In defense of open society

[rogerv]

I've been reading Karl Popper's two volume work "Open Society and it Enemies". Here's the amazon.com link:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0691019681/103-5859654-8821426?v=glanceThe thread I posted at commongroundcommonsense.org, "In Defense of Open Society" was inspired by that work. I'd like to start a thread with the same name here because I see this as an important problem that crosses partisan lines. In a nutshell, the central question is this: how can we rationally institute changes in our society? Changes take place whether we consciously bring them about or not, and some changes are threatening to some people. Popper charts some of the philosophers who have tried to tame change--Plato, Hegel and Marx--by suggesting laws of history (what he calls 'historicism')--but such ideologies led to totalitarian societies where society was forced, like Procrustes bed, to fit a revolutionary or essentialist mold, attended by great bloodshed and misery. Popper's question, and mine, is how do we bring change under rational control, so that we can improve things and minimize the advserse effects? Popper's claim is that society is best when it considers its beliefs open to revision in the light of evidence, like scientific theories, conjectures subject to refutation. Next, we do best if we introduce change in small increments, and monitor the effects--what he calls 'piecemeal social engineering'. This rules out grand Utopian schemes--but that is just as well, because most of those have been disasters. As a reformist liberal who follows John Dewey, Popper's suggestions make sense to me. But, as for everything else, the important questions lie in the details.

For example, even in science, it sometimes makes sense to stick with a theory that seems in trouble. Most scientists do not consider a theory overthrown by the first bad result. It may be the expriement was performed improperly, or the scientist was careless in observations, or there is something new and interesting happening that the theory could explain if elaborated.

It seems to me good policy should pay attention to good science. But how? Policy involves value judgments as well as factual claims--and sometimes a little crystal ball gazing. We don't always know how a particular policy will play itself out once enacted. But maybe it is best to start at this general level, and work in the details as we go along.

The reason beliefs should be treated as revisable is that we are often guessing the way the world is, and need to update our guesses in the light of new information. Markets can be good for this, but not always. In efficient markets, price reflects available information. But competition can lead to information being witheld (for the sake of competitive advantage) and there are market failures as well. The assumption of rationality in the markets is an idealization. But in the ideal case, for econmies as well as scientifc systems, the end result should reflect all the available information.

So I guess the deep question for me is how does one arrange society so that we can adapt our institutions to changing conditions and improve their performance of important functions (like education, judicial justice, economic welfare, scientific knowledge, etc.)

I think the answer cannot be just: individual initiative and hard work. Both of those are necessary, but they are not sufficient. Case in point: people in the third world work as hard or harder than many of us do in the indistrial world, but have much less to show for it. The difference is the social system in which they do their work. The answer isn't private property either. To be sure, the system needs incentives to energize the work and creativity any economy needs. That you will own things appeals to self-interest, and self interest is an important factor in human motivation. But we need something more, I think, a sense of wanting to help others live better lives. Hume put it this way: in addition to self-interests we have sympathetic interests in the well-being of others. Those sympathies are limited, but they are a significant force in making people care about others in their community. Well, that's enough for a start. I donm't want this to be a monlogue, but a conversation, and am interested in hearing what you think.

[marron]

Your post number 75 is excellent.

The belief that there can be such a thing as a perfect society, inevitably leads us to hold in contempt a society that may be imperfect but fundamentally decent. Imperfect, but fundamentally functional.

I believe that society is "perfectible" in the sense that it can grow and be made better over time. But there is nothing more destructive to human nature than the belief that such perfection is the responsibility of government.

Let me repeat that: there is nothing more destructive than the belief that the perfection of society is the duty of the government.

Leaving aside the infamous experiments of the twentieth century, the ones that ended in mass death, we often forget the others, the ones that are merely dysfunctional but muddle through. The notion that government is the guiding source for a people leads always to the infantilization of the people. It leads to the politicization of every area of life, and gives you a people that is frustrated, angry, and whose self-righteousness resides in being able to identify yet another perceived injustice that the government hasn't gotten around to fixing, and demanding amid tears and histrionics that someone do something.

I love Latin America, there are certain elements of character among the people that I find appealing. But Latin American governments are famously dysfunctional, and I would say fortunately so. The dominant political culture is one that expects a centralized organizing authority, there is no Republican Party as you know outside the US, no libertarian party, you have left wing and right wing parties who would both fit on the left side of the American political spectrum.

But the fact is, of course, that these governments never work well, and as a consequence people develop parallel ways of surviving; family, church, voluntary organizations, people develop personal contacts, and people develop habits of character.

What they don't realize is that they have found what works. But they believe that its not supposed to work that way, they keep expecting a government that is going to set everything aright, and so you have the endless instability that is characteristic. And you have the corruption that is characteristic. What people don't often realize is that such corruption is to be expected, and it is in fact a necessity.

There are actually two kinds of corruption. There is a corruption driven by greed and opportunity, which centralized government makes possible. Put too much authority in the hands of government functionaries, and someone will take advantage of it.

But put too much power over your life into law and regulations and you will have a system that is clumsy, and blind, and tone-deaf, and as a consequence you will have no choice but to find ways around it. Thats when you find it necessary to have a brother-in-law in the planning commission, an uncle in the party leadership, and you wind up offering a beer to a cop to overlook a law you both know is stupid. That second kind of corruption is the only way such systems work, which is to say, they don't work but we all agree to make it look like they do, while living our lives in reality according to what our real needs are.

Engineered societies never work. If you try to make them work, you run the society into the ground, maybe you wind up having to shoot a lot of people. Or, people on their own find ways to jimmy the system to make it work after a fashion. We call that last option "corruption" but eliminate the corruption and the whole system comes apart.

Alternatively, you let people manage themselves, and have whatever laws are necessary to manage the collisions when they occur. Thats the classic American system. If laws are predictable, people will sort it out themselves and they don't need smart guys to figure it out for them. Most people in the end are decent, and need only a basic framework which allows them to work out their own dreams. All people need is for their governors to protect them from being robbed, and to keep the streets paved, and the rest they can and will do themselves. If government is done properly, at least in peacetime, government should be nothing more than a utility. Boring.

[HuntsvilleTxVeteran]

You need to read "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand.

[rogerv]

thank you, jackbob,

I agree there is a range of bad behaviors comprised in irrational economic behavior, and personal stakes may be included. But we also have the problems of insider trading, corruption, and socializing cleanup costs where there are unconsented to risks and costs borne by people who are not party to the transactions, and not beneficiaries of the gains. This I think is wrong. It is not necessarily covered by the laws on fraud, but it does affect markets by adding hidden costs. Secrecy in markets, just like secrecy in politics, creates space for bad behavior. I'm in favor of greater transparency in both markets and government. My guess is that we are agreed on that.

[rogerv]

thank you, jackbob,

I agree there is a range of bad behaviors comprised in irrational economic behavior, and personal stakes may be included. But we also have the problems of insider trading, corruption, and socializing cleanup costs where there are unconsented to risks and costs borne by people who are not party to the transactions, and not beneficiaries of the gains. This I think is wrong. It is not necessarily covered by the laws on fraud, but it does affect markets by adding hidden costs. Secrecy in markets, just like secrecy in politics, creates space for bad behavior. I'm in favor of greater transparency in both markets and government. My guess is that we are agreed on that.

[rogerv]

I'm not sure how true it is that "just letting things happen" was the formula for success before World War Two you claim for it. You have just given me incentive to read my copy of Heilbroner and Singer "The Economic Transformation of America"! While I agree that markets can be rational, there is such a thing as market failures. Mankiw mentions a few in his textbook. Charles Kindleberger in his book "Manias, Panics and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises" mentions even more. The question, of course, is what to do when things go badly wrong. While I defend the New Deal aims, I am open to consider there may be better ways to achieve them during such crises. But given the level of suffering that occurred then, especially in the wake of the Dust Bowl, and given that recovery was nowhere in sight, I believe the government needed to try some things we might not have otherwise contemplated. Asking starving people to wait for the market to correct itself is cruel, especially when so many were out of work. Getting America working again was a good idea, even if it did not, by itself, get us out of the Depression.

I believe there are genuine emergencies where people will die if government doesn't intervene. And there are long term crises where people will slowly fall behind without a little assistance. I think the challenge is to do so in such a way as to not undermine incentives to work and improve, and to do so in ways that do not weigh down economic growth. But I think we can do this now. Just as for the military, I think we can go smaller and smarter, and still be effective.

[rogerv]

hi, dr pat,

Could you elaborate on your point about 'philosophies tried and found wanting on he global stage'?

[rogerv]

BTW, I think urban sprawl is precisely what happened from lack of planning. It is a case of the unintentional consequences of intentional actions (e.g., our embrace of the personal motor vehicle with internal combustion engines has had all sorts of unintended, and even unwelcome consequences, as well as the good and intended ones). This is not something government created, but is a feature of human actions in general.

I agree however that there have been lots of cases of aggressive land grabbing that followed some misconceived imperative to develop more roads. That is a problem for which short sighted municipal governments should rightly be blamed.

[rogerv]

Again, I don't think the point is how quickly these changes took place. Depending on when you start the clock, Lenin was in power within a decade of his activity in Russia, and once in power effected sweeping changes very quickly. From Hitler's Beer Hall putsch to his reign as the Fuhrer was about five years. Once he was in power, he claimed emergency powers and changed things very quickly.

But the point isn't about how fast these changes were, but whether the changes were good or bad. And the point about making changes gradually is their reversibility. Very quick changes (often accompanied by great violence) are often hard to reverse (or, equally bad, superficial--the French Revolution was supplanted by a restoration of the monarchy only a few years later). (An interesting question is how much change rally did occur under Lenin or Hitler. After all, the Prussian unification of Germany under Bismark had left a militaristic caste on the nation, one that was perpetuated by Hitler rather than challenged by him. And the communists turned the Czars secret police into the KGB. It is worth asking how much of the repression under those totalitarian regimes was brand new, and how much a perpetuation of bad old authoritarian tendencies that have been with us for a long, long time).

[oldbrowser]

how can we rationally institute changes in our society?

"we" are not God.
"we" do not really understand all the dynamics involved.
"we" have a history of disastrous social engineering.
"we" should stick to what has brought us this far.

[rogerv]

Not always a bad sign. It shows someone is still thinking about a topic, trying to find his way to first principles, rather than simply produce a list that has no discernible grounding in principle. I agree with you it would be better if I were further along in my thinking and able to produce such a list of civic duties or obligations. But that is not where I am at this point. I am working with hunches, based on the information I have, and trying to work out a coherent position on just the matters at hand. Guessing where one doesn't know is not an irresponsible act provided one takes into account evidence and reasons to constrain one's guesses.

[rogerv]

Hi, sunsong,

Thank you for your thoughtful thread. I see no reason a liberal could not agree with you that we have a very fine set of institutions, maybe the best available. But since every institution was created by human beings who like us, have limited sympathies, limited knowledge, limited resources, can make mistakes, there may still be, as jackbob put it, "room for improvement". The reformists among us are not arguing for wholesale replacement (not even gradual replacement) or our institutions. That may of course occur, but it can occur on conservative models as well as liberal ones. After all, what does capitalism as 'creative destruction' mean if not that some institutions may die out and new ones my be created?

I'm less convinced that you that we get to the bottom of things by appeal to our views of human nature. I've become skeptical of the notion myself. The idea that only one set of institutions is consistent with human nature is, I think, untrue. I think whatever biological basis there might be for human behavior is shaped variously by different societies, and that there may be more than one set of institutions in which humans can thrive. At any rate, I think any set of institutions involves trade-offs that are difficult to evaluate. I think John Dewey has said a lot of things in his work "Human Nature and Conduct" that make a lot of sense to me.

I am guardedly optimistic about our prospects as a civilization. There are no guarantees here. Any changes we consciously and deliberately effect can turn out to bring more bad than good. We have to keep our wits about us and monitor the consequences of our actions carefully. But that is simply the human condition: we never know in advance all the consequences of our actions. No institution, not the market, not the government, not even science, can iron out all risk of bad consequences. Uncritical faith in any human institution is irresponsible. Even with the best of institutions, we need to keep our eyes open. This is one reason why I am and always have been a advocate of something like the doctrine of countervailing powers: no institutions should be completely trusted to police itself, and no institution should have unchallengeable power. I think we both agree with the founding fathers on this,and this is common ground between us.

[rogerv]

I'm not sure what to make of this list. It is really a mixed bag. Some things on it are I think very good, and well within the scope of constitutional constraints. Others are more problematic. If you point is that we are already well down the road to losing our liberties because of some progressive socialist takeover, I think that conclusion is decidedly premature. There is room for concern here, and tends that most certainly need to be resisted. But I don't think the game is up, and do not see a conspiracy at work here. We are nowhere close to abolishing private property, and property rights have always had limits and conditions attached. If it ever comes to that, I can guarantee you you will not be fighting alone. There will be plenty of liberals fighting alongside of you against such abuse of power.

[rogerv]

hi, tkdietz,

I think putting the matter in terms of trust or mistrust of human nature (or human freedom)is to narrow the options unduly. I think we have no choice but to set the default at trust in a society of strangers, but that we all learn by experience to calibrate our trust based on individual track records. We deprive ourselves of helpful assistance if we simply mistrust; we invite exploitation if we simply trust. I think we need to learn appropriate trust, and I think all competent adults do.

[TKDietz]

I think that's a load of hooey. If you want to narrow the options you'll let the government shove one-sized fits all solutions down our throats. If you want true innovation, you'll allow free citizens to work things out themselves.

Believe in the human spirit, Rogerv. Don't count on government bureaucracies to fix all of our problems. History has shown that the thing they do best is grow bigger and bigger and screw things up.

[rogerv]

I agree that society is perfectible. I think of good changes we can effect as improvements, not some steps to some perfect society. I don't think the need for reform ever disappears. I also think good intentions do not guarantee one will not do harm; we need to watch carefully the actual effects of what we are doing, and not convince ourselves that things are going as expected when the evidence suggests otherwise.

I for one agree with Orwell that we need to focus on basic human decency, and that for me means we focus on the obvious causes of human misery and see what we can do to lessen those. Amelioration is the goal.

[rogerv]

Thank you for the suggestion, but I have never found Ayn Rand a very persuasive spokesperson for the libertarian view. Nozick and Narveson are, I think, more persuasive.

[rogerv]

I agree with what you have said, but not the conclusion you draw from it. We can do better than muddle along; that is why we have r&d. Modern medicine is much better than 19th century medicine because we have actively and aggressively sought better surgical technology and better drug therapies. And modern medicine would have been impossible without the studies in anatomy during the renaissance and breakthroughs in chemistry in the 19th century.

[rogerv]

I am not a fan of Procrustes! I most certainly do not believe one size fits all. And I very much want to encourage just the innovation of which you speak.

But there are problems of coordination here, which is why government bureaucracies developed in the first place, and why they were an advance over what preceded. There is a reaon why Max Weber thought bureaucracy represented the rationalization of society, nd why the emphasis on explicit procedure was marked as an advance over the uncoordinated efforts of the past. In fact, modern industry, with job descriptions, explicit rules, performance reviews, would not be possible without these developments (that and Taylors studies of workplace efficiency).

But however much of an improvement that may have been, we now have more flexible models of rationality and more reliable ways of communicating information that can lead to greater efficiency. Bureaucracy is no longer the best we can do.

The issue of trust or mistrust however should not be reduced to questions of efficiency. There are also issues of equity. We don't want a winner take all society where people can press temporary advantages to the harm of others. We need government as an agent of countervailing power to keep the ground rules of fairness in force. Otherwise, we don't have markets, but something more like the war of all against all.

I do believe in the human spirit, as do you. I find anarchism tempting, and if I trusted human being to do the right thing in all circumstances, I would be an anarchist. But I do think there are circumstances under which even the best of us would be tempted to do the worst, and I think we need government to intervene in such situations and control the damage.

[TKDietz]

Even modern medicine causes unintended consequences though. And with medicine, quantitative analysis can be used in a laboratory setting. With social engineering there are far many more variables that can come into play that can't be ferreted out in a laboratory setting. The problems cased can take years and years or even generations to manifest themselves and by then it's often to late to change things back to the way they were.

We need government to try to keep things fair and to protect us from each other and external forces. But we need to understand governments limitations. Government can't do everything, and the more they do the more they are likely to screw up. Governments are inherently inefficient and they are prone to corruption. These are facts you need to acknowledge. Our forefathers recognized this and that's why they drafted the Constitution to limit the power and scope of government, and included checks and balances to limit the power of each branch of government so none got too powerful.

I for one believe that our federal government in particular has already gotten too big and too powerful contrary to the intent of our forefathers. I don't see this as a good thing. I don't see them making great strides improving the lives of the people. In fact I see them doing the opposite in many ways. I do not have confidence that they could accomplish the things you believe them capable of.

Part of the "problem" is that we are a democracy. I used the quotation marks because I don't really look at it as a problem, but it is a major factor in our governments inability to be efficient. A totalitarian dictatorship could be streamlined and run much more efficiently, but then we are at the mercy of our leaders who may not have our best interests at heart. Absolute power corrupts absolutely and all that. With a democracy, we are always going to have all of the competing interests struggling and fighting in government to do the things necessary to please their constituency and those who finance their political campaigns. This is just a fact of life in a democratic nation. It will never be a particularly efficient form of government, but it is preferable to the alternatives for people who wish to be free and who wish to have at least some control over those who govern them.

[TKDietz]

"We don't want a winner take all society where people can press temporary advantages to the harm of others. We need government as an agent of countervailing power to keep the ground rules of fairness in force. Otherwise, we don't have markets, but something more like the war of all against all."

I agree with this, except that I don't have a problem with a "winner take all society." I believe in competition and natural selection. Without it we go the way of the Soviet Union. Allowing nature to more or less run its course in society encourages hard work and innovation. It's true that we need government to step in and to try to keep things fair, but I believe that we should work to keep government intrusion to a minimum, because as you know I don't have much faith in government. The more they get involved the more problems they seem to cause.

I'm not as well read on these issues as you seem to be. Please explain to me the new alternatives to bureaucracy that we now have.