Critical Critical Review Review
Ok, I've put this off for a while--I wonder why? The Critical Review (henceforth CR) seminar was full of smart people and was pretty much non-stop thought about important things. I expected that it would all spill over into a giant post immediately when I came back. But I guess instead I faced some burnout, or maybe just made the appropriate gear shift towards all the things I have to be doing here.
But let's see... CR seminar. How shall I talk of thee?
Well, first, I want to say that the best part was the diversity of people there. Ok, so maybe there wasn't much diversity along traditional lines--12 male, 2 female, all white, for those of you counting. And even as far as political diversity goes, there wasn't a lot going one--people sort of ranged from the lackluster moderate left to the passionately moderate left, with the exception of those few who felt alienated by the left-right divide in general. But there was a diversity of backgrounds and academic disciplines which people differentiated each other by. Here are some examples:
Some math majors, some English majors....
Ok, again, not terribly impressive on paper. But in an intense discussion about politics, you really could see exactly where each person was coming from, and it was different for all.
Talking with these people was a lot of fun.
But you're asking: what were the politics? What did they do to me?
Well, it turned out to be way tamer than I had thought it would be. Or at least, what I interpreted as the main thrust of the argument presented was stuff I already agreed with. I suppose it would make sense that polishcyclist, with his more libertarian background, might come out seeing something else as the point, and so represent it as more straightforwardly libertarian. Hmmm....
Anyway, the guy, Friedman, himself actually isn't a libertarian, or, more likely, he's in denial about his libertarianism. He said that when his organization had more funding he used to run a seminar that he thought of as the "deprogramming libertarians" seminar, designed to take them down a notch.
Enough drivel! Here were the arguments, summarized:
I think I've lost mental control over how this whole post was supposed to be organized. Right now I both want to go on and explain other reactions to the seminar and material, but I'm also getting bored of typing and realize that it's already a heinously long post. So I guess later I'll have a Part 2 or something, which will probably be more sympathetic to the material in that I'll be objecting less and point out what I actually learned from the seminar, which was a lot. Despite myself, three days of thinking intensely in a particular way has, I've noticed in the couple days I've had since I've come back, given me some new lenses through which to view things. More later.
But let's see... CR seminar. How shall I talk of thee?
Well, first, I want to say that the best part was the diversity of people there. Ok, so maybe there wasn't much diversity along traditional lines--12 male, 2 female, all white, for those of you counting. And even as far as political diversity goes, there wasn't a lot going one--people sort of ranged from the lackluster moderate left to the passionately moderate left, with the exception of those few who felt alienated by the left-right divide in general. But there was a diversity of backgrounds and academic disciplines which people differentiated each other by. Here are some examples:
- undergrad, undecided major, background in philosophy, econ, and cog sci (that's me!)
- undergrad, snide political science major, experience in community and labor organizing
- journalism grad student
- 33-year old sociology PhD student
- transhumanist wander-the-earth type college dropout with experience in the army and as an intelligence analyst, now continuing eduction in biochemical engineering
- undergrad, analytic philosopher type
- undergrad, Middle-East studies
Some math majors, some English majors....
Ok, again, not terribly impressive on paper. But in an intense discussion about politics, you really could see exactly where each person was coming from, and it was different for all.
Talking with these people was a lot of fun.
But you're asking: what were the politics? What did they do to me?
Well, it turned out to be way tamer than I had thought it would be. Or at least, what I interpreted as the main thrust of the argument presented was stuff I already agreed with. I suppose it would make sense that polishcyclist, with his more libertarian background, might come out seeing something else as the point, and so represent it as more straightforwardly libertarian. Hmmm....
Anyway, the guy, Friedman, himself actually isn't a libertarian, or, more likely, he's in denial about his libertarianism. He said that when his organization had more funding he used to run a seminar that he thought of as the "deprogramming libertarians" seminar, designed to take them down a notch.
Enough drivel! Here were the arguments, summarized:
- First, he tried to debunk the idea that people ought to have rights to individual freedoms and self-government. In other words, he believes that these rights should not be viewed as ends, or values in themselves, but should instead be looked at instrumentally.
My reaction: I completely agreed here. How often have I said "rights don't exist" in passing? How often have I declared myself to be an instrumentalist here? Others in the seminar, on the other hand, had a really hard time with this, and fought tooth and nail for rights as justice. Whatever dude. Only thing to be wary of: if declarations of rights and/or self-government are means to ends, the key question has got to be "which ends." For the rest of the seminar, Friedman adopted an implicit utilitarian framework, which is what basically everyone does, I guess. But every time somebody pulls out utilitarianism I get a little antsy, because the concept of utility is so bogus...still, it's a good placeholder for other more complicated or less palatable moral theory. - Next was this long and awkward defense of the Bush administration's handling of the War on Iraq. The defense went something like: even though there turned out to be no WMD's in Iraq, the information they had was enough to justify belief in their existence, especially because of the magnitude of any error. So the Bush and Rummy and the others didn't lie, they made a mistake. The media, Friedman concludes, is responsible for so many Americans believing that he actually lied.
My reaction: I felt like this argument was more trouble than it was worth. The seminarians fought this point just as hard again, so it took lots of time which meant that the end of the seminar, which was probably the most intellectually juicy, got rushed. My personal opinion is while the case for having a reasonable amount of belief in WMD's was made well, the administration lied about its degree of confidence in their findings. This disingenuity may be exagerated in the media now, but they brought it on themselves after hyping an uncertain claim for so long. Really, though, I felt like this was Friedman pursuing a grudge against popular opinion--he had a point about politicians being able to make mistakes, and he was going to get somebody, for once, to listen to him, god dammit. It only vaguely led into later issues, like how the media is biased and the public is stupid, and these were better argued when they were the focus of discussion. - Next was short course on basic economic theory, with a focus on the consequences of minimum wage and on the sweatshop side of globalization (rent control didn't come up much--rushed for time). Also was a weird criticism of contemporary "formalist" economics--Chicago school, new Keynesian--basically saying that they ruined economics and that Austrian economics are where it's at, because, according to Friedman and some of the readings, the Austrians don't make as many ridiculous assumptions about perfect information and perfect competition.
My reaction: I'm generally happy with economic arguments as far as they go--as I've said before, they seem to do a pretty good descriptive job. I'll talk about externalities and things later. Really, the minimum wage and sweatshop arguments don't work well except in the context of a larger economic theory (see below). As far as formalist bashing goes, however, I had a bit of a tussle with Friedman on this and just have to conclude that he's afraid of numbers. He's a history/philosophy/poli-sci guy who at some point in the seminar said he doesn't mind anecdotal evidence because he "distrusts systematic studies" because of implicit assumptions within them--yuck. What a joker. Back to economics: I'm happy to admit that formalist economics is shot with bad assumptions and that the Chicago School belief that the market really exists in a state of equilibrium is silly. But I think the critique of Samuelson, who, I gather, led the formalist revolution in economics, still holds: putting things into math reveals underlying assumptions what's otherwise a slippery literary framework. Maybe, just maybe, the formal economists had to make such broad assumptions when they went to math because all economists, even the Austrians, were implicitly making them anyway! I asked Friedman if the Austrians had attempted formalism at all and if so, what went wrong. He didn't know, but refered me to another guy who might. I'm still extremely skeptical--everything in Austrian economics so far that I've read seems to point to saying that in the long run, there will be perfect competition, perfect information, and rational, utility-maximizing consumers. These are exactly what the (bad) formalists assume, and exactly what the (better) formalists (like Stiglitz, for example) are trying to remedy. Also, Austrian anti-empiricism (using "praxeology"--introspection to discover "universal laws," which sound like shitty-assumption making to me all over again) sucks balls as a methodology compared to other anybody with a reasonably positivist agenda, like, ultimately, basically all modern (and yes, formalist) economics. - Which brings me to what I'll call the Friedman Program for government, which he claims follows from the Austrian school arguments (which could easily be replaced by a less cranky bunch of economic theory). It goes something like this:
- Free markets are good for handling pretty much all economic activity except for
- these exceptions:
- Macroeconomic policy, which is just too big for the Austrians to handle.
- public goods, like the military or streetlights. Bridges maybe. (Intellectual property, which didn't get brought up at all, maybe...) A sort of unavoidable concession, since any decent economist will tell you that the free market doesn't handle public goods well, even and especially under the utopian economic assumptions.
- Paternalism, which polishcyclist is so against--I had assumed it had come partly from CR training, but apparently this is his own libertarian biases. Really, this is also an unavoidable concession once you're an instrumentalist about markets and property rights. What it's saying is that if people really are too dumb to know what's good for them, state action may be justified in stepping in. Rock on.
- Finally, (and this is key) lots of wealth redistribution so that there are no poor people. [You can all stop hating Friedman now]
My reaction: Ok, I basically agreed with this going into the seminar. Responding to particular points:- First, note that with the income redistribution, that's a strong break from Libertarianism. The liveable income is on the Green Party platform for christsakes. It conveniently dispels pretty much all "capitalism is a fucked up system that fucks over disadvantaged people" arguments, especially since it's incredibly vague about how much wealth should be redistributed. Even if you think that, say, inequality, not just particular circumstances, has a role in human welfare, there seems to be fix in income redistribution. Also, just so you know that not all economists are assholes, you should know that the living wage was initially proposed by Chicago (read: conservative) school uber-economist Milton Friedman (no relation) under the name "negative income tax." So there.
- Second, the broad heading of "paternalism" basically makes the entire political system tautological: free markets are good except when they aren't. Paternalism essentially amounts to at least the possibility of government intervention whenever and wherever free markets won't actually meet the governments moral goals (maximize utility...). In other words, any and all market externalities. So environmental issues, institutions people might naturally underinvest in like education and health care, etc. could all be weasel into this clause, assuming there's any good reason for them at all. (In some cases, it might be easier to justify intervention by declaring something to be a public good.) And since human nature itself is an externality, i.e. a deviation from economic theory, in that people are not naturally rational or utility maximizing, it basically undermines any a priori notion of the free market being even the default distribution mechanism.
- Next we learned that the public is stupid. The vast majority of people either do not or are not able to evaluate government policy on any sort of reasonable grounds. Lots of empirical evidence to back this up in the reading. The world is complex and counterintuitive--the heuristic people use to think about politics (immediately obvious and short-term effects, guesses about the intentions of people making policy) are incredibly unreliable. Generally, this amounts to a condemnation of the democratic process in its ability to select appropriate policies (read: anti-market policies).
My reaction:- No objection to the general idea. If my cognitive science reading has taught me anything, it's this maxim: People are stupid.
- Of course (and Friedman would have himself entirely agreed, but it's worth noting), this doesn't necessarily mean that democracy itself is bad--it has all sorts of good effects. For example, they are relatively stable in terms of civil peace. They tend to seriously piss off or exploit only a minority of the population at a time. Not half bad. And the public really can't make any decent policy analysis. Sure. [But withholding judgment about experts---you know, technocrats, philosopher kings, utopian world-controlling AI programs--for later.]
- This section did actually probably have an effect on me since it did give me many new ways to think about how dumb people are. For example, one great observation by Lippman-as-interpreted-by-Friedman was the propensity of people to assume that everybody sees the cause-and-effect relations of the world in the same way, which is bad. So for example, say I think A is really valuable, and think B will cause A. So I say "Let's do B." You say "I think we should do C, not B." Since I assume you see the world the same way, I assume that you're against A. But A is something like "ending poverty" or "stopping AIDS" or "saving cute animals." So I assume that you're an asshole. But really it might be that you think that C will bring about A, and that B will put all give all the cute animals AIDS and throw them into poverty. But it's too late, because I've already dismissed you and declared a jihad. [Which isn't to say that there aren't people who genuinely disagree with you on values. But there may be a lot fewer than we normally think.]
- Oh, and did you know that the media and academic institutions have a leftward bias? Because they do! Just look at all these ridiculous New York Times and Washington Post articles!
My reaction: Ok. Granted, but whatever. I read The Economist. [At which point I totally miss the point, because I also watch The Daily Show when I get the chance and read Ted Rall cartoons...] - Then Friedman pulled this thing where he tries to undermine the authority of experts. To be honest, right now I can't really remember what his arguments were. I think the points were something like
- experts often disagree
- we can see by the overwhelmingly liberal bias in academia that intellectuals operate within a framework of assumptions that is to some extent inherited, not synthesized
- since all people inescapable use a framework of concepts which they use to carve up experience and make judgments about the world, even experts are prone to the sorts of errors that normal people make.
My reaction: While I'm happy to bring experts under the same "People are stupid" maxim as above, at this point little warning signs went off in my brain at this point and I accused Friedman of endorsing general skepticism about all government policy. If this were true, the argument would backfire on him and his suggestions about market forces would fall under the same criticism. If we are trying to make any effort at all to solve problems in society, we must, I argued, trust ourselves if only at the moment of making that effort. He conceded the point, and said that it wasn't a contradiction to make policy taking into account how terrible people are at making policy. I agreed. It wasn't until I had already returned from the meeting that this doesn't save him from having a hard to critiquing a specific policy-makers anti-market suggestion on these grounds.... It's some trickiness I'll have to email him about. - At this point we were running out of time in the seminar, so he ran a little fast past towards his conclusion. But it seemed like he was trying to rebuild political theory with pro-market foundations by replacing previously held economic assumptions with the concept of Exit. Exit, in this language, is the ability for somebody to physically remove themselves from a particular situation. So not buying a product is a type of Exit (which I'll keep capitalizing, even though it's annoying, for clarity). Also leaving a country would be Exit. Once he's done this, he argues that government is so big and complicated that people can't handle thinking about it but that operating within an Exit based framework in one's private economic life takes no more sophistication than a rat avoiding electric shocks and chasing cheese in a cage. So the ultimate thesis comes out to be libertarianish in that he wants a small government and market solutions because they will supposedly make the best use of mankinds very limited intelligence.
My reaction: Makes some sense, but there's a problem when our own market experiments don't actually produce the knowledge we need. And because people are so fucking dumb, that's a problem. In the seminar I brought up the example of the peak-end rule in cognitive psychology: that when we remember how pleasurable or painful experience, we don't take into account the whole experience but instead use a heuristic that takes the peak moment (most painful) and the end moment and takes a sort of average of the two. That's what we remember and make decisions about in the future. But that heuristic will be systemically be thrown off in certain experiences. How can we trust the market to do better than a technocrat when people are this unable to manage for themselves? To assume that a fallible expert will do a worse job of ensuring citizen's desires than the fallible citizen will do on their own is to make an empirical claim that can't just be posited a priori. I think what Friedman's suffering is a carry-over from the assumptions of Austrian economics, which assume, without empirical evidence, that people are rational decision makers. With that conception of human nature, his conception of government may follow. But that view of human nature is bogus.
I think I've lost mental control over how this whole post was supposed to be organized. Right now I both want to go on and explain other reactions to the seminar and material, but I'm also getting bored of typing and realize that it's already a heinously long post. So I guess later I'll have a Part 2 or something, which will probably be more sympathetic to the material in that I'll be objecting less and point out what I actually learned from the seminar, which was a lot. Despite myself, three days of thinking intensely in a particular way has, I've noticed in the couple days I've had since I've come back, given me some new lenses through which to view things. More later.