Will Wilkinson Explains Why Politics Is Not a Morality Play

En fuego, here:

We’d very much like to increase nutritional assistance for impoverished children. In fact, we’d love to. What could be better? But, you see, we have promised very large, richly-deserved pensions to some very important people very dear to our hearts, and, to put it frankly, money these days is, well, tight. I know. It’s very dispiriting. If only the selfish rich bastards would pay their fair share of taxes! But, no. No. Whatever happened to the idea that we’re in it together? Huh? Whatever happened to love for our fellow man? It’s sad. Anyway, we are so sorry the bastards have chosen to steal from the mouths of hungry children. I wish we could do something. I really wish we could.

This, by the way, applies as much to private v. public redistribution as vice versa. And it applies even more to those not lucky enough to have been born in a rich country with a robust safety net. So while you fight like a brave for the last ounce of Medicare, remember that billions have nothing approaching it.

The moral is: ante up or shut up. And if you care about anything like equality or any other egalitarian principle, then you should be lobbying for a huge redistribution from the U.S. to the rest of the world. Starting with more liberal immigration policies. If you're not serious about this, then you're not serious.

Johann Hari's People of 2010

I don't have my own, so I'll just comment on his. It's a pretty short list, but then it's been a pretty bad year:

Under-Appreciated Person One: Bradley Manning. While we were all fixated on Julian Assange, the story of the young American soldier who actually leaked the classified documents passed almost unnoticed. ...

Here’s what really happened. Manning signed up when he was just 18 believing him would be protecting and defending his country and the cause of freedom. He soon found himself sent to Iraq, where he was ordered to round up and hand over Iraqi civilians to America’s new Iraqi allies, who he could see were then torturing them with electrical drills and other implements. ...

Manning had to choose between being complicit in these atrocities, or not. At the age of 21, he made a brave choice – to put human rights before his own interests. He found the classified military documents revealing the US was covering up the deaths of 15,000 Iraqis and had a de facto policy of allowing the Iraqis they had installed in power to carry out torture – and he decided he had a moral obligation to show them to the American people. ...

Under-Appreciated Person Two: Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf. The only African leader who appears with any regularity on our TV screens is the snarling psychopath Robert Mugabe, spreading his message of dysfunction and despair. We rarely hear about his polar opposite. In 2005, the women of Liberia strapped their babies to their backs and moved en masse to elect Africa’s first ever elected female President. Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf was a 62 year old grandmother who had been thrown in prison by the country’s dictators simply for demanding democracy. She emerged blinking into a country trashed by 14 years of civil war and pillaged by dictators – but she said she would, at last, ensure the Liberian state obeyed the will of its people.

In the face of a chorus of cynics, she did it. She restored electricity for the first time since 1992. She got the number of children in school up by 40 percent. She introduced prison terms for rapists for the first time. Now she is running for re-election in a fully open and contested ballot. ...

Under-appreciated Person Three: Senator Bernie Sanders. In 2010, the hijacking of American democracy by corporations and the super-rich became almost complete. ...

But one American politician, more than any other, showed there can still be a different, democratic way of doing politics in America. Bernie Sanders was elected as the independent socialist senator for Vermont with 65 percent of the vote in 2006, in a fight against the richest man in the state. ...

He won over even very conservative parts of his state to a self-described socialist agenda ... This is what democracy looks like. ...

Under-Appreciated People Four: The Saudi Arabian women who are fighting back. Women like Wajeha Al-Huwaider are struggling against a tyranny that bans them from driving, showing their face in public, or even getting medical treatment without permission from their male “guardian”. The streets are policed by black-clad men who enforce sharia law and whip women who express any free will. Saudi women are being treated just as horrifically as Iranian women – but because their oppressors are our governments’ allies, rather than our governments’ enemies, you hear almost nothing about them. Al-Huwaider points out that her sisters are fighting back and being beaten and whipped for it, and asks: “Why isn't the cry of these millions of women heard, and why isn't it answered by anyone, anywhere in the world?”

Under-Appreciated People Five: The real N’avi. The people of Kalahandi, India, saw the film Avatar and recognized it as their story. The land they had lived in peacefully for thousands of years – and they considered sacred – was being destroyed and pillaged for by a Western bauxite mining corporation called Vedanta, whose majority owner lives in luxury in Mayfair. The local protesters were terrorized – for example, in one case documented by Amnesty International, they were abducted by local gunmen and tortured. But they didn’t give up. They appealed for international solidarity, so Vedanta meetings in London were besieged by people dressed as N’avi. The Indian government finally responded to co-ordinated democratic pressure and agreed the corporation had acted “in total contempt of the law.”

I'll respond thus:

1. Bradley Manning could have resigned in protest. He could have gotten himself dishonorably discharged. He could have made a public fuss about why he was refusing to obey orders. He did not. He acted in secret and in illegal ways, and engaged in acts that were immature and probably counter-productive. Somewhat ironically, he may have even strengthened the U.S. security state and intelligence apparatus. All of these things have been covered in great detail elsewhere, so i don't feel the need to chase down links. Suffice to say, Manning's actions were silly, stupid, and most likely at cross-purposes to his desired ends.

His treatment since his arrest has been absolutely horrendous, I agree. I wish it wasn't the case, and I don't think it should be so. But when you sign up for the military you give up your constitutional rights. He knew that. The U.S. government is itching to make an example out of him and I think that's wrong and excessive... but (as far as I can see) he has no legal claim. WTF was he thinking? I feel sorry for him on a personal level, but he did something that was very stupid, very illegal, and very dangerous. In my opinion, that does not make a hero.

Would the world be better if there were more Bradley Mannings? Well, has the world improved as a result of the first one?

2. I've heard of Johnson-Sirleaf, but know little about her. Everything I've heard has been good. Sadly, it wouldn't take much to be a major improvement over the past. The U.S. has a shameful record of neglect of Liberia, its cousin country. Hopefully that can be remedied in the future.

3. I love Bernie Sanders, even though I'm not from Vermont nor am I a socialist. I just appreciate when people argue honestly rather than disingenuously, even if/when I disagree with them. And every day I find the libertarian slice of my brain matching up more and more with the Marxist slice of my brain... they meet when statists and capitalists collude, where regulatory capture becomes real and oppressive. There's been a lot of that sort of collusion over the past two-three years, and it worries me. I'm glad Sanders is around to call "shenanigans" on the whole thing, and if the Tea Party had any intellectual sense they'd line up as his allies, not his enemies, on many issues. I might not agree with him on the solutions -- in fact, I definitely wouldn't -- but I'm glad he's pointing to the problems. Nobody else is.

4. Strong regards to the Saudi women who seek emancipation and those who support them. This is the (global) cause I embrace above any other. Unfortunately, beyond offering solidarity I'm not sure what can be done from this end. So for now I offer meager solidarity, and welcome other suggestions.

5. I have not seen Avatar (on purpose) and I know nothing about the people of Kalahandi. I will say that I support the rule of law and the correction of negative externalities, and oppose corporate bullying. I do not care about "sacred" sites, and generally think that foreign capital can (and should be!) be used to help under-developed regions improve their standards of living. So I support protections against corporate abuses that violate the law, but I worry that this will be a Pyrrhic victory: win the battle (no corporate oppression), lose the war (no capital inflow).

On DADT Repeal

For those who prefer analysis to tropes, here's a nice rundown (via Stephen Walt) of the research on the effects of allowing gays to serve openly in the military. They survey the experience of other countries, as well as the U.S. military's own studies. Short version: almost no bad effects excepting (very minor) short-run disruptions from implementing the policy, and many positive benefits beyond that.

None of the above would have to be true for me to support DADT repeal -- the best argument is the one that invokes justice and liberty -- but it's always nice when empirical facts appear to line up with my normative preferences.

As a side note, I've always found the (only) case against DADT repeal -- that it would adversely affect unit cohesion and morale, which apparently is the greatest end of modern society -- to be immensely insulting to the troops. It's basically saying that our servicemen and women are so immature that they can't deal with a situation that college kids in dorms manage every day. It's profoundly disrespectful to say such a thing to those we ask to kill and die on our behalf, and I have enough regard for them to think that notion is ridiculous.

And that's to say nothing about the disrespect shown to those who wish to serve openly, but are told that they would weaken the military by their very presence.

In fact, the studies cited in the Palm Center's report say the opposite is true: a policy whereby gays cannot serve openly weakens cohesion and morale, perhaps by breeding suspicion and ostracization of those believed to be gay (whether they are or not), and by preventing gay people that serve while in the closet to fully assimilate into the group. This should have been obvious to anyone who has thought about it for more than 3 seconds.

I try not to get on my high horse too often on this blog, but DADT was a terrible policy in every respect. Good riddance.

The Double-Standard Ethics of RCT

On the one hand I definitely understand this:

“I don’t think homeless people in our time, or in any time, should be treated like lab rats,” Ms. Palma said.

On the other hand, this is also true:

“It’s a very effective way to find out what works and what doesn’t,” said Esther Duflo, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has advanced the testing of social programs in the third world. “Everybody, every country, has a limited budget and wants to find out what programs are effective.” ...

“This is about putting emotions aside,” [Seth Diamond] said. “When you’re making decisions about millions of dollars and thousands of people’s lives, you have to do this on data, and that is what this is about.”

Esther Duflo recently won the John Bates Clark award for her use of RCTs in the developing world.

A complication arises when applying discount weights to the calculus. While we do not want to hurt people by excluding them from a potentially-helpful treatment, resources are scarce. If the treatment is not in fact helpful, we can divert those resources to better uses. Thus, while some people risk being harmed in the present by excluding them from the treatment, many more people might be helped in the future if we learn that there is a better use for the funds. In other words, there is some probability that the program is useful, and an inverse probability that it is not. We are essentially weighing the cost to the homeless from being removed from the program if it is useful against the hypothetical gain to future people of having access to those funds if it is not useful.

I'd also note that nobody complains when this happens in Africa or India. If it's controversial when it happens in NYC, shouldn't it be controversial when it happens in Monrovia?

On balance, put me on the side of RCTs. Not without some reservations, but on balance.