Complexity and Central Planning

Another bone of contention between socialists, conservatives,  and libertarians centers of the political implications of natural complexity. Here's heart of the issue: If Nature is a vast network of complex adaptive systems conditioned by unpredictable emergent properties, then what are the implications for public policy? In general, there are two political options: the political LEFT and RIGHT embrace "central planning," based on their stated political agendas; while LIBERTARIANS defends "de-centralized planning."

Beginning in the twentieth century, a variety of philosophers and scientists began to develop a systems ontology, which identified "systems" as the basic units of ontic reality. Typically, systems theorists differentiate between macrosystems (the Amazon Rain Forrest) and microsystems (species and organisms that live in the Amazon Rain Forrest), non-living systems and living systems, relatively simple, closed systems, and more complex open systems. Complexity spawns emergent properties that are explicable (in terms of systems theory), but are inherently unpredictable and uncontrollable. To make a long discussion short, most biologists agree that even the simplest living organisms exhibit enormously complexity and that ecological systems like the Amazon Rain Forest are exhibit infinite complexity via interacting open living and non-living sub-systems. Enter the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers... To what degree should we "trust" the ACE to redesign our natural ecosystems, especially wetlands?

If human communities are comprised of a number of at least two infinately complex human brains networked together in an infinate number of interacting networks (communities); and, if the behavior of those macrosystems (neighborhoods, cities, states, nations etc.) is influenced by what happens in the microsystems (neurons, brains, human organisms, and families), and if what happens in the microsystems is shaped by what happens in the macrosystems, and what happens in BOTH are influenced by what happens in other systems in the environment, then what are the political ramifications?

Central planning implies a Newtonian interpretation of Nature that assumes that Nature is ultimately a complex"clocklike" mechanism that can be fixed and/or redesigned by "engineers." They argue that since the world is a mechanism (closed system) that can be fully described in terms of deterministic laws of nature, once we discover these laws we'll be able explain, predict, and control all aspects of human nature.

Most behaviorists are Newtonians, but argue that we really don't have to know exactly what goes on within the human brain to predict and control human behavior. All they need to know are systemic inputs and outputs. But the underlying premiss is the same for all Newtonians: human behavior is ultimately explicable, predictable, and controllable, once we discover the deterministic laws that govern human behavior.

De-Centralized planning is based on a Darwinian interpretation of Nature, where unpredicatable emergent properties at the micro-cosmic levels (genes, organisms, species) condition organization at the macrocosmic levels (ecosystems). Beginning in the late 19th century, philosophers like Charles Sanders Peirce, began to seriously question whether complexity is merely a reflection of our ignorance of the true laws of nature, or whether there's an irreducible element of chance in the universe. Today we know that the human brain is an enormously complex system comprised of many identifiable, interacting subsystems. We also know that when these brains get together and form complex networks we create communities and cultures that exhibit mind-bogglingly complexity. If brains and networks of brains generate mind-boggling complexity, what can we say about economics?

Classical, Neo-Classical, and Keynsian economists are Newtonians. Darwinians (that accept the metaphysical assumption that Nature is conditioned by a degree of chance) reject the Newtonian assumption that Nature is ultimately a deterministic closed machine describable in precise mathematical calculus, and by implication they also question the human capacity to re-engineer or re-design Nature from the "Top Down." This is the underlying theme of Austrian macro-economic theory as described by Mises and Hayek.

So here are the basic ontological issues. Are the laws of nature that describe human genetics and economics ultimately like the laws that govern the movement of the planets in our solar system, or are those laws qualitatively different? If we knew the precise laws of Nature that underlie human brain activity, would we be able explain, predict, and control individual human behavior, community behavior, and cultural behavior with the same same degree of accuracy as we can explain, predict, and control the boiling of water? And, if we "could" someday redesign Nature, does that mean that we can do it now, and does that imply that we "ought" to do it? If so, what "ends" ought those re-design efforts pursue? Now there's a homework assignment for you! Have fun.

A Living Wage

Another bone of contention between libertarians and welfare liberals is the idea that all workers "ought to" be paid a "living wage." What might that entail?

Beginning with Plato but mostly with Aristotle, philosophers have acknowledged two different kinds of principles: formal principles and material principles. Untangling confusion between these two different kinds of principles accounts for about 2500 years of the history of philosophy. Aristotle distinguished between the formal principle of justice ("Treat equals equally and unequals unequally") and the various material principles of justice (merit, need, equality, social utility). Everyone agrees that the formal principle captures the essence of what we mean when we say "X is fair" or "X is unfair." The formal principle captures the "idea" of justice. The material principles of justice are basically the principles that human beings living in the "material world" employ to decide how the formal principle applies to the distribution of social goods. Thus, when we say "X is fair" we "really" mean that it's fair based on one (or more) of the material principles. So, if you own a corporation and want to pay your workers "fairly," you will have to specify a material principle.

Suppose you decide that you decide that you want to pay your workers a "fair wage," how would you proceed? Well, the formal principle says that morality requires adhering to the formal principle and at least one specific material principle. Aristotle thought social goods "ought to be" distributed based on "merit." In a fair society, "the best get the most," regardless of need, equality, or utility. Egalitarians would pay everyone the same salary, regardless of merit, need, or utility. Welfare liberals would base salaries on need, and would ignore merit, equality, and utility. So suppose we decided that every corporation in the United States must pay their employees based on "need," or what welfare liberals might call a "living wage," what might that entail?

Well generally, a living wage entails paying your workers enough to meet their basic needs, which requires a material distinction between needs and wants. Needs are often associated with "a positive right to life," which implies a duty to provide a wages sufficient to cover things like: food, clothing, and shelter. In the United States today we'd probably include a right to health care, retirement, disability insurance, and unemployment insurance. But let's forget all that for now, and just focus on food, clothing, shelter, and maybe transportation. Let's tackle a hypothetical case study.

White Widget Inc. employs 10 workers. Ron want's to provide all of them at least a "living wage." He just now hired George, who has sole custody of five children. How would Ron set that initial pay scale. Well, he'd be morally required to provide enough wages to feed his family. How would Ron calculate how much George needs to feed his family? Should he go to Kroger and figure out how much it would cost to provide meals a week? Let's assume, that Ron wants George's family to be healthy so he decides to pay him enough for him to buy a daily portion of chicken or fish, fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. Let's say it costs $3 per meal x 3, or $9 per day per family member, or $54 a week per family member, x 6 family members or $324 a week.
For the sake of argument, let's assume that George's family already has enough clothes. What about shelter? If Ron want's to pay enough for shelter, how much would that entail? Should Ron pay enough to rent a house or buy a house? Should every member have their own room? Let's say Ron is generous and pays enough for George to rent a six bedroom house for $250 a week. Now, unfortunately that house is 10 miles from the widget factory, so George will need transportation. Let's say that the house is on the bus route and the ride costs $2 a day x 5 or $10 a week. So right now that living wage stands at $584 a week or about $14 an hour. But wait...three of George's kids are under 5 years old and need day-care. But George lucked out and found a neighbor that would watch his this kids for $40 a week, a real bargain. So Ron decides to pay George $13 an hour to sweep the floors at White Widget Inc.

Now George goes to Kroger and spends $500 on frozen pizza, ice cream, Coca Cola, chips, Hostess Twinkies. Then he goes out and buys a new Toyota Camry for $25,000 so he doesn't have to ride the bus, and decides to send his two older children to a private school for $10, 000 a year each. And of course, George also starts buying $100 worth of lottery tickets a week. Now George can't pay his rent.

So if Ron wants to pay George a "living wage," how much a week should Ron pay George? Mary, a much more productive worker, also gets paid a "living wage" but lives within her means. Should Ron pay George more, less, or the same wages as Mary?

Markets

One of the fundamental points of contention between libertarian and socialist philosophers is their views on "The Market." As a philosopher, let me try to clear away some of the noise that impedes rational discussion.

First of all, the term "market" is ubiquitous. Everyone likes to talk about it but they are rarely talking about the same thing. I'm one of the few philosophers that "hangs out" with economists, so I've obviously been influenced by them. However, even economists often fall prey to ubiquity. So here's my philosophical analysis based on what I've stolen from philosophers and economists.

More than anything else "markets" are the natural consequence of scarcity. Our lives are finite. Although there are 24 hours in a day, I usually sleep 8 hours out of that which means I have 16 hours a day to "do things." The average lifespan of the average American is about 78 years old. My genes suggest a shorter lifespan for me. Thus, every day I have to deal with this "time market," which means I have to decide how to spend the rest of my life. Right now I'm writing a blog entry. There are costs associated with that decision. I could spend this time preparing for a meeting one hour from now, grading exams, or playing guitar. In other words there are "opportunity costs" associated with me writing this blog. You are reading this blog. There are other things you could be doing with your time. That's why I appreciate the fact that you're reading it! After all, there are thousands of other bloggers on the Internet. You could have spent this time reading their blogs, watching television, or taking a walk. Taken together, there is a "blog market" where us bloggers compete for readers with finite time, energy, and resources. I sell Freedom's Philosopher on that market, you bought it. No money was exchanged, but you bought it with "time and effort." No one forced you to read it, and no one forced me to write it so here we are participating on that free market. I also read several blogs on a regular basis and spend time and energy commenting on those blogs. Writing and reading blogs is a form of cooperation.

My blog also participates in another market. The market of "ideas." Since the nineteenth century, philosophers have been participating in an "extended" market across several generations comprised of competing "ideas." My blog ideas usually relate to the nature of government and it's role in human affairs, however, I also expend time and energy thinking about and writing about health care policy. In fact, my mind is a marketplace of competing ideas. Right now I'm thinking about markets. My blog competes with, not only with other libertarian blogs, but also with Marxist and anarchist blogs. The beauty of the Internet (as it currently exists in the United States) is that the "idea market" can thrive. No one forces us bloggers to blog and no one forces you to read them. Consequently, there is a lot of variety on the Internet, which is a huge marketplace of ideas. (It's also a great place to buy books and guitars!) Unfortunately, you can't read every blog on the Internet market because of the natural scarcity of time, energy, and resources. If I spend too much time writing and reading blogs, my wife will get mad at me and my students will complain that I'm unprepared for class. In fact I have to end this blog right now and go to that meeting. I wonder if anyone will notice that I didn't prepare for it?

Evolutionary Epistemology

Let's talk metaphysics. There are two longstanding strands of metaphysical inquiry: ontology (inquiry into the basic elements and forces that constitute the universe); and epistemology (inquiry into what we can know about the universe and how we can know it.) Materialism attempts to reduce epistemology to "material things" such as brains, neurons, molecules, or atoms. Idealism atempts to reduce epistemology to "mental things" such as feelings, thoughts, memes, beliefs, theories or in more recent parlance "information." Hence, contemporary ontologists that embrace complex adaptive systems theory as a monistic theory, and thereby avoid Cartesian dualism (and the mind body problem) reduce reality to either matter (and/or energy) or information. Now the most fundamental question of metaphysical inquiry is whether scientists can develop a freestanding ontology that explains the nature of information; or whether ontology presupposes epistemology. Evolutionary epistemologists like Peirce and Popper argue that knowledge of Truth and Value (the primary targets of epistemology inquiry) evolve based on variation and selection. What is the evidence? The history of individual and collective belief systems.

Individual minds and collective minds accumulate beliefs over time whereby old beliefs compete with new beliefs. Hence, the metaphysical beliefs that currently occupy my individual mind have survived 60 years of variation and selection. Many of those beliefs are collective beliefs that I've replicated from previous cultures, I've also replicated other cultural beliefs that have emerged more recently, such as systems theory. I hope that some of my individual metaphysical beliefs get replicated by the larger community of scholars that study evolution. Of course, Darwins' beliefs have been replicated across many different scholarly disciplines: evolutionary biology, evolutionary psychology, evolutionary ethics, and evolutionary politics. Before Darwin, Aristotle ruled the roost! All of those scholarly disciplines are comprised of individual minds that share new beliefs and old beliefs (information) within networked groups. Beliefs that survive competition between old and new beliefs are deemed True.

Peirce argued that the basic elements of "The Fixation of Belief" are the feelings of belief and doubt. Of course, today social psychologists and neuropsychologists generate theories that identify the various mechanisms that underlie those processes. They write scholarly papers and books hoping to "sell" those beliefs (literally and figuratively) to scholarly communities and/or the community at large. But all human communities are generally hostile to new ideas, just like Nature is hostile to most genetic mutations. Peirce argued that humans (individually and collectively) literally "love" their beliefs and want to share them with others. But fast-paced, full-blown, sustained intellectual revolutions within large communities of networked minds are pretty rare. Most intellectual revolutions (individual and collective) are slow, incremental, and temporary. After all, we all prefer to bask in the truth of our beliefs and seek to avoid the unpleasant feelings of doubt. In fact, most full-blown scientific (intellectual) revolutions take place only after the minds (and bodies) of the defenders of the previous theories die off. Inexplicably, there are still a few members of the Flat Earth Society, Klu Klux Klan, and Nazi Party. As long as they don't force the rest of us to join their groups, or harbor their beliefs they will eventually suffer extinction.

I "love" the theory of libertarianism. I belong to to several groups that share those beliefs, including: the Independent Institute, Institute for Humane Studies, and the Reason Foundation. We don't all agree on everything. Some libertarians are anarcho-capitalists (reject all government) and some are minarchists (reject big governmment). Because we all tend to hang out together, especially on the Internet, we do not always subject ourselves to other new beliefs that might raise doubts about our old beliefs. A real libertarian deliberately embraces variation of belief and is even willing to defend the rights of welfare liberals and Marxists in an "Open Society." Evolutionary epistemology requires a free market of beliefs, and therefore defends free inquiry more than any one set of beliefs. The ultimate Truth emerges out of what Peirce called the evolutionary process of "Human Inquiry," what Popper called "Conjecture and Refutation," and what Hayek called the "Extended Order."

Scientific and Moralistic Positivism

How can we know what's True and/or what's Good? Philosophers call this area of inquiry epistemology. There are two untenable theories: positivism and constructivism. Positivists argue that human beings can know timelessly universal scientific and/or moral facts, which correspond to reality. A statement is true if it corresponds to the facts. Correspondence is detemined based on a verification process. Hence, positivists argue that "if X is true, than it's true in all times and all places." And/or, "If X is good, it's good in all times and all places." And of course, we all seek these timelessly universal "True Beliefs," and when we think we've got one, we arduously embrace those "facts." A world of timelessly universal facts is highly coveted, but profoundly naive. The other untenable epistemological theory is called constructivism, which argues that Truth and/or Goodness are manufactured by sociopolitical forces. Hence, our beliefs are are relative to time (historical relativism), or place (cultural relativism). Most constructivists are either historians or sociologists. So are there epistemological theories that avoid both positivism and constructivism?

Most libertarians embrace evolutionary epistemology as proposed by Charles Sanders Peirce and Karl Popper. The basic idea is that our individual and collective beliefs evolve over time based on variation and selection. Hence, they reject the verification process in favor of a falsification process, or "creative destruction." Why? Because we can never know when the verification process is over (the problem of induction). How many experiments must we conduct before our theory is finally verified. Peirce and Popper, therefore argued that, although we cannot know the Truth, we can know what's False. Therefore, when we say "X is true," what we're really saying is that "X hasn't yet been falsified." The goal of human inquiry is to dethrone false theories. Over time, our individual and collective beliefs get closer to the Truth, but never achieve finality. So what are the social implications of evolutionary epistemology?

Scientific and moralistic positivists typically claim unqualified authoritative dominion over others based on what they "know," that is "The Truth" and/or "The Good." Finality: it's over! "I know the Truth or the Good, and you don't. I'm the ultimate authority, therefore, you must submit to that authority and bestow up me, the social privilages that I deserve." Libertarians, resist the temptation to coronate timelessly universal "experts." Expertise is inexorably fallible, but not necessarily socially constructed. Libertarians, therefore, question both scientific and moral authorities. Why? Because they forge monopolies.

Theories and experts become authoritative when they dominate any given market. The sellers of theories profit most when their theories gain monopolistic status, which can be achieved via either persuasion or coercion. Theories become natural monopolies when they explain, predict, or control phenomena better than other competing theory and therefore attract a critical mass of buyers based on emotive and/or rational persuasion. Artificial monopolies attract and maintain buyers not by persuasion (emotion or reason) but by coercion, which usually prevents exposure to falsification. Thus there is a difference between "selling" theories of Truth and Goodness within a competitive market of ideas and "forcing" others to buy those theories. The most efficient way to establish an artificial knowledge monopoly is to deploy the coercive power of government via the criminal justice system, which often protects artificial monopolies. That's how theories become ideologies and scientists and moralists become ideologues: by using their enhanced sociopolitical status as justification for exercising coercive force over non-believers. Both Science and Religion can easily fall into the hands of ideologues.

The "Is" and the "Ought"

As I wind up my research on Leadership Ethics I have become more convinced of the centrality of the distinction between facts (is) and values (ought), and how they are related. As social psychologists continue to uncover the mental mechanisms that comprise our "moral psychology," it becomes increasingly evident that we still do not really know what to make of these scientific truths. Here are the basic questions: How does empirical knowledge about mental mechanisms elucidate everyday moral problems? If we knew all of the "facts" that underlie our moral feelings, thoughts, and behaviors, would we also know all of the "values" that ought to guide us? Before we get started, let's clear the air of two fallacies. The naturalistic fallacy says that "facts" determine "values" and that empirical knowledge alone elucidates knowledge of moral goodness. The moralistic fallacy says that knowledge of "values" (moral facts) trumps knowledge of "facts" and/or that "facts" are merely values in "disguise. Most moral psychologists deny that either the naturalist fallacy or the moralistic fallacy is a fallacy. So how does libertarianism approach the is/ought distinction?

First of all, thoughtful libertarians like Karl Popper, F.A. Hayek and myself (;D) deny that there are (in fact) either scientific facts or moral facts. The word "fact" carries with it an aura of finality: "We know the Truth, therefore, we must act on it. If it's True, it's True forever." Libertarians argue that knowledge of facts and values is highly fallible and therefore must be subjected to constant revision. Why? Well, because scientists, like everyone else, are prone to make mistakes and/or succumb to the influence of power structures. Science and ethics, therefore, are about establishing a self-correcting system that uncovers both factual errors and value-errors wrought by ideological corruption. The early libertarians were the first to attack the scientific positivists and the moral positivists by insisting on continued inquiry, even when scientists and moralists insist that they've got it right. That means that thoughtful libertarians are reluctant to bestow unquestioned authority on either scientists or moralists. We are not skeptics or cynics. Our allegiance is not to particular scientific or moral truths but to self-correcting epistemic processes that weed out error and ideological contamination of what's presented as unassailable scientific and moral facts. How does all of this work? I'll have to cover that later. I have a class in 10 minutes and a stack of essays to grade before I can do much else.

Nationalism v. Globalism

Check out my friend Peter Corning's most recent blog entry on "Fair Trade" on his FAIR SOCIETY blog and my comment. http://www.thefairsociety.net/