Better Times A’Comin?

US Capitol Building under repair, Washington DC, photo 2016 by Amy Cools

In her new opinion piece in The New York Times, Anne Marie Slaughter identifies and describes a heartening array of individuals, organizations, and businesses in the United States and around the world that have done things right, and new and better attitudes and practices that may arise out of the COVID-19 crisis.

Slaughter doesn’t address the issue directly in this piece, but it’s been my hope that this crisis will finally force government and business sectors to develop efficient, targeted work training and redeployment of workers who have found themselves unemployed as industries that once employed them shrink or disappear. This must be done, quickly and on a mass scale, to prevent the kind of economic and social disasters which many communities have been experiencing in recent decades as the economic rug was pulled out from under them, as factories, mines, and other industries that drove their local economies were closed, relocated, or automated.

So far, such training and reemployment efforts have been piecemeal and have left vast swaths of unemployed or underemployed people in the lurch. Meanwhile, political figures, parties, and pundits have largely responded with non-solutions, such as point-scoring with symbolic but futile gestures of bringing a few jobs back in dying or robotizing industries (coal mining, manufacturing, etc), or by pitting Americans against each other by adopting and amplifying identity politics and other socially corrosive ideological battlegrounds. Meanwhile, the wealthy and connected few vacuum up most of the economic gains, aided and abetted by a national government that has become their increasingly corrupt and self-serving handmaiden.

The United States can do better, as it has done in many other crises. Now, in this period of mass mobilization unlike anything seen since the Second World War, is the time to do it.

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New Podcast Episode: On the Recent Intelligence Squared U.S. Debate About Basic Income

The Moneylender and his Wife by Quinten Massijs (detail)
This weekend, on the BART ride to San Francisco and on the walk to and from my destination there, I listened to this fascinating debate on Intelligence Squared U.S.: The Universal Basic Income Is The Safety Net Of The Future. (It’s also available as a podcast.) It was so thought-provoking that my walk turned into a rather long one, as I stopped every few blocks to sit down and scribble some notes in response to what I heard.
The debaters in favor of the motion are the libertarian political scientist Charles Murray, infamous in many

Listen to this podcast episode here or on Google Play, or subscribe on iTunes

This weekend, on the BART ride to San Francisco and on the walk to and from my destination there, I listened to this fascinating debate on Intelligence Squared U.S.:  The Universal Basic Income Is The Safety Net Of The Future. (It’s also available as a podcast.) It was so thought-provoking that my walk turned into a rather long one, as I stopped every few blocks to sit down and scribble some notes in response to what I heard.

The debaters in favor of the motion are the libertarian political scientist Charles Murray, infamous in many circles for co-authoring The Bell Curve, and labor leader Andrew Stern. These two make surprising debate partners, but of course, that’s part of the fun!

The debaters against the motion are Jared Bernstein and Jason Furman, both economic advisors to the Obama administration, and both more on the liberal / progressive end of the economic spectrum, which also adds to the interesting contrasts between audience expectations and the arguments made…. Read the written version here

Ordinary Philosophy and its Traveling Philosophy / History of Ideas series is a labor of love and ad-free, supported by patrons and readers like you. Please offer your support today!

 

On the Recent Intelligence Squared U.S. Debate About Basic Income

The Moneylender and his Wife by Quinten Massijs (detail)

This weekend, on the BART ride to San Francisco and on the walk to and from my destination there, I listened to this fascinating debate on Intelligence Squared U.S.:  The Universal Basic Income Is The Safety Net Of The Future. (It’s also available as a podcast.) It was so thought-provoking that my walk turned into a rather long one, as I stopped every few blocks to sit down and scribble some notes in response to what I heard.

The debaters in favor of the motion are the libertarian political scientist Charles Murray, infamous in many circles for co-authoring The Bell Curve, and labor leader Andrew Stern. These two make surprising debate partners, but of course, that’s part of the fun!

The debaters against the motion are Jared Bernstein and Jason Furman, both economic advisors to the Obama administration, and both more on the liberal / progressive end of the economic spectrum, which also adds to the interesting contrasts between audience expectations and the arguments made.

Here’s the summary of the debate from the IQ2 website:

Imagine getting a check from the government every month. $600 guaranteed. It’s happening in Finland, where a pilot program is being launched to test what’s known as a “universal basic income.” As technology transforms the workplace, jobs and income will become less reliable. The idea is that a universal basic income could serve as a tool to combat poverty and uncertainty in a changing society, and provide a cushion that empowers workers, giving them latitude to take risks in the job market. But some argue a guaranteed income would take away the incentive to work, waste money on those who don’t need it, and come at the expense of effective programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Is the universal basic income the safety net of the future?

I’ve written about basic income before in light of Thomas Paine’s case for a social welfare system, broadly distributed to the point that we’d call it basic income today, in his pamphlet Agrarian Justice of 1796. I’m broadly sympathetic to the case for basic income especially insofar as I’m convinced by two of his major arguments.

One, Paine argues that the right to private property is not an intrinsic right or derived from nature, or even from moral convictions about deservingness or our duties toward those less fortunate. Rather, property rights are artificial rights we’ve created for efficiency’s sake: it’s a way to incentivize people to be as productive as possible to the benefit of both individual and society. But whatever efficiencies property rights promote, Paine observes just as we observe now, they too often deprive people of the very thing they promise to provide. Economies based on property rights deny most people direct access to the world’s natural resources while sometimes failing to reward them proportionally.

This is true not only of those who produce the most necessary, useful goods and services such as growing and preparing food, building and maintaining our cities, towns, and homes, and caring for the disabled and sick; they are often the ones who receive the lowest wages. In the meantime, others who create such frivolous and even arguably harmful things as casinos, violent video games, and poor quality trinkets that become trash almost as soon as they’re made can often make money hand over fist. Some people are not able to make money even if they were willing: they may be disabled or aged, or the skilled work they’ve done all their lives becomes obsolete. Worst of all, those who raise children, care for the disabled and aged, and otherwise keep the home generally receive no pay, though their work benefits society most of all. The amount of money we can bring in generally determines the resources we have access to, so if we have no money, we have no property. Property rights, then, guarantee us the right to property without any consideration as to whether or not we actually end up be able to obtain or keep any. Therefore, Paine argues, we owe every person compensation for denying them their natural right to equal access to the world’s resources.

Two, Paine argues that a universal income is better than discretionary welfare, such as that based solely on need, because it prevents the inevitable jealousies and complaints of unfairness that can erode social cohesion and undermine mutual trust. If everyone starts out at the same basic level, we may not have all of the same chances in life just as we don’t now, advantages or disadvantages that we can’t do much about: we may have rich parents, poor parents, or none at all; we may be able-bodied or we may not; we may be beautiful, smart, or have other attributes that society rewards. But, we’ll all have the same basic chance that we can give one another: the freedom and well-being guaranteed by a basic level of economic security.

But back to the debate…. Why this digression, you might ask? I return to Paine because he makes the first sustained modern argument (that I’m aware of) in favor of a basic income and because his basic points, or closely related ones, are brought up throughout this debate. In the question and answer session, Andrew Stern refers to the way perceived unfairness, such as Paine discusses, has long politically undermined need-based programs, from publicly-funded unemployment benefits to health care insurance for those with low income. Stern also points out that many people already enjoy ‘undeserved’ basic income, such as those born to parents who can afford to provide it. If we have no problem with those people reaping the benefits of work they didn’t do, why not everyone? Charles Murray adds the element of personal responsibility to the question of perceived unfairness of needs-based welfare. If everyone were given the same basic level of resources, people could no longer justly claim victimhood for not having the same chances as everyone else. If we collectively provide the same benefits to everyone, we can hold people to a basic equal accountability for all who could work and contribute more than they do.

Murray, as you may guess from his emphasis on opportunities for traditional marriage and the preeminence of personal responsibility, is much more conservative than the other participants in the debate, and introduces a free market argument that many political conservatives might like just as well as pro-labor liberals and progressives. This argument is founded on the importance of competition in a well-functioning economy. To harness the benefits of competition, Murray proposes that if people have ‘walking – away’ money, employers will have to compete with one another for employees, and in doing so, they will have to innovate to make jobs appealing. Employers would have to offer good wages, provide a pleasant and safe working environment, and make the work seem meaningful and appreciated. This is a sort of competition that serves drives wages, standards, and productivity up, not sending wages and working conditions spiraling in the race to the bottom that so many unregulated job markets, mostly competing to lower prices, have exhibited throughout the history of capitalism.

Jared Bernstein repeats the argument throughout the debate, like a mantra, that a dollar given to someone that doesn’t need it is a dollar taken away from someone that does. Many in the audience seem to find this argument convincing, but I don’t, at least without much more justification than he provides. For one thing, neither Bernstein nor his debate partner Jason Furman addresses the vast expenditures of time and money of a bureaucracy required to administer large-scale need-based welfare. It’s expensive for government as well as for individuals, who are required to provide proofs of their need, which is multi-dimensional and subjective and therefore difficult and time-consuming to demonstrate. (Murray does address problems with this kind of bureaucracy, but he emphasizes its unpleasantness and the way it re-introduces a form of serfdom, creating a class of people whose freedom is limited by this system.) For another thing, neither Bernstein nor Furman directly addresses the fact that universal basic income would vastly expand the number of people with disposable income for the first time, much more vastly than needs-based programs do. Most of this money, in turn, would go straight back into the economy, rather than into the ever-inflating bank accounts of the ever-fewer, ever-wealthier wealthiest individuals who are now gobbling up an ever-larger share of the economic pie. Our targeted redistribution system has been entirely unable to resolve this inefficiency, and in fact, may exacerbate it.

The side arguing in favor of the motion, which, as I’ve already mentioned, I’m more sympathetic to for aforementioned reasons, does not, in the end, convince the audience. They’re handily defeated, as the side arguing against the motion not only convinces most of the undecided but also wins over some of the basic income supporters. I suspect that Murray hurts his side a bit by spending too much time on arguments that I think are beside the point, such as whether more people could afford to get married (it doesn’t have to be expensive!) and on very subtle, not-very-well expressed arguments that were lost among the rest. But I would like to hear another major debate in which basic income is supported by stronger arguments, more convincing answers to objections, and most of all, better evidence. As Stern points out, there are small-scale and short-term experiments in basic income happening all over, in Alaska, Finland, and Toronto, for example, but the results are not in yet. I agree that such a major social program should be rolled out with some caution, given the potential fallout from unforeseen as well as foreseen potential side effects. But perhaps smaller experiments can’t reveal the benefits that a complete reinvention of a large economy would reveal, especially if effectiveness is entirely a matter of scale. For example, such a well-balanced, sturdy, and beautifully functioning thing as a termite mound couldn’t happen without an incredibly large number of factors contributing, namely the weather, millions of termites, many square miles of dirt, and so on. If you took a small pile of dirt and a small number of termites, a well-functioning termite mound would not result.

Our American re-invention of government was another such experiment founded on the idea that people can govern themselves and on the ideal of universal human rights (the ideal, mind you, not yet the reality). Many societies before and for some time since had tried to correct abuses and oppressions with one reform here, one reform there, or with a wholesale chaotic and violent overthrow after societal cohesion had already collapsed through famine and extreme corruption (such as, famously, the French Revolution). But it took a large number of fair-minded people to come together and lay the foundation for an entirely new system of government based on the ideal that all human beings have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, or as John Locke originally formulated it, life, liberty, and property. Or in the case of universal basic income, to actual property.

Ordinary Philosophy and its Traveling Philosophy / History of Ideas series is a labor of love and ad-free, supported by patrons and readers like you. Please offer your support today!

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Sources and Inspiration:

Labor Theory of Property.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia

Locke, John. Two Treatises of Government, 1689

Paine, Thomas. Agrarian Justice, 1796.

Paine, Thomas. The Rights of Man, 1791.

The Universal Basic Income Is The Safety Net Of The Future. Intelligence Squared U.S. Debate, March 22, 2017

O.P. Recommends Freakonomics: Is Migration a Basic Human Right?

Airport Terminal in Salt Lake City, Photo 2015 by Amy Cools

I just listened to this episode of Freakonomics Radio podcast the other day, which I enjoyed very much and learned a lot from, and I think you’ll love it too. Freakonomics Radio is hosted full time by Stephen Dubner, one of the two authors of the famous book of the same name, published in 2005, with occasional guest hosting by its other author Steven Levitt. The book and podcast consider individual, social, and political situations from the view that human behavior is best explained in terms of the incentives that motivate us.

The podcast episode I’m recommending here is called ‘Is Migration a Basic Human Right?’ and I can hardly think of a more timely question. As Syrians fleeing death and destruction flee their war-torn country, we are invited to consider this question: do nations’ rights to maintain secure borders trump (how funny …no, actually ironic that I need that particular word right here!) the individual human right to survive and to flourish?

I love Freakonomics, despite the fact that it adopts, at times, a dismissive and even scornful tone towards philosophy (as do some of my other favorite podcasts), but that’s okay: there’s so much good information and clearheaded processing of it that its informative values trumps (groan) what might be philosophically lacking. After all, I believe, philosophy is at its best when it’s informed and disciplined by evidence, and it’s such a firmly established, fascinating, and eminently useful discipline that it can withstand critique and dismissiveness from economists, science enthusiasts, and so on. But to my edification and delight, the guest in this episode, Alex Tabarrok, professor of economics at George Mason University, gives a spirited defense of philosophy almost right off the bat.

Here’s a little excerpt for those of you in a hurry, but for the rest, I recommend you just skip this and go listen to the whole thing. Enjoy!

DUBNER: …As much as you may not like those reasons, aren’t they very much a symptom of the way humans have behaved throughout history? Borders, I mean.

TABARROK: So, borders are very common in one sense. As you say, when you look around, that’s the way the world is organized. And we’ve just gotten so used to them that we don’t even ask very much about their fundamental justification. And it’s when you come to ask about the fundamental justifications for borders that they begin to look very strange. Because they run counter to almost all of our moral writings and intuitions and philosophies. …

DUBNER: …I’ll be the skeptic for a moment — I could just say, “Well, that’s what philosophers do. Philosophers talk about ‘in a perfect world where all people were X, Y, and Z, things would go like this.’” But we all know that philosophers have no idea how the world actually works.

TABARROK: So, you know, our moral intuitions and indeed our laws today are that you shouldn’t discriminate against someone because of their race, because of their gender, their sexual preference or other issues. But for odd reasons, it’s perfectly OK to discriminate against someone because they were born somewhere else …Now, to defend philosophy, for very long periods of time, racism was perfectly normal; people have been doing it for thousands of years. And then people began to ask, “Well, what justification is there for treating someone so differently just because of their race?” And when people couldn’t come up with an answer to that question, when they were forced into this discomforting area that they can’t justify this terrible injustice, things began to change. …

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Sources and inspiration:

Dubner, Stephen. ‘Is Migration a Basic Human Right?’, Freakonomics Radio podcast, episode 231.
http://freakonomics.com/radio/

 

Money and Human Worth

‘It’s just business.’

This is one of my least favorite phrases of all time. 
It seems to be used, generally, to explain away unpleasant, unkind, or unethical behavior, or to avoid addressing or dealing with the undesirable side effects of a difficult but necessary decision, in a situation where money is involved.

Yet just because the phrase ‘it’s just business’ might be used only in difficult or unpleasant situations, that doesn’t make it wrong, does it? Couldn’t it be a shorthand way of pointing out that it’s impossible to make everyone happy in every business transaction, since it involves two or more opposing sets of interests? In fact, the phrase could be revealing humane concern, a regret that there are often undesirable side effects to the other in conducting business.

Yes, I allow; the utterer could be expressing these sentiments, choosing this phrase because it’s a ready-made, widely understood part of our lexicon.

But we don’t hear it being used this way much, do we? It seems this phrase is almost always used to justify rudeness, treating human beings as if they’re merely a means to an end or taking advantage of an opportunity to exploit others; to explain away bribery, theft, extortion, bullying, abuse… It’s not generally used in cases of honest dealing, of courtesy and respect for other person(s) involved in a transaction, of doing one’s best to make sure an employee is treated or ‘let go’ in as just and fair a manner as possible. In such situations, no such disclaimer is necessary.

So why am I bringing this up? What’s caused me to think about why and how people use this phrase, and for it to rankle with me enough to write this essay?

Full disclosure: I have a working gal’s chip on my shoulder.

I’ve worked for a living my entire life, since I was about seventeen. Most of those years I worked in customer service. I’ve prepared and served food and drink, I’ve sold goods and services, I’ve made art and things to wear, I’ve lifted and carried loads, I’ve decorated and cleaned, I’ve answered phone calls, I’ve scheduled appointments and events… The list goes on. I consider it all honest work, and I think… no, I know, I’ve helped make life better for many, many people along the way.

All this is true, in fact, of most of the people in the world. Behind every counter and cash register, on the receiving end of every phone call and email, in every kitchen and factory and field and warehouse and office and hospital, other people’s work make our lives better. We depend on them for providing the necessities and the luxuries of life. Their hard work makes our lives enjoyable and even possible. Given this fact, it never fails to disappoint me, and sometimes still surprises me, how often people feel entitled to treat working people with condescension, disdain, and even abuse, from the first moment of interaction.

Now most people I’ve worked for and done business with have been decent, many more have been polite, friendly and supportive, and some have been the loveliest people I’ve ever had the pleasure to meet, some have become dear friends. I consider myself lucky that in so many ways, throughout the course of my working life, I’ve enjoyed a great deal of moral and financial support, others’ concern for my well-being, a richness of interesting experiences, of opportunities to improve my situation, of the goodness of other people, and of the chance to expand my talents, exercise my creativity and problem solving skills, and best of all, to never stop learning.

But I also couldn’t possibly begin to make a full account of the number of times I’ve felt dismissed, condescended to, treated like a machine or a servant, and attacked for all manner of disappointments and inconveniences (real or perceived) whether I was responsible for them or not, simply by virtue of being on the other side of that counter, that receipt book, that telephone, that paycheck. I am also keenly aware how instrumental I was, or at least tried to be, in making that person’s life better at that moment. And this, again, is true of every working person in the world. Without us working people, no one could eat food, drink water, keep themselves and their homes and cities clean, travel, heal their ills, enjoy any luxuries, and so on, in comfort and security. And of course, the category ‘us working people’ include the vast majority of humanity. Most of us work for a living, and each job we do involves at least some kind of business interaction. It’s work that provides the (real) goods and services for sale in any business transaction. And almost all of us who live in this world have had many occasions to bemoan ill treatment in our capacities as workers and engagers in business.

This is where we arrive at the connection between the phrase ‘it’s just business’ and why it bothers me so much. I detest it because it expresses an attempt to dehumanize the interaction and, by extension, the person one does business with. It implies that one can remove the ‘human element’, the consideration of the other as a being with moral worth to whom we have certain obligations, from the realm of business. And if it’s not really a human interaction, therefore, one does not have to act with kindness, fairness, or respect.

I argue that this the attempt to dehumanize business is impossible: business is entirely about people. All business transactions are a type of human interaction. It’s true that when we make a bargain, when we exchange money for something we want, certain elements are added to the interaction. There are problems of fairness to be resolved, there’s customer loyalty to be won, the need for expediency may be pressing, and so forth. But all types of human interaction contain unique elements: all involve a particular combination of expectations, obligations, etiquette, and other considerations. The fact that it’s a business transaction, and not another kind, does not subtract from the basic fact that all parties are human beings to whom we owe a basic level of respect and courtesy.

Business, in this sense, is always personal.

Most of us, most of the time, recognize this. Most business, day to day, is conducted in a reasonably courteous and decent way. We greet the other person, we say thank you (if not always ‘please’), we ‘shake hands on it’. We don’t usually lie, steal, or bully to get what we want. We treat our colleagues and employees with decency at least when we come into direct contact with them, we praise their work and give them raises and bonuses if we can, we usually feel regret, at least on some level, if we feel we need to fire them, and we hope they do well in the future. When we consider the phrase ‘it’s just business’, we realize that it holds little meaning when considered in light of how we usually behave. Understood as ‘it’s just a human interaction that involves money,’ we realize it’s a rather meaningless statement.

So it appears clear that we resort to this phrase when doing the right thing by the person we’re doing business with becomes difficult or inexpedient to getting what we want. And I fear it’s became far too widely, and far too unquestioningly, accepted when used this way. Why have we come to acquiesce to the idea that when money enters an interaction, that its appropriate to overlook or cast aside our concern for the cost in human dignity, in respect, well-being, rights, justice, and simple decency? I fear that in our enthusiasm for the benefits of the marketplace, we too easily become complacent to what can be lost.

What we can lose is the respect we should have, as a central feature of our character, for the moral worth of others, and that if we let that slip, we undermine ourselves as social creatures, and in turn, everyone’s prospects for well-being. If our dignity, our moral worth, is up for sale, then the marketplace, ideally a highly cooperative, mutually beneficial institution, devolves into an arms ace where the most ruthless thrive in the short term, while trust erodes and the whole system of collapses in the long run. We can recognize this by comparing and contrasting various societies and their market systems, contemporary and historical. Oligarchies, tyrannies, rigidly enforced class systems and aristocracies, ideologically-based planned economies, are all extreme examples of how the disregard of individual human worth and dignity cause a marketplace to lose its ability to benefit all, and ultimately to self-destruct.

So, from a matter as minor as rudeness to a salesperson, to as serious as slavery, the same principle applies. The exchange of money for something we want or need makes no difference, morally, to the basic way we should treat anyone. That’s because, while goods or services are marketable, a person’s moral worth can never be, and should never be, up for sale.

It’s true that we’re sometimes justified in expressing anger and disappointment when doing business. Sometimes others fail, a little or a lot, in performing their part of the bargain or duties of their job, and we feel quite unfriendly when that’s the case. Sometimes others fail to provide good customer service, and are rude and unhelpful from the start. Sometimes others provide ‘services’ and products that are faulty, useless, or even harmful. In these circumstances it’s just to criticize their work, or to withhold or take back payment if the terms of the exchange aren’t fulfilled, or to let them know that you won’t be patronizing their business again. It’s appropriate, in such cases, and to voice one’s displeasure.

But this just reaction to the failure of the other to fulfill their part of the bargain is not what I’m criticizing here. It’s the unspoken attitude, unfortunately too widespread in my observation, that the person with the money in the exchange is automatically entitled to be abrupt and impersonal, to always demand, command, act impatient, and even abuse those they’re paying, in a manner inconsistent with respect for human dignity. It’s implied in the adage ‘the customer is always right.’ Are you the recipient of a payment, for goods or services, or as an employee on the clock? If so, many think, you are immediately transformed into a legitimate target for frustration, impatience, desire, greed, and sense of entitlement, whether or not you were responsible for the disappointment. In this sense, it feels as if you are no longer a person to them. Because if they consider you a person, wouldn’t they feel that they should be polite, respectful, or at a minimum, not rude or hateful to you, just as they would any other person?


Again, to argue that business is not personal, that it removes much or even all of the human element, is to make a very serious claim, with dire repercussions. It would imply that the moral worth of a human being is calculable in dollars and cents, and that it can be bought and sold. I argue that the number value of money and the degree of significance of a human life can never be aligned, and that you can’t ‘pay away’ your moral obligations towards any human being. When you pay for a good or a service, that, and only that, is what you pay for. Your payment does not apply in any way to your moral obligation to respect others.

One might object: ‘I didn’t choose to enter into any kind of relationship with the person I’m doing business with, they just happened to be the one I had to interact with to get something I need or want. Shouldn’t relationships be a matter of choice? Why, then, can’t a business interaction be impersonal, especially if members of a society agree that it’s impersonal?’

To begin with, all human interactions ultimately belong in the category of unchosen relationships. We stumble upon interactions with people all the time, and it’s a fact of life that all relationships occur because of chance circumstances, at least at first. We don’t choose for ourselves who we pass by on the street, who the open seat on the subway is next to, who our classmates, colleagues, or the new neighbors will be, who the people we already know will introduce us to, or who our parents, siblings, and relatives are. They become part of our world via circumstances out of our control. Since all human interactions belong in the same category. I argue, the same basic obligation to be just, polite, and respectful applies equally in all human interactions.

Secondly: one can no more give away or sell one’s own moral worth than they can choose to negate or buy another’s. That’s because human worth, mutual obligations of respect and duty and mutual dependence, are not merely a part of some unspoken contract. They are a feature of human nature by virtue of the fact that we are social and rational, and therefore, moral beings. ‘X cannot buy or sell away the moral with of Y‘ is equally true, if we are indeed rational, social beings, whether the variables X and Y are replaced in that statement by ‘you’ or ‘I’. (1)

It’s a fundamental part of the human condition that we are all bound together in a mutual web of obligation and dependency. Without one another, we would not get very far in life, and all we achieve, all we do, are the result of the combination of our own efforts with the contributions of others. One needs the ingenuity and knowledge of physics of the inventor and the architect when one needs a car, a bridge, a home, and owes a debt of gratitude for the resulting vast improvement in the ease and comfort of life. The inventor and the architect, in turn, needs the labor of the miner, the smelter, and the carpenter, and owes not only money, but respect and gratitude for supplying the raw material, without which their designs could not be realized, and for being among their clients, without which their wealth could not be earned and their work would not be needed. One needs the knowledge and skill and of the physician when health fails, and owes to her gratitude, admiration, and respect for the services she provides, and the hard work and intelligence it required to attain her abilities to heal. The physician needs the fruit of the work of the laborer in the field to sustain her life, and owes the laborer gratitude, admiration, and respect for the difficulty of the work performed and the fact that her life is sustained through his labor. The exchange of money is simply the means by which the exchange is organized; the basic fact that we all depend on each other, and have moral obligations to each other, is not altered by its usage.

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(1) Pinker, Steven. The Better Angels of Our Nature, 2011, Viking Penguin, New York. pp 647-648

Free Market Fundamentalism: A Moral Objection, and What Should Take Its Place (Short Form)

Etching of the view on the marketplace in Duisburg by Theodor Weber, 1850‘Free market fundamentalism?!? What do you mean by that? Isn’t that a loaded term?’

Yes, it is a loaded term! I’m sure you’re aware that the phrase, as commonly used, implies a negative attitude towards the idea that strict adherence to free market principles is the best economic path for a society to follow. And it also implies that proponents of a strict laissez-faire economic approach possess a blind faith in the power of the market. According to this view, Adam Smith’s ‘invisible hand’, operating only in a free market, is the only force or principle in the universe that will assure the best overall outcome for both personal liberty and the fair distribution of goods. But if you detect a certain…. skepticism on my part towards belief in that hypothesis, well, you’re right.

Because all economic choices are based primarily on self-interest, so the free market fundamentalist argument goes, no one will purposefully decide to act against their own self-interests. Even if it’s true that one’s choices result in satisfying only short-term self interests but are harmful over the long term, over time and in the aggregate, these choices with balance each other out in the marketplace. The tendency to make harmful choices will wane and eventually cease when the harm becomes apparent and other choices are observed to be better options. Self-interest will, therefore, inevitably cause people to make better economic decisions over time.

One example of people making very harmful decisions on a large scale, based on short-sighted self interests put into practice in a free market, is the Dust Bowl disaster in 1930’s United States. Farmers, en masse, planted high-market-value crops that impoverished the soil and led to widespread erosion problems. These, combined with unusual weather conditions, caused a massive dust storm and drought that caused hundreds of thousands of farms to fail, thousands of people to die from dust pneumonia and other drought- and famine-related illnesses, and millions to become homeless. These people were hard-working and did not lack in that enterprising, pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps work ethic lauded by the free market fundamentalist. They also made a rational choice: to make a success of the farm right away. So most farmers chose to forgo more prudent, sustainable methods of farming and chose instead to lift themselves out of their current state of debt and poverty by planting wheat. And in the end, this strategy soon proved disastrous to almost everyone’s long-term self-interest, including many prudent farmers who had made wiser choices.

So even though it’s true people sometimes and even often make self-destructive decisions due to short-sighted self-interest, the free market fundamentalist might point out that the ‘invisible hand’ force of the free market will correct this tendency overall. After all, we haven’t had another Dust Bowl (well, not exactly), and even if we’ve gotten ourselves into similar messes for similar reasons, each episode serves to correct our tendencies to make those particular unwise decisions. The individual might choose irrationally, but the system overall is rational.

But human beings are not just economic actors who allow our choices to be judged and corrected in the long run by the impartial and heartless forces of nature. We are moral agents: we judge each other’s actions, as well as our own, according to a(n) intuitive and/or written code of conduct, and hold each person accountable, in real time, for acting in accordance with that code. We also consider the potential consequences of our actions and choose to act according to how morally acceptable they are.

Here’s where our roles as ‘rational’, self-interested economic actors and as moral agents conflict. The corrective force of the free market, like biological natural selection, is an amoral force, which doesn’t ‘care’ who flourishes and who does not, who suffers and who does not, who lives or who dies. Human beings, as moral agents, do care about these things, both on a rational and on an emotional level. (I am convinced that the sharp distinction between emotion and reason is artificial and largely misleading, but that’s a topic for another essay. Here, I’ll use this distinction as it’s colloquially used, as two ways of looking at things, one that’s instinctive and one that’s more considered

So should humans, as moral beings, leave the weeding out of bad economic decisions mostly or entirely up to the amoral force of the free market? Is it morally right, or even acceptable, to allow the chips to fall as they may, so that bad effects (or the morally neutral term ‘inefficiencies’ of economics) end up correcting the whole system on its own? The corrective force of the free market, like natural selection, needs inefficiencies to correct against, in order to work its magic. But, the moral agent objects, these ‘inefficiencies’ that die out are, all too often, human lives! I argue that we, as moral, social beings, don’t consider the loss of human life an acceptable risk, and must hold ourselves and each other accountable if we don’t act to save lives if we can. And this commitment to moral excellence only begins at saving lives.

A general commitment to being a good citizen and a morally worthy human being should replace free market fundamentalism as the driving force behind one’s political and social views.  The facts of observation and of history reveal that the market is a force for ill as well as for good, and the morally committed, good citizen relies all of the evidence, to correct and sustain their beliefs and to inform their actions, and welcomes a system of checks and balances to keep them honest and on the right course between self-interest and concern for the common good.

The full text of my original essay can be found here:

Free Market Fundamentalism: A Moral Objection, and What Should Take Its Place

‘Free market fundamentalism?!? What do you mean by that? Isn’t that a loaded term?’

Well might you ask! And yes, it is a loaded term! I’m sure you’re aware that the phrase, as commonly used, implies a negative attitude towards the idea that strict adherence to free market principles is the best economic path for a society to follow. And it also implies that proponents of a strict laissez-faire economic approach possess a blind faith in the power of the market.

According to this view, Adam Smith’s ‘invisible hand’, operating only in a free market, is the only force or principle in the universe that will assure the best overall outcome for both personal liberty and the fair distribution of goods. But if you detect a certain…. skepticism on my part towards belief in that hypothesis, well, you’re right. I think that the term ‘free market fundamentalism’ accurately conveys the sense of an unshakable and all-encompassing belief in free market principles that I want to critique. Devotees of laissez-faire economics are commonly referred to as libertarians here in the US, but I’m not using that term here because it’s too broad for my purpose here: libertarianism also includes very liberal attitudes towards free speech rights, gun ownership, drug use, sex work, and so on. Here, I’m focusing on the economic issues only. In this essay, I’ll be using the acronym FMF to refer both to these common terms for strict free market philosophy (free market fundamentalism) and its proponents (free market fundamentalists), and speaking in general terms; of course, there are individual takes on the specifics of each issue, but I think my summaries of the arguments reflect the beliefs of the average FMF (free market fundamentalist).

Because all economic choices are based primarily on self-interest, so the FMF argument goes, no one will purposefully decide to act against their own self-interests. Even if it’s true that one’s choices result in satisfying only short-term self interests but are harmful over the long term, over time and in the aggregate, these choices with balance each other out in the marketplace. The tendency to make harmful choices will wane and eventually cease when the harm becomes apparent and other choices are observed to be better options. Self-interest will, therefore, inevitably cause people to make better economic decisions over time. There are many parallels between the ‘invisible hand’ of the free market and the biological force of natural selection, as Michael Shermer points out in his The Mind of the Market. (Disclaimer: I haven’t yet read it, and may never get around to it, but I’m familiar with many of the central arguments he makes in the book from his talks and interviews.)

A prime example of people making very harmful decisions on a large scale, based on short-sighted self interests put into practice in a free market, is the Dust Bowl disaster in 1930’s United States. Farmers, en masse, planted high-market-value crops that impoverished the soil and led to widespread erosion problems. These, combined with unusual weather conditions, caused a massive dust storm and drought that caused hundreds of thousands of farms to fail, thousands of people to die from dust pneumonia and other drought- and famine-related illnesses, and millions to become homeless. These people were hard-working and did not lack in that enterprising, pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps work ethic lauded by the FMF. They also made a rational choice: to make a success of the farm, to achieve the American dream as well as to pay debts necessarily incurred by a self-starting farmer, which do you plant: a crop that will bring in more money, like wheat, or a far less profitable, more sustainable one? Of course, the one that brings in more money! And how much of your land do you plant: just part of it (leaving the rest covered by that prairie grass that kept the topsoil in place, or planted with crops that must be plowed under to repair the soil), or all of it? You can guess which rational, short-sighted self-interest will lead one to choose.

So most farmers chose to forgo the more prudent methods of farming and chose instead to lift themselves out of their current state of debt and poverty by planting wheat. And in the end, this strategy soon proved disastrous to almost everyone’s long-term self-interest, including many prudent farmers who had made wiser choices. This pattern of harmful economic behavior considered in the long term, based on short-sighted self-interest, is endemic in the human species. From casino gambling to trading in high-risk derivatives, from daily eating at fast-food restaurants to choosing ‘natural, alternative’ treatments for usually curable cancer, from choosing great-looking, gas-guzzling, highly polluting cars to instituting a system of health care coverage that’s highly profitable to a few but unobtainable to many, market choices abound that lead to disastrous results for life, health, and financial well-being.

So even though it’s true people sometimes and even often make self-destructive decisions due to short-sighted self-interest, the FMF might point out that the ‘invisible hand’ force of the free market will correct this tendency overall. After all, we haven’t had another Dust Bowl (well, not exactly), and even if we’ve gotten ourselves into similar messes for similar reasons, each episode serves to correct our tendencies to make those particular unwise decisions. So the corrective force of the free market even renders moot recent studies by behavioral economists that indicate that human beings usually make irrational but emotionally satisfying economic decisions. Irrational choices that only negatively effect the individual on a small scale may happen all the time, but in the long run, the tendency to make truly harmful economic decisions will be weeded out by the market equivalent of natural selection. The individual might choose irrationally, but the system overall is rational.

But human beings are not just economic actors who allow our choices to be judged and corrected in the long run by the impartial and heartless forces of nature. We are moral agents: we judge each other’s actions, as well as our own, according to a(n) intuitive and/or written code of conduct, and hold each person accountable, in real time, for acting in accordance with that code. We also consider the potential consequences of our actions and choose to act according to how morally acceptable they are. The code might be a universal one, such as that which requires all human beings to respect each other’s right to freely make decisions for themselves, or it might be a particular one, which specifically prevents a doctor from selling her patients’ private health information to an interested third party. These moral codes make it possible for human beings to live and thrive together in a society, attaining the maximum level of flourishing and personal liberty while limiting the opportunities of others to infringe on these. As moral agents, we are not only driven by such self-interested concerns as satiating our own hunger and thirst, obtaining and defending property, and so on. We are also driven by wider social instincts and concerns, such as helping those in danger or in need, earning the approval of our peers, and improving the future prospects of our children and friends. The latter is often partly driven by self-interest: so the saying goes, we sink or swim together. But much of our human moral character is quite selfless: throughout history (and even pre-history) and in every culture, human beings perform acts of kindness that provide no immediate or foreseeable benefit to ourselves.

Here’s where our roles as ‘rational’, self-interested economic actors and as moral agents conflict. The corrective force of the free market, like biological natural selection, is an amoral force, which doesn’t ‘care’ who flourishes and who does not, who suffers and who does not, who lives or who dies. Human beings, as moral agents, do care about these things, both on a rational and on an emotional level. (I am convinced that the sharp distinction between emotion and reason is artificial and largely misleading, but that’s a topic for another essay. Here, I’ll use this distinction as it’s colloquially used, as two ways of looking at things, one that’s instinctive and one that’s more considered.)

So should humans, as moral beings, leave the weeding out of bad economic decisions mostly or entirely up to the amoral force of the free market? Returning to the example of the bad decision to farm intensively and unsustainably: time and the evidence revealed that these farming practices were harmful and actually against one’s rational self-interest, though the opposite had initially appeared to most to be true. But the harm was revealed by the resulting death of thousands and the financial ruin of millions. Is it morally right, or even acceptable, to allow the chips to fall as they may, so that bad effects (or the morally neutral term ‘inefficiencies’ of economics) end up correcting the whole system on its own? Is this true for everything in the economic sphere, from polluting cars and industries to the health care system in the United States? The corrective force of the free market, like natural selection, needs inefficiencies to correct against, in order to work its magic. But, the moral agent objects, these ‘inefficiencies’ that die out are, all too often, human lives! And I hold that most moral agents, most morally committed human beings, consider death and the risk of death to human persons to be a morally unacceptable result of our choices. And not only do we, as moral, social beings, do and should hold ourselves accountable, we hold each other accountable.

The FMF might allow that this is true, but  while the damage to individual finances, health, and life are regrettable, the corrective force of the free market is a better alternative to any other to ensure the greatest outcome to preserve human life and health. From Stalin and Mao’s communist regimes to Cuba’s socialist system, the FMF says, we’ve proved time and again that laissez-faire may sometimes look bad, but interference is almost always worse. Yet for every one of these cautionary tales of coercive top-down economic systems, there’s another tale of the horrors of laissez-faire: the Dust Bowl famine, the Industrial Revolution’s Manchester and other factory towns where the laboring poor were deformed and died from harsh working conditions and disease, child labor, the factory collapse in Bangladesh and the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire and the exploded fertilizer plant in Texas whose owners ignored regulations…. who’s right?

Well, we can start with the observation that there’s a massive difference between a totalitarian regime ruled by a single unchecked despot who’s more often than not a deranged sociopath (a mentally healthy person is not one who desires unchecked power, I presume I’m in agreement with the public and with mental health professionals on this one) and a representative government whose powers are wisely limited by a bill of rights. I will betray my American prejudices (‘United-Statesian’ is just too clumsy an expression to use, so I apologize to Mexicans and Canadians, I’m not forgetting about you!) and proclaim that I’m a huge, HUGE fan of the checks-and-balances theory of government of Aristotle, Montesquieu, and Madison, in which several branches of government share power and so act as a check on any one person, branch of government, or set of interests holding too much power. But I’m not just a fan because I’m an American, I’m a fan because of how well it works. But it’s evident that a system of checks and balances not only works in government, it works marvelously in a multitude of other domains as well, from the worldwide scientific community to organizations to families to the inner and public life of each individual person. In all of these domains, the conflicting needs and interests are balanced against one another so that no one single interest or factor holds unchecked sway and potentially lead the whole into ruin for lack of a corrective mechanism. For example, the scientific community is rife with individuals who hold conflicting theories, who know disparate facts, and who wish to triumph over their colleagues by formulating the best theory or by cleverly debunking a seemingly established one. Over time, faulty theories are amended or are weeded out as science is ‘kept honest’, its theories constantly put to the test by the growing body of evidence.

The FMF focuses on the marketplace as the overarching system that’s subject to the corrective forces provided by the competition which animates the ‘invisible hand’. I think this is, at least partially, where the mistake lies. What corrects the marketplace itself when it comes to moral concerns? For example, in a free market, a worker’s wages are determined by how easy it is to replace them, according to the principle of supply and demand. As we’ve seen throughout history, the wages of relatively unskilled labor remains very low, since there’s usually a very large supply of it. The result, as it is in most of the world today, is that the people who pick the harvests on which our health and lives depend make very little money, and in fact can often hardly keep food on the table for themselves and their families. In contrast, a computer programmer, which requires a higher level of education and more technical skill, can make a very high salary developing video games or apps, a fun but relatively frivolous pursuit, which all too often encourages a sedentary lifestyle and poor attention span, negatively affecting health. (I’m not hating on video games, which bring joy and relaxation to many, though I have no interest in playing them myself; I’m making the point that they’re luxury items that are often addictive and misused). I think that for most people, other than the most extreme FMF, this is a regrettable result, at the very least. That’s because our morality includes a strong sense of justice and fairness, which indicates that people who do the most difficult and most beneficial jobs should be rewarded more than people who do the less difficult and less essential jobs.

It appears, then, that the market might better be regarded as one of the components of society that needs to be checked by and balanced with others. It needs, for one, to be checked by the essential practical needs of a community, such as a legal system, infrastructure, and defense, which is generally done by government (which, in turn, should be representative of and accountable to the people as a whole). But above all, it’s our moral commitments that should keep the market in its place (for an excellent explanation and defense of this, read Michael Sandel’s ‘What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets‘). The marketplace has proven to be an excellent and efficient institution for bringing goods to the people who want them, providing social mobility, and driving and funding technological innovation. It’s also been a very handy tool for oppressive and greedy institutions and individuals to exploit others, as earlier discussed, even being co-opted for these purposes by tyrannical regimes. I believe that it’s a mixed economy that can provide the best overall results for a society, that provides the most goods for the most people while ensuring that no-one (or as few as possible, realistically) goes without or is oppressed by the unscrupulous. By a mixed economy, I mean one that is free within limits, regulated wisely so as to prevent harm but not enough to stifle trade, and where those goods essential for life are not subject to the vagaries of market forces, but are provided by and for the people as a whole, again, through accountable and representative government. These essential goods, such as water, power, and health care are as essential as any infrastructure of roads or system of laws, and should be re-categorized and treated as such. It makes no more sense to me that a citizen, which enjoys the protections and other benefits of society, can complain about being ‘forced’ to pay taxes for health care that they may or may not use, while not complaining about being ‘forced’ to pay taxes to support the police force that may or may not actually have to catch a burglar in their home, or to pay for a murder trial where they have no relation to the murdered victim. That’s because societal goods, from health care to the criminal justice system, are not only based on the practical needs of individuals within a society. They arise from our moral concerns, which apply to everyone in a society. It’s no less acceptable, I submit, that we let people die because they could afford no health care provider to diagnose and treat their illnesses, than we let people die because they couldn’t pay for private security to protect themselves from armed burglars. That’s because our moral commitments to justice and the value we place on empathy demand that we look out for the welfare of the poor as well as the rich, and that we place on ourselves the public responsibility of relieving the suffering of everyone as best we can.

A general commitment to being a good citizen and a morally worthy human being should replace free market fundamentalism as the driving force behind one’s political and social views. I have no doubt that many who espouse FMF have, in fact, made this commitment and that’s what led to their beliefs. But clinging fiercely to the idea that there’s one and only one chief principle behind the betterment of society is no more defensible than believing there’s one and only one true theory in science, or one and only one branch of government that works. The facts of observation and of history reveal that the market is a force for ill as well as for good, and the morally committed, good citizen relies on the evidence, all of the evidence, to correct and sustain their beliefs and to inform their actions, and welcomes a system of checks and balances to keep them honest and on the right course.