my viewI label myself a liberal egalitarian because I value equality but am also very concerned with preserving civil liberties. I am also concerned with economic growth, proper economic incentives, and making sure people get the fruits of their labor (e.g. get what they deserve). Working out a coherent view about all this I find extremely challenging. Thus, I am also interested in the classical liberal tradition, as well as libertarianism. Liberal egalitarianism traces its roots to the Enlightenment (e.g. Kant and J.S. Mill). Thus, it shares its heritage with contemporary classical liberalism and libertarianism. In contemporary American philosophy, liberal egalitarianism includes figures like John Rawls and Ronald Dworkin.
what's political philosophy?Political philosophy is concerned with figuring out what justice demands. This does not mean knowing what the law says since the law might be unjust (e.g. think of Nazi Germany or laws that preclude women from having the right to vote). Merely because something is a certain way, doesn't mean it should be that way (this is known as Hume's is-ought distinction). Rather, political philosophy is concerned with figuring out in part what the law should say or how our political and economic system should be organized. Thus, political philosophy takes moral philosophy (a.k.a. ethics) as its starting point. There are two types of justice: retributive and distributive. Retributive is concerned with punishment (e.g. when is punishment just and why) while distributive justice is concerned with distributing something in limited supply (e.g. limited resources like money or land). After all, if there was an abundance of something, we probably wouldn't care about justice (see Hume). In distributive justice, one can be concerned with just processes or just patterns. Voluntary exchange, for example, might be a just process. The Gini Coefficient, on the other hand, is concerned with the pattern of distribution instead. My view is that both the process and the distribution matter when it comes to justice. (The libertarian philosophy Robert Nozick, on the other hand, argues that only the initial distribution matters for justice and beyond that, all that matters is whether the process of exchange is just.) Words like 'equality', 'liberty', 'need', 'entitlement', 'merit' and 'desert' ('desert' means having deserved something), 'justice', and 'fairness' all belong to the realm of political philosophy. They all sound good, but figuring out what they mean exactly and having a coherent view that agrees with our moral intuitions turns out to be extremely difficult. For example, if we think equality is a good thing, then equality of what?! Equal liberties? Equal income? Equal opportunity? To make matters worse, you usually can't have it all. Liberty and equality might be at odds with one another for example since if people are free to invest and free not to get taxed, some will make good investments, some will get lucky, and some will lose their money. Moreover, if we think a commitment to liberty means that all voluntary exchanges are okay, then it would be difficult to formulate objections to slavery or prostitution, and it would be even more difficult to explain why we think it is unjust if a student buys a school paper online or why it shouldn't be okay to sell seats in Congress on ebay (see Walzer's Spheres of Justice; great book and an easy read).
egalitarianismBoth socialism and democracy are based on egalitarian ideals. The former is econonic equality while the latter is political equality. Soviet and Chinese Communism of course were very anti-democratic. Scandinavian countries, however, are fairly democratic despite being semi-socialist. The opposite is also true, we have anti-democratic tendencies under capitalism, especially when a monopoly or an otherwise economically powerful interest group emerges (e.g. tobacco and pharmaceutical lobbying in the U.S. Senate, or being elected for mayor because you had much more money than your opponents to run the election campaign and advertise yourself). There is, thus, no necessary connection between economic equality and political power. (See Kymlicka's Introduction to Contemporary Political Philosophy.) There are dangers, however. With great economic inequality can come political inequality because, well, money is power. I am interested in egalitarianism in both the economic and the political realms. There are of course reasons to worry about egalitarianism in both the economic realm and the political realm: those are incentives and competence. Because meritocracy is not a very egalitarian doctrine, there is a tension in the political between meritocracy and egalitarianism. Or, if you ask Plato, between democracy and competence. Either you only let political scientists run for president or you don't require political skill or education or talent and anyone can take a stab at it, as long as they are popular enough to get elected and are a "natural born citizen" (sorry Arnold). To practice medicine, we require a medical degree. To practice law, we require a law degree. To bulid buildings and bridges, we require an engineering degree. But to practice politics, we only require campaign donations and enough charm. These are the criticisms a defender of democracy faces, democracy as an ideal of political equality. (In fact, this is Plato's criticism of democracy in his Republic.) But of course as history has shown, meritocracy in the political realm can easily lead to authoritarianism and oppression. Even in the ideal case of a benevolent dictator, there are reasons for pause (see Mill's Considerations on Representative Government, ch.3). As for the economic realm, as a practical matter I suspect that it is easier to have egalitarian values in smaller and more homogeneous populations (e.g. small groups of friends or family, the military, or countries like Norway and Sweden). In larger and/or more heterogeneous groups with less in-group identification, the salient principle of justice becomes liberty (as is the case in the United States, given its founding history and its current population), which can be thought of as equality in the political realm. I also think that equality can express reciprocity and so suspect, as a psychological hypothesis, that comradery fosters equality and equality fosters comradery. As another practical economic matter, equal shares can destroy incentives, especially in large and/or heterogenous populations (as was the case in the USSR). After all, if no matter how hard you work, you will still get paid the same, there is an incentive to free-ride. Thus, we must be careful to not have egalitarianism result in social dilemmas (see a section on "Social Dilemmas" below). I actually think of Thomas Hobbes as the first egalitarian political philosopher of the Enlightenment. (Neither Plato nor Aristotle condoned equality.) Hobbes's egalitarianism, however, is very weak: he starts with the premise that all people are equally vulnerable. In other words, anyone can kill anyone when there is no government (in what he calls "the state of nature"). Moreover, I think of Jeremy Bentham (yes, the hedonist utilitarian) as an egalitarian too. Bentham thought that the tastes and pleasures (or in Mill's case, happiness) of a king or someone similarly blue-blooded and educated are no more important than those of a peasant. In other words, watching the baseball game can be just as important to human welfare as watching an opera. Bentham's hedonism seems silly today, but in fact, I think it is not because it is an egalitarian anti-snobbery pill. Egalitarianism is also the key insight I take to be behind Karl Marx's labor theory of value in economics. The insight is that all things being equal, your labor shouldn't be more valuable than mine. For example, there is injustice if I am a trustfund baby and so own a factory which allows me to live very comfortably on only one hour of work a day, while my workers work long hours to merely make ends meet. While there might ultimately be reasons to reject Marxian (or any other: e.g. Adam Smith's) labor theory of value -- reasons like the marginalist revolution (e.g. Jevons and Menger) -- the key insight about the equal worth of human beings ought not be forgotten. Egalitarianism is a view in political philosophy whose main principle is that all human beings are equal. Equal does not mean the same. Philosophers aren't stupid, after all. Of course some of us are physically stronger, more talented, smarter, or more energetic. But the thought is that morally this is all irrelevant. This is in stark contrast with the belief that some people matter more than others (e.g. Hitler's philosophy). While egalitarianism sounds good (especially since I just used a sophistic trick of rhetoric and associated the opposite proposition with Hitler instead of, say, Plato or Aristotle, and well, no one wants to be associated with Hitler), the details of working out a political theory based on this simple moral premise can be quite difficult because there are different ways to express our human equality. Democracy is only one attempt to express this human equality (as opposed to the belief that those of noble birth are more important). Here are some candidates:
Note that (1) above conflicts with legalized inheritance. To
make sure everyone has the same amount of resources at the beginning
of their life, we would have to have 100% inheritance tax and then
redistribute the money between those who are about to hit the age of
maturity or at least the age of adult responsibility (e.g. 18). J.S.
Mill, in fact, was for heavy inheritance taxes. Or, consider political power. Why not give those with more education more votes? One answer to this is that the interests of the less educated will not be represented, as history has shown; e.g. literacy voting laws in the South. However, another possibility is that a vote represents a voice and an equal share of political power, a share that expresses our human equality. We might not be equally smart or equally educated, but in a moral sense, we are all moral equals, which we express with one man, one vote, thus acknowledging human dignity that stems from this moral status. (Ah yes, this is very Kantian.) In political philosophy, things get even hairier because we can express moral equality by aiming for equality of welfare or equality of resources. (Philosophers use the word 'welfare' to mean 'wellbeing'.) Equality of welfare is motivated by the intuition that if someone is born with a handicap and needs a wheelchair, the person ought not bear all the costs of the wheelchaire herself and that we ought to chip in and spread the costs over everyone (which we can do through taxes). On the other hand, if someone like Tiny Tim is perfectly happy even without a wheelchair, that shouldn't give us an excuse to not buy them the wheelchair. It seems that a disabled person should have a wheelchair regardless of how happy or good natured they are. This leans in the direction of equality of resources instead of equality of welfare. Of course a hybrid theory is also possible. We might think that in some domains equality of welfare is appropriate and in others equality of resources. (See Dworkin and G.A. Cohen for more on this debate). In general, sometimes egalitarians focus on equally distributing benefits
(e.g. welfare, happiness, or resources),
all things being equal (e.g. everyone having worked equally hard).
But sometimes egalitarians focus on equally distributing burdens instead,
as in our example above when the fair thing to do seemed to share the
costs of Tiny Tim's wheelchaire. responsibility-sensitive egalitarianismWith liberty comes responsibility. For example, we want full members of our society (e.g. adults who aren't thieves or murderers) to have a choice about whether to spend their time on the beach reading Plato or playing guitar or instead doing something more socially useful (e.g. working in soup kitchens, or teaching Plato or playing guitar to a broader audience). But with this choice comes the responsibility for the costs and benefits this choice bestows on other people. Namely, we think it would be unfair if we had to work hard to support the leisurely lifestyle of surfer. The surfer should be able to surf full-tmie if s/he wants to, but it seems unfair to have us pay for it with our labor (see Van Parijs's paper on why surfers must be fed for an argument to the contrary). So, it looks like the fair thing to do is to have us pay all share the costs of only those disadvantages for which a person is not to be held responsible (e.g. disabilities and wheelchairs). This is the line I am interested. In my research, I focus on working
out this theory, as well as linking it with the desert-based view of
distributeive justice I am currently developing. egalitarianism and the leveling down objectionThere is a serious theoretical objection to egalitarianism -- i.e. to the claim that justice demands an equal distribution of something as a way of expressing that we are all moral equals. It goes as follows. Imagine five of us are on a sinking ship with a lifeboat big enough to hold only four. If equality is the ideal, as an egalitarian thinks it is, then it looks like it’d be better if everyone drowned. After all, if four of us live and one drowns, then we do not all get equal shares of the limited resource – a place in the lifeboat. (We could rephrase the same example in terms of distributions of welfare instead of distributions of resources, or even in terms of distributing burdens instead of benefits.) So does commitment to equality really mean that it’d be better that everyone were equally worse off than not. There is something to comradery in small groups, but in this case it seems extreme. After all, how can justice demand that everyone be worse off when only one could have been worse off? (Moreover, remember that distributive justice deals with principles that are supposed to scale up to entire societies and the larger and less homogenous the group, the less comradery there is.) In the lingo of modern economics, shouldn’t justice always favor pareto superior outcomes? If some people can be better off at no one’s expense, then this should clearly be better from the point of view of justice. If our theory of justice can’t capture this, then it can’t be the right theory of justice. So if egalitarianism requires leveling down, then egalitarianism is wrong. This is known as “the leveling down objection.” Thomas Christiano has worked out a response to this objection. The response is simple and, I think, quite intuitive. The idea is that there is only one ideal distribution. That distribution is one where everyone gets an equal share. But that, of course, does not mean that any equal distribution is better than any unequal distribution. That’s because the closer any given distribution is to the ideal (equal) distribution, then less unjust it is. In the case of the lifeboat, for example, the ideal distribution might be one in which everyone gets 1/5 of the boat to sit on (because there are 5 people). But this is unattainable because the boat isn’t big enough and so seats come only in 1/4 sizes. So our two choices are distribution S1 = { 0, 1/4, 1/4, 1/4, 1/4 } or distribution S2 = { 0, 0, 0, 0, 0 }. The former is where only one person dies, whereas the latter is where everyone dies. The ideal unattainable distribution, however, is { 1/5, 1/5, 1/5, 1/5, 1/5 }. But because seats in the boat don’t come in those sizes, this distribution is unattainable. Distribution S1 is closer to the ideal than S2 is. That’s good news for egalitarianism because S1 is (weakly) pareto superior to S2. In other words, S1 is a distribution in which some are better off while no one is worse off. For a more detailed response, along with some mathematics and intersections with the philosophy of science in measuring divergence between probability distributions, see our co-authored paper: Christiano and Braynen, “Inequality, Injustice and Leveling Down,” forthcoming in Ratio, Blackwell Publishing. For more on egalitarianism in general, see this Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article.
taxes, liberty, and the (in)efficiency of social programsTo start, let us not confuse democracy and liberty, unless by liberty we mean liberty of the collective to do whatever it wants, including complete control over its members. Modern democracy includes civil liberties, which in the U.S. are protected by the Bill of Rights (i.e. the U.S. Constitutions first ten amendments). The Bill of Rights, however, is designed to protect you from the rule of the majority (which is why constitutional violations of rights are heard by the Supreme Court, whose judges are shielded from the public with life-long tenure). Athenian democracy in Ancient Greece was different. It was absolute. The majority could vote to exile another citizen, for example, simply because they did not like him or merely perceived him to be a threat. Majority vote was enough. This was liberty of the collective, not individual liberty. Civil liberties, on the other hand, are meant to give you certain inalienable rights that the majority cannot take away from you. (For more on this, see Benjamin Constant's "The Liberty of Ancients Compared with that of Moderns.") When it comes to free markets, economists and political philosophers are concerned with slightly different things. An economist, for example, might worry about when free markets are efficient: e.g. when there are no externalities and the cost of market entry is low. For example, certain public works projects (e.g. electric streetcars) might not be well suited for the free market and the private sector because the payback period would be too long and the cost of entry would be too high (building train tracks can be very expensive). In other words, by the time the company makes a return on the initial investment, all initial investors will be dead. If this is true, then the costs aren't internalized because the investors have to pay the costs, whereas future share holders reap the benefits. This is a case of temporally displacing costs, but otherwise similar to when a factory displaces its costs spatially by polluting downstream. Political philosophers, on the other hand, are concerned with whether certain institutional arrangements are just. For example, if there is something inherently unjust about the free market or the centralized economy, then it's a reason to prefer something else, even if one is more efficient than the other. After all, it might be very efficient to use children to mine coal, but that does not mean we should do it (since, after all, it would be the immoral thing to do). Moreover, political philosophers are concerned with how to organize institutions fairly. In other words, political philosophers worry about justice. For example, slavery might be economically efficient, but it is not only immoral, but it is also deeply unjust and unfair. (Perhaps the same holds of child mine workers.) Political and economic institutions are -- for the political philosopher -- just that: institutions. Hence the concern with both. In the United States, there are two major political parties: democrats
and republicans. Thus, your choice in your political views and at the
voting booth is rather boring and binary. Say you think liberty is
the most important thing. You might express your commitment to liberty
by favoring economic liberties or political/civil liberties. Republicans,
for example, might favor less taxes and thus favor greater economic
liberties in a sense (the liberty not to have part of your income taken
away against your will), but might nonetheless be against expanded
civil liberties (e.g. the liberty to abortion or privacy). This might
be for religious reasons or for reasons of national security. After
all, there is an inherent tension between national security and civil
liberties because to have a completely secure state, you would need
to police everything and everyone (which is why, worried about security
and peace, Hobbes in his Leviathan advocated
the authoritarian state). But say you take liberty so seriously, you
are willing to sacrafice some national security (and so would, for
example, be against Bush's
Patriot Act). But, because you favor laissez-faire
capitalism and are against taxes, you cannot vote for democrats either,
even though they favor civil liberties over national security. What
do you do? The most consistent political platform I know of when it
comes to this is the
libertarian
platform
(so neither
democrats nor republicans).
But even though I think liberty
is pretty important, I think human welfare
is
what
should
matter
politically
the most, which means that I am not a libertarian. Libertarians, for
example, are against taxes on principle, even if taxes were the only
way to fund universal healthcare. Because I value human welfare over
the liberty from taxation (philosophers call this kind of liberty "negative
liberty"), I would rather tax people than have 47
million Americans (16% of the population) be without medical insurance. Similarly, I
would choose taxation over homelessness. But if there are other ways
to address the same problems, I'd listen.
hybrid solutions: public funding for private implementation in competitive marketsBecause I am more concerned with human welfare than with liberty per se, I think it can be worth taxing people to channel financial resources to those who need them (e.g. the homeless, the disabled, or children), especially if they either cannot be said to be responsible for their condition or the costs cannot be said to be deserved because they are too high (e.g. lack of shelter, lack of minimal autonomy, or lack of education). But I also think that free market competition is important. So potentially, it is worth looking at hybrid solutions: publicly-funded projects with services offered by competing private firms. Consider an example. In New York State, (former) Governor Pataki made health insurance available to everyone under the age of 18 and to everyone who cannot afford it beyond the age of 18. In other words, public funds (i.e. tax payers) will pay for your medical insurance (e.g. medicaid) if you cannot afford it yourself. However, instead of having the (state or federal) government be your service provider, you buy health insurance from private companies just as you would if you or your employer were paying for it. This way, businesses compete for your business. After all, why should it matter for market competition who is paying for your medical insurance: you, your parents, your employer, or other tax payers. (This idea isn't new; see J.S. Mill for example). The punchline is that tax-funded projects (e.g. universal healthcare) do not have to imply economic inefficiency. But whether this approach of public funding for private markets will work in a particular domain is an empirical question. Right now, this is being tried out in education for example (e.g. charter schools and early intervention & special education services). I should say that I am not necessarily against taxes not only because I often value welfare over liberty (and if we are talking about positive liberty, then that seems to cut very close to human welfare), but also because I am not even sure that taxation is an infringment on liberty. But that's a long story. So why am I interested in libertarianism if I am not a libertarian?
Well, for three reasons. First, I am afraid of abuses of power that can
result
from centralized
governments. After all, I grew up in the USSR. So protecting civil liberties
I think is important (although this does not necessarily correlate with
free economic markets: compare McCarthyism or the Patriot Act with Scandinavian
semi-socialist countries). Second, I think that free markets, when properly
regulated (e.g. with good information,
many
players,
etc) can be very efficient. Hence my interest in Hayek and economics in
general. Third, I think that all things being equal, it is always preferable
to use incentives instead of coercion. But market processes can be rather
slow to bring markets to an equilibrium. So when speed is of the essence,
more centralized or coercive action might be morally required. Moreover,
I am not sure that all social
dilemmas can be solved using market incentives
instead of governmental regulation. social dilemmasSocial dilemmas are dangerous because they can lead to market failure. The most imfamous example of a social dilemma is the prisoner's dilemma. Social dilemmas require collective action. In other words, if I try to do the right thing, but no one else does, then nothing will happen (or, worse yet, I'll be worse off as a result). But if everyone acts together (or a sufficiently large number of people do), then we (or most of us) can be better off as a result. (Of course social dilemmas also can have the further feature that if everyone else is cooperating, you would be even better off if you were a free rider and did not.) Polluton is an example of this. So are long working hours and the short vacation days in the U.S.. College students experience the shock of the real world when they lose their summer vacations. This might, for all I know, be the single most powerful reason why many Americans do not think that American school teachers are drastically underpaid; after all, they get their three-month summers when the rest of us do not! The standard vacation policy in business firms in the U.S. is two weeks. That's two weeks out of a 52-week year, which leaves 50 weeks of employment. There are rare exceptions of course, which include public schools (where teachers are drastically underpaid and where the work can be extremely stressful), Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City which offers 6 weeks of paid time off, and Bloomberg LP which has (or at least did in 2000) unlimited sick leave, albeit with only 3 weeks of vacation. Here's the social dilemma: most of us would prefer longer vacation days, but companies won't give them to us because they competing for the business of their customers who are... us. So, in effect, we are making ourselves work longer hours and have less time off even though we do not really want to. Well, we like to consume, but we don't like to work. But I go off tangent again. So here's the social dilemma, take two: a business firm would be at a competitive disadvantage with other firms (because it would be less efficient) if it offered more time off to its employers. But if all business firms offered more time off, then no one would be at a competitive disadvantage. We would all prefer the latter, but can't have it because it requires collective action. Western Europe dealt with this problem by enacting legislation that makes minimum vacation mandatory. Finland, for example, has a mandatory 30-day vacation policy (plus 14 public holidays). Enacting legislation to this effect, however, messes with the free market and economic efficiency. So how can we achieve the same effect by using free market incentives? Do we use tax money to offer companies incentives to offer two-month vacations? Legislation is cheaper, no? (Empirical question I suppose, since the costs of legislation would have to be compared with the costs of economic inefficiency.) Moreover, sometimes speed is morally imperative. For example, consider the free market of the industrial revolution where children worked in coal mines. Giving coal companies tax breaks for not employing children seems to miss the point. The immorality of employing children, however, is obvious, whereas when it comes to our own time off, we are in a much greyer territory, where the choice of soluton to the social dilemma depends on how much immorality we think there is in government regulation, how dangerous we think government regulation is and how effective and quick incentives can be instead. These are the kinds of questions legistators face when they first give us tax break incentives and then decide to ban certain kinds of light bulbs altogether, or when they annually raise the minimal efficiency rating of A/C units allowed to be sold on the U.S. market. Economic egalitarianism can destroy the incentive structure if it leads to a social dilemma. Say we all get paid the same. Then my preference ordering might be as follows, with Outcome A being my most preferred outcome and Outcome D my least preferred outcome: Outcome A: I slack off while others work. <-- Free-riding outcome In game-theoretic terms, the dominant strategy here is to slack off. This, however, leads to everyone slacking off (Outcome C) even though we all would have preferred that no one slack off (Outcome B). This is a version of an n-person prisoner's dilemma (see Robyn Dawes, Henry Hamburger, and Thomas Schelling) and is a type of a social dilemma. When equal shares lead to this preference ordering, we have an incentive problem and are now in a social dilemma. And if this leads to decreased production, our individual shares will shrink over time and we will all be worse off. I suspect that in-group identification helps prevent this preference ordering, but that requires a strong shared ideology (as might have been the case in the initial phases of the building of the Soviet Union) or a population that is homogeneous in some other way to get identification going. Having small groups helps too. For those fluent in game theory, I should note here that my prisoner's dilemma model above is actually a repeated game. But that doesn't change the dominant strategy (which is to slack off). In theory, this might be because the game is infinitely repeated or is perceived to be infinitely repeated by the players. In practice, however, I think this is irrelevant because people do not actually reason using backwards induction in cases like this (since backwards induction is actually highly counter-intuitive in psychological terms). For those fluent in political economy, remember J.S. Mill's distinction between production and distribution? Well, here it looks like distribution will have an effect on production, which will in turn should affect our decisions about how to distribute the surplus of production since this will affect production again. So then it looks like distribution affects production and production affects distribution. That's because distributive decisions will have an affect on the incentive structure (as a matter of human psychology) by changing people's preference orderings and thus placing us in a social dilemma. My hypothesis is that whether equal shares will lead to incentive problems -- will lead to the preference ordering of an n-person prisoner's dilemma -- depends on how much in-group identification there is. In other words, it can depend on how homogeneous the group is and might also depend on the size of the population. ___________________________________________________________ |