure to keep a steady job, failure to finish school, successfully birthing many children, failure to find a husband/wife, et cetera.
The immigrant poor are not in their condition for the same reasons. A large portion of them have come to America precisely so that they can work, buy homes, nice things, and lead a life that was mostly out of reach in the place where they came from.
I've read a number of studies on immigrants where the first generation does very well, while the second and subsquent generations typically fall below the original bar for success. It seems they have become "Americanized" if you want to consider the anti-US theme, or more accurately, they have succumbed to an unbelievably affluent society.
A society so affluent, that one practically has to try to be "poor."
Posted by: Ray G at Aug 8, 2007 2:02:44 AM
@ sidereal
"don't listen to much hip hop, do you?"
yep, I do, among a lot of other things...though, I have more gangster rap (50, eminem, obie trice, boyz), which would tend to skew my perceptions that way. ...I'm kinda surprised that you wouldn't think that crime is a large percentage of the source for rap.
As a professor of mine once said, "you can't say everything when you say anything. If you try, you won't say anything, because you'll be saying everything else."
You can't say everything that every rapper is writing about, and I'm not trying to. The themes that I talked about are there and are at least widespread enough to be known (they're certainly not fringe incidents by one or two guys). We can argue about the percentage of rap that have 'rob to get ahead' themes, but that's not really the point.
Is it, or is it not, true that that's a theme in rap? Does it, or does it not, interestingly correlate with this article?
"Well, that explains rap." = "Well, I can see those themes in rap music."
It's utterly irrelevant if some of the themes are also sung about by white singers like Cash and Elvis (of which I have neither).
Posted by: shawn at Aug 8, 2007 7:49:49 AM
Do you not understand why women aren't 50% of elected officials? How about as the heads of major firms? Perhaps you (I assume you are male) should talk to some business women and ask them what has been holding them back.
I don't presume to know all the reasons, but I don't see how that's an answer. You still seem to keep the assumption that people ought to be represented in politics and as heads of major firms in proportion to their numbers, although I don't your opinion as to whether the community of progressive bloggers should "look like America". You do make the assumption that something is "holding them back", although I don't know what you mean by that more specifically. A major factor for women is children. Larry Summers offered that as a possibility and caught hell. I think the idea that the standard deviation for women in many traits is smaller than in men (due to humanity being mildly polygynous throughout its evolutionary history) will result in a dearth of women at the tails of most distributions, another Summers idea that got most people mad. Since women have the same median IQ as men, that's not going to be as big a factor for them as it is for various other underrepresented population groups. If you ignore IQ you're going to have a hard time explaining the extreme over-representation of Ashkenazi jews at the peaks of accomplishment without sounding like some anti-semitic conspiracy theorist. La Griffe du Lion does take IQ and normal distributions into account, which results in some fascinating analyses. Gene Expression had some really good posts on the Larry Summers brouhaha, you might want to start here and work backward.
I don't consider programs like Social Security and Medicare as government owned. I consider them as government-administered. The money is collected from special taxes, put into a special fund and reserved for a specific purpose. How it is paid out is determined by the enabling legislation. The government just performs the clerical tasks of collection and disbursement.
By that explanation you could say communism isn't socialism! Nazism/fascism would be even easier to defend, since it was nominally left in the hands of regular citizens but with government officials placed near the top of companies and with absurd hoops to jump through to actually use the property you nominally owned.
Only democracy allows people to control their own destiny. This permits mistakes, but I can't think of a better approach. The philosopher-king hasn't worked out too well in practice.
If your philosopher is Lee Kuan Yew, it's not so bad. Can you give any examples where country A is more democratic and less capitalist (actually, the former isn't that important, so I'll settle for just the latter) than otherwise similar country B, but A outperforms B? We've all seen how West Germany beat East, South Korea beat North, Hong Kong beat Mao's China, Chile outperforms its neighbors and so on.
Posted by: TGGP at Aug 8, 2007 11:12:49 AM
robertdfeinman, I just came across this, and it is pretty interesting. It fits with the variance explanation.
Posted by: TGGP at Aug 8, 2007 11:24:01 AM
I don't think the "variance explanation" is really an explanation, at least not yet. More like a hypothesis.
Basically, it goes as follows:
Q: Why are there so many men in the top 10%?
A: Because men are genetically more extreme than women (so they're overrepresented in the tails).
Evidence: Men are overrepresented in the bottom 10% as well.
The evidence of course fails to distinguish between this hypothesis and alternate hypotheses such as, for example, that society encourages men to go for broke while encouraging women to be more conformist and away from failure. Metaphorically, men get thrown into the wilderness and women are kept at home. This alternate hypothesis is not inconsistent with genetic explanations of human behavior but doesn't sanctify the extreme outcomes for men as "just the way things are."
Posted by: Barbar at Aug 8, 2007 11:46:44 AM
In the 1980s, when Wall Street yuppies were at their most obnoxious, they were fond of lecturing homeless beggars why they would not advance them a penny. Odd that a tenured professor would encapsulate the same boorish mentality.
Posted by: Louis Proyect at Aug 8, 2007 12:06:12 PM
On crime the crime rate went down in the great depression up in the mid 1960s. Professional athletes have a high crime rate.
Posted by: Floccina at Aug 8, 2007 12:10:17 PM
The dictionaries I just consulted pretty much give this sort of definition:
Socialism:
"a theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole."
If you want to create your own definition for the term you will have to explain what it is.
Libertarians may think that they can do better by doing things on their own and avoiding communal structures like Social Security, but we have a democracy and over time the people have decided that they prefer to dedicate part of their earnings to a government-administered insurance program.
This is just the way democracy works, not everyone is happy with the decisions of the majority, but that is one of the "defects" of democracy - the "tyranny" of the majority.
If you have a solution to this defect, please enlighten the rest of us.
TGGP:
I frequently use Lee as a successful example of a philosopher-king. What the people gave up for rapid economic growth was the ability to participate in politics or policy making. The defect is that the choice of the next leader is made arbitrary. So one can just as easily end up with a Mugabe as another Lee.
I still hold out for democracy, warts and all.
Posted by: robertdfeinman at Aug 8, 2007 12:48:13 PM
Anderson, I am shocked.
I've been poor (not knowning from whence my next meal would come). It stank. Funny how I managed to avoid running up unpaid bills (right until I was about to transition into a better circumstance).
Grad school? My wife worked as an entry level secretary. We banked 50% of our income.
There are almost no poor in this country by historic or even global standards. There are, however, plenty of people who don't think it worth the effort to improve their long-term expectations. Lots of those in middle class high schools these days, by the way.
It amuses me that no one has tied this discussion with the credit snob issue. Suppose I have a wad of cash, and I am considering giving to you on condition that you pay it back with interest and that you yield the seniority of your interest in some real property. When I consider the proposition, what are the inputs to my computation? Interest rate. Probability of late payment. Probability of extracting penalties for said late payment. Time to collect said penalties. Probability of default. Expected funds capture under default scenario (including penalties).
The funny thing is, I make MORE money on a late payer, because a late payer gets hit with penalty clauses specifically designed to discourage late payment. Likewise, the penalty clauses in a default are designed to dramatically improve my ability to recover my base expected return. To be blunt: a lender that lends more money to a person than that person can reasonably expect to repay, and then uses the contract to extract substantial additional sums before "recovering" the property reaps substantially more profit than one who makes a loan which never misses--without accounting for the increase interest rate of the loan!
The sub-prime market consists primarily of people who have demonstrated their inability to rationally assess their financial situation. If they enter into a sub-prime loan, they do so with significant information asymmetry. They also are on the edge of having a convex utility function.
Posted by: Nathan Zook at Aug 8, 2007 1:41:59 PM
Nathan...doesn't your lending example assume that the 'late payer' will actually eventually be a 'full payer'? As in, they won't default completely on the loan, or enter bankruptcy?
And...I'm glad your Dad's not coaching us anymore. :) (Sorry, stupid UF joke there)
Posted by: shawn at Aug 8, 2007 3:25:35 PM
John Dewey/Robert Feinman:
We've all seen poor people in this country decide not to be poor. It's a
fact.
But to dismiss the group because we don't like current ineffectual methods
of solving poverty is immoral and hopefully John wouldn't want to be
responsible for children starving in his opulent midst.
Courage which is out of balance with compassion is equally destructive as
compassion out of balance with courage.
Posted by: Jane2 at Aug 8, 2007 8:16:18 PM
And I just read the post claiming there are nearly no poor people in this country. Come on! You need to get out more before you post, your ignorance is embarrassing.
Posted by: Jane2 at Aug 8, 2007 8:25:09 PM
And Baltimore has been run by Democrats and Republicans, pls recall the battles between the R gov and the D mayor over the past years including the situation with Baltimore schools. What Baltimore needs is someone working for the people, not the partisans mapping out political careers.
Posted by: Jane2 at Aug 8, 2007 8:43:51 PM
robertdfeinman,
The poor would probably benefit if more effort was spent trying to figure out how to move them from engaging in personally destructive behavior and less justifying said destructive behavior.
Posted by: TJIT at Aug 8, 2007 10:56:15 PM
@Robertfeinman
They do not dedicate part of their earnings that is patently false. They are compelled by duress to give up part of their earnings. They are later compelling by duress someone else to give them their earnings. "Dedicating" part of their earnings is pure bunk. It implies that the individual has a choice, and is doing something of their own free will. Again, which is not true. There is a tax law, and a payout law. There is no fund. There isn't even a right to the benefits after you pay in. There is just involuntary servitude compelled by law.
Posted by: jacob at Aug 9, 2007 7:34:04 AM
Jane2: I'll say it again. There is almost no poverty in this country by historic or even global standards. Even my definition (being chronically uncertain about the source of your next meal) is probably high. Historically, the poor suffered chronic malnutrition (not due to eating junk food). If you think that this standard is met by a significant number of people in this country, then it is YOU who need to get out. Out of Hollywood and collective pipe dream of the left. I made a conscious decision to remain poor rather than to avail myself of government handouts because in my view a young, healthy, single adult male had no business accepting such money. That is, I was not willing to stoop to thievery. Ten years later, I met another man who was in the middle of a similar situation. He actually was malnourished.
The definition we use for "poor" in this country includes having a TV, car, and cell phone. Give me a break. It is effectively impossible to be poor by historic standards if you are on welfare in this country.
Posted by: Nathan Zook at Aug 9, 2007 8:43:37 AM
Jane2,
Baltimore has been run by Democrats since, well, forever. One Republican governor of the state of Maryland for 4 out of the last 38 years does not change that fact.
Posted by: Yancey Ward at Aug 9, 2007 9:51:12 AM
jacob:
You are so caught up in repeating the libertarian bullet points that you avoided discussing the way democracy works. I went into this in detail.
The majority creates the rules for society. Those who don't agree must take their lumps. If you feel that the social security tax is a forced taking you have several choices, you can move to a country without any such forced takings (if you can find one), or you can use the mechanisms of the democratic process to get your ideas adopted as the law instead.
As 70+ years of experience have shown, your vision continues to be rejected by the vast majority of citizens which is why social services continue to expand over the decades.
Perhaps it is unfair, perhaps SS should be voluntary, but this is what we have and you can rant all you like, but to what end?
Posted by: robertdfeinman at Aug 9, 2007 10:59:37 AM
Robert:
And you are reinforcing the point of why democracies fail, and end up in violent chaos. The minority loses any reason to continue to participate. A democracy cannot continue to exist when the consequences of continued participation outweigh the benefits. This is why there were a lot of people that read a lot, made a system where the majority could not trample on the rights of the minority. This was done expressly so that we wouldn't have a 'balkanization' of the nation and a heterogeneous population could co-exist. Way to go promoting the break down of rational society. Good for you.
Posted by: Jacob at Aug 9, 2007 11:29:22 AM
Jacob:
Exactly which system are you talking about that "could not trample on the rights of the minority"?
Do you mean the US? The US has lots of road blocks to prevent rash actions, but they are not fool proof. A determined group can pretty well get anything enacted it wishes, it may just take a bit longer. The hope of the founding fathers was that cooler heads would prevail before the worst was enacted. They were only partially successful.
So please explain in more detail. Do you feel that the US tramples the rights of the minority? If so how would you remedy this? Can you point to a society which does a better job that we can learn from? Which democracies have ended up in violent chaos? Chaos usually arises in nominal democracies like the Philippines under Marcos where there were only rigged elections.
I'm having a problem understanding your point.
Posted by: robertdfeinman at Aug 9, 2007 12:31:19 PM
I don't think the "variance explanation" is really an explanation, at least not yet. More like a hypothesis.
An hypothesis or theory is an explanation, though it might not be a good one.
The evidence of course fails to distinguish between this hypothesis and alternate hypotheses such as, for example, that society encourages men to go for broke while encouraging women to be more conformist and away from failure.
Both of those are explanations. What I like about the variance explanation is that we can do some measurement of the degree of polygyny by comparing size differences between the two sexes. There is a good graph of this for different primate species in "The Ancestor's Tale". Then we can compare the size of that to the over-representation of men at the tails of various distributions. Furthermore, we could look at traits we don't think society could affect to see if the same phenomenon of male over-representation occurs. As far as I know, there are no societies in which it is not the case that men are encouraged to "go for broke" more than women, so it is hard to test that theory. Furthermore, sociology is simply a muddier area than evolutionary biology (how many equations are there in the former compared to the latter?).
This alternate hypothesis is not inconsistent with genetic explanations of human behavior but doesn't sanctify the extreme outcomes for men as "just the way things are."
I'm not trying to sanctify or justify anything. I'm not committing the "naturalistic fallacy". I'm trying to come up with an explanation that can actually be examined with data.
If you have a solution to this defect, please enlighten the rest of us.
The founding fathers had a solution: prohibit the government from engaging in a whole host of activities that now make up the bulk of what it does today. Ron Paul suggests we start following the Constitution again. Personally, I prefer the Articles of Confederation, but I'll take the Constitution if I can get it.
I still hold out for democracy, warts and all.
Since you haven't given me any examples I asked for, would you prefer an elected leader with no regard for property rights and basic economics like Mugabe, Chavez or Ahmadenijad over an unelected one like Deng? How much misery are you willing to take on for your right to vote?
The majority creates the rules for society. Those who don't agree must take their lumps. If you feel that the social security tax is a forced taking you have several choices, you can move to a country without any such forced takings (if you can find one), or you can use the mechanisms of the democratic process to get your ideas adopted as the law instead.
As 70+ years of experience have shown, your vision continues to be rejected by the vast majority of citizens which is why social services continue to expand over the decades.
Perhaps it is unfair, perhaps SS should be voluntary, but this is what we have and you can rant all you like, but to what end?
The German volk create the laws for society, complaining Jews must take their lumps. If they feel that being rounded up and put into ghettoes was unfair, they should not have come to Germany and began exploiting the Germans in the first place. All the years in which the Jew has been persecuted and kicked out of nations around the world have shown than that they and their ways have been rejected by the people. Perhaps it is unfair, perhaps Jews should not be persecuted, but this is what we have and you can rant all you like, but to what end?
Argumentum ad populum is a bad idea for ethical justification.
Can you point to a society which does a better job that we can learn from?
I've already pointed out several non-democracies that do a better job than most democracies.
Which democracies have ended up in violent chaos?
Most recently the Palestinian territories right after elections that replaced Fatah with HAMAS.
Posted by: TGGP at Aug 9, 2007 1:26:08 PM
TGGP:
This has gone on too long to make the thread easy to follow, but one more time.
There is more to a democracy than that it holds elections. There is the rule of law and the mechanisms to ensure that it is adhered to. Germany under Hitler was not a democracy. The "law" was enforced by brown shirts and the legislature a rubber stamp. Hitler wasn't even elected.
I'll point you to the writings of the legal philosopher Franz Neumann. Here's a quick version of his principles for the rule of law:
1. All men are equal before the law.
2. Laws must be general, not specific (this rules out bills of attainder).
3. Retroactive laws are illegitimate.
4. Enforcement must be separate from the decision-making agencies.
I think you will find that Germany didn't follow these and neither does Singapore.
I think dragging in Germany is a red herring. Let's stick to the US. The majority has caused social service activities to be adopted as a government function. You don't like this. What are you going to do about it?
Posted by: robertdfeinman at Aug 9, 2007 2:03:37 PM
Robertdfeinman,
The United States clearly already violates principle #1, and I would argue that it also violates principle #4 as well. Or would you disagree?
Posted by: Yancey Ward at Aug 9, 2007 3:38:56 PM
Yancey:
Actually I think the US is violating all four, I even wrote an essay on this:
Posted by: robertdfeinman at Aug 9, 2007 4:21:22 PM
@TGGP:
"Argumentum ad populum is a bad idea for ethical justification."
Do you have a better idea than? Like philosopher-kings have such high ethics. Please.
"Which democracies have ended up in violent chaos?
Most recently the Palestinian territories right after elections that replaced Fatah with HAMAS."
First of all, it's "Hamas". It's not an acronym or something.
Secondly, the violence didn't erupt immidiately after the democratic election of Hamas. Your statement is factually untrue, but I can read between the lines. I guess your saying that the democratically elected Hamas started a civil war.
Thirdly: having actually read somethings about the situation on the West Bank and Gaza Strip, I can say that the U.S. and EU boycot of the Palestinian territories has more of a causal link with today's violence than the election of Hamas. You see, West Bank and Gaza have been totally dependend for foreign aid for sometime. The western boycot (futher) impoverished the Palestinians. Does it surprise you that hungry people grow violent? Just don't blame it on democracy.
Counter question: how many [i]dictatorships[/i] haven't ended in violence? (yes, you'll probably mention South Korea now)
Posted by: JSK at Aug 9, 2007 4:28:53 PM
Robertdfeinman,
So, you think progressive taxation is a violation of principle #1?
Posted by: Yancey Ward at Aug 9, 2007 4:30:48 PM
Yancey:
I don't see the connection. All men are equal before the law just means that all laws should be applied so that those in the same situation are treated the same. This is in contradistinction to the age of the aristocracy where there was one set of rules for them and one set for everyone else.
If I was worth $1 billion I would expect to pay the same rate of taxes as every other billionaire. If one of them was reduced to $30K I would expect him to pay the same taxes as everyone else earning $30K.
The principle doesn't say everyone gets treated the same absolutely, only that there are no special treatments because of their position within society.
Posted by: robertdfeinman at Aug 9, 2007 8:02:24 PM
Robertdfeinman,
Your definition of "equal before the law" is nonsense, which explains some of your other positions regarding democracy and a host of other issues. You are not attempting to live by a principle, but defining the principle to suit your own views. A system where I give up 50% of my work time to the state while another gives up only 10% is inherently unequal before the law. It is clear that you view "equal before the law" as whatever the majority wants it to mean, as long as you are part of that majority. It leaves one with no recourse for dissent, and, by the way, explains your frustration with libertarians. Libertarians are more interested in a priori principles, especially freedom from coercion. Such principles do not have their foundations in the quicksand of majoritarian will. You really should reflect on the silliness your admonitions to libertarians to stop holding out for their ideals- it reveals a shocking degree of immaturity that is exactly identical to the command "shut the f**k up".
Posted by: Yancey Ward at Aug 10, 2007 9:44:14 AM
Yancey when you have the time read the works of Franz Neumann. When you have done that and can speak intelligently instead of spewing obscenities I'll be happy to continue the conversation.
Deeply held opinions are not adequate, you need to know something about the subject as well. Till then...
Posted by: robertdfeinman at Aug 10, 2007 12:31:39 PM
Robertdfeinman,
Where did I spew obsenities? I was comparing your insistance that libertarians stop their advocacy of their positions to what an earlier commenter told you. Why don't you learn how to read before spouting off.
However, the first principle you laid out requires that each man be equal before the law. You then immediately made an exception that the law treat differently men of different means. How can one complain that the law treated the aristocracy differently from the common man, and then proceed to advocate exactly the same thing, but now based on one's income? One might as well accept that the law treat a black man differently from a white man because they are not "in the same situation". In other words, you have a principle made out of clay- malleable to fit any situation one desires. Or, I would describe it as no principle, whatsoever.
Posted by: Yancey Ward at Aug 10, 2007 1:15:31 PM
There is more to a democracy than that it holds elections.
You are redefining democracy so that it includes things you like. I too like the rule of law. I think it is more important than democracy, and the two are separate distinct concepts.
I think dragging in Germany is a red herring.
I disagree.
Let's stick to the US.
I will not. Both of us have relatively high opinions of the U.S, and I want to get into whether it is because democracy is good or capitalism.
The majority has caused social service activities to be adopted as a government function. You don't like this. What are you going to do about it?
The German volk has decided that jewry is to be smashed. You don't like it, what are you going to do about it?
Do you have a better idea than? Like philosopher-kings have such high ethics. Please.
I'm an emotivist. I don't think anything can be justified or unjustified in an objective sense. I judge policies on themselves, not on whether they have "the people" or a "mandate of heaven" backing them. I will criticize both ad populum and arguments from authority (your "philosopher king") when it comes to ethical justification.
First of all, it's "Hamas". It's not an acronym or something.
YES IT IS, DON'T TRY TO CORRECT ME ON SOMETHING YOU DON'T KNOW JACK ABOUT.
Secondly, the violence didn't erupt immidiately after the democratic election of Hamas. Your statement is factually untrue, but I can read between the lines. I guess your saying that the democratically elected Hamas started a civil war.
I didn't use the word "immediate". There was a civil war between Fatah and Hamas being waged after the elections, so in a strictly factual sense I was correct. I also do not commit to blaming either side, but what I have read claims that Fatah started the violence.
I can say that the U.S. and EU boycot of the Palestinian territories has more of a causal link with today's violence than the election of Hamas.
I agree that the boycott was a bad idea, but I don't hold it responsible for the violence. In most of the countries the U.S sanctions the result is just stagnation rather than the eruption of conflict (the latter is likely what the policy-makers hope for).
The western boycot (futher) impoverished the Palestinians. Does it surprise you that hungry people grow violent? Just don't blame it on democracy.
There are lots of people poorer than Palestinians that don't depend on aid. Palestine doesn't even look that bad compared to Egypt and Jordan, which it would be part of if not for Israel. Finally, the idea that "poverty causes terrorism" has been so refuted time and again (it is usually the relatively well-off and educated that engage in it, including in Palestine) I shouldn't even have to make a note of it.
Counter question: how many [i]dictatorships[/i] haven't ended in violence? (yes, you'll probably mention South Korea now)
Do the monarchies and empires of the past qualify as dictatorships? If the dictatorship calls itself "democratic" can I count it as a democracy?
I don't see the connection. All men are equal before the law just means that all laws should be applied so that those in the same situation are treated the same. This is in contradistinction to the age of the aristocracy where there was one set of rules for them and one set for everyone else.
Conservatives use the same excuse for why laws against gay marriage or sodomy are not discriminatory. To put it simply, people like some forms of discrimination but not others.
If I was worth $1 billion I would expect to pay the same rate of taxes as every other billionaire. If one of them was reduced to $30K I would expect him to pay the same taxes as everyone else earning $30K.
If you were a jew the SS would treat you like any other jew.
Posted by: TGGP at Aug 10, 2007 2:16:38 PM
You should advise the current administration. . . .
Posted by: Gina at Aug 10, 2007 4:22:26 PM
TGGP:
Nazi Germany was not a democracy. Why do you pretend otherwise?
There is a large literature of intellectuals who fled Germany and went on to use their experience and study of the period to formulate political philosophy.
I've already cited Franz Neumann, but one could include Popper and his circle, Arendt and Adorno. Even George Soros was influenced by his experiences and has tried to turn into a philosopher in his latest two books.
Let's assume the you and I agree an some ethical norms. Something about all men are created equal and the like. Now we have to create an operational government to assure that they are enforced.
What are the choices? The philosopher-king has arbitrary power and there is no guarantee that he will serve the needs of society at large, and even if he does there is no way to ensure that his successor will.
So we chose democracy. We end up with (I'll just use the US), slavery, jim crow laws and lynchings, unprovoked wars (I'll stick with the Spanish-American and the annexation of Hawaii to avoid current politics), the internment of Japanese-Americans and the decimation of the Indians.
As I've said before I don't know how to fix this. It's a flaw in democracy. I'm hoping for some ideas from somewhere.
Posted by: robertdfeinman at Aug 10, 2007 4:27:02 PM
Nazi Germany was not a democracy. Why do you pretend otherwise?
It's a reductio ad absurdum. You justify certain policies (like Social Security or progressive taxation) on the support for them on the part of the people. I show that line can justify Nazi policies I already know you find abhorrent. From that you can conclude that popularity does not justify policy, so we must shift to examining the policy itself. Mein Kampf was a huge best seller. Hitler's party gained a plurality of seats in normal democratic fashion, attained a majority through the standard proportional-parliament method of a coalition (as did Allende, whom we never forget was popularly elected) and remained immensely popular with the Germans throughout his tenure. All the plebiscites annexing more territory were immensely popular with the voters, who after all were ethnic Germans. The main opposition to annexation in Austria were the fascists, who held the power and didn't want to be replaced by the Nazis!
There is a large literature of intellectuals who fled Germany and went on to use their experience and study of the period to formulate political philosophy.
I'm most familiar with the Austrian School and Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, but probably more famous are the Frankfurt School. I think we (and Popper) can both agree Marxism is absolute bunk and skip over them.
Let's assume the you and I agree an some ethical norms.
As an emotivist, I don't believe norms have any truth-value. Saying "X is good" is like saying "Hooray X!". It is a sentiment that disagreements over cannot be settled objectively. I try to be Bayesian-rational and gain more information to correct my false perceptions about the world. That is one reason why I read a lot. Because I don't believe in normative truths I cannot believe I hold false normative beliefs or that there are any true ones I need to learn, so I have less incentive to read philosophy, which I regard as largely devoid of truths. This position (which post-dates my libertarianism but coincides with my loss of faith in God) deprives me of the defense of capitalism on the basis of virtue rather than efficiency, as Albert Jay Nock and Frank Knight (along with others, but I'm not sure which of them weren't also confident in its efficiency) made. If you want to change my mind about something, it would best be done with data about the world I was unaware of or an analysis that would give me an additional perspective on such data.
Something about all men are created equal and the like.
That sounds like a positive rather than normative statement. I've taken far too many mathematics courses to throw around the word "equal" that loosely. In geometry we even had to put squiggly lines over any equals sign because equality actually meant identity. The me of right now isn't even equal to the me of yesterday. In a positive sense all men, including identical twins, are different and therefore unequal.
Now we have to create an operational government to assure that they are enforced.
Says who? You've just ruled out anarchy without any justification. Note that for reasons Randall Holcombe explains here, I'm not an anarchist. It's just that you skipped over it too lightly.
What are the choices?
Certainly more expansive than you've made them out to be. Most of human history has been characterized by neither of your alternatives, and you don't even address the question of how wide the franchise should be in a democracy. You might be interested in Mencius Moldbug's formalism.
As I've said before I don't know how to fix this. It's a flaw in democracy. I'm hoping for some ideas from somewhere.
We could go back to the Constitution, as Ron Paul advises. That would prevent a whole host of stuff. I prefer the articles of confederation, but the Constitution is plenty good in comparison with the status quo. Bryan Caplan has some suggestions, but you seemed pretty dismissive of them.
Posted by: TGGP at Aug 11, 2007 1:12:34 AM
@TGGP:
First of all, it's "Hamas". It's not an acronym or something.
YES IT IS, DON'T TRY TO CORRECT ME ON SOMETHING YOU DON'T KNOW JACK ABOUT.
Pff.. take it easy. Are you sure your an 'emotivist' or just 'emotional'?
I didn't use the word "immediate".
Well, your words:
Most recently the Palestinian territories right after elections that replaced Fatah with HAMAS.
Isn't 'right after' equivalent to 'immidiately', even in the literal sense? Anyway, it is just not true: I recall that the election of Hamas was at the beginning of 2006. Things between Hamas and Fatah started heating up during the second half of 2006, after the boycot.
"I agree that the boycott was a bad idea, but I don't hold it responsible for the violence. In most of the countries the U.S sanctions the result is just stagnation rather than the eruption of conflict (the latter is likely what the policy-makers hope for)."
Most countries aren't as economically hopeless as the Palestinian terriritories. If you are refering to the Irak boycot during the nineties: it didn't criple the Iraqi economy, because that country had some productive assets of it's own. Anyway, I think it's a mistake to say that economic boycots as a rule result in "stagnation rather than the eruption of conflict", simply because it sometimes turned out that way.
There are lots of people poorer than Palestinians that don't depend on aid. Palestine doesn't even look that bad compared to Egypt and Jordan, which it would be part of if not for Israel.
Based on GDP? Please, that's a very poor measure of poverty in this case. Looking at unemployment and population under the poverty line, the West Bank looks much worse (20 and 45 percent respectively) than Egypt (10 and 20) and Jordan(15 and 35). Does it surprise you that young men who have nothing to do and are also impoverished take up arms against the government they hold responsible? How do you think the French Revolution got started?
Democracy, as you define it, isn't immune to violent popular uprising, but empirically it occurs much less in democracies than in dictatorships. Which brings me to the next points...
"Finally, the idea that "poverty causes terrorism" has been so refuted time and again"
I'm not talking about 'terrorism'. That's an all different subject all together. Geez, your so American. :P Not all violence committed by arabs is 'terrorism'.
Do the monarchies and empires of the past qualify as dictatorships? If the dictatorship calls itself "democratic" can I count it as a democracy?
Yes and yes, but only during official presidential/cabinet terms. So nazi-Germany was a democracy after Hitler was elected in 1932 until 1937 (his official chancellor term), but not during the 1937-1945 years after.
Let's make it easier. You find 5 instances of democratically elected governments killing or condoning the killing of citizens and I find 5 instances of dictatorships killing or condoning the killing of citizens. Let's limited the time period to the 20th century. Who ever lists the most deaths proves his point.
A good site for information is Power Kills: http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/
I'm an emotivist. I don't think anything can be justified or unjustified in an objective sense. I judge policies on themselves, not on whether they have "the people" or a "mandate of heaven" backing them. I will criticize both ad populum and arguments from authority (your "philosopher king") when it comes to ethical justification.
Yes, but in counting policies of dictorships and policies of democracies, judging them 'objectively' isn't possible. It depends on your criteria for good policies. For my a important criterium would be "loss of life". Are either dictatorships or democracies 'better' according to this criterium? (for me the answer is quite obvious)
Posted by: JSK at Aug 11, 2007 5:53:26 PM
TJIT, "The poor would probably benefit if more effort was spent trying to figure out how to move them from engaging in personally destructive behavior and less justifying said destructive behavior."
Well, the point is that, if you want to change people's behavior, you might want to spend some time figuring out why they're acting the way they are. This is the whole point of Karelis' book. If their actions are rational responses to their circumstances, then attempting to get them to act "more rationally" is unlikely to help much unless you do something about the circumstances.
More generally, I don't see why people see the need for either/or explanations here. My (unsupported) intuition is that both convex utilities, and certain elements of irrationality are likely to be at work (and may interact in interesting ways).
Posted by: conchis at Aug 13, 2007 9:22:45 AM
Yes, many interesting points.
But as well, the "deeply poor", who've been in this country of relatively wide opportunity for the NATURALLY OR EASILY TRAINABLE ABLE compared to most of the rest of the world rather than some crystal sphere imagined ideal, generally have low IQ's or other severe issues with major genetic components, I think.
The evidence is getting more and more compelling.
The Marxist and soft or cultural Marxist models of blank slate and it's all environmental and completely and relatively easily changeable if only there's social will to do so are looking more and more untenable.
To the dispassionately scientifically minded (most of whom are dissuaded into public silence for career risk/benefit reasons), it's looking increasingly and actually right now, very, clear.
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Posted by: wslmwps at Aug 21, 2007 2:05:36 AM
1. There is absolutely no scientific basis, considering the latest genetic and evolutionary research, for believing that all human geographic / ethnic populations have the same overall IQ, or the same distribution of personality types, and so on. Some groups are very likely to be adapted to modern highly abstract high growth economic strategies than others. There is large and mounting evidence that very significant brain evolution occurred esp. in some areas in the last several thousand years, and even in the last thousand esp. among some groups.
2. Cultures and genes do in fact tend to co-evolve. I'm not talking cultural fads and other very short term ephemera here, but longer term cultural basics. Lactose tolerance (drinking milk and eating cheese and butter into adulthood, for example, but there are many others). It's likely they do so far more finely than we now appreciate.
Posted by: dougnn at Aug 22, 2007 7:46:53 PM
I've just realised that there's actually no necessary link from Karelis' argument for convex experienced utility to risk-loving behavior. Maximising the expectation of any positive monotonic transform of experienced utility is consistent with the Savage axioms. Risk-loving only follows necessarily if we assume that transform is affine (i.e. that individuals are risk-neutral with respect to experienced utility) and there's no reason to assume rationality requires that.
(See e.g. Broome's (1985) takedown of Allais on this score. Allais (1979) argued that rationality cannot require risk-neutrality with respect to experienced utility, and that, because the expected utility framework seemed to require such risk-neutrality, it must be incorrect. Broome showed that the key step in his argument, which required equating the von-Neuman Moregenstern utility function with experienced utility, was based on a mathematical error, and that the expected utility hypothesis consequently does not require risk-neutrality with respect to experienced utility. A corollary of this is that the shape of an experienced utility function doesn't determine rational risk preferences.)
Posted by: conchis at Aug 30, 2007 8:27:38 AM
Karelis' point is that there's a difference between pleasure and relief of pain.
Poor people are in pain, and until they get out of it to somewhere a little more neutral, their decisions are not going to jibe exactly with someone whose goal is to increase their pleasure.
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