Why do we disagree?

This question matters.  It determines the scope of debate and helps us understand differing viewpoints.  It is also answered with confusion or misinformation with hilarious frequency.  I'll touch on how to think about these disagreements and briefly highlight some examples of confusion in the tax and voter ID debates.  Anyway, why do we disagree?

In politics, it seems to come down to a few things:

1. Differing, empirically testable, ideas about the world (facts)
2. Differing, empirically testable, ideas about how the world works (models)
3. Differing ideas about the proper values and goals of society 
4. Differing ideas about the proper powers of government

or, if you like:

1. What is the world like?
2. What can we do about it?
3. What should we do about it?
4. How shouldn't we do it?

None of that is terribly controversial, but I think that people often confuse the origins of their disagreement.  

I often, for instance, hear conservatives saying that the government shouldn't raise taxes on the rich, but depending on who you talk to, the answer to why varies a lot.  For some it is "because they are job creators", but for others it is "because it isn't fair".  These world views have the same conclusion, but different implications.  We can, to some extent, test the proposition that raising taxes will mean less job creation.  If a person genuinely believes this to be the primary reason not to raise taxes on the rich, then empirical arguments are the most appropriate forum of discussion.  For the "it isn't fair" person, the proper arguments are philosophical--diminishing marginal utility, &c.  Of course, people often convolve many different types of reasons, or simply hold positions as an aspect of group identity, but the basic point still stands.

Now, I don't think it is impossible to convince people to change their positions in 3 & 4 type disagreements, but it's substantially harder.  It is, however, possible to give people better access to facts, and in many cases that changes the nature of the discussion for the better.

Presenting evidence of the extremely low incidence of voter ID fraud, for instance, seems to have shifted the debate from "we need to curb rampant voter ID fraud" to "it is right and proper for voters to show ID in order to vote".  In other words, the debate has shifted from an empirical one to an ideological one.  From my perspective, that is good, because ideological questions are the only valid questions to ask voters in my idealized constitutional anarchy model of government.   Voters are, in fact, quite bad at discerning which facts and models best reflect the real world.  But, they are excellent at determining what they think are good goals to focus on as a society, and what they think are categorically unacceptable ways of achieving those goals.

I'll have more on practical applications of this idea, and ways in which it might help move the debate forward in a later post.

Random Representation

Despite routine assertions of the moral superiority of Democracy, people seem uncomfortable with any ideas about implementing one in which the people actually decide anything (we're talking about direct democracy here).  We often get excuses about this under the heading of "impracticality", though in the internet age that argument gets increasingly difficult to swallow.  It really seems like people are just uncomfortable with the idea.

Consider this thought experiment proposed by Yglesias (an experiment bearing marked similarities to conversations my lab mates and I have had in the past few months).  Basically the idea goes like this:

1. Assume that direct democracy is still unfeasible for logistical reasons.
2. A mathematically pleasing proxy is just to take a random statistically representative sampling of the population and make them the representatives of the people.  Do that, and let them rule.

or

3. In Yglesias' argument, you make them a sort of check on the actual governing body (say a city council and/or mayor or whatever) so that they are just approving (or denying) actions and budgets rather than making policies, and occasionally deciding whether we need a new governing body.

One would imagine that almost by definition this would better represent the spread of views in the population than the results of a "winner takes all" style election.  I know you all agree with me, but are still squirming in your seats as you contemplate the various sorts of people who would get minor positions of authority in this setting.  I like Yglesias' take on it, because it makes them into a sort of check on the person or people doing the actual governance, rather than the governors themselves, which seems to alleviate the majority of my squirming (a squirming I firmly believe is more closely tied to prejudice than to practicality).  I can even imagine that in the right small town you might be able to convince people to agree to give this a try.  Anyone want to form a new community with me and give this a shot?

Practical Anarchy

Last post I discussed Wolff's book In Defense of Anarchism and promised to talk about a potential way out of his assertion that no practical government can have moral legitimacy.  Now I'm following through on that promise.  So Wolff puts forth that Unanimous Direct Democracy can have authority without undermining personal moral autonomy.  Within that section, he points out that even arbitration can be codified within such a system.  Those two points are the basis for my idea of a practical form of governance by practical direct democracy.  I need a catchy term for this form of government.  Here are the ingredients I think we need to make this work.

1. Unanimous passage of items in a bill of rights.
2. Unanimous passage of a process for ascertaining the best ways to guarantee these rights.

It seems to me that the vast majority of politics isn't about the right thing to do, it's about the right way to do it.  Democrats and Republicans alike agree that people have a right to life, for instance, and that the taking of a life without due process and control is unacceptable, they disagree on the best way of ensuring that life taking is minimized.  In our government, there is no mechanism for finding the best way, testing enacted laws to verify they are in fact improving the situation, or rigorously studying the impact of our legal strategies at all.

I think that a large and diverse group of people could agree upon a significant number of fundamental rights if asked to consider merely the right thing without concern for its implications or practical significance.

Then comes the tricky part.  This group of people would need to agree on a mechanism for developing procedures to protect the rights they have codified.  This is akin to an arbitration process.  Personally, I would advocate the scientific method.  Allow people to propose mechanisms for enhancing protections of the codified rights.  Require rigor in these proposals.  In other words, place the burden on the bill writer to demonstrate that the bill does not contradict existing rights, and has a plausible mechanism for enhancing the support or protection of one of those rights, and provides metrics by which the impact of the bill could be measured.  Select several proposals at random, and apply them to test groups determined in an appropriately random and statistically rigorous manner.  If the law is found to violate existing rights by some unintended consequence it is immediately abolished.  If, after an appropriate trial period, the law is found not to significantly improve the metric(s) it provided, it is abolished.  If it succeeds in improving its metrics appropriately, its scope is progressively expanded, its impacts reverified, and its consistency with the bill of rights reevaluated, until such time as it is implemented nationwide.  Following nationwide implementation, bills are periodically reviewed for consistency with the bill of rights (though their efficacy is no longer tested as there is no control population).

I think that a large number of people could agree to this strategy or one like it, and I think that such a governance strategy would create a government capable of developing a recognizable and appropriately far reaching legal code without undermining the moral autonomy of the population.  Let's call it a Constitutional Anarchy.  This is my current best effort with regards to an ideal form of governance, and it is basically going to be the yardstick by which I judge ongoing legal and political discussions in the US.

Here are the questions I would ask of any law or political policy.

1. Does it attempt to protect or enhance a universally acknowledged right? (answer should be yes)
2. Does it impede any universally acknowledged rights? (answer should be no)
3. Does it provide rigorous support for its chosen strategy? (answer should be yes)
4. Does it provide for the measurement of its impact, and repeal if shown to be ineffective? (answer should be yes)

I think those are in order of importance, but I'd say that giving the wrong answer to any of 1-3 should be a deal breaker.

In Defense of Anarchism

So, that's the title of a book I've just been reading.  It basically consists of a formal evaluation of Democracy's claim to increased inherent goodness over other forms of government.  Its initial premise is that every person is morally autonomous, and its conclusion is that there is no morally valid form of government, and that Democracy  is no better than anything else in this regard.  Here are some interesting highlights:

1. Direct Unanimous Democracy is the only way to reconcile moral autonomy with state authority.  In other words, the only morally valid state is one which only has laws agreed upon by every single one of its citizens.

2. There is no extant democracy which is even internally consistent.  In other words, majority voting systems can produce results that are internally inconsistent.  This is related to Arrow's Impossibility Theorem which is a super interesting result demonstrating the impossibility of generating reasonable voting systems.  Direct Unanimous Democracy is not subject to these challenges because, well, it only does something if every single person agrees.

The basic argument of the book is that we are all obliged to carefully consider what is right and wrong and act accordingly, and that acknowledging the authority of another is tantamount to abandoning that responsibility.  In other words, if you say someone is an authority, you are saying that you should do what they say because they are the ones saying it, not because you agree with them or whatever.  If you grant that an entity has authority, then you are saying that, within the scope of their authority, their moral judgement supersedes your own.  Therefore, authority is fundamentally at odds with moral autonomy.  The only way to get around this problem is to ensure that the authority in question is in fact only enforcing your own moral judgments upon you.  The only way to guarantee this situation is for the authority to only enforce laws upon you to which you have explicitly agreed.  That way, if you step out you're doing so against your considered moral judgement, and it is right and just that the state place you back on your proper path.  It basically makes the state a giant shared conscience.  Of course, direct unanimous democracy is tantamount to anarchy.  


Wolff argues that this means that no practical and morally valid government can ever be constructed.  Before I read the book, I agreed with him.  I think that he provides a way out of his contradiction, Which I'll discuss in my next post.