400+ pages of cheap talk

In case you need convincing that there's a difference between knowledge and conviction, or that higher education's rather unreliable as a means of moral improvement, Maclean's reports that Moummar Gadhafi's son, Saif al-Islam Alqadhafi, currently famous for threatening to unlease a bloody civil war on those who oppose his father's regime (and then following through), obtained a PhD in 2009 from the London School of Economics and Political Science.  His dissertation's title:  The Role of Civil Society in the Democratization of Global Governance Institutions: From ‘Soft Power’ to Collective Decision-Making?

How to debate public policy

Jim Manzi recently did what all policy analysts and political economists are required to periodically do: he wrote about Negative Income Tax (NIT). NIT goes by numerous aliases, including Guaranteed Annual Income (GAI), Basic Income Guarantee (BIG), and Guaranteed Living Income (GLI), and is a streamlined welfare system that, in the words of the Basic Income Earth Network, involves "an income unconditionally granted to all on an individual basis, without means test or work requirement.”

Manzi does a fine job showing the system's flaws, which is not surprising; Manzi's good at what he does. What's most interesting to me is a general point about public policy debates that he makes in passing.   Regarding the apparent simplicity/'tidiness' advantage NIT/GLI has over the red-tape laden bureaucratic status quo, he notes:

it is the difference between an academic idea that has not yet been subjected to lobbying and legislation, on one hand, and real laws that are the product of a democratic process, on the other. ...[T]here is nothing inherent about an NIT that will prevent Congress from creating thousands of pages of special rules, exemptions, tax expenditures and so on, that are collectively just as convoluted as the current welfare system. After all, “tax each person a given fraction of income” is a pretty simple idea too, but look at the 2011 federal income tax code.

That's exactly correct. Being serious about policy requires us to be at least half serious about the political process and the people involved in it. What could this look like here? is a better question than what could this look like in starting-government-from-scratch-with-a-perfect-citizenry-and-perfect-politicians-ville? 

Moral Tribes

Jonathan Haidt (pronounced “hite”, like the horrible Korean beer), is a social psychologist at Virginia. He’s gained a lot of popular exposure for his research in to the moral foundations of politics. I first encountered him in this TED Talk which is quite good, and which I recommend to all students of important things. Recently I came across this talk at Edge, which is even better than the TED Talk because it’s addressed to a convention of social psychologists. It is most certainly not preaching to the choir. He even calls out a previous speaker for providing a great example of what’s wrong with his discipline: tribalism.

Haidt’s work (following Durkheim, as he mentions in the Edge piece) explains morality in terms of its social function, which is group binding. If you want to argue that this is reductionist, fine, but I think that even if we want to expand the definition, all of us would still admit that whatever else morality is or does, it definitely binds people into groups. Haidt is interesting because he takes that very basic social sciences assumption and applies it with considerable force to social scientists themselves - and by extension to highly educated liberals who think their knowledge of social science somehow exempts them from its implications.

Liberals, in other words, are just as “tribalistic” as conservatives. In his Edge talk he backs up this claim with three points usually made by social scientists when they are criticizing “backward” organizations or communities. These are directly specifically at the social psychology community, but they apply to every mostly liberal group that thinks they don’t count as a (in Haidt’s words) “tribalistic moral community. These groups:

1. have taboos and danger zones (e.g. sex differences in standard deviation on IQ scores)
2. have a statistically impossible lack of diversity (there were 3 “conservatives” among the 1000
social psychologists in his audience)
3. create a “hostile environment” for members with different views (as evidenced by several
testimonies from “closeted conservative” social psychologists)

When you live in Portland, Oregon, Haidt’s argument becomes especially convincing. People move here because they want to get away from close-minded midwestern conservatives, and congregate with open-minded west coast liberals. Functionally, there is no difference between their morality and the morality of the group they left behind. Each refuses to countenance certain heretical notions (the 2nd amendment really is in the Constitution?!), each enforces a self-perpetuating homogeneity (a trend intensified nowadays by various structural factors, as Bill Bishop explained in The Big Sort), and each creates a hostile environment for divergent opinions (try defending George W. Bush in a vegan cafe and see what happens).

Of course I could mention some evil twin sister city - Branson, Missouri comes to mind - and reverse the charge with completely different examples. That’s exactly the point.

Haidt’s point, as far as I can tell, is not necessarily that morality is therefore a bad thing, and that we should try to overcome it (in fact it seems more likely he would argue that this is ultimately impossible). The point is rather that for certain endeavors, the “binding and blinding” effect of morality is an obstacle. Scientists are the best example, which is why his thesis is so powerful when aimed at a group of social psychologists. But morality is also an obstacle in politics, where we are ostensibly aiming at the “common good,” in which case conflicts between morally bounded groups is a very large obstacle indeed.

I wonder if anything productive might come from putting Haidt’s ideas into conversation with, say, Rawls' idea of the overlapping consensus. Maybe I should read more social psychology when I start that PhD program.

Pro sports and public funds

My hometown has been fretting of late about whether a proposed sports complex should receive funds, directly or indirectly, from the municiple government.

There are votes to be won and lost in the 'public money for arenas' debates, and the government of Canada has also been weighing its options (and publicly equivocating) about the matter.  Yesterday, news came of a clever roundabout way for Harper's government to financially back the projects without directly doing so.  The portion of the Federal gas tax given to cities, previously only to be used on public transit and a few other select endeavors, could possibly in the future be used for municiple projects, including arenas.  A few hours after word got out, the government sorta maybe stepped back from the idea.

As a number of recent books argue (which I admit I've only heard talked about on the radio), profitability in sports has, for a number of generations, been less about building a community-connected winning brand and more about getting governments to pay one of your major expenses: facilities.  In a sense, sports teams hold governments ransom.  If you decide your city won't try to lure or retain sports francises with direct subsidies and tax expenditures, there is surely another jurisdiction that will. The same, of course, goes for non-sports businesses.

This recent Globe and Mail piece looks at how the reactions to public funding for pro sports differs from public funding for the arts. This post on Colby Cosh's Maclean's blog makes the case that the widespead acceptance of funding for, say, an art gallary, put beside widespread antipathy towards money for a pro sports area makes perfect sense when you think about the meaning of 'public'.  Both are worth reading.

As with all political issues, and I really mean all political issues, we can find great insight into the mess by watching Yes Minister.  In this clip, two top bureaucrats discuss public funding for sports stadiums: 

Yes Minister is the best.

Wikipedia and the social nature of knowledge construction

There are a lot of interesting things to say about Wikipedia, and I like to think I've said a few of those interesting things since its genesis. Today I'm feeling a bit lazy, so I'm going to mention, and link to, two recent pieces about the oft consulted source:

1. A recent study shows that more than 85% of Wikipedia contributions are made by men. Wikipedia, of course, is anonymous and has a participation process that is simple and apparently barrier free. Numerous explanations for the disparity have been tossed around this internet thing, including that the discourse rewards stubbornness, competitiveness and combativeness, and this builds hidden barriers to female participation. What I find to be a plausible partial explanation is that guys are less likely to feel bad about wasting time, either at work or at home.
2. This article in Slate looks at the history of Jesus on Wikipedia. It's fascinating.  It's also fascinating that so many people seem intent on refighting the 'who was Jesus?' battles in the comment section of the Slate story.  The gatekeepers are less vigilant there than at Wikipedia I guess.

Moving too fast on Mubarak?

A while back I wrote a piece on dictators' exits.  Yesterday I wrote about the messiness of Egypt's current mess. If those posts were a pale ale and a stout, this one's a black and tan. 

Egyptian opposition leader Monir Abdel Nour was on the CBC Radio's As It Happens (starts at 9:45 in the clip) yesterday arguing that Hosni Mubarak needs to remain in power for a least two months in order for necessary constitutional changes to be made.  It's quite a compelling argument. Without the necessary constitutional changes and administrative transitions, and without a timely fair election (which just can't be done immediately), whoever takes over from Mubarak may face chaos and hold power, as Mubarak currently does, without legitimacy.  Or, perhaps even worse, the military could impose one of their own, as they did in 1956.

In the National Post, Conrad Black makes a similar argument about order and legitimacy post-Mubarak, and like Nour, says Mubarak has to be allowed to transition out of power over the coming months.   Black posits that leaders faced with mass protests can, a) flee, b) order the protesters to be fired upon (although those ordered to do so don't always obey - see Ceaucescu), or c) wait until the situation makes the majority uncomforable enough to side with a legal resolution rather than passionate chaos.  Black uses De Gaulle's response to France's 1968 uprising as an example of the masterful use of option c.  He suggests Mubarak, while not himself legitimate, is trying to do the same, and will use the time it'll buy to transition out peacefully. The fact that Mubarak may have sponsored the chaos-inducers doesn't seem to me to undermine Black's argument that, legitimacy and stability wise, option c may be better for everyone than the option a the protesters and many westerners want to see.

Legitimacy is about procedures and legality and all that, but more than anything, it's about people buying in.  The appearance of mob-rule, however real the greivances, could lead to a lot of horrible years for Egypt. 

"Devils behind every door..."

When I'd teach my undergrad students about what textbooks quaintly call 'transition to democracy', we would inevitably land on the core dilemma for western countries as they interact with non-democracies: should we prioritize stability or democracy? Will removing this or that particular autocrat lead to a healthy democracy or a post-Tito-Yugoslavia-style hell? Is democracy a good worth pursuing regardless of concomitant chaos? Should we think long-term and push what neoconservative polemicist Daniel Pipes prescribed for post-invasion Iraq: a “democratic-minded strongman”?

The stability/democracy tension is clear in the responses, by governments, experts and pundits, to the past week's mass protests in Egypt. Some think bad things will happen if Mubarak is ousted. Others think (well, know) that bad things will continue to happen if he doesn't. Both sides are probably right.

I can't remember who it was that said that total depravity, a central tenant of five point Calvinism, is the only empirically verifiable theological doctrine. (I also think that Total Depravity would be a great name for a Calvinist heavy-metal band). In politics, the choice isn't between a pure and right option, and a second option that's, well, the opposite of that. All institutions and people and movements are touched by sin. That translates into non-theological language as everything is broken.

Ross Douthat's recent New York Times column puts it well:

There are devils behind every door.
    Americans don’t like to admit this. We take refuge in foreign policy systems: liberal internationalism or realpolitik, neoconservatism or noninterventionism. We have theories, and expect the facts to fall into line behind them. Support democracy, and stability will take care of itself. Don’t meddle, and nobody will meddle with you. International institutions will keep the peace. No, balance-of-power politics will do it.
    But history makes fools of us all. We make deals with dictators, and reap the whirlwind of terrorism. We promote democracy, and watch Islamists gain power from Iraq to Palestine. We leap into humanitarian interventions, and get bloodied in Somalia. We stay out, and watch genocide engulf Rwanda. We intervene in Afghanistan and then depart, and watch the Taliban take over. We intervene in Afghanistan and stay, and end up trapped there, with no end in sight.
    Sooner or later, the theories always fail. The world is too complicated for them, and too tragic. History has its upward arcs, but most crises require weighing unknowns against unknowns, and choosing between competing evils.

When people say 'this is going to lead to some trouble', regardless of what the 'this' is, they're probably right.