The relevant moral community

Richard Lowry notes an unusual bit of news: soldiers in the Iraqi Army have donated $1000 to the victims of the California fires. It's a negligible sum by American standards, but that shouldn't diminish the fact that they sacrificed to make the gift. Richard writes:

Unfortunately, most Americans do not consider Iraqis as people. We see them as terrorists or victims, not as everyday people with the same values as our friends, neighbors and relatives. Yet, most Iraqis are decent human beings with the same concerns, dreams, and compassion as most Americans. They want peace and are concerned about their fellow man.

Is it no wonder that we feel differently about the people of Iraq, when the American media only reports sensational news?

While the American media doesn't do itself any favors, I don't think we should blame the press for American attitudes towards Iraqis. The national debates about immigration and global trade make it clear that there's a strong streak of nationalism (if not xenophobia) in American society. The economics and the politics involved in these debates seems to mask an underlying question: what's the relevant moral community we should be considering?

Here's how George Mason economist Alex Tabbarok breaks down the issue of trade:

Peter wishes to trade with Jose. The individualist says the relevant moral community is Peter and Jose and presumptively no one else. Trade, the right of association, is a human right and on issues of rights the moral community is the individual. When Jose offers Peter a better deal than Joe it's wrong - a moral outrage - for Joe to prevent Jose at gun point from trading with Peter.

The more common view . . . is the nationalist view, the moral community is Peter and Joe. Joe gets a vote on Peter's trades. Peter should be allowed to trade only if both Peter and Joe benefit, otherwise too bad. Jose counts for less.

A third view, that of the liberal internationalist, says that Peter, Jose and Joe count equally and are together the moral community.

Now how does the positive economics apply to these three cases? Peter and Jose presumptively are better off from trade otherwise they wouldn't trade so the individualist economist (the economist who takes Peter and Jose as the relevant moral community) will support free trade. The liberal internationalist will also support free trade because there is a strong argument from positive economics that trade increases total wealth (comparative advantage, specialization, competition etc.).

In between, we have the nationalist economist for whom it depends. The case for trade for the nationalist economist is pretty good - after all the individuals involved benefit and the world benefits - so the case is reasonably strong that Peter and Joe taken together will also benefit especially if we consider many trade pacts on some of which Joe benefits directly. Nevertheless, . . . when you exclude Jose it is possible to come up with examples where Joe's losses exceed Peter's gains.

I would argue, however, that economists are too quick to take the nation as the relevant moral community. It is quite possible, for example, for Peter to benefit from trade but for Peter's city to be harmed, for Peter's state to benefit but for his region to be harmed, for his country to benefit but for his continent to be harmed. Why should we cut the cake in one way, excluding some from the moral community, but not in another? Indeed, geography is not the only way we can define the moral community. Why not ask whether English speakers benefit from free trade or Christians or left handed people? Each of these is just as valid as asking whether the collection of people called the nation benefit from free trade.

I understand individual rights and I understand counting everyone equally but I see less value in counting some in and some out based on arbitrary characteristics like which side of the border the actors fall on.

As some of Alex's commenters point out, this analysis can be applied to immigration as easily as it can be applied to trade.

Idiocy

Sometimes it shocks me that democracy works at all:

Nixon presided over an unprecedented expansion of the welfare state, established affirmative action, created the Environmental Protection Agency, proposed a guaranteed annual income and national health insurance, and established closer relations with communist China and the USSR. But he was still widely perceived as a right-winger. Similarly, liberals rallied around President Bill Clinton, while conservatives rushed to condemn him, despite his endorsement of conservative policies on free trade, welfare reform, crime control, and other important issues. Liberals defended Clinton and conservatives attacked him in large part because of what he represented on a symbolic level as a "draft dodger" and philanderer, rather than on the basis of his substantive policies (Posner 1999). In both the Nixon and Clinton cases, the desire of liberal and conservative "fans" to rally around their leader or condemn a perceived ideological adversary blinded them to important aspects of the president’s policies—despite the fact that information about these policies was readily available.

Today, the hostility of partisan liberal Democrats to President George W. Bush, and the desire of partisan conservative Republicans to defend him, have largely blinded many in both groups to his adoption of numerous liberal domestic policies. To take just one example, Bush has presided over the largest expansion of domestic spending since (ironically) the presidency of Richard Nixon (Bartlett 2006). Thus, partisan opinion has to a large extent ignored an important aspect of Bush’s policies.

That's from a paper by Ilya Somin of George Mason University - School of Law. His larger point is that people are much more likely to vote than they are to have any useful understanding of the politicians and platforms that they are voting for. There's nothing to be done about it, really. Republican democracy is ugly and inefficient, but it's so obviously superior to all alternatives that I can't help but believe that America needs to be an exporter of democracy. The world would be a better place if every political system was as messed up as ours.

On the other hand, let's stop with all of these idiotic Rock The Vote campaigns. Our system can function despite voter ignorance, but that doesn't mean we should turn ignorant voting into a civic virtue.

The good old days

Megan McArdle has an uncanny knack for saying what I'm thinking:

Pretty much everything one can think of is better than ever. Wars are fewer, and kill fewer people. Everyone's richer. Racism and xenophobia are bad, but not as bad as they used to be. Women have more freedom and opportunity than at any other moment in world history. Health care is better. Our teeth are cleaner, straighter, and less cavity-filled. We know more, do more, and enjoy more than human beings ever have before. I mean, things may look pretty grim compared to the three years at the end of the last millenium, but that's life: you have good years, then you have less good years, then you have better years again.

But of course, people now in their early twenties don't really remember anything before the late Clinton administration; no wonder everything seems like it's going to hell in a handbasket. Their baseline is an unsustainable economic bubble in an unprecedented peacetime lull following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

We're living in the best times this world has ever known, but a lot of people are convinced that America is on its last legs economically and socially. Part of me believes that a big part of the problem is the horrible state of education today--children just aren't learning history in any meaningful sense. It would be really nice if we could fix education by going back to the good old days when history was taught properly. But a bigger part of me suspects that there never were any good old days when history was taught properly. I've said before that some problems have no feasible solutions--this is probably one of those cases.

my heart is true

I've never considered myself to be prone to self-deception. I hope I've been fooling myself:

The psychological evidence indicates that self-deceived individuals are happier than individuals who are not self-deceived (Taylor 1989, Alloy and Abramson 1979, Taylor and Brown 1988). Lack of self-deception, in fact, is a strong sign of depression. (The depressed are typically not self-deceived, except about their likelihood of escaping depression, which they underestimate.) Individuals who feel good about themselves, whether or not the facts merit this feeling, also tend to achieve more. They have more self-confidence, are more willing to take risks, and have an easier time commanding the loyalty of others. Self-deception also may protect against a tendency towards distraction. If individuals are geared towards a few major goals (such as food, status, and sex), self-deception may be an evolved defense mechanism against worries and distractions that might cause a loss of focus (Trivers 2000).

This paper explains a lot, I think.

the wild self

Alex Tabarrok, on gift giving:

Someone gives you $100 cash. You go out to the store and buy a set of car tires. Purchasing the tires clearly maximizes your utility. Now imagine that instead of $100 the gift giver gave you a set of car tires. Would you be happy that they know you so well that they purchased for you just what you would have purchased for yourself? I don't think so.

The example illustrates that we want the gift giver to buy something for us that we would not have bought for ourselves. Or more precisely one of our selves wants this - the self that is usually restrained, squashed, and limited, the wild self, the passionate self, the romantic self.

Gift giving, therefore, is about reaching out and giving to the wild self in someone else. Why would we want to do this? Because we want the wild self in someone else to be wild about us.

I concur.

the fallacy of power

I've been reading Bowden's Guests of the Ayatollah. Some thoughts after reading the first quarter of the book:

The radical Islamic students who overran America's embassy in Tehran on Nov. 4, 1979 believed that they were striking a blow against the evil plots of imperial America. In the minds of those students, the embassy was a critical tool enabling America's continued meddling in Iran's internal affairs. While most of the staff claimed to be serving diplomatic functions, the Iranian students knew that they were actually the agents of a superpower working to impose its will on Iran. The same superpower that had placed the Shah in power in 1953 was conspiring to defeat the Islamic revolution and return the Shah to power--how else to explain the fact that the he was allowed to come to the US for medical treatment? The students who led the attack on the embassy knew that in capturing the embassy they would find proof of America's continued plotting, would expose to the world the machinations of a scheming power.

The students were wrong. Of 66 embassy staffers that were captured, only seven were working for the CIA (three of whom handled communications, and one of whom was a secretary). Those few CIA agents at the embassy had little influence and no control over events in Iran. Far from imposing America's will on Iran, the CIA was primarily concerned with trying to get enough information about the new revolutionary government to understand what was going on in the country. The students spent weeks interrogating diplomats and clerical staff, trying to find evidence of plots that didn't exist. They thought that America was capable of controlling events on a global scale and that America frequently exerted that control, but they were wrong.

America was and is a superpower, but that power has limits. Both our capability and desire to control the world are limited. Many people believe that the primary source of this world's problems is America--we are the sole superpower and we exercise power on a global scale, so problems that exist in this world could be resolved if America would just stop misbehaving. Global poverty, war, famine, environmental problems--they are all either caused or allowed to exist by an America that wields power irresponsibly, the theory goes. The people who hold to this belief are just as wrong as the Islamic students who were bewildered to find that they had overrun an office building full of mundane people doing mundane tasks. America has global influence but it is limited in scope. We are neither the primary source of nor the ultimate solution to this world's problems.

Hitch

Christopher Hitchens is funnier than a woman.

I'm fairly certain that I'm going to get in trouble for linking to this.

Which, I think, proves the point.

Which is a joke, not that women will think it (or I) am funny.

Must. Stop. Digging.

words worth reading

Peter Schramm on becoming an immigrant to America:

My mother tells me, though I don’t remember saying this, that I told my father I would follow him to hell if he asked it of me. Fortunately for my eager spirit, hell was exactly what we were trying to escape and the opposite of what my father sought.

"But where are we going?" I asked.

"We are going to America," my father said.

"Why America?" I prodded.

"Because, son. We were born Americans, but in the wrong place," he replied.

Peter Schramm on being a book lover:

There is something special about owning and reading your own books. I never liked to use libraries. Perhaps it is a natural reaction to the communist propaganda of my youth, but I think that some things just shouldn’t be shared. At least not with just anybody. I like to smell and fondle books, keep them, set them back on their shelf, sometimes to just let them fall open to where they may and read into them again. I fancied that these books became friends, and I just couldn’t bear to part with them.

Cicero on the nature of the limits of American and Israeli power:

A friend of mine said yesterday that he believes Israel and the United States have reached the limits of their power. He believes the battle is joined, is highly asymmetric, and has ground American and Israeli forces to a halt. He wasn't gloating, but was hypothesizing.

He might be wrong. Having power assumes a monopoly of violence. As we restrain our power to appeal to our allies and win friends on the ground, Islamicists do everything they can to monopolize violence through random acts of terror. They're quite unrestrained in that pursuit, and on that level, we are neck-and-neck with them for control on the ground. The battle for the monopoly of violence is symmetrical in this war because we restrain ourselves from unleashing our full fury. My friend assumes that we will restrain ourselves indefinitely, and so we have reached the limit of our power.

My friend will be right -- that the Israelis and Americans have hit their wall -- only if we continue self-restraint. We've made war with our seat belts on. There's no guarantee that things can't get to a point where further self-restraint makes no sense.

Smash on conversing with hunger-striking leftist protestors:

I wasn't in uniform (I only have to wear it for ceremonies), so maintaining strict military bearing wasn't an issue. Also, a heavy blanket of humidity had descended on D.C., so the half-dozen or so remaining hunger strikers had retreated deeper into the park, laying in the shade of a couple of magnolia trees. Their banners were strewn across the grass alongside one of the brick walkways. They didn't appear to be holding up very well with the hunger and the heat.

The same man from Friday saw me approaching, and staggered his way over to engage me. If he recognized me from before, he showed no sign.

I paused in front of the banners, and pulled a big juicy apple out of my lunch bag.

"Day seven of a hunger strike..." the man muttered.

I looked him in the eye, took a bite of my apple, and shrugged.

He turned away, and retreated back to the shade of the magnolia. I took another couple bites out of my apple before continuing my stroll around the park.

I give 'em about a week before they break camp.

love according to nerds

My favorite econ blogger on love:

The thesis is simple, and almost everyone disagrees with it upon first hearing. The symmetry thesis: A given person likes (loves) you as much as you like (love) him or her...Perhaps we like other people for their intrinsic qualities less than we pretend. Mostly we like people for liking (loving) us.

Interesting idea. If this thesis is true, then romantic relationships should tend to be self-reinforcing, growing stronger over time. Does the prevalence of divorce disprove the thesis? Or does the prevalence of divorce suggest that real love is often not at the foundation of modern marriages?

excellent financial advice

I don't always follow this financial advice, though I'm getting closer. The advice I most need to take to heart:

1) Pay yourself first. What does that mean? It means you divert money into savings automatically, before the money hits your bank account. You divert an automatic percentage of your salary into your 401(k), and you set up your direct deposit so that money is automatically put into a special savings account unconnected to your ordinary checking and savings, that serves as your rainy day fund. The rainy day fund should hold at least six months, and preferably a year's, worth of expenses. Retirement savings should 15-20% of your income.

Yes, I said 20%.

"20%!!!!!" I hear you screech. "I can't afford it!" Well, then you'd better start developing a taste for cat food. Home equity is going to be a bad way to save for retirement in a country with a stagnating population, as the US will have when I get around to retiring. And Social Security benefits may be slashed, means tested, or otherwise legislated out of your pockets. If you're putting 3% of your salary into your 401(k) every year and hoping that will cover you you're in big trouble.

The reason you pay yourself first is that for most people, budgeting just doesn't work. Most people simply don't have the discipline. The answer is to keep the money out of your bank account. If you don't see it, you won't spend it.

and

6) Saving is more important than lattes People who say they can't afford to save can surprisingly often afford Starbucks, new cars, and alchohol. These are not things you need in the same way that you need to be able to eat if you get sick and can't work.

The easiest things to cut out are food. You *can* cook at home, no matter how tired you are; breaded chicken breasts and steamed vegetables take ten to fifteen minutes to prepare from scratch. Cutting out restaurant meals and buying your own lunch are the single easiest way to save money. Oh, I know, it's not as pleasurable to pull a turkey sandwich out of a plastic bag as it is to go down to the deli and get exactly what you want this minute. But the markup on those sandwiches is generally between 400-800%, and a daily starbucks will cost you over $1000 a year. As a side bonus, the more you have to cook it yourself, the less you'll be tempted to overindulge in goodies. And if you want to hang out with friends, I can generally prepare a very nice dinner for four for less than it would cost me to pay for my own meal at a New York City restaurant. And no waiter badgering you to free up the table.

we have met the enemy and he is us

Coke has plans for a new drink:

Coca-Cola Co., the world's No. 1 soft drink company, on Wednesday said it will launch a coffee-infused soft drink called Coca-Cola Blak in various markets around the world in 2006.

The new drink, a combination of Coca-Cola Classic and coffee extracts, will be first launched in France in January before being rolled out in the United States and other markets during 2006.

Maybe I'm not their target customer, since I'm not a coffee drinker in general... but do they really expect this to sell?

(Via The Volokh Conspiracy)

experts--what are they good for?

Via Marginal Revolution I discovered this pair of posts by Daniel Drezner regarding experts and the value of their predictions. Here's the bottom-line: experts are often worse than non-experts when it comes to predicting future events within their area of expertise. This effect increases as the fame of the forecaster increases and is worse among specialists and thinkers who have a single all-encompassing theory or idea that informs their views than among generalists and those who don't look at the world through any single dominant philosphical framework.

parenting in public

As James Lileks said, "I salute the owner of this place. He may be a tad too dictatorial, but it is his joint, and he seems to be peeving the right people."

I like kids and I like playing with kids. I recognize that kids aren't naturally quiet and well behaved, but that's all the more reason that they should be taught. Parents who refuse to parent in public are pernicious.

Alliteration is also pernicious, but it's my blog, so deal with it.

feminism and rape

Megan McArdle's post about feminism and rape is a must-read:

In my ideal world, men would not be tempted to commit rape. Sexual encounters would be handled with negotiation, not with one partner's insistence on getting what he wants at the expense of another. Men would respect the desires of women to control what happens to their bodies, whether they've known each other for ten minutes or ten years.

And in my ideal world, the fear of rape could not be used as a justification for slut-shaming.

Let's rephrase that bolded part a little bit: "In my ideal world, people would not be tempted to take things from other people that those other people do not freely choose to give them." I endorse that statement wholeheartedly. But that doesn't mean I leave the door unlocked.

There is a strain of feminism that encourages women to behave as if we have arrived in some feminist utopia where rape is impossible. This stems from a very admirable desire to put the responsibility for rape on the men, not the women, and is an understandable backlash to rape trials that used to investigate whether the woman was "asking for it".

Nonetheless, it's stupid. Not only are we not in this utopia, we are never, ever going to be in that utopia. Even if we achieved a marvelously gender-blind society, there would still be some people who want to have sex with people who do not want to have sex with them. Indeed, the variety of human sexual fantasy being what it is, there will be some people who are almost exclusively interested in that sort of activity.

That means women are going to have to take action to protect themselves. If you don't want to stop engaging in risky behaviour, then vote libertarian and buy yourself a gun. But don't just stick your head in the sand and claim that it's all society's fault, so you're not going to do anything until society takes care of the problem.

Feminists (and liberals in general) would be wise to stop confusing the ideal world for the real world. I've heard too many date rape stories in the press that could have been easily avoided if the victims had understood that parties featuring hormone-driven men, alcohol and an absence of sober friends are a really bad idea. This doesn't excuse the perpatrators--any man that would take advantage of a woman in those circumstances fully deserves to be locked up until he needs Viagra to pose a threat.

real character

I wonder how many people really remember what happened in Tiananmen Square, Beijing back in 1989? The brutal manner in which the Chinese government dealt with its critics makes a mockery of the idea that China is a "People's Republic". The bilious lefties in this country who love to scream about the crimes of Chimpy McBushitler don't have any idea what it really means to "speak truth to power".

Oxblog reminded me of this example of true courage. After seeing soldiers, policemen, armored personnel carriers (APCs) and tanks massacre his fellow protesters, one man stepped in front of a column of tanks, stared them down and brought them to a halt. We don't know the identity of the man that stopped the tanks, nor do we know his fate. One thing I do know--I want to display the same kind of courage the next time I have to choose between confronting evil or stepping aside to protect my own interests.