techo-babble

An excerpt from
Stephen A. Marglin, The Dismal Science: How Thinking Like an Economist Undermines Community (Harvard, 2008).

http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/MARDIS.html

Economics celebrates the self-interested, calculating individual and the market as a means of realizing individual satisfactions, and this celebration is important in overcoming opposition to extending the sway of the market and, by the same token, undermining community. Economics is not only descriptive; it is not only evaluative; it is at the same time constructive—economists seek to fashion a world in the image of economic theory.

The problem with the idea that economics is purely, or even primarily, a descriptive undertaking is that the apparatus of economics has been shaped by an agenda focused on showing that markets are good for people rather than on discovering how markets actually work. And from this normative perspective has come the constructive agenda. If you believe that economics is or should be about describing the world, then it is a case of the tail wagging the dog. If you believe, as I do, that the normative agenda has been central to economics from well before Adam Smith’s time, then it is more understandable why the apparatus of economics is built on foundations that undermine community. Undermining community is the logical and practical consequence of promoting the market system.

This much is certain: if all we economists cared about was describing the world, we could easily forgo much of the framework that I find problematic. Take one of the most basic tools of economic analysis, demand. If we did not care about drawing conclusions about how well markets work, as distinct from how markets actually work, we could start directly from the demand curve rather than basing demand on choices made by rational, calculating, self-interested individuals. We do not take demand as the starting point because it would then be impossible to argue that—subject to some fine and not so fine print—a system of markets maximizes welfare.

In making this argument, economics relies on value judgments implicit in foundational assumptions about the self-interested individual, about rational calculation, about unlimited wants, and about the nation-state, and it is these assumptions that make community invisible. In arguing for the market, economics legitimizes the destruction of community and thus helps to construct a world in which community struggles for survival.

Informed Comment: Obama Scores against McCain

‘ MR. RUSSERT: . . . do you reserve a right as American president to go back into Iraq, once you have withdrawn, with sizable troops in order to quell any kind of insurrection or civil war? SEN. OBAMA: . . . Now, I always reserve the right for the president — as commander in chief, I will always reserve the right to make sure that we are looking out for American interests. And if al Qaeda is forming a base in Iraq, then we will have to act in a way that secures the American homeland and our interests abroad. So that is true, I think, not just in Iraq, but that’s true in other places. That’s part of my argument with respect to Pakistan. . .’

Note that Obama was simply responding to Russert’s hypothetical, which assumed that the US was already out of Iraq but that in the aftermath, there was “insurrection” or “civil war.” The world that Russert imagined was presumably one in which Iraq had firmed up enough for the US to get out, but then at some later time it developed substantial civil unrest. Russert was presumably attempting to find out if the Democratic candidates were adopting an isolationist position, of getting out and staying out. Obama implied that no, if al-Qaeda came back to Iraq and formed a new base years from now, he would “act” in such a way as to “secure American interests.” He is not an isolationist. Note that he was not specific about how exactly he would act.

The mere ability to choose between good and evil is the lowest limit of freedom, and the only thing that is free about it is the fact that we can still choose good.

To the extent that you are free to choose evil, you are not free. An evil choice destroys freedom.

We can never choose evil as evil: only as an apparent good. But when we decide to do something that seems to us to be good when it is not really so, we are doing something that we do not really want to do, and therefore we are not really free.

~ Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, ch. 27 (1961).

[From No Comment]

Scott Horton | No Comment | “Another Milestone on the Road to Serfdom”:

This weekend, the darkness continues to descend in Washington, the powers of the state continue to grow and the mechanisms of accountability rot away unused. Americans are focused on the selection of a new president. Many of them share the naïve assumption that on January 20, 2009, when a new leader takes the oath of office from the south steps of the Capitol Building, the Founders’ constitutional order will once more be set aright and the extra-constitutional excesses of the Bush years will be but a bad memory. But whoever is installed as the new guardian of presidential power will not likely part with many of the rights that Bush claimed and was allowed to use, unchallenged.

(more)

The House of Lords debates the UK’s squirrel problem:
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200405/ldhansrd/pdvn/lds06/text/61107-0001.htm

Last semester ended up well.

U.S. Constitutional History I: Colonies to 1860: ‘A’
Constitutional Theory: ‘A’

On my history final exam the professor wrote: “Maybe the best exam I’ve ever seen in this course.” (I received an A+ on the exam.)

A while back I posted about potential topics for a constitutional theory term paper. I ended up choosing the fifth option (What is the purpose of constitutional theory? Why do people do constitutional theory?). It was both my favorite and favorite of everyone who provided feedback. The paper has veered more toward an account of authority (legitimacy), though the purpose of constitutional theory is still a factor. That is, I believe constitutional theory has a role to play in an account of authority. I submitted a first draft last week for comments. The paper is still very rough. Nonetheless, my professor’s final comment was: “Wow!  This is the most ambitious student draft I’ve read in a long time, maybe ever.  That’s fine, if you can pull it off, and I suspect you can.  If you do, this will be not only a publishable piece, but an intellectually useful (and thus potentially a widely read) one.”

I get the phrase “disaster capitalism” from Naomi Klein’s article “Disaster Capitalism: The new economy of catastrophe” in Harper’s (October 2007) [available to Harper's subscribers in their archive].

Guardian Unlimited | Rapture rescue will airlift you to safety. If you can afford it

… In northern Michigan, during the week that the California fires raged, the rural community of Pellston was in the grip of an intense public debate. The village is about to become the headquarters for the first fully privatised national disaster response centre.

The plan is the brainchild of Sovereign Deed, a startup with links to the mercenary firm Triple Canopy. Like HelpJet, Sovereign Deed works on a “country club-type membership fee”, according to the company’s vice-president, the retired general Richard Mills. In exchange for a one-time fee of $50,000 followed by annual dues of $15,000, members receive “comprehensive catastrophe response services” should their city be hit by a man-made disaster that can “cause severe threats to public health and/or well being” (read: a terrorist attack), a disease outbreak or a natural disaster. Basic membership includes access to medicine, water and food, while those who pay for “premium tiered services” will be eligible for VIP rescue missions.

Like so many private disaster companies, Sovereign Deed is selling escape from climate change and the failed state - by touting the security clearance and connections its executives amassed while working for that same state. So Mills, speaking recently in Pellston, explained: “The reality of Fema is that it has no infrastructure, and a lot of our National Guard is elsewhere.” Sovereign Deed, on the other hand, claims to have “direct access and special arrangements with several national and international information centres. These proprietary arrangements allow our emergency operations centre to … give our members that critical head start in times of crisis”. In this secular version of the Rapture, God’s hand is unnecessary. Not when you have retired CIA agents and ex-special forces lifting the chosen to safety - no need to pray, just pay. And who needs a celestial New Jerusalem when you can have Pellston, with its flexible local politicians and its surprisingly modern regional airport? …

Evangelical Atheists like Richard Dawkins frequently bemoan the resistance to science they see in Evangelical Christians ((I’m using “Evangelical Christian” to signify the set of Christians which take a literalistic view of the bible.)) Paul Bloom and Deena Skolnick Weisberg provide some insight into where resistance to science may come from:

The developmental data suggest that resistance to science will arise in children when scientific claims clash with early emerging, intuitive expectations. This resistance will persist through adulthood if the scientific claims are contested within a society, and will be especially strong if there is a non-scientific alternative that is rooted in common sense and championed by people who are taken as reliable and trustworthy. This is the current situation in the United States with regard to the central tenets of neuroscience and of evolutionary biology. These clash with intuitive beliefs about the immaterial nature of the soul and the purposeful design of humans and other animals — and, in the United States, these intuitive beliefs are particularly likely to be endorsed and transmitted by trusted religious and political authorities. Hence these are among the domains where Americans’ resistance to science is the strongest. ((http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/bloom07/bloom07_index.html))

Robert McHenry writing on Britannica Blog takes issue with Bloom and Weisberg: “a good deal more is needed to answer the question the two authors initially set themselves. We need to know much more about the various mental faculties that humans exhibit in varying degrees. Curiosity, for a prime example. That’s a common word for something that, in ordinary discourse, we think we know about, but what is it, what is its source? Why are some people more curious than others?”

I know The Advocate named Ferndale as a “best city” for gays and lesbians. ((http://www.metromodemedia.com/inthenews/ferndale10.aspx)) But I didn’t know how Ferndale became gay central for southeastern Michigan. This Advocate article from a few years back filled in the blanks:

Ferndale got its reputation as a gay mecca after people in Detroit’s Palmer Park neighborhood, once considered the anchor of southeast Michigan’s gay community, started moving out to avoid crime and poor city services in the mid 1980s, said Craig Covey, Ferndale’s mayor pro tem and the director of the Midwest AIDS Prevention Project. Former residents scattered throughout the area, but a handful of people–including Covey–were drawn to the old, inexpensive homes of Ferndale. “Ferndale was a blank canvas,” he said. “Downtown was empty.”

Today, Nine Mile Road is full of restaurants, bars and bookstores, many of them gay-owned. Soon after Covey arrived, Ferndale’s small gay population began organizing, he said, and by the early 1990s, the Affirmations community center and the predominantly gay Metropolitan Community Church had taken up residence in town. Some longtime residents of the blue-collar town were wary. “People were a little afraid–apprehensive–at first,” said Jackie Leggio, a waitress at Como’s, an Italian restaurant and Ferndale fixture. Now that fear is gone, she said.