Archives: July 2009

Theodore Dalrymple on rights and moral imagination

Writing for the Wall Street Journal, Theodore Dalrymple (Anthony Daniels) makes the following observation:

When the supposed right to health care is widely recognized, as in the United Kingdom, it tends to reduce moral imagination. Whenever I deny the existence of a right to health care to a Briton who asserts it, he replies, “So you think it is all right for people to be left to die in the street?”

When I then ask my interlocutor whether he can think of any reason why people should not be left to die in the street, other than that they have a right to health care, he is generally reduced to silence. He cannot think of one.

Dalrymple opens his piece by noting that “concrete benefits in pursuance of abstract rights, however, can be provided by the government only by constant coercion.” The obsession with “abstract rights” is not just confined to modern liberals and socialists. This kind of metaphysical thinking about rights is just as prevalent among libertarians and neoconservatives.

Health care as a right?

To understand the background of the recent debates on health care it is instructive to look at how this issue  is being approached in “progressive” states like Oregon. Last year a Constitutional Amendment was discussed  which would declare access to health care in Oregon to be a “fundamental right.” But what is so progressive about a proposal that increases the scope of collective decision making over individual choice?

We can think of a right as a contract between two people in which both parties have agreed to accept the obligations of the agreement because it provides them mutual benefit. Evidence that such rights and obligations exist can be found in a verbal or written agreement. For example, person A is obliged to pay person B a specific amount of money, and person B is obliged to deliver A the product before an agreed date. So far, so good.

But when we talk about health care as a constitutional right we no longer talk about rights in this sense. We talk about rights as the outcome of political decision making. Rights conceived in this fashion do not reflect actual agreement between individuals but political authority. This may not be necessarily problematic when the rights in question reflect the “common good,” but rights that generate massive entitlement programs do not reflect this kind of  consensus.

The right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” reflects the freedom of individuals to live their lives as they see fit. The only obligation these “rights”  impose on others is not to interfere. These obligations can be satisfied by doing nothing and we all have an interest in having such freedoms. Such universal agreement is not possible when we talk about a right to health care. The right to health care does not just mean that people have a right to obtain medical care, but that others have an obligation to supply it.  A right to health care will impose obligations that are far reaching in nature and inevitably lead to a state-run health care system where all people are equal in having no choice and health care is rationed by “experts.”

There are many things in life we think as desirable, perhaps even necessary. But from this it does not follow that other people have an obligation to supply these things. During the 20th century there has been an increasing tendency to claim everything we desire in life as a “right.” This does not just undermine the ideal of having a government that serves the common good, it also produces a society where mutual assistance, charity, and self-reliance are increasingly undermined. The movement to make health care a constitutional right reflects a cynical view of the purpose of a Constitution. Instead of protecting fundamental freedoms that all citizens will recognize as just, the Constitution is used to secure greater protection for partisan political issues.

It is guaranteed that a constitutional right to health care will not come about without a political struggle. This itself is indicative that such a right is the outcome of non-unanimous decision making (to put it mildly) and does not represent the common good. If we secure a right to health care this way, it will not reflect right but might. It should go without saying that “might makes right” is not a progressive but an authoritarian principle to organize society.  The situation is not much different in the case of current proposals to reform health care.  If any breakthroughs will be made it will be in the form of one coalition prevailing at the expense of others.

Arthur R. Jensen against politics

At one point in the conversations between Frank Miele and Arthur R. Jensen in the book Intelligence, Race, And Genetics: Conversations With Arthur R. Jensen, Jensen becomes impatient with all the questions about his politics and makes the following statement:

You keep harping on politics. Over the years, I have become increasingly disillusioned about politics and increasingly suspicious of it. What I see of partisan politics and government’s interference in people’s lives these days lends considerable appeal to the philosophy of libertarianism, although I am not a libertarian with a capital L.

It is interesting that when scientists who are routinely identified as “fascist” actually make statements about their political views they are often in favor of limited government. Charles Murray, co-author of the The Bell Curve, even produced a little book outlining his own views called What It Means to Be a Libertarian. Is seems clear that in the case of people like  Jensen and Murray words like “fascist” are not so much used to make cognitive statements  but to intimidate the writer or (potential) reader. Using phrases from historical politics to identify the work of practicing scientists is indicative of how politicized our society has become.

Keynes and the efficient market hypothesis

Over at The Money Illusion, Scott Sumner has posted a number of blog entries about John Maynard Keynes as an investor and how it informs the debate about efficient markets:

Far from refuting the efficient markets hypothesis (EMH), the story of Keynes’ investments actually supports the buy and hold recommendations of those who adhere to the efficient markets view, “stocks for the long run.” He did best when he didn’t try to time the market, and did poorly when he engaged in fancy speculative gambles during 1928-29.

It seems to me that one of the errors that many people (including some academics) make when discussing market efficiency is to assume that the hypothesis requires that all participants in the market are rational. Since this postulate so obviously contradicts empirical reality, it is argued that economic approaches associated with market efficiency (such as New Classical Macroeconomics and Real Business Cycles) must be flawed as well. But does the efficient market hypothesis really require such a strong postulate? Is it not enough to propose that rational individuals take advantage of the profit opportunities created by those who make mistakes?

Another flaw in discussions about rationality and efficient markets is that little attention is being paid to the question whether it can be rational to be irrational. As Bryan Caplan has argued in his book The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies, the average  voter in a mass democracy does not have a strong incentive to be rational because irrationality is basically costless. Thus Caplan writes “irrationality, like ignorance, is sensitive to price, and false beliefs about politics and religion are cheap.” Linking rationality to incentives in this fashion offers the prospect for a reformulation of classical economics that can lead to improved insights into the observation that we see so much variability in the applicability of the strong rationality postulate.

Of course, the case against efficient markets is of little practical interest unless it can be argued that something meaningful can be done about it. Government intervention seems to be of little use if the incentives that shape and maintain irrational behavior apply to collective choice as well; instead, we should expect them to be worse for reasons that are unique  to government (monopoly, the absence of price mechanisms, the prospects of redistribution etc.)

Liberal and religious creationism

The blog OneSTVD [One Standard Devation] has produced a useful table that outlines the similarities between religious creationists and “blank slate” liberals:

These educated, liberal elitists believe their shallow acceptance of evolution distinguishes them from the ignorant “Jesus freaks”. Yet, it is amusing how closely liberal creationism matches the creationism supported by religious fundamentalists.

This chart reminds one of a section in Bertrand Russell’s discussion of Augustine’s philosophy and theology in his  “A History of Western Philosophy.” Russell draws attention to the similarities between Jewish/Christian eschatology and Marxist socialism:

Yahweh=Dialectical Materialism
The Messiah=Marx
The Elect=The Proletariat
The Church=The Communist Party
The Second Coming=The Revolution
Hell=Punishment of the Capitalists
The Millennium=The Communist Commonwealth

The theme that socialism and modern liberalism have been shaped by, or at least display, quasi-religious, anti-realist,  and puritan tendencies has recently received interesting support in a recent piece on the early religious thinking of the political philosopher John Rawls.

Further reading:

The New Enemies of Evolutionary Science

Liberal Creationism and Transhumanism

HT Secular Right