All societies are hierarchical. This includes egalitarian societies. This includes anarchist societies, as well as societies that employ no coercion, make rules by consensus and don't recognize leaders. For primates, the primary means by which hierarchy is established has never been coercion - it has instead been grooming. For humans, grooming has been superseded by language. When we use language, we are engaging in the establishment of hierarchy.
At any given time one could be engaged in an effort to raise one's hierarchical rank within one's society. Also at any given time, one could be engaged in an effort to improve one's society overall (for example, by increasing the abundance of resources or increasing safety or raising the status of the society relative to other societies or by promoting a beneficial change in culture).
These pursuits need not be mutually exclusive, and in healthy society we might imagine that they largely coincide.
It makes sense that one would increase their rank within a society by doing things that are helpful for the society.
However, this is not necessarily the case. In dysfunctional societies the means for rising within the hierarchy could prove detrimental to the society as a whole.
What determines whether or not a society is healthy or dysfunctional?
The answer must be found within the worldviews, culture, beliefs and values of the individuals who make up the society.
Whenever a significant number of individuals within a society begin admiring, respecting or lauding actions and rhetoric that are detrimental to the society overall - the society takes a turn from healthy toward dysfunctional.
Disputes within a society over whether certain ideas are positive or negative can themselves either be positive or negative depending on their severity. If the disputes are handled in a civil, charitable manner, they can lead to improved culture on both sides. If they instead become bitter and entrenched, they can turn the entire society toward dysfunction. This is especially true if a primary means of gaining status within a particular faction is to work toward the detriment of rivals.
When disputes between factions become heated to the point where they threaten to be dysfunctional, it is up to the centrists, moderates and pragmatists - the peacemakers - to attempt to tone down the rhetoric and foster mutual understanding.
In the United States of America we are in desperate need of such pragmatists right now.
Saturday, May 30, 2015
Friday, May 29, 2015
On Society (post 28)
A society is run by its most powerful members.
In our society, power is supposed to come from a mandate of the majority, but, clearly, it can and does also come from wealth.
The most powerful members make decisions that affect our wellbeing and also their ability to retain and build more power.
Much depends on whether and to what extent those goals conflict or coincide - and that, in turn, depends largely on the worldviews, culture, beliefs and values of our society - both of the masses and of the elite.
One particular category of values/beliefs that is of primary importance concerns how a society should respond to or treat its weakest, most vulnerable and most incompetent members.
Typically members of a society with the least amount of power are thought to be children, the elderly and the sick - which should include the mentally ill. I submit that we should also include addicts (especially those who became addicted as children), the uneducated and the unloved.
Though there are myriad ways the leaders of a society can treat such people, these can be lumped into a few basic types.
What are the ideological considerations? What are the pragmatic considerations?
In our society, power is supposed to come from a mandate of the majority, but, clearly, it can and does also come from wealth.
The most powerful members make decisions that affect our wellbeing and also their ability to retain and build more power.
Much depends on whether and to what extent those goals conflict or coincide - and that, in turn, depends largely on the worldviews, culture, beliefs and values of our society - both of the masses and of the elite.
One particular category of values/beliefs that is of primary importance concerns how a society should respond to or treat its weakest, most vulnerable and most incompetent members.
Typically members of a society with the least amount of power are thought to be children, the elderly and the sick - which should include the mentally ill. I submit that we should also include addicts (especially those who became addicted as children), the uneducated and the unloved.
Though there are myriad ways the leaders of a society can treat such people, these can be lumped into a few basic types.
- Do not spend resources on them.
- Spend resources to punish them.
- Spend resources to attempt to increase their competency.
- Spend resources to feed, house and placate them.
- Spend resources to create productive roles for them.
What are the ideological considerations? What are the pragmatic considerations?
Thursday, May 28, 2015
Increase the Minimum Wage? (post 27)
Should we (meaning either Indiana or the US) raise the minimum wage?
The pragmatic approach to an answer is to carefully examine the canonical research on the topic. A sampling of such research is found below.
While conclusions from such research are ambivalent, an increasing proportion of studies are finding that the effects are generally more positive than negative. I suspect that a lot depends on the particular state of an economy when a minimum wage is raised - and how far it is raised. I have yet to find any studies that address this question directly, but I wonder whether, in contexts where capital is inexpensive, raises in minimum wages have more beneficial effects than where capital is expensive.
1) In a recent CEPR study of US states that raised their minimum wages in 2014:
"GS compared the employment change between December and January in the 13 states where the minimum wage increased with the changes in the remainder of the states. The GS analysis found that the states where the minimum wage went up had faster employment growth than the states where the minimum wage remained at its 2013 level."
http://www.cepr.net/blogs/cepr-blog/2014-job-creation-in-states-that-raised-the-minimum-wage
The pragmatic approach to an answer is to carefully examine the canonical research on the topic. A sampling of such research is found below.
While conclusions from such research are ambivalent, an increasing proportion of studies are finding that the effects are generally more positive than negative. I suspect that a lot depends on the particular state of an economy when a minimum wage is raised - and how far it is raised. I have yet to find any studies that address this question directly, but I wonder whether, in contexts where capital is inexpensive, raises in minimum wages have more beneficial effects than where capital is expensive.
If forced to take a stance based on what I know now, I would advocate for a modest increase in the minimum wage.
Here are some important studies and summaries for the debate:
1) In a recent CEPR study of US states that raised their minimum wages in 2014:
"GS compared the employment change between December and January in the 13 states where the minimum wage increased with the changes in the remainder of the states. The GS analysis found that the states where the minimum wage went up had faster employment growth than the states where the minimum wage remained at its 2013 level."
http://www.cepr.net/blogs/cepr-blog/2014-job-creation-in-states-that-raised-the-minimum-wage
2) In a CBO study published in Feb 2014 on the effect of raising the federal minimum wage:
3) Journalist's Resource provides an excellent summary of the most prominent research:
http://journalistsresource.org/studies/economics/inequality/the-effects-of-raising-the-minimum-wage
http://journalistsresource.org/studies/economics/inequality/the-effects-of-raising-the-minimum-wage
4) Politicfact.com, in fact checking a claim made by Ben Cardin, provides an excellent summary of different studies and concludes:
"We looked at nationwide employment data in the years following minimum wage increases since 1978, and sometimes there was job growth, and sometimes there was job loss. Modern research tends to show that raising the minimum wage has little significant impact -- positive or negative -- on employment."
"We looked at nationwide employment data in the years following minimum wage increases since 1978, and sometimes there was job growth, and sometimes there was job loss. Modern research tends to show that raising the minimum wage has little significant impact -- positive or negative -- on employment."
5) In 2010, The Institute for Research on Labor and Employment published a study which found:
"For cross-state contiguous counties, we find strong earnings
effects and no employment effects of minimum wage
increases."
6) A NBER paper from 2006 found that:
"Although the wide range of estimates is striking, the oft-stated assertion that the new minimum
wage research fails to support the traditional view that the minimum wage reduces the employment of
low-wage workers is clearly incorrect."
http://www.nber.org/papers/w12663.pdf
http://www.nber.org/papers/w12663.pdf
7) In 1998 the Economic Policy Institute published a study where:
"The principal findings are that:
* The 1996 and 1997 minimum wage increases raised the wages of almost 10 million workers. About 71% of these workers were adults and 58% were women. Just under half (46%) worked full time and another third worked 20 to 34 hours per week.
* The average minimum wage worker is responsible for providing more than half (54%) of his or her family’s weekly earnings.
* The two-stage increase disproportionately benefited low-income working households. Although households in the bottom 20% of the income distribution (whose average income is $15,728) receive only 5% of total family income, they received 35% of the benefits from the minimum wage increase.
* Four different tests of the two increases’ employment impact — applied to a large number of demographic groups whose wages are sensitive to the minimum wage — fail to find any systematic, significant job loss associated with the 1996-97 increases. Not only are the estimated employment effects generally economically small and statistically insignificant, they are also almost as likely to be positive as negative."
Monday, May 25, 2015
Pragmatism to Enlightened Self-Interest (post 26)
Pragmatism is a essentially an ideology concerning truth. It states that truth exists but we can never know with certainty what it is. The best we can do is move closer to it by developing theories and models and then evaluating their accuracy through the testing and tracking of their predictions.
While pragmatism is mainly about truth, there is an extension to morality which states that while we can be wrong about what is and isn't moral, we move closer to a "true" morality as we evaluate and synthesize various moral systems over time.
The evaluation of factual outcomes at the societal scale, an extremely contentious endeveour, is far less controversial than the evaluation of moral outcomes. Those involved with such evaluations use terms such as happiness, wellbeing, justice - all difficult to define and more difficult to measure. A pragmatic approach to these difficulties is to admit they exist and to continue to work to mitigate them. We are fortunate that there are so many people and organizations doing exactly this. Happiness studies have exploded over the past few decades. We can thank the efforts of psychologists and economists involved with both the Positive Psychology movement and Happiness Economics such as Martin Seligman, Daniel Gilbert, Richard Layard and Daniel Kahneman, and we can also thank their critics such as Kirk Scheider, Barbara Ehrenreich, William Davies and Barbara Held. Measuring social justice is more explicitly political and not nearly as high profile, but there are many interesting efforts - mostly concerned with the impact of philathropy and social entreprenuership. Such efforts include those by The Center for Effective Philanthropy, The Open Philanthropy Project, The Social Inclusion Monitor, The Peace and Collaborative Development Network, The DME for Peace, and The Ashoka Network.
The data amassed by such individuals and organizations is yet ambiguous, contradictory and subject to diverse, self-serving interpretations. For the purpose of changing policy or cultural ethics, this body of data is akin to religious scripture - it can used to justify just about any doctrine imaginable. Nevertheless, as long as these efforts can, for the most part, evade conscription by hegemonic powers, then the ongoing amalgamation of data and the scientific process should lead to a clearing of ambiguity and a facilitating of moral concensus.
My current working hypothesis - the hypothesis at the heart of Pragmatic Ventures - is that the eventual moral consensus these efforts are leading to is in line with the doctrine of enlightened self-interest.
That is, people are able to do the most - both for their own sense of wellbeing and for social justice within their society - when they are able to see themselves as connected to others, their fates as entwinned, and by working for their own wellbeing and justice via working for wellbeing and justice for all.
While pragmatism is mainly about truth, there is an extension to morality which states that while we can be wrong about what is and isn't moral, we move closer to a "true" morality as we evaluate and synthesize various moral systems over time.
The evaluation of factual outcomes at the societal scale, an extremely contentious endeveour, is far less controversial than the evaluation of moral outcomes. Those involved with such evaluations use terms such as happiness, wellbeing, justice - all difficult to define and more difficult to measure. A pragmatic approach to these difficulties is to admit they exist and to continue to work to mitigate them. We are fortunate that there are so many people and organizations doing exactly this. Happiness studies have exploded over the past few decades. We can thank the efforts of psychologists and economists involved with both the Positive Psychology movement and Happiness Economics such as Martin Seligman, Daniel Gilbert, Richard Layard and Daniel Kahneman, and we can also thank their critics such as Kirk Scheider, Barbara Ehrenreich, William Davies and Barbara Held. Measuring social justice is more explicitly political and not nearly as high profile, but there are many interesting efforts - mostly concerned with the impact of philathropy and social entreprenuership. Such efforts include those by The Center for Effective Philanthropy, The Open Philanthropy Project, The Social Inclusion Monitor, The Peace and Collaborative Development Network, The DME for Peace, and The Ashoka Network.
The data amassed by such individuals and organizations is yet ambiguous, contradictory and subject to diverse, self-serving interpretations. For the purpose of changing policy or cultural ethics, this body of data is akin to religious scripture - it can used to justify just about any doctrine imaginable. Nevertheless, as long as these efforts can, for the most part, evade conscription by hegemonic powers, then the ongoing amalgamation of data and the scientific process should lead to a clearing of ambiguity and a facilitating of moral concensus.
My current working hypothesis - the hypothesis at the heart of Pragmatic Ventures - is that the eventual moral consensus these efforts are leading to is in line with the doctrine of enlightened self-interest.
That is, people are able to do the most - both for their own sense of wellbeing and for social justice within their society - when they are able to see themselves as connected to others, their fates as entwinned, and by working for their own wellbeing and justice via working for wellbeing and justice for all.
Monday, May 18, 2015
We Need More Pragmatists (post 25)
We need more pragmatists.
Pragmatism is an ideology that says ideologies should be less important than practical results, that the truth of a theory should be evaluated by its predictions, and that the value of an idea should be measured by its consequences.
A pragmatist is not committed or biased to a particular approach or methodology. If something works, keep using it - if not, try something else.
A pragmatist values data, listens to different viewpoints and is open to compromise.
Our society is harmed by ideologues and extremists who are more concerned with hurting each other than with helping our country - all of our country - and its people, regardless of their religion, ethnicity or political views.
Those who would stand up to such extremism need to band together to help each other.
I am looking for people who share this desire - people who may be Democrats, Republicans or Independents, but who all put facts, empirical reasoning and the well-being of communities ahead of partisan loyalty or any form of hatred.
Pragmatism is an ideology that says ideologies should be less important than practical results, that the truth of a theory should be evaluated by its predictions, and that the value of an idea should be measured by its consequences.
A pragmatist is not committed or biased to a particular approach or methodology. If something works, keep using it - if not, try something else.
A pragmatist values data, listens to different viewpoints and is open to compromise.
Our society is harmed by ideologues and extremists who are more concerned with hurting each other than with helping our country - all of our country - and its people, regardless of their religion, ethnicity or political views.
Those who would stand up to such extremism need to band together to help each other.
I am looking for people who share this desire - people who may be Democrats, Republicans or Independents, but who all put facts, empirical reasoning and the well-being of communities ahead of partisan loyalty or any form of hatred.
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