December 07, 2003
Political Discourse
I've posted a couple of articles recently (on disability and ecology) that people have taken to task in the comments as further evidence of my heartless "conservative" politics. Now, I'm happy to have the comments because getting pushback from smart people on some of the things that I'm thinking about is one of the reasons I set up this site. But, re-reading those two articles in particular, I'm not sure why they elicited that response.
Perhaps the people commenting think they know my politics outside of the blog and therefore they can assume that I was marshalling evidence for a larger world view. But I assure you, sending people back to work missing fingers and clear-cutting rainforest are not even remotely close to my positions on these issues.
Perhaps they followed the links in the story and, recognizing the destination as a conservative or libertarian site, took issue with the tone or position of the linked-to author. But I read both righty and lefty blogs, and I don't always agree with everything they say (imagine that), even in the posts I link to. I try to say what I found interesting or compelling — do I need to explicitly disavow the parts I find hyperbolic or contentious? I'm not sure if there's time in the day to do that.
Regardless, I assure you that I am not trying to take over the world with a conservative agenda. Perhaps I'd like to make it a bit more libertarian, but I'd settle for more of the presumption of liberty we found in Lawrence. Revive the Privileges and Immunities clause, so we don't have to overload Due Process with everything. Take the Tenth Amendment seriously.
But beyond that, with this blog, I'm want to think about policies in a way that I believe is useful, non-partisan, issue-neutral, but rarely done. I want to think about:
- consequences — often unintended, often unrecognized. We need to know whether our policies do more harm than good – in my mind, you cannot truly evaluate a policy or proposal without examining the consequences. And as a corollary,
- incentives matter. Time and time again, in aggregate, people tend to do what they are incented to do. Understanding how these incentives work and their effects is crucial to understanding the consequences of policies. But incentives are often overlooked or denied because they paint an unflattering picture of people or our society. Also, we must recognize that
- trade-offs are not optional. There are no silver bullets and to bring up a negative consequence of a policy proposal is not to condemn it, since all options will be burdened with negative trade-offs.
- principles, if any, that guide our actions, and when those principles are in conflict or are unlikely to bring about the consequences we desire. And most importantly, we need to discuss the
- goals, particularly the difficult, sticky, unpleasant details of those goals. What exactly are we trying to achieve? An imagined pristine forest, or a hands-off one (not a clear-cut one!) Vagueness buys votes, but we're less likely to get what we expected. Finally, in reaching our goals, what
- metrics do we use to measure success or failure? Are we going to know when our goals are met?
Don't get me wrong. I wasn't lumping you in with the rightists — my respective points on the disability and forestry issues were directed more at what I thought was flawed or manipulative argument in your sources.
I think it's great that you're using these blogs as springboards into real discussions about issues that are important but do not get the sort of big-media airtime that, say, low percentage threats of asteroid collisions invariably do.
The Marginal Revolution post, in particular, was almost over-the-top in its exploitation of a complex issue solely to generate a right-wing soundbite. It gets credit for not using the word "un-American" in it, I suppose, but beyond that, what? I just think this sort of thing needs answered. These people already own the entire AM band. They don't get immediate Net cred just because they can dress up a graph; if they want an audience other than Clem from Fayetteville, they need to come through with the goods.
But I'm not gonna fault you for pointing me to this stuff. It's good to know it's out there. It's great to know I can get reasonable discussion here.
Posted by: Brad Abruzzi at December 7, 2003 02:24 PMWell, I appreciated your comments on both topics — speaking from experience and avoiding oversimplification; both things I'll cheer for every time.
But, I think you may be being too hard on Marginal Revolution. They tend to take free-market positions, maybe to the point where the label "economic conservative" would fit, but I'd hesitate to put them into the big Conservative AM radio bucket, because they avoid the social conservative stances that really are (in my opinion) indefensible. Also, they're economics professors, so I don't think they just learned how to graph in Excel, and the study they referenced was an academic paper by economists at Boston College.
Sometimes though, the nuggets they put out, which I often think are compelling, do come with a tone that's a little too "Aha!" for my tastes. I try to modulate that down a bit in my own posts, though.
Calling it "fascinating" was probably the one thing I regret — but being a less practiced writer than you, I run out of adjectives for "good", "interesting", and "worth-reading" too quickly for my own good.
