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I had an epiphany during a panel discussion of Lobato v. State of Colorado (the Colorado district court holding that the Colorado public school system violates the state constitutional requirement that the state provide “a thorough and uniform” public education system, and that vastly increased funding would be necessary to be in compliance with the state constitution) at the annual policy summit of CLLARO/CLF (Colorado Latino Leadership, Advocacy and Research Organization/Colorado Latino Forum): A constitution is unenforceable in a state that allows direct democracy, or what I call “government by plebiscite” (usually in the form of the initiative process, through which the polity can directly amend the constitution or pass legislation, entirely circumventing the state legislature), and therefore such direct democracy is ultimately incompatible with both constitutionalism and the rule of law.
The panel consisted of Lisa Calderon (the mother of one of the plaintiffs), James Eklund (an attorney for the state), Prof. Kelly Hupfeld (UC Denver Assistant Dean of the School of Public Affairs) and Liane Morrison (Executive Director of GreatEducation Colorado). Two of the panelists (Lisa Calderon and Liane Morrison) were advocates of and in agreement with the Lobato decision; one (Kelly Hupfeld) was academically fascinated by and apparently somewhat favorable toward the decision; and one (James Eklund) had the thankless and clearly not entirely heartfelt task of presenting the state’s opposition to the decision to an audience of progressives overwhelmingly on the other side.
The discussion revolved around the familiar issues of quality of education, deficiencies in funding, the constraining constitutional provisions of TABOR and the Gallagher amendment (which constrain Colorado state government taxing and spending power, and require the state to submit any proposed tax increases to the electorate for approval), and the question of whether the court overstepped its bounds and addressed what is properly “a political question” and therefore not within the competence of the court to address (a separation of powers issue). For the record, I’ll state that I’m agnostic regarding the central legal question involved in the decision (i.e., whether it was the court’s role to quantify in dollars what constitutes “thorough and uniform,” or whether that is a political question to be addressed by the state legislature), but wholeheartedly agree with the decision as a matter of public policy, and am glad to see it as a potential catalyst for much needed systemic change.
(As an aside, non-lawyers aren’t always familiar with, or interested in, the distinction between legal analysis, on the one hand, and social/political/economic public policy analysis, on the other. But this distinction is a vital one to constitutional government and the rule of law, and I think we’d be well-served to make it a more commonly understood aspect of our social institutional landscape, a goal, ironically, that could be more effectively met through a better-funded and designed public education system.)
Of the facets of Lobato directly discussed, the reference to TABOR and Gallagher comes the closest to identifying what I think is really the most essential issue implicated by this decision, though it was raised in too superficial and limited a way to identify that issue clearly. Some might take exception with this claim, arguing that the deficiency in school funding and subsequently in quality is the central issue, but I am not talking about the obvious and fairly easy to understand political ideological battle between those who, on the one hand, recognize that we have underfunded and underperforming schools, and those who, on the other, believe that less government is always better government (the latter delusion being one I address at length and in depth is a series of essays hyperlinked to in the fourth box at Catalogue of Selected Posts). Rather, I’m talking about the subtler and more structurally fundamental question of whether the rule of law and governmental accountability can exist in the absence of a government to be held accountable.
Though TABOR and Gallagher don’t eliminate government entirely, they do diminish its role sufficiently to raise this question, because compliance with the court order to dramatically increase public school funding is, in reality, virtually impossible for the government to accomplish without the electorate agreeing to it, and if there is no concise and identifiable population of people (e.g., the state legislature) that can be held legally accountable for refusing to obey the court order, how can the court order possibly be enforced? And if a court order mandating governmental compliance with the state constitution can’t be enforced, how can the state constitution be said to exist as a legally relevant and effective document? In other words, in circumstances when direct democracy makes the enforcement of court orders mandating constitutional compliance impossible, direct democracy is incompatible with constitutionalism and the rule of law!
Certainly, there are subtleties and complications involved in this analysis. Courts never have troops to enforce their orders, and I may be exaggerating to some extent the distinction between a state legislature choosing to ignore a court order and a populace choosing to ignore a court order. But, while the distinction may be less stark than I have made it, I think it still exists, and is still critically relevant: A state legislature consists of a very limited number of identifiable individuals who can be held directly responsible for violating a court order, while an entire electorate is comprised of a large population of ultimately anonymous individuals who can not be held directly responsible for defying a court order.
Many, perhaps most, court orders directed against governments require state expenditures to be carried out. Desegregation in the Civil Rights era certainly did, for example. Those who hold the purse strings are those who can be held responsible for either complying with or disobeying such court orders. If the purse strings are held too diffusely to hold anyone responsible, then such court orders are essentially meaningless, and therefore so are the laws they serve.
One can argue that while direct democracy is incompatible with a bill of rights which protects the rights of individuals from the vagaries of power, including the rights of minorities from the democratic power of majorities, it is not incompatible with a constitution, since a constitution need not include a bill of rights. A constitution might say, instead, that as long as majorities exercise their power according to a prescribed law, which is ultimately up to those same majorities to interpret, then the rule of law has been adhered to. But this is a sham rule of law, only marginally better than the “rule of law” created on the spot by the whims of a ruthless dictator (since even dictators hold power in part by dispensing favors to supporters who form with the dictator a ruling faction, and the tyranny of the majority is nothing more than such a faction that is at least one person –though never necessarily more than one person– larger than half the population).
In other words, such a “constitution” is merely a ruthless dictatorship of a bare majority over all others, always subject to the caprice of that majority, regardless of how that maj0rity might choose to exercise it. If such a majority decided to interpret its constitution to permit the execution on sight of everyone with green eyes, then that would be within the law as defined by this “constitutional” society. A law which protects only those who wield power, whether they are few or many, is no law at all, but rather naked tyranny.
In reality, constitutions not only protect minorities from majorities, but also majorities from themselves, since it is often the case that foolish fanaticisms, sometimes entirely organic and sometimes fabricated or fanned by and for a minority with resources to influence popular opinion, inform mass decisions that are self-destructive. A majority mobilizing its genius through a process of careful reflection and contemplation to guide and channel its future passions (i.e., by drafting a constitution) is likely to fare better than a majority which simply surrenders to its own ephemeral whims.
This argument is related to the argument by the plaintiffs in Kerr v. State of Colorado, a challenge to the constitutionality of TABOR under the U.S. Constitution, which “requires all states to have a Republican Form of Government embodied in a representative democracy” (http://www.scribd.com/doc/56167554/Kerr-vs-State-of-Colorado-Challenge-to-Colorado-Taxpayer-Bill-of-Rights-TABOR-Amendment). In the complaint, the plaintiffs reference Federalist #10 (by James Madison), which states:
From this view of the subject it may be concluded that a pure democracy, by which I mean a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole; a communication and concert result from the form of government itself; and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths. Theoretic politicians, who have patronized this species of government, have erroneously supposed that by reducing mankind to a perfect equality in their political rights, they would, at the same time, be perfectly equalized and assimilated in their possessions, their opinions, and their passions.
A republic, by which I mean a government in which the scheme of representation takes place, opens a different prospect, and promises the cure for which we are seeking. Let us examine the points in which it varies from pure democracy, and we shall comprehend both the nature of the cure and the efficacy which it must derive from the Union.
The two great points of difference between a democracy and a republic are: first, the delegation of the government, in the latter, to a small number of citizens elected by the rest; secondly, the greater number of citizens, and greater sphere of country, over which the latter may be extended.
The effect of the first difference is, on the one hand, to refine and enlarge the public views, by passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country, and whose patriotism and love of justice will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial considerations. Under such a regulation, it may well happen that the public voice, pronounced by the representatives of the people, will be more consonant to the public good than if pronounced by the people themselves, convened for the purpose.
But the observation in this essay goes beyond that of Madison: Not only does representative (as opposed to direct) democracy temper passions and protect minorities from majorities, but it is ultimately indispensable to the very existence of the rule of law!
“The Father of the U.S. Constitution” understood the defects of direct democracy, and condemned those who advocated for it. A careful analysis of the effects of direct democracy demonstrate that it is fundamentally incompatible with the existence of an effective constitution and the rule of law. Ironically, once again, it’s precisely those who arrogate to themselves the mantle of defenders of the Constitution who are the ones against whom it must be defended.
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(The following is a response to a letter in the December 31, 2011 Denver Post regarding the error of making comparisons to Nazism: http://blogs.denverpost.com/eletters/2011/12/30/those-making-nazi-references-should-check-history/16103/)
1) The aspect of Nazism most reviled, and the reason why it is held in boundless contempt, is the Holocaust, which was an exercise of ultra-nationalist violence against a perceived “foreigner within” (accompanied by a similar ulta-nationalist violence against perceived inferior peoples without, in the name of “Lebensraum”). It is the expression of, and political implementation of, an extreme in-group/out-group bias that is the defining characteristic of the horror that was Nazism. (This in-group/out-group bias was not just directed against Jews, but also Gypsies, Slavs, Serbs, Homosexuals, the poor, trade unionists, and Communists and Leftists, explicitly and repeatedly, which should settle the non-issue of where on the ideological spectrum Nazism fell.)
2) The aspect of Nazism that falls on a spectrum with a mixed historical record is that of “corporatism,” not in the modern sense of power concentrated in large private corporations, but in the sense of the nation as corporation. Japan had enormous post-WWII aggregate economic success with this model, and the social democracies of Northwestern Europe have had enormous human welfare success with a more moderate version of it. Conversely, the Soviet Union, Maoist China, and other failed Totalitarian experiments point to the ways in which it can be a horrible and tragic failure. The challenge is not to paint with overly-broad brush strokes when discussing these lessons of history, but rather to look at details and nuances, and to use our disciplines for studying and understanding the systems involved to inform our analyses and comparisons.
3) When making comparisons with Nazism (generally, really, with the Holocaust), it is certainly important to emphasize the scope and relevance of the comparison being made. Nothing in America, at least since the genocide of the indigenous population, compares in degree, and any comparison should emphasize that fact. But if there are legitimate specific similarities to be pointed out, making the comparisons not with a broad brushstroke but rather with a finely focused analysis, and making it not merely to wield a crude rhetorical weapon, but rather to suggest that there are legitimate areas of concern that should be setting off the alarms that the lessons of history offer, then comparison is not only appropriate, but really quite essential.
4) Mike Godwin himself, the author of “Godwin’s Law,” which predicts that the longer a political debate continues, the more certain it is that a comparison to Nazism will be made, emphasized that his point was not that no such comparisons are ever legitimate or useful, but rather that their overuse blunts their effectiveness when truly appropriate by desensitizing people to the possibility of valid comparisons.
5) Nazism is not unique in the history of the world, but is rather our archetypal example of something that happens in varying degrees and forms repeatedly (and not infrequently) around the world and throughout history. To pretend that this powerful lesson of history about one constant threat-from-within to any society, and to humanity, must be deemed forever irrelevant and off-limits, would be a victory for ignorance and a blow against the growth of human consciousness in service to human liberty and welfare.
6) There are indeed some very potent political ideological trends in America today that bear comparison to Nazism, not in degree (not even close), but in kind. Nazism did not emerge onto the world stage as an agent of genocide, but rather as a more modest expression of xenophobic and bigoted reactions to events which undermined national pride and economic security (the loss in WWI and subsequent economic collapse in pre-WWII Germany paralleled by 9/11 and the Great Recession in America today), and gradually, imperceptibly to many, grew into the horror that we now know it to have been.
We must not blind ourselves to its lessons by refusing to heed them unless and until millions are brutally killed; we must instead be mindful of the real lesson of Nazism: That humanity must come before nationalism, that “foreigners” both within and without must not be reviled for being “foreigners,” and that our best hope for the future is to become less chauvinistic, less bigoted, less xeno-homo-islamo-hispano-phobic, more inclusive and accommodating, more committed to reason and universal goodwill, more aware that the welfare of America and Americans is inextricably linked to the welfare of all people and of the planet itself, and, in short, more sane, more conscious, more compassionate, and more rational.
7) I’ve written some essays drawing these comparisons: Godwin’s Law Notwithstanding and “Sharianity”, to name a couple. It’s up to those among my neighbors and fellow countrymen (and countrywomen) lost to these bigotries and hatreds whether they want to continue down that horrible road, or whether they want to choose to be, instead, the kind of people that never have cause to be reviled around the world and in historical hindsight for any lack of enlightenment or humanity.
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This Week With Christiane Amanpour hosted an excellent debate this morning, with conservative pundit George Will and Congressman Paul Ryan on one side, and Congressman Barney Frank and Clinton Administration Labor Secretary Robert Reich on the other, over the fundamental, perennial issue of the optimum size and scope of government. First, please note that I did not frame it in the conventional way, with “small government” (SG) on one side, and “big government” (BG) on the other, because that is the frame created by SG advocates to mislabel their opposition. The real debate, as I see it, isn’t between SG advocates and BG advocates, but rather between SG advocates and advocates of “No Presumption Pragmatism” (NPP).
The legitimate concern is that NPP may tend toward limitless growth in government, but it is not therefore the case that those who are advocates of “no presumption pragmatism” are advocates of big government. Rather, it might be that there is an un-met challenge facing NPP that, if met, is a preferable path to either dogmatic SG advocacy or a careless, unrestrained-government growth version of NPP.
But there is an inherent tension between wanting government to perform an endlessly growing list of functions, and wanting government to be a minimalistic agent in our national affairs. ABC News’ John Donvan summed up that aspect of the debate nicely:
In the following introductory comments and opening salvos in this incarnation of The Debate, the participants lay out the parameters nicely, challenge some assumptions, redefine some positions, and offer some compelling insights and arguments:
Paul Ryan does an impressive job advocating his position, arguing that adhering to strict principals that generate optimal outcomes is superior to overreliance on government to take care of all challenges and address all issues, the latter error leading to a sprawling and cumbersome burden on human creativity and enterprise rather than an effective reduction in social problems and increase in human welfare. Barney Frank and Robert Reich respond that the government is too big in some ways and too small in others, and that reducing one’s position on the issue to an anti-government presumption fails to address the real challenges of managing a popular government.
Frank points out that many SG advocates are perfectly happy to rely on government to impose their will on others, advocating restrictions on women’s reproductive rights and a lack of definition of civil rights for gays and lesbians, while opposing the use of government in the productive manner of addressing “public goods” and “public bads,” not defined by arbitrary moral convictions, but rather by the real effects of our inevitable interdependence on our individual well-being. Reich reiterates that the question isn’t the size of government, but rather what factions of the population government is assisting or failing to assist.
Paul Ryan’s argument that smaller government is inherently more efficient and more effective than big government simply ignores the inevitable fact that any government function costs money, that, in a complex modern economy, there are a plethora of inescapable and quite expensive government functions that must be performed (e.g., regulating information-intensive markets such as financial and energy markets, which are easily gamed at potentially catastrophic public expense, but costly to monitor effectively); that the majority of the government programs targeted by SG advocates (with the notable exceptions of Social Security and Medicaid) actually involve piddling expenditures in relation to these large inescapable costs that government must be able to meet; that advocacy not to meet those inescapable costs is advocacy for a wildly self-destructive public policy; and that many of those piddling expenditures are in programs which research strongly demonstrates reduces far larger future costs that occur in their absence (such as those we currently incur in our enormous criminal justice system, far larger and more expensive, per capita, than those in other developed countries, incarcerating a far larger proportion of our population).
Since, in reality, there are expensive functions that a modern government must perform, and since, in reality, some social welfare programs have been strongly demonstrated to be cost effective over time, all things considered, what we as a polity really need to do in this debate is to transcend both the “big government is bad” platitude and the “every problem has a direct government solution” habit, and move into thinking more systemically, more intersectorally, and engage, in ever larger numbers with ever more commitment and knowledge, in the real challenge of using government as a disciplined and effective agent of our will, a portal into the organic processes of which we are a part, through which the essential functions of consciousness, of collective decision-making, of necessary oversight, of intentionality and value-driven intervention, can be implemented.
The debate in response to the audience question at the end over bailouts v. limiting the size of banks so that none are “too big too fail” is, as Robert Reich pointed out, an example of an information-intensive issue on which the relative positions of “conservatives” and “liberals” is not quite clear. The conservatives in this debate favored limiting the size of banks, while Frank on the liberal side argued that we require a different paradigm that allows for the existence of big banks in order to be internationally competitive. Though this Great American Debate historically began, in many ways, over a very similar question (should we have a national bank or not?), in its modern incarnation, it’s less ideological than technical, both sides admitting to the need to rely on economic analysis rather than blind ideology, neither side having the definitive solution to what is in reality a very complex problem.
The next segment deals with economic inequality and collective responsibility:
Elizabeth Warren’s introduction to this segment of the debate is, I believe, a very eloquent expression of the fundamental truth undermining the extreme SG/Libertarian argument: We are interdependent members of a single society, our political economy not being, never having been, and simply not capable of being, a mere market place for exchanges among atomized individuals, but rather an arena of coexistence in which some aspects of our shared lives are coordinated through market exchanges, but some aspects are necessarily coordinated in other ways as well.
These “extra-market” aspects of our shared existence aren’t just cultural, aren’t just a matter of family relationships and community relationships and voluntary organization memberships, but are also political and economic, involving our collective decision-making apparatus, our laws, and the ways in which a modern capitalist economy is populated with corporate actors whose own internal structure is hierarchical rather than “free market” based, and which wield enormous political power as a result.
The distribution of wealth and opportunity in America is clearly not a function of some mythical perfected meritocracy, but, as in all times and places throughout human history, is primarily a function of historical injustices reproduced through the chances of birth and the inherited opportunities and burdens that come with them. Our current legal system, evolved through periodic cleansings of the codification of those injustices, has certainly diluted the effects of those historical injustices, but their remaining legacy is clear to see, and is, in fact, a statistically undeniable current reality. Whatever policies we implement or decline to implement today, doing so with blithe disregard for the realities that currently exist is indefensible on both pragmatic and moral bases.
Paul Ryan’s response to Christiane’s opening question about economic inequality bordered on disingenuous: He blamed “current economic policies” for that growing disparity, despite the fact that the disparity has grown with the greatest acceleration, as it has in previous historical epochs, with the growth of deregulation and the success of SG political advocacy. This trend can clearly be seen in the three eras of most obscene concentration of wealth in America: The era of “The Robber Barons,” the “Roaring Twenties” of the Hoover Administration, and the current Reagan and post-Reagan era.
Ryan also, as he did throughout this debate (and as is an endemic deficiency in his ideological camp’s position), acted as if there is no other nation in the world with which we can compare our policies, to determine which kinds of policies really do increase social mobility and decrease economic inequality, and which ones really do exacerbate the lack of social mobility and the increase in economic inequality. The inconvenient fact is that a comparison to the social democracies of Western Europe and Canada demonstrates what the historical record I mentioned above also demonstrates: Social mobility is increased through social democratic government interventions in the economy, economic inequality is decreased, and prosperity is not undermined.
Paul Ryan argues that any attempt to decrease social inequality inevitably serves only to impoverish the wealthy rather than enrich the poor. This is an assumption and a fallacy. Historically, in fact, our political economic institutions have evolved in large measure to decrease social injustice (including economic inequality) without undermining the productive engine from which we all benefit. We’ve been successful enough at the latter goal that we consider merely slow growth to be economic failure, and periods of economic stagnation to be a crisis, and have, on average, maintained a fairly constant and sustained continuing growth in overall economic prosperity. While we’ve met that side of the challenge rather soundly, we not only have failed to address the increasingly inequitable distribution of the wealth thus created, but have actually devolved into a debate over whether we should care about that failure or not.
Ryan and Will represent the more “urbane” branch of their ideological movement, counterfactually insisting that their position decreases inequality and increases social justice, rather than that inequality and social injustice don’t matter. Unfortunately for Ryan and Will, the history of our own nation, and a comparison to other nations, demonstrate that the truth is the precise opposite of what they are claiming it to be.
Robert Reich added the observation that both the marginal tax rate on the wealthiest, and economic growth, were astronomically high under Dwight D. Eisenhower, debunking the assertion that they are antagonistic to one another.
George Will argues that Big Government always favors the wealthiest and most powerful, because it is most responsive to those who can pay expensive lobbyists and make large campaign contributions. Well, yes, government is skewed in favor of those with greatest political economic power, which is why the anti-government, deregulation movement has been so successful: It favors those with the greatest political economic power. To argue against using government to favor the interests of the less powerful on the basis that any government action is somehow inevitably going to favor the more powerful is a bizarre tautology, especially given the historical fact that disenfranchised groups have with some regularity successfully organized to gain power and legal protections throughout our history (e.g., women, African Americans, workers, environmental activists, etc.)
George Will then brought up the interesting observation that (therefore) the welfare state in America is primarily a transfer of wealth from the poorer young to the wealthier elderly (in the form of social security and Medicare). But this is a surprisingly sloppy representation, since neither the young nor the elderly are monolithic in their economic condition. I do agree, however, that social security and Medicare should be means tested; as a nation, we simply can’t afford to subsidize the wealthiest with public programs designed as safety nets.
But it is completely disingenuous to argue that the primary reason for that intergenerational disparity in wealth is due to Social Security and Medicare. The fundamental reason is insufficient government regulation of a market successfully exploited by a small minority of citizens over the course of their lives, such that they accumulate astronomical wealth by old age, creating the disparity that Will cites.
Ryan, however, made a potentially good point that Big Federal Government concentrated in Washington creates a convenient geographic and institutional nexus of power for corporate America to influence the political class. However, ironically, the policies that are most implicated in anti-BG advocacy are those policies that are most antagonistic to corporate interests, such as improved public health and safety standards, improved environmental standards, and expanded social services and programs for the neediest. The success of corporate lobbyists isn’t primarily the increase of government action to their benefit (though there is, of course, some of that), but rather the decrease of government action to their benefit (i.e., deregulation).
I do believe, however, that we need to move toward a paradigm of government facilitated public empowerment to carry out some of the functions currently embedded in governmental bureaucracies. Government can serve best to channel resources and pass legislation that will fund and guide local efforts. We need to think and act more systemically, in a more decentralized way, rendered coherent and conscious through our central agency of collective action (i.e., government), but utilizing all of the social institutional material on the ground in pursuit of social problem solutions and social institutional improvements.
The audience question that opens the next segment is very timely for me, since just yesterday I received my first “photo surveillance” ticket in the mail:
Paul Ryan’s repetition of the notion that economic equality automatically grows with economic growth is well answered by Barney Frank, who pointed out that economic growth is a necessary but not sufficient condition of wide-spread economic well-being
In fact, aggregate economic growth and economic equity (distributive justice, which is one aspect of social justice) are neither diametrically opposed nor perfectly compatible. There is a tension between them, in which some policies could indeed increase aggregate growth at the expense of distributive justice, some policies could increase distributive justice at the expense of economic growth, and some policies increase both economic growth and distributive justice at the same time. Obviously, the last category has the most to recommend it, but there are also times to accept trade-offs between aggregate growth and equitable opportunity to partake of the wealth produced by it.
As a thought experiment, consider the extremes: Few would support an arrangement by which one person accumulates ten times our current GDP every year, but everyone else is left in abject poverty. And, similarly, few would accept an arrangement in which there is absolute equality of abject poverty. There is clearly some balance to be struck between these two values.
Of course, Paul Ryan is right on target in the gist of his last remarks at the end of this segment: We need to end crony capitalism, eliminate subsidies to the rich, and address our economic challenges systemically. Those observations, however, do not belong to the larger ideological package that he is advocating, and, in the final analysis, are not compatible with it.
And on to the closing arguments:
Diminutive Robert Reich’s joke during his closing argument, reminding the audience that he has worked in government most of his life and then standing up and asking, “Do I look like Big Government to you?” struck me for a moment as funny but irrelevant, until I reflected on it a bit: Government is a human institution, comprised of human beings, acting in human ways. It is how we use it (and how we fail to use it), and what we do with it that defines its value. It is a vehicle of human will, not an external imposition, and it is, and should be, exactly as “big” as we are.
But, despite all of my arguments above, the take-home lesson from this debate, for everyone, should be that there is a legitimate debate to be had. From there, we can begin to acknowledge that no platitude suffices, and that the question is not one that can or should be answered with a slogan or reductionist philosophy. The responsibility of popular sovereignty, of self-governance, is that we govern ourselves wisely, succumbing to the manias and oversimplifications neither of the left nor the right. The more of us who take that step, who seek to transcend blind ideologies and embrace the challenge of being reasonable people of goodwill working together in a complex and subtle world, the better off we all will be.
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I’ve decided to coin a new term, “sharianity,” which is defined as the state of mind implicated in the citing of examples of sharia law being enforced somewhere in the world (or imagined instances of it being enforced somewhere in the United States) to stoke up anti-Muslim hysteria here at home (by arguing, arbitrarily, that sharia law is taking over America, and that, therefore, we must discriminate against all Muslims living in the United States). In two threads (so far) on Facebook, I have taken on this particular hysteria, part of the larger anti-Muslim hysteria sweeping across some factions of this country.
It’s important to emphasize that opposing the exploitation of horrendous acts of violence abroad under the guise of sharia law as a pretext for advocating prejudice and discrimination here at home is in no way a defense of or tolerance of or acceptance of those acts of violence. Just as the opposition to rationalizing any other form of racism by pointing to some crime committed by some members of a given race as a pretext for that racism is not an expression of approval for the crimes committed, so too opposing rationalizing this form of racism by pointing to some crime committed by some members of the given race (or, in this case, religious community) does not in any way imply approval of the crimes committed.
While it may be true that a significant portion of world Muslims support aspects of Sharia law repugnant to Americans, it’s also true that those who exploit that fact most vigorously to condemn all Muslims en masse are precisely those Americans who are most similar to those who endorse and enforce sharia (close-minded, bigoted religious fanatics). Jihad, meet Crusades, brought into the Modern era by remarkably similar throw-backs of two different stripes….
One commenter captured the cornerstone of that fanaticism with the assertion that, since both Islam and Christianity can’t both be right at the same time, to be tolerant of Islam is not enlightened but rather confused. I’ve addressed this error of false absolutism many times (see the essays linked to in the fifth box at Catalogue of Selected Posts, plus A Dialogue on Religion, Dogma, Imagination, and Conceptualization and An Argument for Reason and Humility). To summarize:
1) The world is comprised of groups of people, each defined to a large extent by some set of shared beliefs. Many or most of these hold beliefs that are considered “exclusive absolute truths.” In other words, they hold some ideological conviction (often, though not always, in the form of a religion) that they consider the absolute and indisputable truth, such that they know that their dogmatic certainty is the one correct one, and all others are wrong.
2) Of those that share this characteristic, at most one can be correct (though not necessarily any are).
3) By adhering to these exclusive ideological certainties, all such ideologues guarantee a perpetuation of a world divided by such mutually exclusive ideological absolutisms, often violently so, and, as we see in this case, even when not violently so, at least hatefully so.
4) Exercising the wisdom of humility, knowing that none of us are in possession of the one, final, absolute truth, but rather are mere human beings striving to understand a complex and subtle world and universe, is not the error of “relativism,” as such adherents insist, but rather the recognition that, while there is a single, coherent objective reality, our ability to ascertain it in its entirety is so limited that our various attempts yield these mutually exclusive absolutists ideologies instead.
5) This habit of thought is also the basis of the most robust system of gaining deeper and broader understandings of nature ever yet invented: Scientific methodology, which is based on skepticism rather than faith.
6) Faith may be a virtue, when it is pure enough not to conflict with humility, and takes the form not of words and beliefs, but rather of a sensation of being part of a wondrous and awe-inspiring reality. In this form, our religions become wonderful windows onto something that transcends them, and become languages that cease to divide us in violent and hateful ways.
Several commenters on both threads insisted that “they” (i.e., Muslims) have brought this on “themselves” by committing acts of terrorism and violence. This is, not surprisingly, a very popular meme. It’s also a very irrational one. I don’t recall a sudden outcry that white Americans had brought such prejudice on themselves when Timothy McVeigh, acting in the context of a large organized anti-government movement (that is even larger and more vocal today, and has even more paramilitary groups running around in grease paint firing semi-automatic weapons), bombed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City (killing hundreds, many of which were children in the daycare center in the building). We use that concept of “they” very selectively, to vilify those out-groups we are predisposed to vilify, but to individualize acts of violence committed by members of groups (generally in-groups) we are not predisposed to vilify.
One commenter asked “Where is your compassion for the young lady (who, according to the story, was executed under sharia law for participating in a beauty pageant) ??????” Again, condemning the hateful bigotry rationalized by means of exploiting that tragic event does not equate to indifference to the tragedy of the event itself. Americans commit crimes all the time, and their victims deserve nothing but compassion, but I doubt that many Americans would find that a convincing argument why generalized hatred toward Americans overseas, rationalized as a reaction to the crimes some Americans commit here (or there), can’t be criticized.
Or perhaps a better analogy is that America is one of the last developed countries to retain the death penalty, considered utterly barbaric by the citizens of most developed countries, and yet these same folks who are indignant over the lack of compassion shown by my criticism of their bigotry would be the quickest to take offense at any similar bigotry directed toward Americans in general by virtue of our continued execution of occasionally innocent convicts.
The trick of finding an atrocity committed by the group toward which you are eager to direct your bigotry is an old one. It was used frequently by people very much like the “sharianists” (those who invoke sharia as a pretext for anti-Muslim bigotry) to rationalize their own racism in the past, just as it is being used now to rationalize the popular prejudice of the present. If there had been an internet fifty or sixty years ago, Southern racists would have posted news stories of African Americans committing crimes, using those stories to condemn African Americans in general, just as some are now doing to Muslims.
The problem, of course, is that bigots are always perfectly insulated against any information that might expose to themselves the ignorance and hatefulness of their own bigotry. That’s the beauty of ignorance: Those who suffer it are able by virtue of it to ignore all information and reason that might inconveniently challenge their bigotry. And so the disease of racism, of bigotry, of hatred, “wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross” (as the very prescient and insightful author Sinclair Lewis said of how Fascism would come to America), marches on, unstoppable. And these new bigots are its foot soldiers.
The concept of “tolerance” popped up, of course, both rejecting and co-opting it at the same time (“those animals don’t deserve to be tolerated, but, if you’re so committed to tolerance, what about tolerating us bigots?”) But tolerance does not mean tolerating specific crimes by specific people; it means tolerating diversity that is not violent or predatory in nature. Being Muslim is not violent or predatory in nature; hating Muslims is.
But there is a degree of tolerance required, even of those who express such bigotries. I believe in the degree of tolerance that recognizes their speech to be protected, and to be opposed not with physical force, or any suggestion of any call to physical force, or any suggestion of any call to the passage of laws prohibiting such positions, but rather just with reason and knowledge and the power of competing speech. But it should not be tolerated in the sense of being disregarded and left unopposed by better reasoned, better informed, and more life affirming ideas and arguments.
Several commenters typically, tried to “rubber-and-glue” me in various ways, suggesting, for instance, that by criticizing them I was committing the same error they were supposedly committing by criticizing Muslims (unsurprisingly unable to distinguish between criticizing specific people for their own specific behaviors and criticizing whole categories of people for behaviors committed by some members of those categories). Two on two different threads bizarrely invoked the “glass house” proverb, suggesting that it was wrong of me to “throw stones” at them for the sin of throwing stones at Muslims in general.
One commenter implied that I must be an anti-Christian “bigot” since I was criticizing these good Christians for hating Muslims, to which I replied that no, I didn’t hold Christians in general responsibility for the viciousness of some. I also referred them to my arguments in A Dialogue on Religion, Dogma, Imagination, and Conceptualization, in which I argued vehemently against such anti-Christian or anti-religion presumptions.
I pointed out to another the questionability of insisting that “Christianity” stands in opposition to “liberalism.” Many great liberals have been Christians. Many liberal civil rights leaders have been men of the cloth, and a whole movement called “liberation theology” was prominent for decades, particularly in Latin America. I pointed out that one of the great ironies cited by many on the left is that the words attributed to Jesus sound much more like words that could be spoken by American liberals today than by American conservatives, with a focus on social justice and compassion and “tolerance” and a commitment to humanity. I pointed out that the commenter did not represent Christianity in its entirety, any more than those murderers in the article represent Islam in its entirety.
Several commenters tried to justify their reporting of the incident as unassailable in and of itself, though it was clear that the purpose was to advocate for discrimination against Muslims here in America. I pointed out that of all the destructive ideologies that exist in the world, when a group of people repeatedly seek out and publish examples of one in particular, plucked from the far side of the planet, to make a specific point about a specific culture that, coincidentally, they have been striving to vilify in general, here at home, for the past decade, that is no longer simply the condemnation of a particular set of violent acts motivated by a particular belligerent ideology. It becomes clearly identifiable as a pretext for an antagonism focused on a particular race or ethnicity.
Present in all of this was another example of one of the great ironies of modern American right-wing ideology: While its adherents claim, on the one hand, to believe in individual responsibility, they also think in very collectivist terms. The incident they cite is not about individuals committing an act of violence, but rather a cause to indict an entire culture, not all of the members of which subscribe to sharia law (and of those that do, not necessarily this more repugnant variety of sharia law).
There are some other great ironies embedded in this ideology. The habitual dismissive disregard for the Constitution espoused by the ideological camp that claims most loudly to be the great champion of the Constitution, for instance, is discussed below.
But a less well-known right-wing hypocricy is the convenient blend of relativism and absolutism. A subjective relativism is invoked to insulate arbitrary opinions, such that no opinion can ever be deemed better informed or reasoned than any other. This is combined with a conveniently invoked absolutism that declares that the set of arbitrary opinions, each of which can’t be challenged because all opinions are equal, comprise together the One Exclusive Truth by virtue of the fact that anything else would imply the error of relativistic thinking!
So, it is possible to condemn Muslims for being Muslims and insist that they must be excluded from American society as violators of absolute truth, and condemn those who say that this is bigoted for failing to accept just one more equally valid opinion! Reminiscent of John Calhoun insisting that the liberty of slave owners was threatened by emancipation of slaves (and that the rights of minorities had to be protected by ensuring that the rights of African Americans weren’t), these specimens insist that their right to be different by advocating for the discrimination of others is the one difference that should be respected!
This deftly convenient blend of relativism and absolutism came up repeatedly in the assertion that the commenter’s personal experience and personal perceptions were inviolate, and that therefore any suggestion that any of it might be empirically false or irrational or offensive was just someone else’s opinion, and therefore inadmissible as a response to the commenter’s condemnation of others for their (the others’) beliefs or identity.
There is clearly a convenient inconsistency, as well, in the way in which the selection of what to be indignant about and what not to be indignant about occurs, serving a blind ideology rather than a rational and humane philosophy. There’s no indignation over one of the richest nations on Earth being obstructed (by them) in its efforts to address poverty, homelessness, hunger, and other forms of needless and curable destitution within its own borders, a travesty that is actually within their political power to confront, but there is boundless indignation over the sins of a distant culture operating in a distant land, because that travesty is committed by a foreign enemy that they are eager to vilify.
We are talking about a political and cultural movement in America which blends the worst of all ideological worlds, mixing a form of individualism only invoked as a justification for belligerence and indifference to the neediest in our own society with a form of collectivism only invoked as a justification for belligerence toward all those outside our own society. It is a particular blend of individualism and collectivism selected not to serve humanity, but rather to attack humanity, to hate rather than to help. (See The Catastrophic Marriage of Extreme Individualism and Ultra-Nationalism for a more in-depth discussion of this issue.)
Here is one telling comment, that was applauded by others on the thread:
Americans were traumatized by 9/11. And, because of that they will be develop a certain dislike or mistrust of the culture that perpetrated it. That’s understandable. The fact that moderate muslims do not denounce the radical muslims looks like tacit approval of 9/11. The fact that when muslims emigrate to the US and other countries, they remain insular also doesn’t help. Western culture is so different to theirs makes it difficult for them to do so. Having American citizens of muslim descent become terrorists doesn’t help. So I suspect those are probably reasons why we are seeing the intolerance.
While my experience is anecdotal, female friends of mine have had problems with muslim men at work. The men feel strongly that they should not have to work with women and that women should not work at all. Well, this is America and women work outside the home. Furthermore, A muslim man just about knocked me to the curb when I was in London in May. I was in his way. I guess as an infidel and a woman, he felt he could do that. I made it clear that it would be assault if he even touched me. There were muslim-only cafes in London and women were not permitted in some. Wonder if this is what we will see in America if we’re not vigilant? Will we tolerate that sort of discrimination? I never thought I’d see it in London. Should we tolerate that here?
I’m also concerned at the apparent acceptance of sharia law and the apparent small inroads it’s making in the US. IMHO, islam needs a reformation–it’s like it’s operating in a bygone era. Educating the people would help. Once they’re educated, they’re not as dependant on one person’s interpretation of the koran as we see now in some muslim countries.
I’m glad I’m of a certain age. Our children and grandchildren will have quite the challenge on their hands.
Another commenter responded to this by asserting that she is not a bigot for agreeing with it, but rather “a realist” who “see(s) Islam for what it is.” Ironically, both emphasized that Islam is stuck is Middle Ages, apparently not having a mirror handy to notice the Inquisition and Crusades standing at each of their shoulders.
I responded to the latter’s assertion that these were “very good examples” by pointing out that they are very good examples of how to rationalize xenophobia, by combining false (and empirically refutable) assumptions with an assumption of being completely justified in an anti-Muslim agenda. I pointed out that a huge number of moderate Muslims have denounced the 9/11 attacks; that their denouncements have been all over the media for the past decade (and I provided some links to inventories of such denouncements by Muslims), and that her twice repeated insistence that no such denouncements occurred was an example of “confirmation bias,” by which one perceives what is most ideologically convenient for them to perceive.
This all, of course, boils down to defining the world in terms of in-groups and out-groups, and then conveniently looking for all of the reasons to condemn all of those who belong to the out-groups, while blithely disregarding all of the often very similar (and sometimes more egregious) transgressions being committed by those who belong to the in-group. (See Inclusivity & Exclusivity.)
The main argument is that, since there are threats confronting America, any degree of xenophobia is justified. There are real threats and challenges in the world that impact the United States, both within and without its borders. But, while we have laws governing people’s actions within our borders, their freedom of belief, speech, association, and religion are all constitutionally protected. (There are fairly well-defined exceptions to freedom of speech of course: You can’t incite violence, commit slander, etc. Also, freedom of religion stops when a practice claimed to be a religious one violates a law whose purpose is other than to infringe on the religious belief itself.) If someone violates our laws, we prosecute them for doing so. If they don’t violate our laws, then there is no issue.
What we don’t do, what we have learned is the wrong thing to do, is to identify people according to their religion, ethnicity, race, or political ideology, and in some way or another, target them for those things in and of themselves. Being Muslim in America isn’t a crime, must not be perceived to be a crime, and those who treat it as a crime are the ones in error. Gross, horrible, shameful error.
The commenters were adamant that we are not doing enough to nip this threat in the bud, to confront and obstruct the intrusion of Muslim culture into our society. But we have a little thing called the US Constitution, which guarantees all Americans, and all legal residents, freedom of belief, of religion, of assembly, as long as they do not break any Constitutionally permissible laws in the process.
Ironically, once again, the same ideological camp that crows about being the true defenders of the Constitution turns out to be the principal threat to the Constitution, trying to whip up a predisposition to target a particular religious community living within the United States that, to the extent that it is translated into the kinds of policies consistent with that predisposition, would be a frontal assault on both our Constitution and our decency as human beings.
Among the comments were comments about how all of this bigotry is justified by the clash of cultures, somehow exhibiting a complete historical amnesia concerning how discredited that justification is. One of those commenters then insisted that all of these fine people posting on that thread would undoubtedly treat Muslims they encounter with love and respect, to which I pointed out that some of the posts included: “Those Jackasses Muslims (sic)…,” “AND THE GOVERNMENT LEADERS IN AMERICA STILL SAY WE CAN CO-EXIST WITH THESE ANIMALS ?? WAKE UP, PEOPLE !!” I mentioned that maybe that was a form of “love and respect” I just wasn’t familiar with.
There was then an endless going round in circles over the insistence that calling people “jackasses” isn’t bigotry, conveniently disregarding that feeling the need to impugn their entire religious community while doing so is. And no amount of pointing this out had any effect whatsoever.
There was the suggestion that I should be criticizing those Muslims who enforce sharia law overseas rather rather than those criticizing them here, to which I responded that 1) they are not mutually exclusive, and when I enter into conversations with Muslims in which they take positions that I find offensive, I have no hesitation to take them to task for it; and 2) having said that, there is a difference between criticizing remote others with whom I am not engaged in any process of shared self-governance and over whom I have little or no influence, and criticizing fellow citizens advocating an attitude and a policy for our nation that I find offensive and reprehensible.
There were comments about “birds of a feather,” and invoking the name of Danny Pearl as justification for the bigotry. I responded to these with:
….
2) The existence of categorical identities is certainly a staple of human history. Whether we will always have them or not is not something my crystal ball can tell me, but they have always existed and do exist today. But what we do with them has certainly been variable, ranging from genocide to amicable co-existence. The question isn’t whether those identities exist, but rather when the focus upon them serves no purpose other than as a vehicle for inter-racial or inter-sectarian hatreds. The former may be inevitable; the latter is not.
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4) To use individual acts of violence as an excuse for sectarian hatred may seem rational and defensible to you, but it is the same thing you are condemning; it is what killed Danny Pearl, not what will save the Danny Pearls of the future; it is the problem, not the solution. It is bigotry.
To assertions that the anti-Muslim hysteria is justified by terrorism, I responded:
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5) Since a significant portion of Muslims do not support sharia law, and do not condone the 9/11 attacks, Muslims in general cannot be held responsible for either; only those Muslims who support sharia law or condone the 9/11 attacks can be held responsible, among Muslims, for supporting sharia law or condoning the 9/11 attacks.
6) This is especially true since there is no centralized decision-making authority embracing all of Islam, and certainly no pan-Islamic democratic mechanisms by which Muslims in general can be held responsible for particular factional “policies” of Islam.
7) The criticism isn’t directed at any one who object to sharia, or object to terrorism, or discuss either in the context of Islam, but rather precisely and specifically at those who exploit the existence of sharia, and of the terrorist attacks, to foment hostility toward members of a particular religious community IN GENERAL.
8) Cultivating antagonism toward such an ethnic community, en masse, rationalized by factually less-than-accurate assertions that Muslims have a monopoly or near-monopoly on terrorism, by means of the absurd assertion that America is under threat of being overtaken by sharia law as evidenced by its patchwork existence in distant lands, is, indeed, an expression of xenophobia, not of a well reasoned and defensible reaction to real circumstances.
9) Terrorism comes in many forms. We normally use it to refer to the weapons of the weak, fighting against stronger powers by the only means they have, which is to attack the most vulnerable. And I am 100% in agreement that such attacks are reprehensible, but I am not in agreement that they are significantly less reprehensible than killing or being responsible for the killing of tens or hundreds of thousands of innocent victims of “collateral damage” inflicted by larger military powers just as eager to exert their influence forcefully in the world, but able to do so without targeting civilians specifically. The point is that many things escalate reactionary cycles of violence, and it is very common for those culpable in one way to only perceive the culpability of those who have inflicted violence on them, rather than include awareness of the violence they’ve inflicted on others.
10) Even terrorism more narrowly defined is hardly limited to Islam. It has been exhibited in the Balkans, in the former Soviet Union, in sub-Saharan Africa, and even by right-wing anti-government fanatics in the United States (remember Oklahoma City?).
11) There are always ready rationalizations for stoking the fires of tribalistic and religious hatred, such as those you’ve cited. Those you condemn for their violence committed their acts of violence in the heat of a very similar mania, and the repetition of it here and now is likely to feed, directly and indirectly, into acts of violence committed in its name. The anti-government extremists who stoked up that rhetoric in the years leading up to the Oklahoma City bombing I’m sure feel no responsibility for that act of violence either, but without them, it would never have occurred.
12) The fact that violence exists, that some of it is perpetrated by Muslim extremists, and that people have suffered horribly at its hands, does not justify or legitimate stoking a frenzy of anti-Muslim sentiment directed toward peaceful and law-abiding Muslim citizens and residents of our own country.
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14) If the concern is over terrorist attacks, then stoking those fires of reactionary tribalistic hatreds is not a very wise strategy for reducing the frequency or risk. In fact, the bigotry I am addressing increases rather than decreases our vulnerability in a multitude of ways, by cultivating more hatred directed toward us in reaction to it, by reducing cooperation of those best positioned to provide information that would help avert such attacks, by, in general, pushing people deeper into antagonistic camps, including people who never would have been antagonistic to us otherwise. You don’t address the threat of terrorism by starting with rationalizations for racial or religious hatred, but rather by asking yourself first and foremost “what set of policies would best and most effectively reduce this risk?” The answer to that latter question is complex and multifaceted, but included within its matrix is “the reduction of anti-Muslim hysteria in the United States today.”
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Social institutional innovation, like technological innovation, has an evolutionary quality to it: New instruments fumblingly addressing new challenges or opportunities sometimes grow up into highly elaborate systems that take on a life of their own. Market economies in general are an archetypical example of this phenomenon: From places where people came together to exchange their wares, markets have evolved into highly complex and robust networks of global transactions, implicated in a velocity of wealth production and transmission that would have boggled the minds of ancient merchants. Therefore, as we stand on the threshold of inventing new kinds of market instruments which trade in artifacts of administrative regulation, even those of us anchored to the dusty tomes of law and economics might benefit from stretching our imaginations a bit, and contemplating what may lie beyond the horizon.
For the purposes of this fanciful conversation, let’s refer to all present and future market instruments that trade in artifacts of political regulation or aspiration as Political Market Instruments (PMIs). The question posed in this essay, therefore, is: If the challenges involved in current tradable regulatory instruments are increasingly surmounted, and the range of PMIs is extended into other realms, such that the trading of such instruments becomes commonplace, what might such markets evolve into?
In order to explore this question, we need to consider what kinds of goods or services PMIs would commodify. Current and recent uses, including global warming abatement, renewable energy credits, and pollution reduction, are examples of a broader category of challenges called “collective action problems,” which have been discussed extensively, in various forms, in the economic, social scientific, and even mathematical literature (see . Global warming, for instance, invokes the need to create viable international accords through which a preferable global energy and GHG emissions regime can be developed, implemented, and enforced. The challenge emanates from the fact that nations individually bear the costs of contributing to such a regime, but collectively reap the benefits. Simplifying the matter somewhat for this initial discussion, all have an incentive to arrive at an optimal agreement and see it enforced, though all also have an incentive for not complying with the agreement to the extent that they can get away with non-compliance.
Here’s a simple thought experiment which illustrates the nature of collective action problems well enough for the average high school social studies student to understand. Imagine that I make the following offer to a group of thirty people, of which you are a member: For each of you that chooses to pay me $10, I will give each and every person in the group (including you) $1, regardless of whether those other members of the group chose to pay the $10 or not. To avoid discussing any complexities at this point, let’s say that the decision is made in secret, no member of the group ever knows what any other individual member chose to do, and all members agree that their only goal in this exercise is to maximize their own individual wealth. If each individual acts in his or her own rational self-interest, since accepting the offer costs him or her $9, no one would choose to do so. However, if everyone does accept it, each person is made $20 richer. No matter how many people accept or reject the offer, those who chose not to take it will always be better off than those who chose to take it. In other words, rationally doing what best maximizes one’s own individual wealth (in this scenario) leads to an outcome in which everyone does worse than they would have done had they been able to enforce a cooperative agreement.
Real world collective action problems are generally much more complex, in which, just as in market exchanges, there are a variety of comparative advantages (differing concessions or contributions which each is best positioned to make, such as Brazilians being better positioned to offer deforestation reduction, and Americans better positioned to offer industrial CO2 emissions reductions). And they occur on multiple overlapping and nested levels and regarding multiple issues, with myriad collective action problems coexisting intranationally, internationally (among nations as the actors), and transnationally (across national boundaries by non-state actors).
Social institutions arise primarily in response to such collective action problems (and, relatedly, in response to time horizon problems resulting from the devaluation of future consequences leading to insufficient foresight in decision-making processes), and utilize four distinct modalities in order to align individual to collective (and immediate to long-term) interests: Hierarchies, markets, norms, and ideologies. Hierarchies are systems of legitimate authority relying on formally codified and enforced rules. Markets are decentralized systems of multilateral exchange, usually facilitated by some form of currency. Norms are informal rules mutually enforced through decentralized social approval and disapproval. And ideologies are internalized beliefs and values enforced through self-policing and auto-sanctioned by cognitive dissonance (in the form of self-inflicted feelings of guilt or shame). Individual social institutions generally are comprised of some or all of these modalities, usually in combination, developing interdependently both within and across individual social institutions.
PMIs are essentially a hybrid institutional mechanism, comprised primarily of the hierarchical element necessary to regulatory regimes, and the market element which facilitates an efficient allocation of resources and burdens. Governments or international commissions imbue PMIs with their value by creating scarcity (in the case of compliance allowances) or subsidized demand (in the case of off-sets or RECs). The benefit of creating an accounting and exchange mechanism for political concessions and accommodations is the same as creating one for the exchange of goods and services: Like money, it frees actors involved in an exchange from what Edgeworth called “a double coincidence of wants,” that is, the necessity of two actors each having something the other wants more than they want what they themselves have. And, like money, it permits multilateral, geographically and temporally decentralized exchanges among a potentially unlimited number of actors, facilitating the achievement of collectively beneficial arrangements with greatly reduced transaction costs. PMIs are a mechanism for duplicating this innovation in the context of political rather than economic exchange.
Differences among nations, among their individual conditions and priorities, provide opportunities to make political exchanges which help both to facilitate such agreements, and to distribute responsibilities and benefits in accord with each nation’s particular circumstances. The expanded PMI model I am contemplating explores both the potential and the limitations of exchanging political concessions among multiple parties to arrive at mutually beneficial outcomes.
The simplest illustration of the PMI model involves three parties negotiating over three issues. Country A wants a concession from Country C, but has nothing to offer Country C in return. Country B wants a concession from Country A, but has nothing to offer Country A in return. And Country C wants a concession from Country B, but has nothing to offer Country B in return. No bilateral agreement can be arrived at among any combination of these three nations. But if it is worth it to A to make the concession to B in return for the concession from C, to B to make the concession to C in return for the concession from A, and to C to make the concession to A in return for the concession from B, then the three of them can negotiate a tri-lateral exchange that satisfies all of their needs. (In this case, the transaction costs are manageable, and PMIs are not required.)
Similarly, it may be possible at times for numerous nations to arrive at an agreement through such “circular exchange,” under circumstances in which no subset of that group could have arrived at any mutually beneficial agreement. At its most complex (and traditionally most difficult to accomplish, as discussed below), a PMI model aspires to facilitate a tangled web of multilateral exchanges of concessions of varying magnitude implicating numerous unrelated issues, such that the removal of any party to the negotiation or any concession being made would unravel the entire agreement. This frees the parties from the necessity of having bilaterally reciprocal interests, and permits the kind of decentralized, multilateral pattern of exchange typified by markets.
The basic premise of the PMI model is that the more parties and issues that can be conflated in a single negotiation, the more optimal the agreements that can be arrived at through a multilateral exchange of concessions on those issues among those parties. The logical conclusion would be that, therefore, conflating all issues and all parties into a single negotiation leads to the most optimal agreement possible. The limiting factor has been that the larger the number of negotiating parties and issues on the table, the higher the transaction costs of coming to a multilateral, multi-issue agreement. The PMI model, therefore, is currently useful to the extent that it can reduce transaction costs enough that the benefits accrued from the arrangement arrived at exceed the transaction costs spent to arrive at it, and to the extent that there is no other non-PMI-facilitated deal that any subset of the parties could have arrived at which would have given them a better benefit-to-transaction-cost ratio.
This is still an onerous obstacle. However, just as various innovations developed historically to reduce the transaction costs involved in economic exchange (money being the most critical one), the PMI model is not immune to future innovations which might reduce the transaction costs involved, and thus increase the range of its applicability. Such innovation begins with a precise analysis of the anatomy of the transaction costs imposed by political (or contractual) negotiations. The least intractable transaction costs involved in multilateral negotiations are coordination costs: Getting the parties to the table, so to speak. Coordination costs are most salient early in such negotiations, and have been greatly reduced, in international relations, by the proliferation of international institutions and treaties.
Bargaining costs, which involve determining the exact nature of the agreement and the precise division of costs and benefits, are somewhat more significant. Bargaining costs are incurred during the actual negotiation process, when the parties involved try to exchange their way to a multilateral agreement that is satisfactory to each and every one of them. At this stage, the negotiations most closely resemble a traditional bartering market, with all parties both sellers and buyers bartering around a single stall.
Finally, and sometimes most intractably, multi-party agreements are beset by defection (or enforcement) costs. Defection costs are those costs incurred by monitoring and enforcing the agreements arrived at during the negotiations. Improving the salience of the multi-party negotiations, and extending its range of applicability, necessarily involves finding ways to reduce all of the aforementioned transaction costs implicated by it.
The potential benefits of pursuing a PMI approach are myriad. As more activities or concessions are brought into a single market, coordination and bargaining costs are almost eliminated, and even enforcement costs are greatly reduced by creating a much larger shared investment in the integrity of the system. To the extent that successful multilateral political exchange agreements are implemented through it, it increases international interdependence, produces oversight commissions with enough authority to ensure the value of the PMIs, and thus provides an incremental back door into some limited though significant degree of global federalism. To the extent that political market solutions can be implemented, they have strong reverberating effects throughout our integrated social institutional and technological subsystems, creating new markets and new entrepreneurial opportunities, and increasing the ideological and normative association of the development and distribution of sustainable energy technologies with political and economic opportunity in general.
In fact, the development of commissions with the authority to ensure the value of PMIs is both a major benefit and a major challenge. Contractual arrangements within jurisdictions are made possible by a legal structure under which they can be enforced. International agreements are made difficult by the paucity of such enforcement mechanisms on the global level. But international commerce, more than perhaps any other historical force, has integrated sovereign nations into a single interdependent global system. Commodifying political exchange requires more oversight than commercial exchange, but also provides more incentives to create it than traditional international negotiations do, by creating more, and more distributed, opportunities to profit from international political exchange.
Despite the potential for PMIs to improve international and transnational cooperation, they would face all of the challenges already encountered by existing regulatory instruments, and to a far greater extent. The determination of the relative value of seemingly unrelated political concessions would be difficult, but fully established markets are particularly good at accomplishing that (their respective market values would determine their exchange rates). Ensuring the integrity of the instruments (preventing leakage, ensuring additionality, etc.) would grow in magnitude of difficulty as the markets become more multifaceted and extensive (though that could also reduce the problem in the long run by bringing more measurements of more changes in more places into the system). The transaction costs involved in every incremental step in establishing such a market will be enormous.
One benefit of such a comprehensive system is that the universal scope and coverage essentially eliminates the problem of leakage, since there is nowhere for any abated public bad to leak to. Just as the concern about leakage has pushed focus on off-set markets from individual projects to sectoral and nation- or province-wide abatements, it would be one force pushing the expansion of PMI markets in general.
Another obstacle for PMIs, already contemplated in regards to existing instruments, is the perverse incentives they can create. If, for instance, we incorporate deforestation avoidance into international carbon markets, then their value is a creature of past deforestation. When a market values the cessation or reduction of the rate of a destructive activity, it implicitly retroactively values having initially increased the rate of that activity in order to necessitate its reduction. In the context of enduring markets for the abatement of past destructive activity, such perverse incentives pose a serious challenge that must be decisively addressed. Many things we might want to incorporate into future and more comprehensive PMI markets -such as improvement in human rights, military de-escalation, and reduced trade barriers, to name a few- would all have current positive value as the result of the negative value of past or continuing actions and policies. Designing mechanisms to prevent the incentive to create problems in order to trade in their correction would be a fundamental challenge for establishing authentic value-generating PMI markets.
It’s worth noting that in our current international political bartering system, this problem already exists. In the lead-up to international treaty negotiations, countries frequently amp up certain misbehaviors in order to have more to trade with. The increased robustness of PMI markets would only increase the robustness of the problem. And, presumably, at the time of establishment of any new abatement PMI, the baseline set for reduction targets would precede any amping up that may have occurred in anticipation of the creation of such markets.
Stretching our imaginations to the utmost, PMIs could trade in a vast array of political goods. As stated above, there are many public bads that we all have a shared interest in abating: human rights violations, military build-ups, trade barriers, and domestic criminal activities with international consequences (e.g., drug cartels), to name a few. And there are many public goods or broadly shared aspirations that there is either already a shared interest in encouraging, or a potential for some degree of international consensus: improved worker conditions and salaries; more political, economic, and cultural freedom; more open borders; and stronger guarantees of protection for foreign nationals abroad, to name a few. In each case, measures would have to be created (such as a “human rights abuse index”); a target would have to be set for abatement markets (either by reference to a baseline, or by some other aspirational standard) and a system for ensuring the integrity of instruments measuring incremental gains in public goods would have to be established; and monitoring, reporting, and verification systems would have to be in place. As such markets proliferate, the ability to identify and implement new areas amenable to new PMIs would continue to emerge.
Though the notion of trading in human rights abuse abatement, or organized criminal activity abatement, may seem odd, and could certainly raise some moral hackles, it is essentially the same idea as trading in GHG emissions abatement: creating markets for the diminution of some undesirable activity. Given the fact that the obstacles are daunting enough for GHG emissions abatement markets, and that the problems facing them grow exponentially as the scope and coverage is expanded to more issues and parties, the path from the present to this possible future would be a long and tortuous one, with many seemingly insurmountable challenges and as-yet-unforeseen technical innovations defining the way. Whether such a future will ever come to pass is far from certain, but that some future which currently appears equally improbable will come to pass seems almost inevitable (assuming continued human survival).
Such speculation may seem to be an unwarranted flight of fancy from our current vantage point, just as to the ancient Greeks, not unfamiliar with the wonders of the agora, contemplation of the exotic financial instruments being traded today would have appeared equally untethered from reality. The preceding discussion is not intended as a blueprint of how to implement an imminently practicable policy instrument, but rather as an added perspective regarding how to contextualize current innovations in terms of potential long-term historical significance. The question isn’t whether current institutions will evolve to surmount obstacles seemingly insurmountable today, but rather which institutions and in what ways. The lathe of trial and error which will produce those innovations is more productive when we experiment with an eye to future as well as present possibilities. I believe that in a comparison between taxes-and-subsidies and tradable instruments as means for internalizing externalities (specifically carbon taxes and carbon cap-and-trade regulation), while both should be used, each in circumstances most appropriate for it, a less obvious (and perhaps still very slight) added weight needs to be accorded to tradable instruments, due to their dramatic long-term potential for facilitating mutually beneficial cooperation, particularly in the Hobbesian paradise of international relations.
1See, e.g., John Von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern, Theory of Games and Economic Behavior (Princeton University Press 1944); John Nash, The Bargaining Problem, 18 Econometrica 155 (1950); Garrett Hardin, The Tragedy of the Commons, 162 Science 1243 (1968); and Mancur Olson, The Logic of Collective Action (Harvard University Press 1965)
2See, e.g., Kenneth Boulding, The Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth, in Environmental Quality in a Growing Economy (Henry Jarrett ed., 1966).
3See, e.g., Garrett Hardin, The Tragedy of the Commons, 162 Science 1243 (1968); and Mancur Olson, The Logic of Collective Action (Harvard University Press 1965)
4I utilized this illustration as a high school social studies teacher, using classroom currency points.
5The actual results in my classroom experiment varied considerably, though there were always some students who accepted the deal and some who rejected it.
6See, e.g., Robert Axelrod, An Evolutionary Approach to Norms, 80 American Political Science Review 1095 (1986); and Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Cambridge University Press 1990).
7Steve Harvey, Institutionalizing the Production of Supranational Public Goods: The Shifting Locus of Interest Group Lobbying in Europe (August 1994) (unpublished paper presented at the annual meetings of the American Sociological Association in Los Angeles, CA).
8F.Y. Edgeworth, Mathematical Physics, (Kegan Paul 1881).
9This is precisely what the famous Coase Theorem postulates. See Ronald H. Coase, The Problem of Social Costs, 3 J.L. & Econ. 1 (1960).
10See Douglas D. Heckathorn and Stephen M. Maser, Bargaining and the Source of Transaction Costs: The Case of Government Regulation, 3 J.L. Econ. & Org. 69 (1987).
11See id.
12See id.
13Admittedly, such discussions quickly run into the issue of cultural relativism v. universal human (and non-human) rights, and the related issue of “imperialism” or hegemony v. cultural and political self-determination, but this issue is implicit in all discussions of international law and international standards of conduct.
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Grasshopper, when you can snatch the set-up to the logic game from my hand, it is time for you to matriculate….
In a rare moment of mercantile marketing, I am posting to inform my friends, followers, and faithful readers, as well as folks who stumbled onto this page due to clever search-engine maximization protocols, about my availability to assist you in going to the law school of your dreams, on a full merit scholarship, and possibly with a live-in masseuse or masseur (that’s how important a good LSAT score is!).
One of my current gigs, and something I intend to do forever (since it is a part-time job that is easily scheduled around other things), is LSAT tutoring for GetPrepped, a lower priced but higher quality LSAT prep company. First, let me tell you, I love the LSAT. I really do. I took it almost five years ago, scored in the 98 percentile, and, strange as it may sound, did so because I enjoyed the intellectual challenge it presented. The logic games are some of the world’s best intellectual puzzles. All of it involves systematic thinking and reasoning. It is a dream come true for over-educated intellectuals woefully ill-equipped for surviving in anything other than a world designed by and for over-educated intellectuals (or, as we like to call ourselves, “lawyers”).
So, if you are thinking of going to law school, then you have to first take the LSAT. And if you are planning on taking the LSAT, then you have to first prepare for it. And if you are going to prepare for the LSAT, then I am certainly a good person to help you to do so. And, if not me, then one of the other fine tutors and teachers at GetPrepped is ready to guide you through the zen-like journey of discovery that gives you access to “The Zone” –not just any zone, but the one in which questions that begin with phrases like “On Tuesday, an accountant has exactly seven bills to pay by Thursday of the same week, according to the following rules…” cause you to vibrate at the resonant frequency of legal reasoning.
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(Please circulate this to anyone you know who is considering, may be considering, or might some day consider applying to law schools; or who may know anyone who knows anyone who knows anyone who fits that description….)
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(The following is a slightly extended version of my response to an op-ed by Vince Carroll, Putting Fat Cats In Their Place, in today’s (10/30/11) Denver Post: http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_19211159?source=bb.)
Vince Carroll is absolutely correct that we must consider not only the distribution of wealth, but also the absolute growth of wealth, when discussing issues of our economic well-being as a nation and a people. Certainly, if everyone is getting wealthier, then why should we worry if that is accomplished by means of a system in which the wealthiest get astronomically wealthier while the further down you go along the spectrum of income and wealth, the less robust the growth of wealth becomes (less robust even as a proportion of existing income and wealth, meaning a lower percentage of a lower base number)?
There are several reasons why:
1) The growth in household incomes that Carroll cites is due to an increase in two-worker families, and a decrease in stay-at-home moms. In reality, there has been a decrease in real individual average income in that same time period, an anomaly in the modern era of ever-expanding wealth which corresponds precisely with the rise of income-concentrating deregulation.
2) We have an economic system demonstrably less efficient than some others in existence (e.g., Germany, the Netherlands, etc.) at striking an optimal balance between absolute growth and distribution of the fruits of that growth, resulting in far greater levels of impoverishment, infant mortality, homelessness, violent crime, incarceration, mental health problems, and numerous related problems, than have been achieved by other nations that have struck a more sensible balance.
3) Extreme income inequality reduces economic vitality by constricting the breadth and depth of economic activity. The more concentrated wealth is, the less disposable income, in the hands of fewer people, is available to contribute to the consumer engine of our economic vitality.
4) Carroll disregards the role of deregulation (from the 1980s onward) in generating this economically debilitating concentration of wealth, how that deregulation has been implicated in every major economic crisis since its inception, how it has now undermined the consumer engine of our economy in dramatic and enduring ways, and how, as a result, our economy is in a period of stagnation following contraction, with a no-longer-growing pie still obscenely concentrated in far too few hands.
5) Carroll disregards the various costs not measured by traditional economic indicators, referred to in the economic literature as “externalities” (those costs and benefits of economic transactions that affect those who were not parties to the transaction, in either positive or negative ways), which, while helping to author the huge concentration of wealth in America over the past 30 years, also have helped to do so on the back of the population at large by reducing public health, safety, and welfare, and placing increasing burdens of accumulating and devastating negative externalities on future generations across the globe.
6) Extreme income inequality has many other socially destructive consequences, even aside from the ones listed above. It undermines national solidarity and cultivates inter-class resentments, creates subjective feelings of relative poverty, and undermines democracy by concentrating both the means of affecting public opinion (and thus determining the outcomes of elections) and the power to determine the economic well-being of the vast majority of the people of the nation into the hands of a small, corporation-beholden-and-embedded economic elite.
One must look not only at this “snapshot of reality,” but also at the trends revealed over time, and the consequences of such trends. Even if all of the present reasons for considering how equitably distributed wealth is did not exist, a trajectory of accelerating concentration of wealth is clearly untenable in the long run.
Today, 1% of the nation’s wealthiest command 40% of the nation’s wealth, while the bottom 80% command less than 15% of the nation’s wealth. In 2007 (see http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html for an overview of 2007 income distribution figures), the top 1% commanded slightly less than 35% of the nation’s wealth (already considered an indicator of astronomical inequity). The current growth trend in capital concentration has been underway since 1980, coinciding precisely with the Reagan-coined “government is the enemy” paradigm of the right; in 1979, the top 1% commanded just over 20% of the nation’s wealth, having fluctuated since WWII between 20% and, in a rare outlier in 1965, 34%.
The last time the concentration in wealth in the hands of the wealthiest 1% of the population exceeded 40% was in 1929, on the eve of The Great Depression, when policies similar to those advocated by the Libertarian Right today had been successfully championed under the Hoover Administration.
If the challenge is to “get it right,” all things considered, then our grotesque and accelerating concentration of wealth in America, accompanied by the highest-among-developed-nations rates of poverty, hunger, homelessness, violence, incarceration, and other social ills, is indeed an indicator of having failed to do so.
Yes, we do not want to seek “equality” in a vacuum, engaging in the folly of imposing an equality of impoverishment. But we as a nation are not teetering on the edge of that particular folly; rather, we are over the edge of the opposite folly, which we insanely avoid addressing by pretending that it doesn’t exist.
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As I’ve frequently written, the fundamental ideological dichotomy in American politics today is not the right/left dichotomy (or “statist”/libertarian, or pro-corporate/anti-corporate), but rather the rational-people-of-goodwill/irrational-people-of-ill-will dichotomy. Perhaps that latter dichotomy is always the real dichotomy in politics, in all times and places; or, if not the real dichotomy, then at least the real poles of perpendicular axes, with various specific ideological orientations falling within the space thus defined. How reasonable are the various positions being advanced? How much in service to humanity?
As is usually the case, people at opposite ideological extremes are oddly similar, obsessed with oversimplistic panaceas in a complex world, angry that others fail to recognize the one absolute truth of which they are so prematurely and impenetrably certain. Just as fundamentalist Christians and fundamentalist Muslims share a tendency toward theocratic moral tyranny, the extreme right and extreme left of political ideology share a failure to recognize that we are embedded in a complex dynamical social system, that the reality with which we are coping and the ways to do so effectively are organic rather than mechanical in nature, and that dogmatic assertions about what single change or doctrine need be advanced, without adequate consideration of that complex organic whole, are counterproductive.
What we need instead of these sweeping reductionist ideologies is a commitment to systemic understanding and systemic action. Not surprisingly, extreme ideologies tend to be anti-intellectual, either explicitly refuting the value of applying our minds to the challenges we face as a people (as is frequently evident among some factions on the far right today), or implicitly eschewing the value of skepticism and scientific methodology as applied to social and political issues by clinging to blind ideological certainties instead (as is too often evident on the far left as well as the far right).
We see this commitment to systemic understanding and action emerging from time to time in what to many are counter-intuitive positions being advocated by responsible representatives of otherwise highly opposed ideological orientations. I recall, for instance, the ubiquitous public relations push of a couple of decades ago for continued investment in space technology, putting various pairs of ideological opposites on screen together lauding the benefits of doing so. For many, the notion that we should invest significant amounts of our limited resources in aerospace research struck many as counter-intuitive: We have so many problems to address here on Earth, why should we be squandering precious resources on something so frivolous as the development of exotic technologies for use beyond the Earth’s atmosphere?
Of course, the case for investing in such technologies is that, by doing so, we create a constant flow of valuable off-shoots with very significant applications here on Earth. Simply by trying to understand and work with some highly complex aspect of our surrounding reality we benefit ourselves, even if the focal aspect of our surrounding reality seems remote or irrelevant.
A similar, also to some counterintuitive, example of a policy position that all reasonable people support is the need for Americans to invest in our infrastructure. There are those, lost in the error of linear thinking in a non-linear world, who insist that we cannot invest in infrastructure because we have a huge and growing national debt, and that therefore no investment is justifiable. This is simply an economically illiterate position, not understanding how economic growth occurs, both as a historical fact and as a basic systemic reality (see, e.g., Real Fiscal Conservativism, The Economic Debate We’re Not Having and The Real Deficit).
To underscore the degree to which investing in infrastructure is a no-brainer, the presidents of both the U.S. Chamber of Commerce AND the AFL-CIO have teamed up to encourage Congress to pass the president’s call for investment in infrastructure (http://www.uschamber.com/press/releases/2011/march/us-chamber-afl-cio-urge-infrastructure-bank, http://blog.aflcio.org/2011/01/26/union-movement-business-back-obamas-call-for-infrastructure-rebuild-and-other-sotu-reactions/).
The right has long claimed that government is inefficient because it doesn’t create wealth, and doesn’t act in ways similar to how private enterprise, the engine of wealth production, acts. The first point is a red herring, because the only sector of our economy that “produces wealth” directly is labor; all other sectors perform auxiliary functions (e.g., management, capital investment, etc.). Government, in a modern capitalist economy, imperfectly performs vital functions for the production of wealth, including reducing transaction costs and internalizing externalities (see, e.g., Collective Action (and Time Horizon) Problems and Small Government Idolatry).
The second point, that government doesn’t act like private enterprise and so fails to perform as well, has some validity in some contexts, but is mere misdirection when, at those times when government is indeed employing sound economic principles in ways very similar to private enterprise, the same critics obstruct rather than applaud such efforts. Investing in infrastructure, and even doing so through deficit spending, has long been a hallmark of successful private enterprise in a modern capitalist economy. Businesses large and small depend on credit as the lubricant of economic growth, and it makes perfect sense for governments to do the same.
Just to put our debt into perspective: We currently owe an amount equal to our annual GDP, and are paying interest on new debt that is about equal to the rate of inflation (that is, when adjusted for inflation, we’re paying zero percent interest on new debt). An average homeowner, conversely, borrows about four times their annual income in order to purchase their home, and pays a far higher interest rate on that debt. Without this form of credit commonly in use, very few people would be able to afford to purchase their own homes. Credit, even proportionately far larger than our national debt, and at a far higher interest rate, is clearly not by definition a bad thing.
The problem is not our current debt, or even any immediate additional debt we undertake, but rather our ability to make economically sound policy decisions as a nation, including implementing a plan to control the long-term rise in debt (without which our national debt will eventually become the problem that some, erroneously, consider it now to be). One aspect of such economically sound policy making is the ability to use deficit spending to grow the economy in order to produce both greater individual prosperity and greater future public revenues in order to reduce our national debt and increase our national prosperity in the long run.
It’s time to leave the blind ideological noise on the margins of our public discourse, where it belongs, and bring well-informed analyses in service to human well-being front and center. When the leaders of organized labor and big business are both advocating the same policy, and when that policy has been proven by both world history and private enterprise to be a sound one, all reasonable people should have the good sense to rally around it.
Mi película favorita en mi niñez era Espartaco, con Kirk Douglas. Cuando el ejército de esclavos estaba conquistado y en cadenas, el general Romano dijo, “Denme a Espartaco, y esclavos eran, y esclavos serán. Si no, todos ustedes van a morirse en la cruz.” Espartaco no podía dejar eso pasar, y estaba al punto de anunciarse, cuando su mejor amigo se paró mas rápido y gritó, “¡Yo soy Espartaco!” Entonces otro, y otro mas, y todos empezaron a gritar, “¡Yo soy Espartaco!”
Cado uno que tiene valor, que tiene alma, que tiene un fuego en su corazón, aun si un esclavo en cadenas, es noble, tiene dignidad y esperanza. Es un esclavo hecho héroe, un carpintero hecho dios. Y cada uno que se fija en el sufrimiento del mas oprimido, y se siente un poco de lo que ese humano siente, cada uno que toma responsibilidad por el trato ajeno, comparte el corazón de humanidad.
Yo no voy a pretender que soy hispano. Soy judío con antepasados del noreste de Europa, como Kirk Douglas (que no era esclavo y no se murió en la cruz). Pero somos un pueblo, una raza, gente unida por la mente, el corazón y la historia mundial que compartimos. El destino ajeno es el destino propio. Su destino es el mío. Sus esperanzas son mis esperanzas. Su lucha es mi lucha. Porque justicia no existe si no existe para todos. Es un desafío compartido.
Tampoco debemos creer que la lucha por justicia para los hispanos es algo que existe aparte de la lucha por justicia para todos los demas. Somos un pueblo, con una lucha, con una meta: Que la humanidad se haga mas consciente, que toda la gente de buena voluntad se junta en contra de injusticia y en servicio de la razón y humanidad. Así somos un pueblo. Así somos invencibles.
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I believe in the human endeavor. I believe in our ability to become ever wiser and more compassionate as a society. I believe that the technological and social institutional innovations we’ve come to take for granted, many of which were unimaginable just a few short generations ago, are ripples on the surface of an unfathomable sea of possibilities, and that what we accomplish in generations to come, like what has come before, will appear in retrospect not just to be more of the same, but rather profoundly revolutionary and transformative, and acceleratingly so.
But there is nothing automatic about the direction this punctuated evolution takes, and no guarantee that it will be benign rather than malignant. In what ways and to what extent, in service to which emotions and inclinations always vying for dominance within and without, we free the genius of the many, this captive giant fuming within her prison of oppression and repression, of intolerance and intransigence, will determine what wonders and what horrors we unleash.
Will we find new, more sterile and yet more virulent ways to enslave minds and souls, to shackle the human spirit by overlords of fear and bigotry, using our genius against itself in acts of brilliant inhumanity? Or will we harmonize more deeply and fully, through soaring but disciplined imaginations, with the malleable but coherent dream of which we are but a part?
Our minds form an ecology of their own, with flora and fauna of our fancy reproducing, evolving, giving way to new forms. We thrive best when we harvest most of that cognitive diversity, articulating the novel into the complex, sublime whole, accommodating more, suppressing less. So it’s no surprise that a sociologist such as myself, who perceives us less as a collection of individuals and more as slightly individuated moments of a shared consciousness, would become an advocate for mental diversity and mental freedom, for that mind we share does not best thrive by imposing as much conformity as fear and convenience counsel, but rather by tolerating as much non-conformity as wisdom and compassion allow.
If this movement, and this organization, were just about helping those in mental or emotional distress to find greater harmony within and avoid the ravages of a brutally destructive psychopharmacological paradigm imposed from without, that would be more than enough to inspire me to join in the effort. But it’s also about all of us together finding a richer and subtler harmony among ourselves and beyond ourselves, about that mind we share spiralling toward enlightenment, and about the increased wealth of joy and wellness we can produce together, from which we all can draw.
It’s to that latter ideal that all of us who believe in the human endeavor ultimately aspire.
(For essays and vignettes related to this one in various ways, see, e.g., Kick-Starting A ClearMind, Symptoms v. Root Causes, An Eddy In The Stream, The Politics of Consciousness, The Fractal Geometry of Social Change, The Hollow Mountain, and A Proposal: The Politics of Reason and Goodwill.)
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