Political Vision
Thera P wrote an excellent piece yesterday entitled "Vision Quest". I wrote an extended comment on that piece today, but by the time I posted it, Thera's original post had disappeared from the recent posts list. So I would like to post my comment again here.
As I said in my comment, I appreciate the thought and earnest moral searching that went into Thera's piece. But I would like to play a few dissonant notes.
Thera says we are experiencing "a meltdown precipitated by the deceit and selfishness and greed of unscrupulous financiers, whose only allegiance was to the almighty dollar and their cronies in crime." This puts far too much emphasis, I believe, on the individual moral failures of certain capitalists, and not enough on the structural problems, legal inadequacies and institutional deformities of the American capitalist order. So long as we stay focused on the trees of the alleged moral depravity of individuals, and respond on that individual plane, whether with outrage or compassion, to the moral or spiritual failure of other individuals, we will miss the social forest. The chief problem is not immoral or amoral individuals. Rather, we have a legal-economic system in the United States that is bound to produce the kinds of outcomes we are seeing now.
Thera's analysis suggests that our chief response to the challenge should be to work on the moral and spiritual improvement of individuals. This is the "bad apples" theory of social problems. It suggests we have a system of laws and institutions that are capable of working fine, and will advance humane values, so long as we have humane individuals manning the positions of this system. I don't believe that is the right diagnosis of the central problem we are facing. We have a bad system. That system hones and fashions the mores of the people who are constrained to work within it. It establishes the basic framework of rules and constraints, of incentives and norms, of what is required and what is permitted, and the outcomes we get are pretty much those that we should expect when ordinary human nature is combined with these flawed structural design features of the social and legal order. If we want better outcomes, we need to act politically to change that order.
I worry that the kind of psychological and spiritual discourse that Thera is engaging in, in response to a social problem like the one we face now, is another expression of Americans' extreme individualism, and consequent apolitical politics. In its own way, the discourse suggests "it's about me". It asks, what can I do to make myself a better person? But it's not about me. It's about us, collectively. The chief question is what can we do, working collectively, to improve the social order.
I don't believe the focus on individual spiritual improvement is either practical, or would achieve the desired results. That's because you can stuff self-actualized Ericksonian saints in the mouths at one end at the corporate system, in their personnel offices, and after passing through the goose of the corporate-based system, those saints are going to wind up in a few years time at the other end, hustling and scamming and running pyramid schemes. The system we have created is a bundle of inherently competitive and anti-social incentive structures, and it produces people who are driven by those incentives.
We can't wait for a religious revolution, or a new Great Awakening. We can't wait for everyone to become self-actualized or to achieve enlightenment, or to experience their truest inward vision. We need politics and wide-ranging social reform.
The other day, somebody posted Obama's comment from 2008 about a reporter's question about "going green." Obama said that we're not going to solve climate change because "I changed a f-ing lightbulb." He said it was about something larger that we do collectively. Repairing American society, which is broken and defective, is not about changing your personal spiritual lightbulb. It's a different kind of project.
"we will miss the social forest"
There is no social forest outside the psyches of individuals, so morality remains an individual issue. Trying to turn the issue into "not about individual morality" is simply dishonest. One could of course talk about the issue AS IF it were not reflections of individuals in a kind of statistical ensemble, but that would of course be only fiction. Not that fiction doesn't play a role in how people think and judge things, but proclaiming a fiction as superior is simply Fundamentalist Bible Thumping for Secularists.
"Rather, we have a legal-economic system in the United States that is bound to produce the kinds of outcomes we are seeing now. "
That is not the problem, that is the sound structure of individual choice in a social matrix which allows for free will. When trees go bad 'en masse' you can talk about the forest AS IF it had a disease, but each diseased tree IS the problem.
"We have a bad system. That system hones and fashions the mores of the people who are constrained to work within it."
No. People make choices within a loosely defined "system". Your view is worse that old communism, where the state dictates to the individual.
"But it's not about me. It's about us, collectively."
Your delusional denial is noted for its psychological aberrance. No offense personally, but you're full of collective horsefeathers. It is about "me" and "my" beliefs about what is right and wrong, acceptable and unacceptable, and finally, desirable and undesirable. The "collective" is a fiction, handy for armchair sociologists and the like.
"We need politics and wide-ranging social reform."
We need politics? Or we need political reform?
The thing to remember is that the best reform is within the individuals who make up the social system, not in imposing artificial restraints from outside in. Social reform may be a good here, but it doesn't happen "out there", it happens within many "in heres".
April 3, 2009 11:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
This post mischaracterizes both my post and the points it was making. (Indeed, this post is an example of the kind of thing we need to leave behind.)
I commend eds (above) for a stirring rebuttal of the poster's contentions.
April 4, 2009 9:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
You surprise me, TheraP.
I didn't realize you were a libertarian.*
* The "collective" is a fiction, handy for armchair sociologists and the like. eds
April 4, 2009 1:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
Neither did I, Ellen, until I had a recent conversation with PseudoCyAnts. I'm still not sure what it means - but it does seem that in the leftist sense I may somewhat fit there. On the other hand, I am not one to like labels. So I'd be wary of asserting that. (or any program which libertarians would be out to implement - even as a Dem, I'm a person of my own views - and while I vote for them, I've never "joined" the party, nor am I currently registered that way - as there's no such kind of registration where I live)
Ok, given the exact quote you took out - actually I think "abstractions" are convenient fictions we make use of. We can't prove them in a sense - and often they make for very fuzzy sets. I like the word community - the idea of an assemblage of people working together. The word "collective" has kind of a Marxist ring to me - but what do I know?
I must admit, Ellen, I read you often, but nearly always what you write is so cryptic I can hardly follow it. No offense meant by that: Your comments are often (to me) like Delphic comments - and I'm not always able to parse them. Kudos to you!
I'm not sure whether I've answered you or not. And I'm not sure I can!
April 4, 2009 2:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
Delphic? Me?
I'm merely attempting -- in my small, Nietzschean way -- to remystify our quotidian discourse.
April 4, 2009 2:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
Collective does sound Marxian. Let's bridge gaps.
We are all One in the body of the Ubermensch.
HAHAHAH!!! Think about the different strands of thought married in that one!!!
April 4, 2009 2:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
"remystify" - frankly, I love that idea!!!
April 4, 2009 5:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
Acknowledging individual responsibility does not make one a Libertarian and only slightly makes one a libertarian. The denial of individual responsibility, OTOH, makes one a slave or a member of the Borg.
One does have a choice, in one's indvidiuality, whether to hold, say, socialist or libertarian or fascist stances. That is, the correct understanding of the role of society here is as a function within the individual. TheraP is close when she writes about "abstraction". We each carry our own abstractions with us. The maps of the world we carry around are not the world itself, generally.
April 4, 2009 3:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thank you, eds. Very helpful.
April 4, 2009 5:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
You're welcome. If you ever want to elaborate on what help you see/find in a comment, I'd like to know your reasoning/intuitions.
Did you catch my other reply to you down a bit? http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/dan_k/2009/04/political-vision.php#comment-3429990
I also replied to another of Dan's comments farther down... I'm going to rec. this blog despite my dislike of the original post.
April 4, 2009 5:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thank you for flagging that. By all means, rec'd the blog. At this point it is a companion piece to mine...
And the new one:
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/therap/2009/04/the-value-of-mistrust-part-ii.php
April 4, 2009 5:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think I prefer you not shaken but stirred! :-)
April 4, 2009 3:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ok. Sounds good to me. :-)
April 4, 2009 5:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
If my interpretation is wrong, then I am happy to be corrected. But I presented my views in good faith and with courtesy, and I have to say that eds' reply is both petulant and rude, including an amateur diagnosis of me as "psychologically aberrant".
Let me approach the point I am trying to make from a different direction:
One problem people have been much concerned about lately is exorbitant executive salaries. I am one of those who believes that these salaries are, in many sectors, far too high. Now, if we want a society in which executive salaries are lower, and in which a firm's profits are distributed more evenly among their employees, we have a straightforward democratic means available to us for accomplishing these changes. We can write and enact laws that make it illegal for firms to pay their top executives so much money and give them such outlandish bonus. Or long the same lines, we could write tax laws that allow firms to pay their executives high salaries, but then tax away a very high percentage of those salaries. Either way, this is a political approach to the problem.
Another approach would be to engage in moral or spiritual criticism of the character of business-people. I don't believe this will be effective. Even if such criticism succeeds in getting some small number of business-people to engage in serious moral self-appraisal and self-improvement, and to change their way of life, this will be a drop in the bucket. Other individuals engaging in the usual patterns of profit-driven business behavior will just take their place.
That's because, in the end, these people are just playing by the rules of the highly individualistic and anti-social American system of commerce. The American business culture is thoroughly dominated by and characterized by competition, self-interest and the pursuit of private material profit. Those values and behaviors are endorsed and reinforced by the structural rules and laws that are grafted into the very DNA of the American system. If you want to lessen the influence of these values and behaviors, you need to change the rules of a system that promotes them.
Many human beings are driven almost entirely by the pursuit of self-interest. There always have been such human beings. From earliest times, moral and social commentators have noted natural human tendencies toward self-love, avarice, aggression, gluttony etc. that, if left unchecked, lead to outcomes that are very bad for society, and even for those individuals themselves. To combat these natural tendencies, like Ulysses having himself tied to the mast, we have to establish firm constraints on our own and others' behavior so that, acting within those constraints, we achieve better overall outcomes.
We also possess other capacities for love, empathy and compassion. But the potential profound selfishness exists withing all of us, and some exhibit this tendency more than others. I see no evidence for believing that those self-interested and sometimes avaricious tendencies will ever be expunged from the human condition. So, if you create an economic system in which those natural, selfish human tendencies are actively promoted, are granted free reign, and are unchecked by laws and other institutional rules that reflect broader social and human values, then you will get the very sorts of harmful social outcomes we are now experiencing.
Merely ranting and railing against the depravity of bankers and business people will have very little effect. Societies are fashioned by the rule of law, and by the systems of incentives and behavioral reinforcements that are subject to rational evaluation and political control of human beings. We are entitled to try to build the sort of society we want, and to do so we need to act politically to erect its legal and institutional foundations.
April 4, 2009 11:14 AM | Reply | Permalink
I apologize for overstating my case.
But I hold that the general points stand. That is, my argument does not rest on fallacies, the "rudeness" was hyperbole not essence.
April 4, 2009 3:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
Dan, some of what you describe fits well what I called the "banality of evil" in terms of how people are inculcated into torture. But still, people designed the torture and designed the fraudulent financial practices.
April 4, 2009 5:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
'inure' in the sense of "To habituate to something undesirable, especially by prolonged subjection; accustom" but not so much in the indirect senses of
"
2. to come into use; take or have effect.
3. to become beneficial or advantageous."
April 4, 2009 5:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
But one can habituate for only so long - and that pertains to my next blog in this series.
April 4, 2009 5:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
At the risk of over-simplifying, may I offer a short Dan k?
"We have a system of governance in place and can enact laws, within the framework of respecting individual rights, that will enable us to have the kind of society we want to have."
Single pay healthcare would be a good example of that at work. We can do it. The constitution would allow it. It would mean passing laws that serve the people over the objections of lobbyists, but it can be done.
This is the essence of politics -- an ironically maligned word on a political web site.
April 4, 2009 11:20 AM | Reply | Permalink
Excellent ideas, destor. (My only concern here is that the poster has taken a stand for something which has nothing to do with my own post - and as if what I am engaged in there is irrelevant or opposed to the legal process. Laws fit within a society. Laws fit within a framework of reasoning. Our legal system has badly abused some individuals and is not a fair system at all. Thus the importance of taking a wider view of communities. I'm all for laws. I'm all for single payer. But to set up arbitrary forced choices (of thinking) - as if they are incompatible or the only ways to view things - is not helpful.)
April 4, 2009 11:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
Perfect example: We have a Constitution - but bush figured he was above the law. We have laws against torture..... how did that work out? And why? Laws do not occur within a vacuum. People, who are intent on subverting the law, are a problem.
April 4, 2009 12:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
It seems that Dan wants to legislate morality and worse, to legislate love, beauty, etc. too.
I agree that we CAN pass laws which MIGHT pass as not unConstitutional. But Dan ignores enlightened self-interest when he discusses self-interest. Given that we are all individuals even if operating in both a mental social network and an ensemble of loosely linked actors we can call a society of people, it is the role of education to teach the selfish child about the larger social picture, not the role of political laws on the books. Yes, we have and need some laws on the books to guide law enforcement and the courts. No, passing more laws is hardly the solution, even if some tweaking of law is part of the solution.
April 4, 2009 3:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
That surely fits with Erikson's stages. And the idea that older persons want to pass along wisdom - naturally in a form children can understand. Not only to pass it along, but to pass on ways of thinking and reasoning so that they can make wise decisions and sound judgments.
I have appreciated this discussion, eds. :-)
Check out my new blog if you like.
April 4, 2009 5:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
What can be passed on, and How can be passed on.
If one is careless the How can hide the What, or vice versa. This is why a good teacher sets a good example, doesn't merely pass on "facts". But sometimes one student's good example is only confusing or misleading to another. This is why tutoring or mentoring can be more effective than public teaching, never mind "arguing over the internet"!
I'll try to look at your new blog soon.
April 4, 2009 5:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, it's not just facts. It has to do with how one reasons, behaves, judges one's behavior and so on. Very complicated. Moral reasoning is part of it.
April 4, 2009 6:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
How one reasons depends on the confusions in one's psyche/mind. Clear minded reasoners reason differently than those with significant confusions present. In one view, it's a matter of formality, or form-ality, similar to Plato's ideas of Forms.
April 4, 2009 8:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
Dan, I think you're partly right. The laws matter. The architecture of the system matters. It has been deformed over the years and that encouraged a lot of the behavior we saw. It, as you suggest, pushed the incentive to misbehave. It was a bad barrel, not a collection of bad apples.
However, I think you're missing where Thera is coming from. Thera is using a very nuanced position. It's not about bad apples or bad barrels. It's about bad barrel MAKERS. Now, people make the barrels, but these people have attitudes, beliefs, and basic assumptions. So, this follows your idea that political vision is a collective enterprise--not an individual one. I never read Thera's post and felt it was about self-improvement. I only understood it as collective improvement.
AS Obama says in The Audacity of Hope, if people's basic assumptions about rules don't change, then our entire legal system is founded upon ink on paper. It's the meaning of the ink that matters, but how we apply the meaning matters most. I think you and Thera are actually in agreement.
April 4, 2009 1:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
Dan, I don't really see your problem. There's a crisis in the structure of the economy and in the fabric of the law. And then there is a broader social crisis which underlies these problems. They didn't pop out of nowhere. We are all very happy to discuss concrete policy reform. And we are all very happy to discuss broader psycho-social phenomena. And sometimes we even get into metaphysics. All these questions are interesting. Some are more important than others. Feel free to join in the ones that interest you.
April 4, 2009 1:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ask yourselves this: Why don’t more people embezzle money from their companies? For many, it’s because they possess an internal ethical compass that tells them that is an inappropriate way to behave. Others may be guided by an inner spiritual light of compassion so that they don’t even have any temptation to harm others. But for many others, it’s because they risk being caught and sent to jail.
Why does a mortgage officer not hustle his client into taking a mortgage way beyond the client’s ability to pay? Some might have that strong moral compass or spiritual light. Others, though, are motivated more by the institutional and legal framework of accountability that turns responsible behavior into a matter of self-interest. For such people, the way they are kept from screwing others is by being handed rules, and by being made aware that there will be various personal prices to pay if they break the rules. If that system of potentially punitive accountability breaks down, human selfishness takes over and runs wild.
I tend reject the idea that what we have witnessed over the past few years in the financial sector is some sort of moral breakdown. We have experienced a breakdown in government and in regulatory frameworks. Yes, many bankers and financiers are greedy and selfish. But bankers and financiers have always been greedy and selfish. People who are filled with the milk of human kindness and sociable fellow-feeling become teachers and nurses and firefighters. People who want to amass a large personal fortune by outfoxing others in the buying and selling of pork bellies, bonds or financial derivatives go into capitalist finance.
The idea behind capitalism is that you let these self-interested money-grubbers do their money-grubbing thing, and by doing their thing – which might not be morally attractive in itself - they produce economic efficiencies and benefits for the rest of us. That’s how our system has always worked.
But it is a system fraught with the potential for producing panics and collapses, and that is bound to attract a fair share of flim-flam artists, loan sharks, numbers runners, swindlers and Ponzi schemers. So how do you keep the whole thing from rapidly degenerating into an economically catastrophic frenzy of swindles and counter-swindles? You keep the practitioners in a tight legal box. You create strict, enforceable rules that set limits on the degree to which they can hustle their fellow-man. And you send people to jail for breaking these rules.
The current crop of capitalist money-hounds is probably no morally better or worse than earlier crops, as any acquaintance with the history of American finance would reveal.
But beginning especially with the Reagan administration, and continuing for a quarter of a century, the old laws and regulatory frameworks that kept the financial sector in check were relaxed and unwound. And new laws that were desperately needed as new financial instruments were created were never enacted. If you don’t have strong laws and strong regulatory enforcement of those laws, ordinary capitalists are going to do their ordinary, madcap capitalist thing, and proliferate recklessness, exploitation, swindles and abusive “creative destruction.” We need more laws, and the political will to enforce them. This can done; it’s been done before.
And it’s not just a matter of regulating this or that trading window for this or that financial derivative. Money talks. Money always has talked. To preserve democratic governance over the long run you need to preserve some degree of rough economic equality, and prevent people from amassing so much money that they overwhelm the capacity of the much poorer majority to control them through democratic governance. If you allow people to grow fantastically rich, you can expect that those people will use their money-power to game the political system and subvert democratic governance. You can’t count on the ethical compasses of the wealthy to prevent abuses.
You walk into the city square and see a pride of lions. They have escaped from the zoo and are munching on the body parts of the townspeople they have hunted down and killed. One response is to say, “My, what has happened to the lions these days? They are so gluttonous! We have certainly seen a breakdown in the moral character of lion!”
I think a better response is, “Who let the damn lions out of their cages?”
April 4, 2009 2:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
Dan, I don't think anyone would argue against that. "Who let the damn lions out of their cages?" is a proper response. I think the next prudent response is, "WHY did someone let the lions out of their cages?" And then, "WHAT did we miss about the character of the cage guards?" And then, "HOW do we prevent this from happening again?"
The WHO is the starting point. Thera is just onto the WHAT, the WHY, and the HOW...
April 4, 2009 2:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
While I agree with the three responses you propose, I would definately reverse the sequence.
April 4, 2009 3:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
DanK, while I put together my comment to stand alone, you posted this one. I like the metaphor of the lions. They were just acting on common lion nature. Until that part of lion nature changes they need to be kept out of the city square,in cages if necessary.
Recommended.
While trying to formulate my thoughts on this subject I have mainly thought about how the rules of the system affect both the values and the actions of actors within our country's system of business.
Think of the old adage. “Honesty is the best policy”. That is distinctly different than saying, “Honesty is the right policy”, although both statements are correct, I believe. In my thinking, honesty here includes ethical fair play even if an action is not illegal.
“Best policy” is about pragmatism and pragmatic action to reach a desirable goal. Honest actions by all actors in business just make business work better. It is more efficient, more productive, and the benefits of the efficient production are more equitably shared.
“Right policy” is about values. In the real world, doing right may or may not pay off, but if the actors in business were all to believe that they should be honest and were able to live up to that value then the benefits of the pragmatic choice to be honest in our dealings would require no coercion.
The interaction of the “pragmatic” reasons and the “right” reasons can affect each other in both directions. It is not hard to imagine a business person who, when faced with a situation where he could get away with ripping off someone else and would do so because the payoff was big enough to overcome his values but the fact of doing so would become known to others and so he might decide, pragmatically, that it was in his business's long term interest to maintain his reputation as a straight shooter. People might honor him as a straight shooter and he might even internalize more strongly the feeling that honesty is “right”. Other's value of honesty might be reinforced by seeing him so honored.
Another possibility is that his business peers do the dirty deed, get rich, and laugh at him for being a naive fool. If the action becomes common business practice he might justify it, change his action, get rich and go to the country club where his peers now honor him as smart and, more importantly, successful and the person who he ripped off is too poor to belong and so is not around to remind him that he has become a scumbag. His conscience might as well be clear if it is never confronted.
If dishonest policy, and remember that that includes the legal but unethical or unfair, is allowed to become the most pragmatic way of getting rich and and then enjoying all the benefits of being rich, then we will get dishonest action. The system, or some of its components, like, for instance the laws, must be changed. [I am beginning to feel stupid here, pointing out the obvious to a group of obviously smart people.]
I am all for humankind having some sort of awakening which leads it to a higher plain. If we survive as a species for a long enough time I think it might happen. Meanwhile, dealing with today's humans who have today's mixes and mashes of human nature, I think we must, if we are to be successful, keep tinkering with the system so that it first encourages, but then, if necessary, coerces, honest dealings. This will help us to survive in a world that provides both the creature comforts and therefore the opportunity to work on our individual and group advances towards that higher plain.
I think this all means that I agree with DanK. I don't think it means that I disagree with TheraP.
April 4, 2009 3:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
Instead of "awakening" and I never used that term, I suggest you read my next blog - which I've been busy writing while you folks were having this fascinating discussion.
April 4, 2009 5:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
"I tend reject the idea that what we have witnessed over the past few years in the financial sector is some sort of moral breakdown. We have experienced a breakdown in government and in regulatory frameworks."
Your rejection is your limit, Dan. You should accept both what you here reject AND also accept another aspect. But I would argue that what you call a "breakdown in government" is largely if not entirely a moral failure in government. When Donaldson allowed super-leveraging and Cox kept it that way, those were moral failures of government. When they allowed "firms" to only self-monitor, that was another moral failure. The legal authority was there. The laws did not fail, the regulators did (in this case). And a lot of the mortgage problems were fraud, not lack of laws.
To use your lion story, it's like putting laissez-faire zookeepers who believe that lions should not be kept in cages in charge of the lion house. Which is the old foxes guarding the henhouse story in another flavor. Donaldson and Cox effectively committed treason by abandoning their sworn duties. They should be behind bars, though not necessarily in the lions' den.
No system can prevent all immoral or amoral conduct. But shifting the focus away from the moral aspects is promoting a delusional state. If you try to put more teeth into the law, at some point I'm sure you'd have to agree you're creating a tyranny, not freeing a sound democracy.
April 4, 2009 3:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
My view, eds, is that what motivated the people who let the lions out of their cages was a defective ideology: a set of sincerely held but mistaken beliefs about the likely consequences of diminished government control of financial markets. The people who promoted this social design, and there were many in both parties, sincerely believed that we all do best when government just leaves people alone. They sincerely believed that the market is self-regulating, and that bad practices are efficiently driven out, without much damage to the broader society, because they are found to be unprofitable. They believed that the invisible hand of the free and unrestrained market is a more effective provider of the optimal social outcomes than the coercive hand of government regulation, no matter how moderate and democratically directed that government hand is. The people with this ideology aren't evil. They were just wrong.
And the economic collapse we are facing, born of a preposterously inflated speculative bubble of exuberance in the housing market, and an out-of-control, opaque, mortgage-backed derivatives market erected on top of that bubble, isn't mainly the effect of villainy. Its the accumulated result of a bad decision here and an irresponsible choice there, and a too-risky venture over there. Thousands and even millions of people contributed a single misplaced card to what became a massive, tottering house of cards that has now collapsed. Our financial system is fueled by risk. But the overall amount of risk involved was allowed to grow much too large and too opaque. This is a systematic failure, a result of bad design. It's a failure to effectively oversee, monitor and regulate our economic activity.
If we adopt a libertarian approach to this problem, we will get the same thing all over again. Small and ineffective government was the problem; its not the solution.
April 4, 2009 5:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
"The people with this ideology aren't evil. They were just wrong."
It depends on which people. I would argue there were both wrong and evil at work. Donaldson was evil for violating his oath of office. People who made bad bets were not necessarily evil. These fine distinctions are, I believe, important. To ignore them is to have only a hammer and then treat everything as a nail.
"... This is a systematic failure, a result of bad design. It's a failure to effectively oversee, monitor and regulate our economic activity."
Again, you have not made the case that this failure was more a matter of bad design than non-moral conduct by the monitors and regulators. Until you can admit both, your position is extreme and merely polemical.
"If we adopt a libertarian approach to this problem, we will get the same thing all over again."
Maybe, but you're arguing a strawman there. And I've explicitly explained this in a recent prior comment, I believe re Ellen http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/dan_k/2009/04/political-vision.php#comment-3429987 . I'm not arguing for ordinary Libertarian government here, I'm arguing for a sane and balanced approach to problem-solving. While I do have Libertarian leanings, I also have Socialist and Capitalist (and Other) leanings.
April 4, 2009 6:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
"... This is a systematic failure, a result of bad design. It's a failure to effectively oversee, monitor and regulate our economic activity."
"Again, you have not made the case that this failure was more a matter of bad design than non-moral conduct by the monitors and regulators. Until you can admit both, your position is extreme and merely polemical."
eds,it seems to me that non-moral behavior is so likely to happen wihin a financial system when that behavior will benefit the non-moral actor that we can predict it to happen with odds aproaching absolute certainty. Therefore, the system must have ways of preeventing such actions. These may be pre-emptive regulations and oversight or penalties for the bad actors when they are exposed. The system liely needs both.
If non-moral actors are able to enrich themselve by their actions at catastrophic cost to the country while acting within the law, even though outside the bounds of morality, it should be obviously self-eveident that the system is defective. If a good system could have prevented the problem it is fair to say that a system that didn't prevent the problem is a bad, or flawed, system.
Yes, an observance of a moral code could have prevented the bad actions but we cannot count on that observance so we need a well functioning system that will.
April 4, 2009 7:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
I didn't read Dan K's desire to distinguish between the idea of systems vs. the significance of individual motivation as a statement that individual motives did not matter at all in the greater scheme of things. My reading is heavily influenced by years of listening when he raised the question of motivation about particular individuals in government. He has often wondered about who will guard us from the guardians.
The issue is not about mutual exclusivity but whether focus upon one factor becomes a mask or diversion that allows one (or us) to dodge the problems inherent to another factor.
Why should there be a big hurry to make his argument not an argument? Isn't our entire polity hanging upon whether we can argue about this or not?
April 4, 2009 7:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
Discussing vs. arguing.
As long as he posts grossly one-sided posts/comments, I'm likely to notice that. When he acknowledges a balance or delves deeper into one side, so much the better.
April 4, 2009 8:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
And interesting discussion overall but to this statement;
I have to disagree on this point. I do think it is a recent catastrophic moral breakdown in the financial sector which is reflective in a broader collective moral breakdown in society caused by elevating the idea that unregulated capitalism/free markets being on the level of an inalienable right. We, as a society, have come to define our 'freedom' in terms of not what 'rights' we possess but how much goods we can individually amass. Right now in America the 'right' we cherish the most is the our right to an unfettered Capitalistic system above all other rights. I have always felt that all of our rights flow from the first amendment but now I am thinking that has changed and they now flow from the Commerce Clause. When young men and women graduating from our Ivy League schools are asked about the movie Wall Street they generally view Gordon Gekko as a role model then we should realize our society/culture has a defective moral compass. Increasing wealth should never result in an increased level of rights under the Constitution...but that is exactly where we find ourselves currently.
April 4, 2009 6:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
Amen, libertine!
April 4, 2009 7:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
But can you spread the blame of a moral lapse in the financial sector as a failure of individuals in society generally? In simplistic terms, the problem was just the fox guarding the chicken coop. Reagan came in with the Randian idea of free markets and the big Wall Street players managed to install their people into government or lobby some of our more corporate-owned representatives for deregulation.
How many average people had any idea of what was happening to the system set up, much of it in the wake of the Great Depression, to control fraud? How many people were even thinking about Wall Street and big banks just a year ago?
Alan Greenspan to Brooksley Born, some time before he, Rubin and Summers killed her derivatives regulations:
April 4, 2009 8:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
I do think that blame can be spread around a bit Don. In our society each citizen, at least in theory, has a responsibility in our collective self governing. Very few take any interest in that at all. Then they are shocked and dismayed when we have crises like the current one. Our government was established with all the tools necessary for 'we the people' to run our government, whether it succeeds or fails is up to us.
As far as Greenspan goes...I think the man, and all devotees of Laissez Faire Capitalism, is either insane, delusional or is in it for the money/power.
April 4, 2009 9:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
Absolutely, Libertine. If we’re a society, we’re collectively accountable both in the abstract and in carrying out real civic responsibilities. Still, we elect our leaders to represent us, but seem more often fooled into electing those who best pretend to represent the people but in fact represent those in the shadows who fund them.
There are major differences between the two parties that have locked up our government. But both have had their interests captured by K-street and Wall Street to the detriment of Main Streeet.
G.W. Bush could have pulled the same shtick that he did with WMDs, looking around the room and claiming,“Nope, no evil-doers here.”Is it America's fault that we elected him and he who went on to twist our government into some evil-doing thing?
No doubt, he should hold no position higher than a crossing guard and we did allow him to take the WH. But he was elected with the aid of some devious propaganda and an apathetic public, and I don’t think we're individually responsible for his secret edicts and secret prisons and secret police state.
I'm not responsible for what my next door neighbor goes out and steals in the middle of the night. It may be an ideal for all to become our brother's keeper in a global sense, but it's impractical so we have a system with built in checks and balances and laws and regulations.
Our lawmakers and regulators and enforcers have failed us. In this long-brewing financial calamity, where fraud has been perpetuated wholesale against an unsuspecting public and under the color of law, it is the fraudsters and lawmakers who are responsible, morally and legally.
April 4, 2009 10:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah our problems are very institutionalized and bi-partisan and they have been for a VERY long time (decades?). We are being kept under control, and distracted, by organized religion and pop culture. A 'free press', which is supposed to be the watchdog of government for us, is now part of the corporate MSM and covering an economic crisis which their company has a very vested interest in. But I digress...
Checks and balances are the key...and that key has been broken. Not only the ones between the branches of government but the ones the people have responsibility for in demanding accountability from our government. Since WWII the US has been in a state of perpetual 'war', whether the war has been a 'hot' or 'cold' war. In times of war governments are allowed(?) to act with extraordinary power and in secret, of course all for our protection some some great evil which would kill us all. We have just become so accustomed to our government needing to keep secrets I think it isn't in our nature to question authority anymore...it is becoming foreign to us.
G.W. Bush was the worst president this country has seen, and that is including Nixon. He did more to damage an already pummeled Constitution. Domestic spying, torture, renditions, waging a war of aggression, breaking international treaties, and gutted most government oversight on corporations which directly led to the economic mess we have now...just for starters. Not that his father was that good either, though a far cry better than his son, but I can see why the old man is closer to Clinton than he is to Georgie.
But nobody did a thing as the flames of our anger over 9/11 was fanned by a hysterical media giving us news coverage that was little more than government misinformation. And now this same media is giving us the 'facts' about our economy? Why am I not instilled with confidence at that thought?
There is an old saying that 'knowledge is power'. So true. And I think we are very ill informed on what our government is doing, the media won't ask for us, so if and when will we ask?
April 5, 2009 1:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
You don't need to talk about lions. Who would believe you could have a medium sized town without theft and the need for police, courts and jails? To think you could turn trillions of dollars over to any group of people without regulation fit to meet the potential crime was just lunacy.
April 4, 2009 6:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
I like what Obey and satyagraha have pointed out.
I personally don't see a need to make things out to be opposites when they don't need to be such. So what are we arguing over? I don't see it. Which is my point!
April 4, 2009 2:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
We need to do both. Remember, TheraP started by teaching third graders. HA We are all just third graders underneath. If you do not believe me watch the Cunninghams of the world break down into tears after they are caught. ha
Good post though. Gets us all thinking.
After all. WHAT CAN WE DO?
April 4, 2009 3:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
DD, you're right. That is the question. I think the answer is to learn. And I think that's happening. We're all questioning how the financial system ran the legal system. I think we're getting a lot of answers. What we do is give the legal system a greater presence within the financial system. I think that is Dan's point.
Then there's another layer. Jurgen Habermas used to distinguish System from Lifeworld. While I think that we need to move the System in a new direction, we also have to move the Lifeworld in a new direction too. The Lifeworld is everyday life with people interacting with people. The System is really just an extension of the Lifeworld. That's why I think Thera's Vision Quest is so important--it deals directly with the Lifeworld, which determines the System. So the question of WHY these people abused the System is crucial. Because if we correct the System, then we only right it for a certain amount of time. If we don't make adjustments in the Lifeworld, then the System will become corrupt again before we know it.
Back to the question, "what can we do?" I would suggest that we have to change the System and the Lifeworld. Now, the System changes mostly from the inside. But the Lifeworld changes from the outside. When we change then the System is forced to change. So, I think changing the Lifeworld is more productive--long-term.
I think understanding WHY these people did the things they did will help tremendously. What were their basic assumptions, their attitudes, their beliefs, and in what contexts? Then I think we have to find how to combat or at least neutralize those assumptions, attitudes, and beliefs. But that is such a subtle task.
I think it means--as Thera suggests--not seeing opposites when they aren't there. A lot of people make a lot of money through divide and conquer strategies. I think that's one thing we can do. See past the divisions. The more people who see past the divisions, the less effective those strategies will be. The less effective those strategies, the less likely we will see a repeat of Bush era abuse.
April 4, 2009 4:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
My answer ended up below. :)
April 4, 2009 5:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
I am about to post the next blog in this series.
Your comments are wonderful, satyagraha. And pertinent. And without the good folks here - reasoning and caring - I could not do this.
I love the idea of the "Lifeworld" - it's a concept I used teaching young children. I tried to see them as persons (with an inner Lifeworld) in addition to the outer world of the classroom.
And yes, I have long thought that if we want to reform society - this Lifeworld - we must reform ourselves. Else what do we live into - when, as Rilke tells us in his Letters to a Young Poet .... when we "live the questions" on into the future.
We must face it all. Just as those who fought the Revolutionary War faced all the abuses against which they were fighting.
April 4, 2009 5:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
Dan K, thanks for this posting. I enjoyed everything you wrote--probably because I completely agree. :)
April 4, 2009 6:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Dan, this is in response to your response above. I disagree with very little you say, except for the relative importance of regulatory reform and socio-moral reform (apologies for the ugly terminology). I don't know quite how to grab it, but I'll start from this bit of yours:
"If you allow people to grow fantastically rich, you can expect that those people will use their money-power to game the political system and subvert democratic governance. You can’t count on the ethical compasses of the wealthy to prevent abuses."
I fully agree with this. But I also don't believe one can or should 'count on' Law and Regulation exclusively to prevent abuses. As has been said ad nauseam in the thread, these are just abstractions which depend on People legislating, executing, and enforcing them. And I don't believe in the possibility of a miraculous system which creates such ideal regulations out of whole cloth, nor one which maintains them, merely by the perfect balancing of self-interested motives of the individuals involved. You seem essentially Hobbesian in your outlook on human nature, and draw the Hobbesian conclusions about how to distribute power in society - handing it all (or most) over to that nebulous entity The State. This Hobbesian ideal of yours is one I don't think is workable.
There is so much to say about why. But here's a start. The reforms you suggest are far-ranging. They go far beyond merely moving back to 1999, I take it. They have no chance in hell of getting implemented given the pervasive socio-moral outlook (or capitalist 'ideology' if you prefer). You need to change that mindset to get the ball rolling, even now with the obvious flaws to the system laid bare. They have even less chance of being effectively maintained or adequately executed. The dominant self-perception of a person as simply a self-interested cog in the wheels of social interaction simply precludes it, unless (i) we all follow and endorse Hobbes' 300 step plan leading to his desired conclusion, and (ii) the resulting incentive structure is so finely balanced it could stay upright on the head of a pin. You need to trust in basic human decency, and a care for the well-being and opinion of society at large.
Anyway, thanks for the post. It is very well presented, and very thought-provoking. Highly rec'd.
April 4, 2009 7:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
One further thought. Hitler came to power legitimately. His policies were all passed as legislation. Laws can legislate good as well as evil. Executive orders - same thing.
April 4, 2009 7:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for the comments everybody. I'm sorry I didn't respond to everyone who commented on what I wrote, but I have already said a lot, and didn't want to try to dominate the conversation. I'm sure we can pick it up again later.
April 5, 2009 1:21 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'm impressed. Awed. By all the above. How did we get so good?
April 5, 2009 8:02 AM | Reply | Permalink