As with all good headlines, the answer is "no". The question "Can Science Provide Better Models for Democracy?" is asked by mt in a guest post at ATTP's. Fathering it on JRO is a little odd, as is doing it in such a way that you can't really tell so are forced to ask. This is perhaps a quibble, but I found it distracting. And indeed although applying-science-to-politics is clearly what mt is interested in, it isn't clear that it's what JRO is interested in; whether there are elements in the way of life of the scientist which need not be restricted to the professional, and which have hope in them for bringing dignity and courage and serenity to other men, can obviously be applied outside politics; even the social problems of the day and try to think what one could mean by approaching them in the scientific spirit… In short, almost all the preconditions of scientific activity are missing… can be.However, I now drop that quibble and consider mt's question.
As usual with mt's stuff about politics, whilst I find it interesting and stimulating I also find it almost completely wrong. One piece of wrongness, although not the most important, is Ah but come back those twenty years later, and who has made progress? The scientific landscape is utterly altered, while the political landscape is the same mess. It is certainly true that not all political problems have been solved, but then the same is true of science. But politics progresses: the percentage of those living under democracy has increased in the last 20 years, and is part of a long upwards curve. Extreme poverty is decreasing. General acceptance that all people have equal fundamental "rights" spreads. And so on.
But the main wrongness, to me, is the familiar one: the desire to have govt do stuff for you. If you look at science and at politics, and despair for the progress of pols compared to science, then one reaction is to try to import some science-y-ness into pols; but another is to have govt do less. It hasn't done a very good job (the decrease in poverty, for example, is due mostly to trade / globalisation / captialism, not govt) so the best thing is to have less of it. Sadly, one of the failures of politics since the 1980's is to appreciate the likes of Thatcher and Hayek.
Related to that is Our present problems seem rooted in a lack of ecumenism, a stupid failure to see the commonality of our collective fate... It’s one world. It thrives or fails as one. This is also not really true, and the sort of thinking that leads to top-down failed stuff like Kyoto. Trying to co-ordinate a world that thrives or fails as one is too difficult; problems can only be solved by being broken down into smaller pieces. Thinking of the world is great, as an abstract concept, of course.
Refs
* Electricity from Large Dams Does NOT Count as Renewable Energy by David Henderson
* MUSCLE CARS ON THE INFORMATION SUPERHIGHWAY - RS
* GOP support for Trump has moved from transactional to fanatical
* BRINGING AGW DOWN TO EARTH - RS
* Governed by Imbeciles
* Beware the Candidate with a Plan by Bruce Yandle
* Why don’t people pay attention to the future of their own world?
* Not everyone cares about climate change, but reproach won’t change their minds
* YES, WE HAVE NO AZOLLA - RS
* The 7 Worst Ideas for Regulation This Century by David R. Henderson
As usual, you are more or less completely wrong, enmeshed as you are in your Rand/Hayek crackpottery. However, I think, both you and the author ignore the real value of scientific practice for governance.
ReplyDeleteTwo principles have been key to scientific progress: rigorous criticism of every proposal and ruthless punishment of dishonesty. Democratic politics, unlike authoritarianism, is pretty good at the first but terrible at the second.
I'm dubious. Politics is good at throwing up criticism, but it is generally scattershot. It is rare to get rigorous analytic criticism; generally - as with much of politics, as you'd expect from a Darwinistic hypothesis - the crit that prevails tends to be what's popular.
ReplyDeleteLeave the floor to politics. And the ceiling to industry. Feed the poor. House the homeless. Treat the sick and disabled. And get out of the way of those with ambitions, plans and ideas.
ReplyDeleteNot that difficult, really.
Social science informs the practice of politics. See the latest work by the French economist Pikety and associates on the political spectrum of successful candidates for elective office, for example.
ReplyDeletere: Our present problems seem rooted in a lack of ecumenism, a stupid failure to see the commonality of our collective fate... It’s one world. It thrives or fails as one.
ReplyDeleteOne of our collective problems today is that evolution bred us to compete in groups against other groups, but today the weapons of competition are so catastrophic as to threaten to annihilate civilization, if not the whole human race. That's true not only of the weapons of war but also things like carbon use.
This instinct is one of the key factors preventing us from controlling carbon emissions. It seems hardly worth mentioning that it is also the animating impulse behind Brexit, Trump's xenophobia, and many other diseases of modern geopolitics.
In many such matters, Benjamin Franklin's aphorism is still operative: " We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately."
William, you seem to think democracy is good, but government is bad. What then, in your view, is the purpose of democracy?
ReplyDeleteA serious inconvenience:
ReplyDeletehttps://izenmeme.files.wordpress.com/2019/06/burningworld1.png
> democracy is good, but government is bad
ReplyDeleteThose two views are compatible (I say this first without asserting that either is my view). It is possible to view govt (which is to say, coercion) as bad (or at least when overdone, as I would argue that it is at present, without disagreeing that it is to some degree necessary); but that the best way of organising it is democracy. See Churchill's least-worst quip.
Would one regard democracy as a positive good thing, rather than merely better than some of the obvious alternatives?
See-also What is Democracy? Words of Wisdom from F.A. Hayek.
The Hayek quote has the murky incomprehensibility of much of his writing. Is he incapable of making a succinct point? What is his point? That majorities ought to be able to change their minds? Does he have any point that isn't hopelessly banal?
ReplyDeleteThe Romans used to have their armies led by two consuls, who exchanged the leader role on alternate days. Did they imagine that this was efficient? Of course not - it was a drastic measure to prevent dictatorship. Democracy has the same role. Experience has shown that popular democracy doesn't work. The mob makes stupid decisions, e.g. Brexit and California, which is why representative democracies (republics) have a better track record.
> Is he incapable of making a succinct point?
ReplyDeleteAh, you what simplicity. Try a pol. Or see https://www.flickr.com/photos/belette/32882693097/in/dateposted-public/
Hayek is actually very good at speaking clearly, and defining terms, in a way that puts philosophers to shame. But, he does force you to think.
> California, which is why representative democracies
ReplyDeleteAh, yes California and it's oh-so-sensible pols.
@Connolley 1710 - So perhaps you can explain Hayek's point in your excerpt. I didn't find your cartoon very illuminating. BTW, invective and snark are cheap, but is that all you've got?
ReplyDelete@Connolley 1715 - California's pols have the usual problems of their breed, see, e.g., Churchill. But it usually takes a popular referendum to really fuck things up.
ReplyDeleteConsider the following.
Repealing a law will make society richer in total. However, it will make one individual richer by $1,000,000, and make the other 99 people in this society poorer by $9000. This will push some over the line into homelessness, starvation and death. However, remember that society is richer in total, and one fewer law is on the books, so government is less involved.
Would you be in favor of repealing this law?
A democratic government would be unlikely to repeal such a law.
If the one individual that would become richer has final say, the law would be repealed. Even if the society as a whole didn't benefit.
You sneer at the popular will. The alternative is tyranny.
@Phil - Tru dat.
ReplyDeletePhil: your example seems contrived. Also, you seem to have mistaken me for a utilitarian or somesuch. I certainly don't agree that simply stating "this change will make the sum total wealth of the country greater" is a justification for adding or removing a law. If you can think of a particular law that fits roughly your example, please put it forward.
ReplyDeleteI've argued the exact opposite of what you seem to think I support: see Taking Property Rights Seriously: The Case of Climate Change.
CIP> explain Hayek's point
Well, I can try.
The ideal of democracy rests on the belief that the view which will direct government emerges from an independent and spontaneous process. - what he is trying to say here is that in the ideal of democracy, the govt represents the will of the people; and it is not the case that the will of the people is formed by the govt; or that only those aspects of the will of the people that a given govt can see that gets represented. If this is to be true, then we need some process to allow the will-of-the-people to emerge. The connection to freedom of speech then becomes obvious, I trust.
All of this, and the other stuff, is effectively a warning against majoritarianism. Perhaps that is clearer with more context. There's another quote - which I couldn't find - which amounts to democracy merely being a means to and end, not a good in itself; and I think that's a good point, because people often seem to think the opposite.
I certainly agree with the "means to an end idea," and I agree that excessive majoritarianism is a serious problem. Much of the US Constitution is aimed at preventing just that.
ReplyDeleteI can't agree that with the notion that "The ideal of democracy rests on the belief that the view which will direct government emerges from an independent and spontaneous process."
That strikes me as a dangerous fantasy. Essentially all successful democracies are Republics in which elected representatives are supposed to make the kinds of choices that the people as a whole have neither the expertise nor time to make. Direct democracy (and again I will cite Brexit and California) often leads to disasters. (Of course republics make mistakes too, but, I think, usually fewer and less catastrophic ones. Oligarchy is one of the biggest threats to republics).
PS - I think you did a good job translating Hayek into English.
ReplyDelete> representatives are supposed to make the kinds of choices that the people as a whole have neither the expertise nor time to make
ReplyDeleteI think that's true. But you've left out a bit, which I'm finding hard to phrase, and is H's point: they should also be making the choices that the people would make, if they did have the expertise and time to think. Ideally, the govt-by-rep shouldn't be drifting away from what the people want. I don't think you should interpret H as proposing direct democracy.
Consider, for example, the last UK general election, which returned a just-about-minority Tory govt, but in which the sum of Tory+Labour would have been a vast majority; and both parties had Brexit in their manifesto, following the 48:52% referendum. So that electoral process didn't represent the will of the electorate, and couldn't.
Meh.
ReplyDelete"Civil and political rights are being eroded all over the world, warns a new report, as populist forces undermine liberal democracies and provide cover for authoritarian regimes.
"The annual ranking of 209 nations and territories, prepared by the U.S.-based democracy watchdog Freedom House, recorded an overall decline in global freedom for the 13th straight year.
"And while substantial gains of the late 20th century haven't yet been rolled back, the report warns of a "consistent and ominous" pattern. "Democracy is in retreat," it declares."
https://www.cbc.ca/news/thenational/national-today-newsletter-civil-rights-bletchley-park-1.5162886
Your point about Brexit relates. Social progress is neither automatic nor currently much in evidence.
Is poverty in retreat? Yes, certainly, in the poorer countries by conventional measures.
But even that may not be because life is getting better, but because it is getting worse; i.e., because it was formerly possible to survive without money and that is no longer the case. (That certainly describes the situation for indigenous and rural people in North America. I see no reason to expect it otherwise elsewhere.)
Anyway, that question of whether we are now making progress is not the core point of my modest effort to revive interest in mid-20th-century scientific progressive thinking.
The core question is whether society needs to be so stupid. Related, why is it apparently so much more stupid than just a few years ago? Couldn't we actually make better decisions somehow?
Indeed, this very day (in the light of another mid-century book) I find myself wondering whether scientific progress itself is reversible. The claim it makes, also explicitly made though not as emphasized by Oppenheimer, is that scientific progress is by nature permanent, monotonic, irreversible. I wonder if we can rely on even that anymore.
> The core question is whether society needs to be so stupid.
ReplyDeleteIt is your core question, and it is my core disagreement with you. As I've tried to explain, I think it is the wrong question. The right question IMO is "politics is inevitably stupid, how do we arrange that less stuff be controlled by pols?".
> Related, why is it apparently so much more stupid than just a few years ago?
I don't think you've made a convincing case that it is. Indeed, I think you're wrong to assert this.
Returning to the core point, imagine a group behind the now familiar Rawlsian veil of ignorance. They will live in a society, and be randomly assigned wealth, position, intelligence, education and so on. But! They get to agree on the rules of that society first. In the present day society people struggle to keep and bend the rules to protect their own positions. But behind the veil we - well I; I think you have other aims - might hope that they would write rules - a constitution - prohibiting too much interference by govt. For example, knowing what we know now, the constitution could forbid any tariffs or protectionism.
If I believed we could, in one go, come up with a set of rules that would work reasonably well forever, I'd certainly be in favour.
ReplyDeleteI think you underestimate the number and complexity of the rule set that is required to keep a modern society more or less working. I'm not sure why this has happened to you. You were very reasonable once. I think you've fallen under the sway of some tedious oversimplifications.
I think we now (on the climate and similar matters regarding the global commons) are facing unforeseen circumstances that the current rule set is powerless to address. This circumstance goes a long way toward refuting your simple ideal. There is no road map for the anthropocene. Consequential collective decisions must be made at every turn.
Our problems are about insufficient capacity to manage our collective circumstances. Speaking of an excess of government is absurd nonsense I think.
We simply are failing to improve our skills at government fast enough to keep up with our circumstances. No government, although it has the virtue of simplicity, is not a solution to bad government. We have no choice but to get much better at it.
Here read this for instance, especially the parts about regulations:
ReplyDeletehttps://americanaffairsjournal.org/2019/05/ubers-path-of-destruction/
Have to agree with MT here. There is absolutely no way any set of rules created today are going to be useful forever, or even ten years from now. At present, the world has a number of global problems that can't be solved without transgovernmental regulation, AGW and exhaustion of the oceans for two. Weakening government would only ensure that no solutions would be adopted, because there couldn't be any enforceable penalties for cheating.
ReplyDeleteProhibiting tariffs and protectionism is just a way to ensure that your nation fails. Suppose, for example, that your nation (if it still exists post Brexit) imposes a carbon tax. If you can't even impose tariffs on goods from countries that don't do this, you won't be able to compete or be able to sell anything except maybe postcards of your decaying and defunct cities.
One thing that always drives me crazy about libertarians is that they seem to have no comprehension of biology or history. Do they just sleep through those classes or what? Adam Smith may have invented the invisible hand of market competition, but he wasn't naive enough to think it could solve every type of challenge.
Hayek via Connolley: ...they should also be making the choices that the people would make, if they did have the expertise and time to think.
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me that nobody could determine the choices others would make if they had more time and expertise, so that's not really an option. Even if I thought that this statement meant anything, and I don't, I wouldn't agree. In many cases, the duty of the elected representatives is to make choices the people would not make, because they are supposed to make decisions on the basis of the long term good of the nation.
Rather than try to guess what the people would do under some contrafactual conditions, elected representatives should use their own best judgement. If the people disagree strongly enough, or don't trust their judgement, they can vote them out.
ReplyDeleteYup.
Delete> The right question IMO is "politics is inevitably stupid, how do we arrange that less stuff be controlled by pols?".
ReplyDeleteThe alternatives are worse.
> Consequential collective decisions must be made at every turn
ReplyDeleteI'm doubtful about this. There are a few limited examples, of which the most obvious is GW, that would benefit from e.g. a global carbon tax. But they would also benefit from individual countries imposing carbon taxes, as would those countries.
> No government
Since I'm not proposing that, your criticism lacks relevance.
> https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2019/05/ubers-path-of-destruction/
mt in "doesn't like Uber" shocker. "Uber’s longer-term goal was to eliminate all meaningful competition and then profit from this quasi-monopoly power." Sigh. This is std.nonsense, but I really don't expect to be able to make you see that.
> any set of rules created today are going to be useful forever, or even ten years from now
That's a strange way to talk about your 200-year-old constitution.
> In many cases, the duty of the elected representatives is to make choices the people would not make, because they are supposed to make decisions on the basis of the long term good of the nation... elected representatives should use their own best judgement...
This is all very well; everyone is drawn to Plato's philosopher kings, particularly if they're philosophers. But does it work as a governing philosophy or theory? The key word here is "representative" and that implies representation; and that doesn't just mean "elected by" it means guided-by-the-will-of. You could attempt to make a theory that rather than being representatives, they were instead chosen for wisdom, and to make independent judgements; I'm doubtful that would fly.
Your opinion, that the people don't have the time so there's way that "more considered view" could emerge from them, is correct, and that is indeed part of H's point. It's a flaw in democracy; in the basic theory thereof.
>>CIP- any set of rules created today are going to be useful forever, or even ten years from now
ReplyDelete>WC - That's a strange way to talk about your 200-year-old constitution.
Among the many virtues of that Constitution is that it is sparse, and doesn't try to dictate everything. It explicitly recognizes that rules will need to be legislated and that even the Constitution itself will need occasional revision.
>It's a flaw in democracy
What part of Churchill's aphorism don't you understand? Seeking perfection in government or any other human institution is a fool's quest. Democracy's virtue is that it's better than the alternatives.
That I detest Uber as an organization is true but not my point above. The point was to consider that regulation of taxi services is good, and that Uber's subversion of that (through the magical fact that money can be willed into existence given enough faith, I gather) creates serious problems, both for the drivers and for the city (primarily because undersubscribed taxi service increases traffic - I wont get into the pressure on drivers to behave illegally).
ReplyDeleteIt's a particularly simple example. The silly ideas that money is an actual thing and that markets arise in more efficient ways in the absence of regulation are contradicted in case after case.
===
My main case remains that we need to do better and can do better.
If democracy is silly it's because we don't have the skills, resources, and time available to do a good job of it. A democracy works best among people with the privilege of having time to think. If we organize society to maximize stress on most individuals, we will optimize for economic throughput, but we will subvert the conditions for functioning democracy and thereby for functioning civilization.
The Scandinavians, the Dutch, and the French appear to still understand this despite concerted efforts to confuse even them. Somehow almost everybody else has trouble holding onto these concepts nowadays.
If we have universal security, leisure and education, we can improve ourselves. We can be less silly. We can be more tolerant of our collective mistakes and learn from them. If we lose track of those basic requirements, things spin out of control quickly.
> money is...
ReplyDeleteRead Hayek. Money - price - is information. And your idea that regulated taxis are a success is odd.
> people with the privilege of having time to think. If we organize society to maximize stress...
Yes, I've heard that before and replied. People do have time to think; they just don't want to. Thinking is hard, people are soft. As for org-for-max-stress, that's not true.
> If we have universal security, leisure and education...
we will have attained nirvana and will have no need to improve ourselves. These are not basic requirements at all. These are things that modern industrialised capitalist free-market societies provide, if not too badly fouled up by pols and dreamers.
"These are things that modern industrialised capitalist free-market societies provide, if not too badly fouled up by pols and dreamers."
ReplyDeleteThese are things that collective decision making in industrialised capitalist free-market societies can provide. The unregulated market, in my opinion, emphatically does not.
The unregulated market drives wages down and forces people to work longer hours, then collects the surplus and hands it to an oligarchy. I'm not sure why this isn't obvious to you.
We used to go a long way toward preventing this outcome by anti-trust (anti-monopoly) regulation. But that's fallen out of fashion. I wonder why.
Too much regulation, or too little? It seems a remarkable point of disagreement.
WC - "These are things that modern industrialised capitalist free-market societies provide, if not too badly fouled up by pols and dreamers."
ReplyDeleteI usually try not to argue about religion, but I'm old and getting senile I guess, so I will just say that there is zero evidence for this. No society provides universal security, but those that provide widespread leisure and education have done so via government intervention and partial socialization.
And don't forget the People's Republic of China.
ReplyDelete> the People's Republic of China
ReplyDeleteIndeed, but as an example of what?
Centrally planned prosperity and health. Totalitarian industrialization which works. Unfree.
Delete> Centrally planned prosperity
ReplyDeleteI thought that might be your illusion. But it's an illusion. China had centrally planned grinding poverty. The it got the free market and globalisation and prosperity took off.
China got markets - they are far from free. The government of China has remained the central player in the Chinese economy. Like other successful economies, China is a mixed economy, and in China's case, one in which the governmental role is enormous.
ReplyDeleteI don't doubt that China's market oriented reforms played an important role in her economic revolution, but arguable far more important was a massive governmental intervention - the "one child" policy. This policy effectively doubled China's human capital while drastically reducing the number of dependent persons.
Yes. Being allowed to join WTO on such --- in my opinion, overly --- favorable terms certainly helped. So much for the free in free markets...
Delete"China had centrally planned grinding poverty. The it got the free market and globalisation and prosperity took off. "
ReplyDeleteThe first time I read this I though you were refering to the first time China got the free market and globalization. The Opium Wars.
WC - ...representation; and that doesn't just mean "elected by" it means guided-by-the-will-of.
ReplyDeleteNow you are just making shit up. The US Constitution is pretty explicit. It delineates the qualifications and duties of the Representatives. There is nothing about "guided-by-the-will-of," probably because that would be an incomprehensible and otherwise lame direction.
I own stock in a number of corporations, and like other shareholders, I am represented by their boards and executives. None of them pretend to be guided by my will. Instead, they are guided, I hope, by the intention to increase the values of our mutual holdings.
You USAnians are parochial in general, but I'd have expected you in particular to be able to look outside just your own constitution. The context here is global, since we're discussing H's ideal. But even within the context of your constitution: what do you think it says explicitly about what should guide the reps?
ReplyDeleteCorps: I'm not sure there's a strong analogy there.
William, as best I recall, Article II states precisely nothing.
DeleteI'm guessing you meant article 1. Which does indeed appear to be silent on in-what-sense the Reps are "representing" anyone.
ReplyDeleteThank you, yes, I meant Article I.
DeleteYou were discussing Hayek's ideal, which I called nonsensical. The US representatives are representing in that they are elected and meet the required qualifications - that's the only specification.
ReplyDeleteIn the UK, Edmund Burke was forthrightly anti-Hayekian: Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion. Churchill endorsed Burke and added: The first duty of a member of Parliament is to do what he thinks in his faithful and disinterested judgement is right and necessary for the honour and safety of Great Britain.
I am not enough of a scholar of comparative government to know how widespread Burke's interpretation is, but a cursory search did not turn up any Hayekian specifications of the duties of representatives.
I'm not sure of your point. If you're trying to prove that respectable people disagree with Hayek, then don't strain yourself, because I already agree. If you're trying to prove H wrong, then these quotes are all beside the point.
ReplyDeleteI just wanted to reiterate that Hayek is nuts.
ReplyDelete