I am still working in a desultory way on Adventures In Flatland — Part IV, but it's not nearly publishable yet. I'll finish it eventually, but I don't know when.
Still, some of the stuff I discuss in that forthcoming essay is worth looking at on its own. Today I will discuss an excellent article by Lawrence Mitchell called The wealthy suffer from an ‘empathy gap’ with the poor that is feeding a rise in inequality (The Conversation, December 8, 2014). Some of this text is from my forthcoming essay. I am not concerned with the "empathy gap" itself in this post (the "first" problem discussed in Mitchell's article).
Let's start with the "second" problem as referenced below.
Fairness is no longer fair
The second problem is with our laws. Many of our laws take some idea of fairness as their starting point, following Aristotle. We see justice as some notion of fairness in terms of how opportunities are distributed.
Our sense of what is fair is structural or procedural, assuming that everyone has access to the same resources or jobs and the individual freedom to pursue them.
But we can’t, or won’t ...
The correct choice is can't because the Flatland unconscious exists, etc.
... say that fairness embraces a particular way to ensure economic goods are distributed evenly or adheres to some collective concept of social purpose. Constitutional due process, for example, attempts to balance the power of the state with the rights of an individual in a formal and structural way but without detailing how it should work in practice. The focus is on the system not the outcome.
As any lawyer or economist can tell you, when you focus on structure or process, the result is typically the status quo. Thus if we start with inequality, we end with inequality.
We mean well, or so I hope. But it usually doesn’t work, at least if social mobility is our goal. And the apparent successes, such as due process in the 19th century, are few and far between and even today haven’t entirely achieved their aims.
These observations are deeply insightful. When politicians or economists focus on structure or process—when they argue about the minimum wage or "safety nets" or more federal "stimulus" of the economy, etc.—instead of focusing on greater outcomes, the result must inevitably be some trivial variant of the status quo, the same old human condition, which will be a little better or worse depending on enacted policies.
But nothing fundamental really changes, does it? Thus if we start with inequality, we end with inequality, as Mitchell observes. And not just a little inequality. If we start with substantial, worsening inequality, we end up with substantial, worsening inequality. Paraphrasing Thomas Piketty, over the long run, returns on capital will always exceed whatever bones (wages, benefits) the ownership class throw to the hoi polloi (the mass of ordinary people).
So in the example above, arguments about minimum wages or food stamps are bullshit. Hopeful fantasies about the demise of predatory capitalism are bullshit. Substantial, worsening economic inequality is the continuing, never-changing outcome. To understand Flatland, always focus on outcomes and filter the bullshit.
This is not to say that we shouldn't accept the bones elites throw our way. Otherwise, many, many people would have nothing. Without food stamps, millions of Americans would starve (WSJ, September 1, 2014).
There were 46.2 million Americans on food stamps in May, 2014,, the latest data available, down 1.6 million from a record 47.8 million in December 2012. Some 14.8% of the U.S. population is on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, down from 15.3% last August, U.S. Department of Agriculture data show.
Almost all of human discourse centers around "structure or process" instead of outcomes. Politicians, economists and mainstream journalists will be happy to tell you that SNAP enrollment is gradually declining from record levels. Great! But that salutary result doesn't change the status quo; it doesn't change fundamental outcomes. The vast majority of those who have gotten off of food stamps are still poor and will remain that way. Now, they are the working poor. And if the Federally mandated minimum wage were raised to $whatever/hour, they would be a little less poor, but still poor.
Again, here's what Mitchell said: as any lawyer or economist can tell you, when you focus on structure or process, the result is typically the status quo. Believe me, it's not just lawyers and economists who could tell you that. With regard to the natural world, Earth scientists or informed writers could tell you the same thing, although they generally don't.
For example, paraphrasing Mitchell, if we start with a mass extinction in its early stages, we end with a mass extinction in its later stages. When environmentalists succeed in getting a law passed which creates a small protected area somewhere on the planet, or manage to bring this or that species back from the brink of immediate extinction, or manage to keep a species alive in zoos—I am sorry to say this—that "success" is equivalent to focusing on "structure or process" instead of outcomes. In terms of larger outcomes, those "successes" are very misleading.
Playing up those "successes" is the environmental equivalent of raising the minimum wage to cure inequality. For every species brought back from the brink of immediate extinction, hundreds of others (if not thousands) will go extinct in the coming decades.
Which is why Elizabeth Kolbert says that she would sound like a crazy person to "lay out a prescription" for halting the Sixth Extinction.
Q: Is there any happy note to end on?
A: People ask me why I wrote this book if I don’t lay out a prescription for what we should do. I make the point that I think it’s quite important that we realize what we’re doing, what’s going on. That’s the only way to even begin to think about how we might ameliorate this situation. I do want to say there are loads of things we could be doing. It’s just that there’s nothing we could do that would be easy. So, there are tons of things to do. The first thing we could do is very dramatically reduce our carbon emissions, which we could do, but we would have to choose to do that.
Although Kolbert is loathe to say it, she is reluctant to try to stop humans from being human. After all, there's no prescription for that
A recent e-mail from a long-time reader of this blog asked me the following:
Have you ever thought about documenting, for others, [your own] evolution, this falling away from normal cognition? The lessening of the filtering of the world. The distancing from instinctual drives and urges. The increasing ability to resist harmonizing...
This post is a partial response to that request. If you want to see the world for what it is, filter the bullshit and focus on outcomes. At the level of our species Homo sapiens, or at the level of very large populations, this rule of thumb generalizes the common observation that it behooves us to pay attention to what people do, not what they say.
I hope some of you find this post useful.
Thanks Dave for getting back. I think it really means a great deal to all of us devoted readers that you really do care about our comments and what we write to you.
In the area of wilderness conservation I have started referring to the structure/process as -- the Conservation-Industrial Complex. Like its sibling, the Military-Industrial Complex, it is surrounded by big, opaque, billowing clouds of bullshit.
If you want to get focused on outcomes there, make sure you have on your hazmat suit fully equipped with industrial-strength bullshit filters.
Posted by: Wheelerlucas | 01/06/2015 at 01:35 PM