What we stand for: Quasi-Rawlsian ethics | 96 comments (96 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

Not sure what you're talking about.

The whole premise here is that ET is looking for other moral standards than the default economic one of income and growth measurements. Rawls, however, is still mostly just income and growth. Dimensions of well-being like influencing others don't enter into Rawls' picture. Sen, however, generalizes past things like the standard economic default to what people actually can and want to do with their lives. That seems like a better way to go.

by santiago on Sun Oct 3rd, 2010 at 11:11:20 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: The equality problem (4.00 / 3)

However, maximising the condition of the least well off in purely economic terms is close enough for corporate work in a society that makes power - and indeed human worth - coterminous with economic wealth.

There are two different but mutually reinforcing projects in play here: The first is to emancipate the powerless, if you'll permit the high-flying expression. The second is to alter the way society allocates power to make it less dependent upon economic considerations.

You're talking about the second of those projects. This diary deals with the first. The second is dealt with here.

These two projects are intimately connected, because you work in the society you have, not the one you might like. Railing against an excessively narrow view of the basis for the allocation of power in society does not diminish one's duty to remedy the observed deficiencies in the allocation on the basis of the institutions that actually exist. Nor should remedying the plight of the afflicted in the present be construed as an excuse for failing to reform the underlying institutions.

Political movements that ignore the institutional basis for the problems they identify rapidly peter out into irrelevance after the first generation of activists. On the other hand, political movements that ignore the plight of the present in favour of building a more glorious future after the revolution tend to obtain poor results - I note in passing the IMF's structural adjustment programmes and the idea of bombing Iraq to democracy, and leave the rest of the laundry list of examples as an exercise to the reader.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Mon Oct 4th, 2010 at 05:44:52 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: The equality problem (none / 1)

The common issue is accepting that in a sane society limiting the freedom of action of a tiny minority who deem themselves worthy of absolute, monarchic freedom to order and interfere in the lives of others can only create wider freedoms, more thoughtful participation, better planning and better decision making for everyone.

Effectively it's an argument against pseudo-monarchy. Which is different to the Anglo concept of freedom and choice which promises that individuals can become pseudo-monarchs through financial acquisition, and as their wealth increases their accountability and the limits on their personal power decrease.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Mon Oct 4th, 2010 at 06:37:29 AM EST
[ Parent ]

That's the whole problem (none / 1)

This isn't a new concept at all. The points you raise were those first thought through by Atkinson and his work on how to measure poverty in the 1970's that led to Sen's development of the human poverty index that the World Bank now uses. But it turns out that even when you look at just the standard economic dimensions of well being, correcting for equality in one dimension causes pretty wide disparities in others - such as how women or other minorities are experience life, for example. How one defines poverty is actually a pretty big exercise of power in itself.

That's why Sen developed the capacity approach. Focusing on equality of capacities to achieve and capacities to be is really the only way to achieve a semblance of equality in even the standard economic measures of well being.

by santiago on Mon Oct 4th, 2010 at 09:13:22 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: The equality problem (4.00 / 2)

Sen, however, generalizes past things like the standard economic default to what people actually can and want to do with their lives. That seems like a better way to go.

Sen was active in the discussion that led to Arrow's dissertation and his 1951 book, Social Choice and Individual Values. Part of that was social choice theory, which "assumes that we need to extract a preference order on a given set of options". This has been the foundation on which much of welfare economics and development economics has been built, by Sen and others.

It is, perhaps, not accidental that the most characteristic feature of contemporary US political life has come to be the highly constrained choices with which the electorate is presented and the ease with which those constraints has come to enable the resulting process to serve the interests of the dominant players. The rest of social choice theory seems less relevant, given the prevalence of that effect.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Mon Oct 4th, 2010 at 12:29:39 PM EST
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Re: The equality problem (none / 1)

True enough, but Sen didn't win a Nobel Prize for his work on social choice theory. (Although Arrow did.) He won it for his work on poverty, and particularly for showing how you can't really affect outcomes which improve equality without first addressing the institutions which prevent individuals from even being able to define what equality means for themselves.

by santiago on Mon Oct 4th, 2010 at 11:34:32 PM EST
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Re: The equality problem (none / 0)

I realize that, even with my very limited knowledge of the work of both Arrow and Sen. My point really was that Sen builds partly on social choice theory and that theory seems not to have produced very acceptable results, given the choices the USA has made and the way those choices seem to be made. In fact, it seems to have little bearing on the actual process. If it did the results might be better. I don't know.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Tue Oct 5th, 2010 at 12:15:51 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: The equality problem (4.00 / 3)

To the contrary, I think their work on social choice theory has proven to have a lot of bearing on the actual process. The work they did showed, contrary to the dominant neoclassical political economy model, that in most cases it's just not mathematically possible for a polity of even the unrealistically free, knowledgeable actors of standard economics to arrive at a socially optimal consensus. In reality there are almost no win-win situations, unlike what we are led to believe through a "market framework" for thinking about society. Instead of mutually beneficial negotiations, people engage in contests over "who gets what" in which there are almost always going to be some losers, so the question is, "Who will society choose to lose?" This explains why values become so important, because they determine with whom you group to join that fight.

by santiago on Tue Oct 5th, 2010 at 06:04:46 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: The equality problem (none / 0)

Great! More reading...

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Wed Oct 6th, 2010 at 12:50:23 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: The equality problem (none / 0)

Suggestions? Preferably pithy overviews that admirably summarize. :-)

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Wed Oct 6th, 2010 at 12:51:42 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: The equality problem (4.00 / 3)

Actually, the wikipedia entry for Arrow's Impossibility Theorem is pretty good, at least for starters. The key thing with Arrow is not to get tripped up, like a lot of people seem to, in his use of an election game and conclude that he was just talking about a strict case of electoral politics.

He invented an abstract voting game between three hypothetical electors to determine, mathematically, if it is even possible to conceive of a political economy in neoclassical terms, even given their pretty unrealistic assumptions, and he finds that it is not: The existence of anything like a social welfare function -- that the well-being of a group of three or more people can be honestly conceived of as a single average or summed function -- is a false proposition.

Regarding Sen, "Freedom as Development," is the non-academic, "popular" book which summarizes his ideas pretty well, like "A Brief History of Time" was for Hawking. (The wikipedia entry for that book, unfortunately, was pretty weak, so I'd go to the source instead.)

by santiago on Wed Oct 6th, 2010 at 05:36:06 PM EST
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Re: The equality problem (none / 1)

santiago:

He [Arrow] invented an abstract voting game between three hypothetical electors to determine, mathematically, if it is even possible to conceive of a political economy in neoclassical terms, even given their pretty unrealistic assumptions, and he finds that it is not:

Well, Condorcet saw it first... ;-)

"Ce qui vient au monde pour ne rien troubler ne mérite ni égards ni patience." René Char

by Melanchthon on Mon Oct 11th, 2010 at 11:37:55 AM EST
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Re: The equality problem (none / 0)

...that the well-being of a group of three or more people can be honestly conceived of as a single average or summed function -- is a false proposition.

How exceedingly interesting.

That's GNP down the rat hole, for starters.

She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist. -- Jean-Paul Sartre

by ATinNM on Tue Oct 12th, 2010 at 11:48:34 AM EST
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Re: The equality problem (none / 0)

Yes, that is exactly what it means, as far as making any grand generalizations about individual well being from GDP figures are concerned. That was his point, elucidated in further work by Sen -- that we really can't say that "a rising tide lifts all boats" when it comes to economics.

However, GDP, and its cousins GNP and GNI, are still quite useful in summarizing the total amount of market-based economic activity that is going on in an economy, which is their primary function in economics, if not in policy debates. Although many seem to forget their intro macroeconomics by the time they become journalists, it's pretty standard in the field, and in economics instruction, that GDP is useless as a stand alone data point. It only makes sense in the context of other data to judge well-being, power, or economic activity.

by santiago on Wed Oct 13th, 2010 at 01:11:00 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: The equality problem (none / 0)

Journalists. And policy makers. And economists talking about making policy. Weird, huh?

by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Wed Oct 13th, 2010 at 01:40:20 PM EST
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Re: The equality problem (none / 0)

All the same thing: blogger wanna-bes -- people who have been liberated to speak in forums where they need not be encumbered with the facts.

by santiago on Wed Oct 13th, 2010 at 02:20:52 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: The equality problem (none / 0)

Although many seem to forget their intro macroeconomics by the time they become journalists,

That is a natural consequence of always and uncritically using GDP or GDP pro capita as the metric for wealth in all economic exposition except these (usually perfunctory) disclaimers.

One cannot exonerate an academic discipline from perpetuating an error solely by noting disclaimers in first-year textbooks when the same discipline ignores those disclaimers essentially from the point they are made and until you graduate. In fact, reading disclaimers about the non-universal applicability of GDP in the discussion section of a first-year national accounting textbook feels a lot like reading a Quack Miranda: "We have to include a disclaimer about not elevating GDP to the One True Proxy in order to cover our asses. This being done, let's get back to elevating GDP to The One True Proxy."

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Thu Oct 14th, 2010 at 05:47:40 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: The equality problem (none / 0)

I don't quite agree. It's more than a disclaimer. It does actually represent the way GDP and similar data points are used in the field and in professional advice to policymakers and business people. GDP per capita is a very good way of measuring economic growth, and its use in the field is mostly limited to discussions of economic growth. It is not a particularly good way to measure economic well-being and usually isn't used as the primary evidence regarding discussions of well-being -- unemployment or other data points are used instead or with GDP. For example, GDP is but one of the frequently published and cited economic leading indicators which are meant to summarize both growth and well-being aspects of the economy. All of the indicators get reported; not just GDP alone.

However, it cannot be denied that there is a strong association between economic well-being of even the poorest sectors of a society and GDP, regardless of how it is measured, particularly when GDP growth is slow or negative, so it would be dishonest to eliminate discussions of GDP from issues of well-being entirely.

I just don't see many economists doing the things you attribute to them. I do see a lot of other people doing it, and I see economists frequently and publicly correcting them when they do. (I just came from the right of center National Association of Business Economists annual meeting, and entire sessions, as usual, were devoted to precisely the topic of the misuse of GDP in policy debate and how to try to correct it.) It's just not the field's fault. It really is the journalists here.

by santiago on Thu Oct 14th, 2010 at 10:20:36 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: The equality problem (none / 0)

They were? Which ones?

I can see one there. The others seem marginally less relevant.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Thu Oct 14th, 2010 at 11:26:40 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: The equality problem (none / 0)

Section 23, directly, and 19 and 20 inclusively.

Section 23 presented recent papers on alternative methods to GDP for measuring economic activity and the drawbacks of GDP and the alternatives to it. This has always been a topic of interest in economics, because of the inherent difficulties in the whole project of defining and measuring an economy and what it means for different people.

by santiago on Thu Oct 14th, 2010 at 12:58:59 PM EST
[ Parent ]

What we stand for: Quasi-Rawlsian ethics | 96 comments (96 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

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