Nuanced Cooperation

In my previous blog entry I suggested that social scientists often overlook some of the finer points in human cooperation. Let's continue that diatribe! Obviously, the word "cooperation" is notoriously vague. It is a relational term that can mean just about anything. So let's call my new approach: "nuanced cooperation." Obviously, cooperation requires at least two persons, unless you suffer from multiple-personality disorder. Under normal, healthy psychological circumstances, you cannot cooperate with yourself or with a thing. Individuals can cooperate with other individuals and/or groups, and groups can cooperate with other groups and/or individuals. One of the nuances that is almost entirely overlooked in discussions of cooperation is the obvious fact that there are varying degrees of cooperation. So why do we cooperate in varying degrees? Well...because we live in a finite world and therefore individuals and groups cannot afford to contribute time, energy, and resources to all cooperative enterprise. Hence, finite humans ration their cooperative time, energy, and resources. Many if not most individual enterprises involve both cooperation and competition from other enterprises. Even Bill Gates rations his finite resources! Given the vast number of cooperative opportunities in our social environment, we are all probably more non-cooperative than cooperative. Therefore, it's probably more accurate to portray modern humans as a non-cooperative.

All cooperative enterprises involve planning in pursuit of ends or goals. Collective enterprises orchestrated by groups (or organizations) require collective planning, which in turn requires leader-follower relationships. A good leader attracts followers, a bad leader repels followers. Individual enterprises require individual planning.  And, of course, there are better and worse forms of individual and collective planning. Ineffective planning usually leads to failure to achieve one's goals. We are non-cooperative when we prefer not to contribute our time, energy or resources to any given enterprise. Even when we choose to cooperate, we limit the amount of time, energy, and resources that we commit to various cooperative enterprises. Consequently, most enterprises eventually suffer from extinction due to competition from other enterprises. The number of cooperators associated with the horse and buggy industry and the Flat Earth Society has been greatly diminished.   

Of course, there's a lot moral discourse associated with how individuals and groups ration time, energy, and resources, especially when it comes to beneficent enterprises. There are many enterprises conducted by charitable organizations that are worthy of our cooperation. But it's impossible to contribute time, effort, and resources to all of them! Our personal friends and relatives often request our beneficent cooperation in pursuit of their personal ends (or goals). If you have a lot of "needy" friends, these requests can really drain your time, energy, and resources. Parents with young children and adult children with old parents experience the finitude of time, energy, and resources. Everyone believes that their own particular enterprise is worthy of the time, effort, and resources of others, and therefore, we are often offended when others choose to be non-cooperative, or contribute less to our enterprise than we'd like.

Some cooperative enterprises are immoral and therefore, not only do we refuse to cooperate, we actively seek to undermine those enterprises. Some immoral enterprises pursue immoral goals, some employ immoral means, and some pursue both immoral ends via immoral means. Unfortunately, we ration our cooperation based on imperfect information, and unwittingly contribute time, effort, or resources to illegal and/or immoral enterprises. One way to dress up a repulsive enterprise is to lie about it's means and/or ends. How many bogus charitable organizations have you contributed to?
Moreover, human cooperation has always been conditioned by both enticements (rewards) and coercive threats (punishments). Many cooperative enterprises involve reciprocity; that is cooperation is based on "you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours." However, we all willingly contribute variable quantities of our time, energy, and resources to various enterprises in the absence of either enticements or threats. And, depending on your supply of time, energy, and resources, if you commit yourself to to many cooperative enterprises, your contribution to any one enterprise might be negligible, or even border on non-cooperative.

Finally, given the inevitable competition between cooperative enterprises, all enterprises eventually suffer extinction. Where's that Roman Empire now? One way to avoid extinction is to force individuals and groups to contribute time, effort, and resources to your particular enterprise. However, forced cooperation is no panacea. Those who control enterprises that provide the coercive force that sustains involuntary cooperation, also ration their own time, energy, and resources, and therefore, usually demand more and more of your time, effort, and resources to monitor and control those who prefer non-cooperation. How many DEA agents, fences, courts, and prisons will it take to monitor and enforce the ongoing Drug War enterprise? There is a general understanding that Libertarians are committed to voluntary cooperation and therefore they reject forceful seizure of the time, energy, and resources of others; and the expansion of coercive force necessary to insure all forms of involuntary cooperation.         

The Road to Serfdom: Part 2

Social and political philosophy is often couched in the language of "isms;" that is, highly idealised conceptual frameworks. These polarized idealizations never exist in the "real world," but they usually represent broad sociopolitical tendencies. In short, societies tend to "lean" one way or another. F.A. Hayek's, The Road to Serfdom identifies two of these "isms:" individualism and collectivism. His basic argument is that eighteenth-century individualism (John Locke, Adam Smith) led to dramatic increases in the quality of life in the Western world; and that nineteenth-century collectivism has led to equally dramatic decreases in that quality of life. Hence, the book's title: The Road to Serfdom. Hayek argues that social and political philosophy is a matter of choice, we are not predestined toward one or the other: philosophical ideas matter! In the United States today, the Democratic Party leans toward collectivism and the Republican Party leans toward individualism, however neither party seem to be very cognizant of the philosophical bases that Hayek identifies. So let's sketch in the broad drift of these two polar "isms."

Individualism argues that personal liberty, individual planning, free market competition, and democratic political institutions are essential for the realization of the "Good Life." Moreover, individualism argues that the relatively unfettered pursuit of self interest by individuals contributes leads to the social good. In other words, society as a whole benefits when individuals are allowed to plan their own lives (pursue their own self-interest) by forging voluntary contracts with others. We all pursue what we believe is "good" for us as individuals. We can best realize these personal individual ends (get a good job) by means of voluntary cooperation with others (paying tuition at the College of Mount St. Joseph). No one forced you come to MSJ. If the college fails to meet your expectations you can choose to take your tuition money and go to another college. If over time, enough students decide to go to another college, MSJ will go bankrupt. However, if we meet student expectations, we'll not only survive but also drive our competitors out of business. (Look out UC, Xavier, Miami, Thomas More, and NKU!) When we earn that monopoly, we cannot sit back and enjoy that enviable position, because our current or future competitors will copy what we did to earn that monopoly. Thus, over the long run competition leads to higher quality education at a lower cost. Not that government had little to do with it. The only thing the free market really needs is to enforce contracts, and monitor and enforce laws against theft and fraud.

Collectivism argues that the free market generates inequalities that cannot be overcome. That's because all markets are subject to business cycles that, by their very nature, wax and wane. Of course, those who own the means of production survive by cutting back on labor costs: buying machines to replace works, making workers work longer hours for less money etc. At the bottom of the business cycle, competition does not work because there are more workers than jobs and therefore dissatified workers are easily replaced. Thus, when workers find themselves at the bottom of one of these cycles, they become alienated from themselves, their family, and their work. They lack economic security. Collectivism, therefore seeks to spread out this risk by using the coercive power of government to plan national and global economies. Collective planners are experts that replace the free market mechanism with a collective system that insures the well being of everyone. Typical collectivist mechanisms include social welfare, unemployment insurance, socialized medicine, centalized banking, and public education. When government control is complete we call it totalitarianism. Under totalitarian collectivist regimes private property, private institutions, and individual planning are replaced by public property, public institutions, and collective planning. Therefore, under a totalitarian regime the College of Mount St. Joseph would be taken over by government's central planners. At that point, all colleges would be controlled by government and you would have no choice of which college you want to attend. My guess is that if MSJ were to continue as a public institution, planners would keep its health care programs and scrap all the other programs. There would be no competition between programs because they'll all be the same. Central planners would decide what is taught, who teaches, how much they get paid, and which students get admitted. Of course, UC would be converted to a football college that trains men to play football. But it would be very boring to watch because the teams wouldn't be allowed to keep score.


My next blog will discuss what Hayek says about the nature of leadership and followership under individualism and collectivism.

Competition

Libertarians have a lot of faith in competition. Why? Whether we like it or not, in Nature, competition is about variable degrees of winning and losing. Winners get a “prize” (survival) and losers do not (extinction). Humans decide when to compete based on our assessment of the value of the prize and the cost of competing. Some prizes are worth the expenditure of time, energy, and resources required and other less so. Assessment implies a clear understanding of the rules. Rational players enter competition, if and only if, they understand the rules. Once we understand the rules, we decide whether it’s worth playing the game. This requires assessing costs and benefits. Competition is ruled by “Supply and Demand,” therefore, accurate information concerning number of competitors is always useful. The number of competitors is largely contingent upon the desirability of the prize(s) offered and the costs associated with entering and playing the game. As a general rule, the more competitors there are the more difficult it is to win. Even though you probably will not win the lottery, you might decide to risk $5.00 to win $1,000,000. Other entry decisions are more complicated. Lotteries are based on a random selection process while other more complex games are based on human judgment. If you are deciding whether or not to compete, it helps to know something about the rules that the judges will apply in the selection of winners. Sometimes winners are decided based on an objective set of rules: in poker a full-house always beats a pair of aces. But sometimes winners are decided based on subjective rules that depend more on the personal, wants, desires, and/or taste of the game-keepers. Most games are played under variable degrees of subjectivity, which is why good looking persons with outgoing personalities tend to win many competitions. If you can enter a competition with an abundance of time, energy, and or resources, one sure-fire way to increase your odds of winning is to manipulate the entry requirements in your favor: that is, convince the game-keepers to raise the cost of entry. For example, if the game-keepers raise the entry fee (increase the time, energy, and resources required to compete) and if you have more time, energy, and resources than the other competitors, your odds of winning will be increased. A more indirect way is to convince the game-keepers to raise entry qualifications. “You can enter this competition, if and only if, you meet certain preconditions.” These preconditions usually involve requiring an advanced college degree, professional certification, a license, or union membership. How does a well-situated competitor go about influencing the game-keepers? Bribes and/or threats have always been very reliable. Bribery involves offering the game-keepers an enticement in exchange for skewing the rules in your favor. Money is the universal enticement. But bribery thrives in secrecy. If word gets out that the winners will be decided based on bribery, non-bribing competitors tend to not enter (or exit) the competition. Then the winners are decided based on who offers the most enticing bribe. Another way to skew competition is to threaten either the game-keepers or the other competitors. Groups engaged in organized crime routinely bribe and threaten both game-keepers and competitors with loss of resources (theft) or physical harm (aggression). “If you try to enter this competition I’ll steal your car, beat you up, and kill your wife!” However, as the value of the prize increases, more competitors willingly take those risks. What will these new risk-taking competitors be like? Well, they’ll probably not have a car or a wife, and they probably they'll probably be powerful enough to thwart or match threats. One way to increase the incidence of illegal bribes and threats is to create a “Black Market” by making the prize illegal: drugs, gambling, prostitution etc. Government skews competition by not only creating Black Markets, but through legalized bribery and legalized threats. Competitors can always get a leg-up on competitors via legalized bribery: that is, by lobbying Congress to alter the rules of the game in their favor. Governmentally enforced licensure requirements reduce competition by threatening non-licensed competitors with fines and prison. Hence, if you want to open a liquor store or drive a taxi, you must pay for a very expensive license. Who originally lobbied for these licensure laws? You guessed it! Liquor stores and taxi cab companies that can afford to pay the costs of those licenses.