Kruse Kronicle

Does Character Count? Does Virtue Matter?

"On this episode of "Calmly Considered," Michael and Allan explore why it appears that American society has jettisoned the importance of character and virtue for leadership, particularly in the realm of politics. Does character really count? Does virtue really matter?"

The Supreme Court--Guardians of the Constitution or Judicial Legislators?

"On this episode of "Calmly Considered" Michael and Allan discuss the Supreme Court of the United States: its history, development and its politicization by politicians throughout the decades."

Managing Tensions, Or How to Keep from Making Stupid Arguments

"On this episode of "Calmly Considered," Michael and Allan discuss the importance of polarity management, a way of viewing tensions not as either/or problems to be solved, but both/and tensions to be managed. When tensions are turned into problems as is so often the case in today's politics, stupidity reigns supreme and solutions remain elusive."

Calmly Considered: Global Population-- Will It Become Standing Room Only?

On this episode of Calmly Considered, Michael and Allan discuss the growing global population, its implications for the future and why it's important for the followers of Jesus.

Calmly Considered: Does Social Security Have a Future?

On this episode of "Calmly Considered," Michael and Allan discuss the sustainability of Social Security and the necessity of seeking the common good.

Calmly Considered: The Sport of Gambling-- Should Christians Take the Bet?

In this episode of "Calmly Considered," Michael and Allan discuss the rise of betting on sports in America and gambling in general.

The Mid-Term Election and Voting as a Christian

Mid-Term elections are next month. This month we reflect on voting with Christian integrity

Student Loan Forgiveness and Thinking Christianly

This month Allan Bevere and I discuss student loan forgiveness, reflecting not just on the merits of proposed loan cancellations but also on how we use (and abuse) scripture to justify policy ideas. 

What's Up With Inflation

Dr. Allan Bevere and I reflect on what inflation is, how it is used in politics, and what it might mean for Christians.

Calmly Considered: Gun Violence in America

Allan Bevere and I reflect on the issue of gun violence in America.

Calmly Considered: The Demise of Democracy and the Rise of Authoritarianism

In this month's installment, Allan Bevere and I reflect on the rise of authoritarianism in recent years. 

"Democracy is receding in the world and authoritarianism is on the rise. Why is this? What is authoritarianism and what are the circumstances that lead people to trust their futures to authoritarians? How do we recognize authoritarian figures? Is character necessary for good?"

Calmly Considered: Climate Change, Yea or Nay?

Allan and I discuss the issue of human-caused climate change, the realities and the economic complexities in dealing with it, and how Scripture informs us on creation care.

Calmly Considered: Immigration-- The Biblical Witness and Current Challenges

Immigration is a complex topic. Unfortunately, our public discourse produces much more heat than light on the topic. Allan Bevere and I recently had a conversation that only skims the topic, but maybe it will provide some food for thought and encourage helpful conversation. 

New Voting Laws and Critical Race Theory

New voting laws around the country are not a response to voter fraud. How do we know? Because there is no credible evidence of consequential voter fraud anywhere in the country.

The new voting laws respond to voter turnout, especially turnout of the "wrong kind" of voters. The laws do not mention ethnicities in their explicit language, but the voting barriers are made more significant for minorities. This brings us to Critical Race Theory.

Critical Race Theory looks at how racism has, directly and indirectly, influenced the legal system to perpetuate racial disparity – like maybe rigging the voting system in favor of white people without saying so. And now you know why one political party, which I used to call home loosely, is so animated in its opposition to Critical Race Theory.  

How to Increase Intergenerational Mobility

Intergenerational mobility is low in the US. Economist Timothy Taylor discusses findings from a recent study investigating how we might make improvements: Intergenerational Mobility and Neighborhood Effects. The unique study incorporates 20.5 million Americans and enables them to analyze down to the city block level.

 

The study determined that neighborhood (.5 mile radius around family) is twice as significant in determining upward mobility compared to family status. Two policy options to consider:

 

First, empowering families to move to locations with greater opportunities. For a variety of reasons, low-income families have significant barriers to relocating for better opportunities. The article shows that when low-income people are provided with brokerage services (much like wealthy professionals get when being relocated), they relocate at dramatically higher rates.

 

Second, rebuilding impoverished neighborhoods with the institutions and resources necessary to achieve upward mobility for people who live there. This one is more problematic to measure and, therefore, more difficult to address confidently. But it does seem to suggest neighborhood development, including economic development, is more critical than isolated aid to families. It seems aid to families without a corresponding improvement in societal support systems is ineffective. 

Billionaires do NOT pay an overall tax rate lower than the bottom 50%.

Two months ago, the New York Times uncritically ran an article claiming billionaires pay lower tax rates than the bottom half of American earners. (I see this and related pieces circulated by my progressive friends.) The unsubstantiated and yet-to-be-reviewed data came from economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, a tease to promote their soon-to-be-released book. Their claim is contrary to other economic entities that monitor and study taxation. Once the book was released, the methodology became public. The methodology conflicts with the methodology they used just a few years ago in peer-reviewed research.

I am not a tax expert, but I have tried to follow the discussion. Econofact gives one of the best summaries of the claim. (Are Taxes (And Also Spending) Progressive?) A couple of observations:

"In their book, Saez and Zucman reach conclusions that are at odds with a variety of previous studies. … What explains the difference? Relative to previous estimates, the current choices and assumptions made by Saez and Zucman generate higher estimates of income among high-income households, and of taxes on low-income households."

"Considering only positive tax payments gives an incomplete picture of the tax system. Some taxes are "refundable" and actually offer credits, such as the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and the Child Tax Credit (CTC). These credits can create negative tax liability for households. For example, if a household pays $1000 in a given year but receives $1,500 in an earned income tax credit, on balance, they have paid negative taxes. Conventional analyses count programs such as the EITC and the CTC as negative taxes, but Saez and Zucman exclude these credits from their analysis, making the tax system look more regressive than other studies show."

Taking this a step further, assume you have an income of $10,000 and tax credits that net you $5,000. You have $15,000 to spend. Assume the local sales tax is 10%. You pay $1,500 in local sales taxes. But these economists don't count the credits. So the tax rate is effectively 15% because the denominator by which you divide $1,500 is $10,000, not $15,000. It artificially inflates the tax burden even more. They do other "unique" things, like count health insurance premiums as taxes. 

On a further note, these two economists are key economic advisors to the Elizabeth Warren presidential campaign, and this book was written and released to support her political objectives, not as a scholarly analysis.

I am not defending billionaires or the present tax system. A factual claim was made concerning billionaires and taxes. Is it true? Outside of these two economists writing with a clearly partisan objective and using unorthodox methods, there is no support for the claim. A disdain for billionaires and a passion about inequality does not make the claim accurate.

Why Population Control Is Not The Answer to Climate Change

Population control is sometimes championed as a way to fight climate change. Bernie Sanders recently raised this idea. The world population is growing. There are 7.7 billion people today. According to United Nations estimates, there will be nearly 11 billion in 2100. Extra people mean extra CO2 emissions. While two children per woman may seem reasonable, women in the poorest countries can average five or sex. Sanders and others believe this excess fertility is why the world population is growing. Fewer children will mean less CO2. Unfortunately, this perception is decades out of date.

We are already at "peak children." Globally, there are 680 million children under the age of five. U.N. projections show a peak of 700 million in about 2060. There are projected to be 650 million children in 2100, fewer than today. Yet the overall population will grow by nearly 50%. How can that be? The compounding effect of people already born will drive population growth over the next century, not excessive birth rates.

Trends in Fertility

Assume women have two children over their lifetime. They replace themselves and one other. Population size will be stable from generation to generation. (The actual replacement fertility rate for an affluent nation is 2.1 children per woman.) Throughout history, the total fertility rate has been six or seven children. One-quarter of children died before their first birthday. Another sizable percentage died before age five. Many of those who made it past five died before marrying and having children. High fertility rates ensured a couple of children would survive to continue the family.

As affluence emerged and health practices changed (first in Europe and then spreading elsewhere), more children survived into adulthood. We needed fewer births to perpetuate a family, but it took a while for customs related to fertility to adjust downward. That lag between declining death and fertility rates led to the population explosion that began two centuries ago. That growth accelerated into the twentieth century and continues into its final stages today. As recently as the 1960s, the global total fertility rate was as high as five children per woman.

Today, the global total fertility rate is about 2.4 and dropping, but the rate is not evenly spread worldwide. Europe, the Americas, China, Japan, and other regions have fertility rates below the replacement rate, well below it in many nations. A handful of smaller poor countries have fertility rates of five or six, but they also have some of the highest child death rates. The world average is fast approaching the 2.1 replacement rate. However, because the global fertility rate has usually been higher than the replacement rate for most of us now living, it means the cohort of people born one year is usually larger than those born the previous year. So let us think about what that means for the future.

The Compounding Effect in Future Fertility

To keep things simple, assume going forward that we birth the same number of children each year, the death rate stays the same, and no one lives past one hundred years. Now say there are 100,000 people aged 100. By next year, all will have died. The group that was 99 will now be 100. Because more of them were born, there will now be maybe 105,000 people 100 years old. After two years have passed, the new group of 100 hundred-year-old people will be the people who are 98 years old today. They will be a still larger group. That will continue for one hundred years.

At the other end of the age continuum, we have the largest number of children ever born in a year and the largest age cohort alive. A year later, this youngest age cohort will replace a smaller cohort a year older than them. But keep in mind that the number of women of childbearing age will increase yearly for the next forty-five years. Therefore, each year the total fertility rate will need to fall slightly below the replacement rate if the population is to stabilize. It can then rise to the replacement rate after forty-five years. This will continue until 2120, when each age cohort is the largest age cohort that has ever existed for that age. This is the primary driver of population growth in the future, but there is at least one other key factor. (Clearly, I am oversimplifying to illustrate my point. We are not down to replacement rate fertility, so there is still some marginal population growth due to "excess" fertility.)

Furthermore, actual global death rates are not constant. They are dropping. People are living longer. So not only is each age cohort larger than before, but it is also living slightly longer. This, too, contributes to population growth over the coming decades.

Therefore, we would need considerably less than replacement-rate fertility to limit global population growth substantially. In fact, there are credible projections of a population peak of fewer than nine billion. Demographers once assumed transition to low fertility and death rates would stabilize at about the replacement rate. Instead, the fertility rate has dropped well below the replacement rate in nearly every affluent nation, in some cases nearly one child per woman. This may look like a good thing from the narrow view of CO2 emissions. From a holistic standpoint, many social scientists are troubled. Depopulation can be as destructive to human well-being as overpopulation.

The Depopulation Problem

A vibrant society needs a critical mass of productive workers relative to its dependents (primarily children and the elderly.) This is the dependency ratio (dependents divided by workers multiplied by 100). With excessively low fertility rates, it is possible to have a great imbalance with many seniors and too few workers to provide for society. We have already seen that current U.N. projections say we will have nearly the same number of children now as in 2100, but the overall population will be almost 50% larger at eleven billion. That growth is a consequence of a burgeoning number of elders. A smaller population of nine billion may mean fewer total people but an even worse dependency ratio.

Modest help may come from lengthening the number of years people work or a higher participation rate in the workforce for working-age people but at some point, that will be insufficient. Then consider the possibility of medical breakthroughs that cure cancer or dramatically reduce heart disease. That means more people living longer, intensifying the dependency ratio imbalance.

As an ever-shrinking number of people (potentially a minority of the population) is expected to support everyone else, improving living standards will begin to stall and possibly reverse, making the world ripe for any societal dysfunctions. It will not take eighty years for this challenge to become real. Japan is already struggling with these issues. China is already headed down this road. One can envision China opening up to immigration from the remaining regions with the highest fertility rate and investing its resources in growth economies. However, if every nation is headed to fertility rates well below the replacement rates, it is only a temporary fix. The dependency ratio for a world with eleven billion people is already a challenge. The only way to get a peak population under nine billion people is to achieve fertility rates well below replacement rates, substantially intensifying the dependency ratio imbalance just a generation or two down the road. (For more detail, see the Brookings' piece, How will we cope when there are too few young people in the world?)

Decoupled Economic Growth

At the most basic level, climate policy must be about economic growth decoupled from CO2 emissions. Population growth is one issue driving this need for economic growth. But also consider people are advocating for a $15 living wage for every worker in the United States. That would put nearly every U.S. worker in the top 10% of wage earners in the world. Meanwhile, despite astonishing improvements in human well-being around the world and the dramatic reduction in extreme poverty, there are still hundreds of millions of people in extreme poverty. A couple billion more have more stable lives but still live well below standards we would consider tolerable. If it is a matter of justice that everyone in the U.S. has a $ 15-an-hour living standard, then it is only just that all citizens of the world have something approximating that standard. The only way that happens is through economic growth. Measures like population control are shortsighted and potentially disastrous. The principal mission is decoupling economic growth from fossil fuel consumption and other disruptive measures like decoupling land use from agricultural production.

Socialism Is A Freighted Word According To David Bentley Hart. So Why Is He Defending It?

Theologian David Bentley Hart wrote an op-ed Can We Please Relax About 'Socialism'. The byline says, "Only in America is the word freighted with so much perceived menace." As he frames it, socialism is simply about creating a more equitable economy, not about recreating the Soviet Union or Venezuela. This is what people like Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez are promoting.

What Hart is describing is social democracy, not socialism. Democratic socialism is the systematic transformation of capitalism (private ownership and market exchange) into socialism (state ownership and control of the economy), while social democrats embrace capitalism, looking for ways to make it more equitable. Social democrats and democratic socialists may dovetail on some incremental policies, but they have divergent missions.

Let's assume Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez, and others want a more equitable market system of government. Let's go further and agree with Hart's questionable protest that this is all socialism means. Hart acknowledges that "socialism" is a freighted word. Why are they using a freighted word to describe their position? People promote similar policies all over the world without using this language and have done it for generations in the United States. They choose the word precisely because it is inflammatory. They are populist demagogues.

Trump and the Freedom Caucus go out of their way to frame things to maximize enemy outrage while communicating to the base that they are the reasonable ones at war with the crazies. That is why Sanders, AOC, and Hart say "socialism." In their communication strategy, the hyperbolic Fox News response to "socialism" is not a bug. It is the objective. It maximizes their enemies' ire and stokes their base's commitment. As with Trump, the specific policy prescriptions are not serious but serve to antagonize enemies and keep a base, giving them power from which to accomplish other agendas.

Hart is wrong about Europe. While there are cadres of democratic socialists throughout Europe, there are no democratic socialist governments. There are a great many social democracies. "Socialism" is not a widely embraced term. Sweden experimented with democratic socialism from the 1970s to the 1990s before returning to their present social democratic capitalism.

Furthermore, Scandinavian countries are among the most free-market countries in the world. Their generous social safety net is oriented around capitalist self-interest, not a sense of altruism. They designed their nets to maximize the productivity of people in their capitalist economy. This is not Democratic Socialism.

The Democratic Socialists of America, to which Sanders and OAC give allegiance, has as their stated aim not to create a more equitable capitalism but the incremental and systematic replacement of capitalism with socialism. So, while I have no doubt the Fox family goes to hyperbolic lengths to stoke fears, their base criticism is legitimate. This is the Left's Tea Party/Freedom Caucus moment. The answer to our problems is a winsome person who can mobilize a sizeable majority to embrace prudent solutions, not another populist fringe to counter the right's populist fringe. Unfortunately, all I read of Hart is an audition to be a Franklin Graham or Jerry Falwell, Jr., in the Left's version of the Freedom Caucus.

(If you want to be more informed about comparative economic systems, I recommend this excellent piece by economist Timothy Taylor, Capitalism with Scandinavian characteristics. This Finnish-American offers insights into the role of the welfare system in Nordic countries, What Americans Don't Get About Nordic Countries. And from Denmark prime minister, Denmark's prime minister says Bernie Sanders is wrong to call his country socialist.)

Recycle Or Not? The Need To Test Good Intentions

This article from October 2015, asks, Are We Recycling Too Much?

Our study made the first known attempt to combine these various costs and benefits into one analysis to estimate what recycling rate is best. Our conclusion was that recycling up to 10% appears to reduce social costs, but any recycling over 10% costs the environment and the economy more than it helps. The environment and economy suffer as we transport some recycled materials to destinations as far afield as China.

These provocative results certainly require confirmation from future independent and objective research before broad policy goals can be adjusted. Also, many of the benefit and costs associated with waste disposal and recycling vary across regions of the country and world, and thus optimal recycling rates may also vary. For example, we used municipal cost data from Japan for this study because the United States and most European countries do not keep such data.

But if these results hold for other developed countries, then society should collectively rethink how to approach recycling.

And

But the substantial environmental benefits outlined above of using recycled materials in production vary substantially across materials. Aluminum and other metals are environmentally costly to mine and prepare for production. Paper, too, is costly to manufacture from raw sources. But glass and plastic appear relatively easy on the environment when manufactured from raw materials.

These differences are vital. Although the optimal overall recycling rate may be only 10%, the composition of that 10% should contain primarily aluminum, other metals and some forms of paper, notably cardboard and other source of fiber. Optimal recycling rates for these materials may be near 100% while optimal rates of recycling plastic and glass might be zero. To encourage this outcome, a substantial subsidy offered only on those materials whose life cycles generate positive environmental benefits should be applied.

The article illustrates once again that whether we are talking about tax cuts, living wages, rent control, tariffs, or recycling, good intentions unsupported by empirical evidence can be counterproductive.

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Why So Much Outrage? Thinking About My Discipleship

Bloomberg had an excellent piece by science journalist Faye Flam titled It's an Outrage! See? Look How Outraged I Am! Her lead is "Science is starting to shed some light on the curiously continuous cycle of moral outrages." Expressions of collective outrage are not particularly new, but it does seem to me that the frequency of expressed outrage, and outrage over more trivial events, has increased. Why? Psychologists offer this thought:

Psychologists say it all starts to make sense if you think of outrage as a form of display. Expressing it advertises a person's views and allegiances to potential allies. And the more popular a victim's cause, the less risky it is to join in displaying your umbrage.

So is the outrage disingenuous?

 

Psychologist Jillian Jordan, who led the Yale experiment, said she wasn't trying to suggest that people were faking outrage for the purpose of looking good. She believes people genuinely feel the outrage. The point was to explain the urge to share it so ostentatiously.

 

In real-world cases, most people unconsciously tally costs and benefits, said Harvard psychologist Max Krasnow. There is a cost to outrage, in terms of social risk. The cost shrinks when there are more and more people expressing it in solidarity. If you're the only person lobbing yogurt at the Icelandic Parliament, you might well get arrested. But if you're part of a teeming mob, your collective display of outrage can lead to the ousting of the prime minister.

 

So what triggers outrage?

Why do some incidents provoke almost universal outrage and others set off only those in certain age groups or of particular political leanings? One of the most universal sources of outrage is stealing or hoarding resources, said psychologist Eric Pederson. The theory is that this is ingrained in humans because our ancestors' foraging cultures survived by sharing; if Joe helped himself to what others hunted and gathered, but then did not share his good fortune when he found berries or killed a wildebeest, he'd get in deep trouble.

Humanity's deeply rooted antipathy for cheaters helps explain the outrage over the tax evaders revealed by the Panama Papers. But in other cases, said psychologist Robert Boyd, the definition of what's outrageous is dictated by less objectively obvious cultural norms. Humans are wired to pick up cultural rules and norms, and to aim outrage at violators, he said. Cultural norms vary by political leanings, geography and other factors. Often there's a large generation gap.

Harvard's Krasnow said it all comes back to the fact that displays are aimed at potential allies. An outraged person may have no personal tie to a given issue, but outrage can signal sympathy with those who do. This can be quite noble and selfless, not entirely self-serving; the two blur together in ways that allow human civilization to work to the extent that it does.

According to an anthropologist I read, human reason evolved in the context of communal survival. People observed patterns in events around them and developed heuristic models for survival. They fashioned stories to make sense of events and their place in them. Reason developed as a way to reinforce stories and strengthen societal cohesion. This is also to say reason that challenged societal narratives and cohesion was a threat. We are not naturally wired for objectivity.

 

It seems to me that expression of outrage serves a similar function. Narrowly, outrage is about calling out destructive behavior, but more broadly, it is about expressing social solidarity. Sometimes it is hard to tell which is the driving motivator.

 

I have long suspected that the rising waves of outrage may have more and more to do with a need for social solidarity than moral indignation. In a post-modern era, identity is much harder to define and solidify, making us feel more insecure. That insecurity leads us to seek out opportunities for solidarity. Expressing outrage is just such an opportunity, particularly if the offending party/parties are of a "tribe" whom we jointly find disagreeable. The person(s) at the center of the outrage may become completely objectified, serving as a prop in the solidarity-building exercise. Exaggerations, misrepresentations, and apocryphal stories will often be added to heighten the outrage and amplify the endorphin-releasing satisfaction from intensely felt "outrage" solidarity.

 

The problem is that in our rush to solidarity, we can dehumanize others and make poor decisions. Applying a little objectivity will often show more complex circumstances than our outrage will allow. Over the years, I can't possibly recall how many times I have calmly pointed out some exaggeration or misinformation in a charged conversation. It doesn't matter that I may even be sympathetic to those outraged. The reaction is predictable. I am a traitor. I am at least being dismissive of people's suffering. When I point out there is no change in the number of police officers killed on duty in the face of claims of increasing murderous violence against police officers because of Black Lives Matter, I am insensitive to police officers. When I point out that extreme global extreme poverty has halved over the past thirty years and global inequality is declining in the face of claims that "neoliberal capitalism" is making the poor poorer and driving up inequality, I am insensitive to people suffering in poverty. Objective input is not welcome because, ultimately the conversation is about subjective commitments, not objective discernment.

 

Flam closes the article with the following:

 

"It's a complicated game we're playing," Krasnow said, "and sometimes the best strategy is to say nothing."

 

I agree, but the operative word is "sometimes." How about the other times? How are we to conduct ourselves, then? I do not write this as someone who has achieved objectivity and never participates in outrage. Not every expression of outrage is inappropriate. Hardly! And yet, I am self-aware enough to see the dehumanizing, exaggerating, hyperbolic demon lurking at the edge of consciousness when I am outraged. I know how good it feels to be in solidarity with a tribe that feels my intense outrage. As a Christian, I know discipleship has political consequences but does following Jesus really look like an endless rolling wave of outrage? What does it mean when we are so quick to misrepresent facts and dehumanize our opponents when the one we say we follow said:

 

"You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors [and the Republicans, and the Democrats, and the ...] doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect." (Matt 5:43-48)

 

It is almost as if Jesus says love should be our solidifying value, not outrage. I do not know. I am still working on it. Let me know if you figure it out.

Confronting Liberal and Conservative Biases on Science

New York Times reporter Eduardo Porter has an excellent piece about how ideology shapes our embrace/rejection of science. The left loves to rant about the "anti-science" right when the left participates just as much in the same anti-science behavior, and the left's anti-science behavior is every bit as destructive.

"The left is turning anti-science," Marc Andreessen, the creator of Netscape who as a venture capitalist has become one of the most prominent thinkers of Silicon Valley, told me not long ago.

He was reflecting broadly about science and technology. His concerns ranged from liberals' fear of genetically modified organisms to their mistrust of technology's displacement of workers in some industries. "San Francisco is an interesting case," he noted. "The left has become reactionary."

Still, liberal biases may be most dangerous in the context of climate change, the most significant scientific and technological challenge of our time. For starters, they stand against the only technology with an established track record of generating electricity at scale while emitting virtually no greenhouse gases: nuclear power.

Only 35 percent of Democrats, compared with 60 percent of Republicans, favor building more nuclear power plants, according to a poll by the Pew Research Center.

It is the G.O.P. that is closer to the scientific consensus. According to a separate Pew poll of members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 65 percent of scientists want more nuclear power too.

He goes on to note:

Research suggests that better scientific knowledge will not be sufficient, on its own, to overcome our biases. Neither will it be mostly about improving education in STEM fields. To defeat our scientific phobias and taboos will require understanding how the findings of science and their consequences fit into the cultural makeup of both liberals and conservatives.

Explaining in more detail:

It is not hard to figure out the biases. People on the right tend to like private businesses, which they see as productive job creators. They mistrust government. It's not surprising they will play down climate change when it seems to imply a package of policies that curb the actions of the former and give a bigger role to the latter.

On the left, by contrast, people tend to mistrust corporations — especially big ones — as corrupt and destructive. These are the institutions bringing us both nuclear power and genetically modified agriculture.

"When science is aligned with big corporations the left immediately, intuitively perceives the technology as not benefiting the greater good but only benefiting the corporation," said Matthew Nisbet, an expert on the communication of science at Northeastern University.

So when assessing the risks of different technological options, the left finds the risk of nuclear energy looming the highest, regardless of contrary evidence.

This doesn't affect only beliefs about climate change and energy policy. The research identified similar distortions in people's beliefs about the scientific consensus on the consequences of allowing concealed handguns. Biases also color beliefs in what science says and means across a range of other issues.

In the context of climate change, this heuristic presents an odd problem. It suggests that attitudes about climate change have little to do with education and people's understanding of science.

Fixing it won't require just better science. Eliminating the roadblocks against taking substantive action against climate change may require somehow dissociating the scientific facts from deeply rooted preferences about the world we want to live in, on both sides of the ideological divide.

And it is the last sentence that is key. How do we do that? We must create spaces for productive conversations. No matter how emotionally satisfying it may be to engage in tribal disdain for those of another tribe for being "anti-science," this behavior entrenches those we may wish to persuade. And the glaring truth is that very very few of us are pro-science. We are pro-ideology and pro-heuristics and happy to embrace science when it meets these prior concerns. The reality is that there are multiple ways to frame an agenda. So another piece of the puzzle is to enter the mind of opponents and to figure out how to frame concerns in a way that resonates with things they value. But research shows, unsurprisingly, that we nearly always attempt persuasion from the most persuasive angle for us, projecting our values onto others. It usually has the effect of driving the opponent further away.

I think the answer lies in these considerations. I didn't say it was an easy answer. What thoughts do you have?

Rosling Univeristy (How to be smarter than a chimp)

Are you smarter than a chimp? There is a good chance you are not when it comes to knowledge about global socioeconomic trends. For years, Swedish global health expert, Hans Rosling, has been giving Ted talks and making presentations about global trends. One of his favorite teaching tools is to ask people a question like this:

Globally, over the past 20 years, the rate of extreme poverty has:

1. Doubled.
2. Stayed the same.
3. Decreased by more than half.

Now chimps will randomly select, giving each answer a 33% chance. Yet when Rosling asks audiences, at least half will say A, a sizable percentage will say B, while a few will say C. Yet C is the correct answer! This is the case with one variable after another. Audiences routinely score worse than chimps, choosing the most negative option.

An old adage states, "It isn't what we don't know that gets us in trouble. It's what we know that ain't so." That we routinely pick the wrong answer more often than chimps shows that we have bias.

In the Ted talk, How not to be ignorant about the world, Hans' son Rosling notes that part of the problem is our education system. Teachers go to college at a particular point in time and learn the state of the world at that time. But they tend not to learn about ongoing developments. The data has often been hard to come by and hard to interpret. So teachers are biased by what they learned years ago. (Reporters have the same problem.) But there are other factors.

During our evolutionary history, our brains became wired to notice threats. Hunters walking through the brush who were attentive to the possibility of tigers lying in wait likely survived those who went about carelessly enjoying a beautiful day. So when we reflect on broad human trends, we fixate on perceived threats. What was useful for us in the wild is counterproductive as we try to interpret socioeconomic trends. If you want to outscore a chimp on an exam about global well-being, Ola Rosling suggests that you must drop your predispositions and adopt these four rules of thumb:

1. Assume most things are improving.
2. Assume most people are in the middle of a distribution, not a binary of rich and poor.
3. Assume social development precedes becoming wealthy. (Don't assume that a population must be rich before meeting basic social needs.)
4. Assume you are exaggerating the threat if the topic is something you personally fear.

Additionally, Hans, Ola, and others have been working to build the Gapminder website to provide you with data that can be presented in meaningful ways. But one of the most important contributions the Roslings have made is their collection of entertaining and informative videos. In this post, I include every video I can find with a brief annotation. (I'll add more as I find any.) Many videos overlap or cover similar data but are all well worth viewing. So here is your resource for becoming smarter than a chimp. Don't say I never gave you anything.

(This link also has links to most of these videos, including some shorts not listed here: Gapminder Video)

Hans Rosling's 200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes (2010)

If you are just getting acquainted with Rosling, I'd begin here. This four-minute presentation gives you a quick sense of what he is talking about.

 

Hans and Ola Rosling: How not to be ignorant about the world. TED June 2014

This is the second video to watch. The front half is Hans making his case that the world is improving, and the back half is Ola explaining, as I recounted above, why we are so disinclined to see positive change.

 

Hans Rosling: The magic washing machine. TED December 2010

This is the third one to watch. This is one of my favorites. While fully embracing the concern about the environmental impacts of economic growth, Rosling shows the importance of economic growth through the story of the washing machine.

 

THE REST ARE IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER

Hans Rosling: The best stats you've ever seen. TED February 2006

The TED presentation that kicked it all off. He focuses on the positive changes underway in the world. He points to his efforts to liberate, integrate, and animate data and to find ways to present data the public finds understandable.

 

Hans Rosling: New Insights on Poverty. TED March 2007

Rosling shows that social development tends to precede economic development. He addresses the issue that, unfortunately, economic development has always been based on fossil fuels. Higher yields, technology, and markets are key to ending poverty, but more dimensions like human rights, environment, governance, economic growth, education, health, and culture need our attention. The ending has a great surprise!

 

Human Rights and Democracy Statistics- Gapminder c. 2008

Rosling describes why human rights are so hard to describe and evaluate.

Source

Yes they can! - Gapminder c. 2008

Rosling explains that poor nations will one day become prosperous, and we should welcome that.

Source

Poor Beats Rich in MDG Race - Gapminder c. 2008

Rosling shows that countries that have developed from poverty to well-being have done so faster than Western nations. Poor countries today can make the transition much quicker because of what previous countries have learned.

Source

What stops population growth? - Gapminder c. 2008

Small families are the key to ending population growth, and the key to small families is childhood survival.

Source

Hans Rosling: Insights on HIV, in stunning data visuals. TED February 2009

Uses Gapminder data to show nuances in how AIDS has spread and what it takes to defeat it.

 

Hans Rosling: Let my dataset change your mindset. TED June 2009

This is the third video you should watch. Rosling deconstructs the dichotomy of wealthy and developing nations and challenges the idea of thinking in sweeping terms like "Africa."

 

The Joy of Stats with Professor Hans Rosling - Gapminder c. 2010

Rosling shows how making data available and animating empowers people to make better decisions, sometimes without realizing they are using statistics.

Source

Hans Rosling: Asia's rise -- how and when. TED Nov 2009

Rosling forecasts when China and India will catch up with the USA and UK.

 

 Hans Rosling: Global population growth, box by box. TED June 2010

 Rosling says that child survival is the new green. This video explains why.

 

Hans Rosling: The good news of the decade? We're winning the war against child mortality. TED September 2010

Rosling breaks down the remarkable trends in child mortality. Education of women accounts for at least 50% of the drop.

 

 

Hans Rosling: Religions and babies. TED April 2012

Religion is not a factor in family size. There is no significant difference between Islamic and Christian countries regarding births per woman. The defining difference is economic well-being.

 

 DON'T PANIC — Hans Rosling showing the facts about population. BBC November 2013

 A one-hour investigation into the dynamics of population growth using stories about real live families interspersed with Rosling's entertaining presentation of data.

 

Don't Panic - How to End Poverty in 15 Years. BBC September 2015

No embed is available.

You can view the video here.

Here is a link to a series of short videos on how to use development data visually.

An introduction to visualising development data

 

Minimum Wage, Nativism, and the Illiberal Roots of Progressivism

Virginia Postrel has an interesting article at Bloomberg, "Progressive and Racist. Woodrow Wilson Wasn't Alone," a book review of Thomas Lenoard's Illiberal Reformers: Race, Eugenics and American Economics in the Progressive Era. Here are a few key quotes:

The progressives believed, first and foremost, in the importance of science and scientific experts in guiding the economy, government, and society. Against the selfishness, disorder, corruption, ignorance, conflict and wastefulness of free markets or mass democracy, they advanced the ideal of disinterested, public-spirited social control by well-educated elites. The progressives were technocrats who, Leonard observes, "agreed that expert public administrators do not merely serve the common good, they also identify the common good." Schools of public administration, including the one that since 1948 has borne Woodrow Wilson's name, still enshrine that conviction.

Later, she writes:

Advocates similarly didn't deny that imposing a minimum wage might throw some people out of work. That wasn't a bug; it was a feature -- a way to deter undesirable workers and keep them out of the marketplace and ideally out of the country. Progressives feared that, faced with competition from blacks, Jews, Chinese, or other immigrants, native-stock workingmen would try to keep up living standards by having fewer kids and sending their wives to work. Voilà: “race suicide.” Better to let a minimum wage identify inferior workers, who might be shunted into institutions and sterilized, thereby improving the breed in future generations. ...

... Clark's theory is now a foundation of mainstream labor economics. In his day, however, it was highly unpopular. "A key element of resistance," writes Leonard, "was that many progressives were reluctant to treat wages as a price," rather than a right of citizenship and social standing. Informed by their beliefs in scientific racism, most progressives preferred wages to favor some groups over others: men over women, whites over blacks, and most prominently, native stock over immigrants.

Although they generally assumed black inferiority, progressives outside the South didn't worry much about the "Negro question." They were instead obsessed with the racial, economic, and social threats posed by immigrants. MIT president Francis Amasa Walker called for "protecting the American rate of wages, the American standard of living, and the quality of American citizenship from degradation through the tumultuous access of vast throngs of ignorant and brutalized peasantry from the countries of eastern and southern Europe," whom he described in Darwinian language as "representing the worst failures in the struggle for existence."

So restricting immigration was as central to the progressive agenda as regulating railroads. Indeed, in his five-volume History of the American People, Wilson lumped together in one long paragraph the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act and the 1887 Interstate Commerce Act as "the first fruits of radical economic changes and the rapid developments of trade, industry, and transportation" -- equal harbingers of the modern administrative state. With a literacy test and ban on most other Asian immigrants enacted in 1917 and national quotas established in 1924, the progressives bequeathed to America the concept of illegal immigration.

The first paragraph is the preface for what follows. It relates to why I eschew the label "progressive" despite sympathizing with some aspects of what today's progressives espouse. In my estimation, "progressivism," then and now, contains substantial hubris - believing that we are justified in moving heaven and earth to bring about a brave new world through dispassionate logic, science, and a superior moral locus. Institutions and practices that have emerged through time as practical ways of making the world work be damned! I believe most change should be modest reform, not revolution. It is in this sense that I would claim the term conservative. We want to conserve the good as we seek improvement. We aren't that smart, and we aren't that noble when it comes to redesigning the world.

The minimum wage piece is particularly interesting. While the impact of minimum wage increases is notoriously complex and difficult to summarize with precision, most economists agree that substantial increases in the minimum wage dampen job growth over time. Some studies show, just as the early progressives logically surmised, that increased minimum wages negatively impact the employment of minorities, particularly young black men.

I am going to read this book!

Double-Edged Denmark: What we Should Learn

Denmark became a central topic during the Democrats' debate last week. Bernie Sanders calls himself a democratic socialist. Hillary Clinton loves Denmark but dismisses the idea that America can be Denmark. This inspired several articles by various commentators about the truth behind Denmark's economic model (or the Nordic model more generally.) Progressives like the high taxes, low inequality, and high government spending. Conservatives counter by noting that the Nordic countries rank among the countries highest in free trade and low corporate taxes. I've been linking articles on Facebook, but I thought this piece in Niskanen was the best. Double-Edged Denmark

Right-leaning arguments about the free-market marvel that is Denmark cut both ways. Denmark shows us that a much larger public sector and a much more robust social-insurance system need not come at the expense of a dynamic market economy. In other words, Denmark shows us that capitalism and a large welfare state are perfectly compatible and possibly complementary.

The lesson Bernie Sanders needs to learn is that you cannot finance a Danish-style welfare state without free markets and large tax increases on the middle class. If you want Danish levels of social spending, you need Danish middle-class tax rates and a relatively unfettered capitalist economy. The fact that he's unwilling to come out in favor of either half of  the Danish formula for a viable social-democratic welfare state is the best evidence that Bernie Sanders is not actually very interested in what it takes to make social democracy work. The great irony of post-1989 political economy is that capitalism has proven itself the most reliable means to socialist ends. Bernie seems not to have gotten the memo. But Bernie Sanders isn't the only one failing to come to terms with the implications of Danish social-democratic capitalism.

The lesson free-marketeers need to learn is that Denmark may be beating the U.S. in terms of economic freedom because it's easier to get people to buy in to capitalism when they're well-insured against its downside risks. That's the flipside irony of free-market "socialism. ...

... the reason the U.S. is lagging so far behind big-government Denmark on free trade, corporate taxation, ease of doing business, and more may very well be that the American safety net isn't good enough, and economic insecurity at the bottom and middle makes free-market policies a tough sell to anxious American voters.

I don't know that this is true. But, then again, libertarians and free-market conservatives don't know that it's not. Mostly, ideological American capitalists really badly want to believe it's not true that we're falling behind Denmark as capitalists because we're not redistributive enough. (I mean, the previous paragraph made me feel like I was channeling E.J. Dionne, which was … unsettling. But let us put away childish things.) Because if it is true, and social insurance and capitalism are complementary in this way, then champions of economic liberty will be forced to face up to the possibility that attacking the welfare state undermines support for laissez faire economic policy. Some of us might even be forced to choose between our love of capitalism and dislike of the welfare state. Awkward. ..."

Economic development always includes, in some broad sense, an embrace of trade and freedom from arbitrary interference in market activity. Yet when you look at the various nations that rose to affluence in the last century, diverse paths were taken to get there. The particular way toward trade and freedom seems less important than the stability issue. When the various players in the economy and society behave in predictable patterns, they can better predict and coordinate their behavior, even if the patterns are not optimal regarding trade and freedom. The imposition of trade and freedom that generates too much instability may be worse than simply staying with less effective economic models in the short run and letting things evolve.

This need for security and stability is a piece that most libertarians frequently undervalue at both the macro and micro levels. Economic historians will tell you that one of the pivotal developments in history (among several) was the emergence of limited liability. People could pool their resources and form joint ventures without risking their entire assets. Bad choices or unforeseen developments would not leave you destitute.

If the aim is a dynamic, risk-taking economy leading to high productivity and economic growth, then we need security and stability for citizens. With a basic safety net in place (here, I'm thinking mostly of a guaranteed minimum income as opposed to our wasteful welfare industry), people would become less risk-averse, knowing that trying new stuff doesn't lead to destitution if you fail.

But if libertarian conservatives are blind to security issues, progressives are blind to productivity and economic growth. Take the living wage debate. It is said that Walmart's low wages are possible because taxpayers subsidize the workers through the welfare system. Nonsense. Welfare support drives up wages. If the wages aren't at least comparable to welfare options, then why work?

Furthermore, while each business should have the aim of helping their employees flourish (improving their skills and providing opportunities to gain more responsibility in a safe environment), businesses are neither benefactors nor aid agencies. They are the institutions responsible for transforming matter, energy, and data from less useful forms to more useful forms on a sustainable basis. Sustainability means creating more value than the value of resources being used. Wages artificially set above the economic value contributed by labor are unfavorable to productivity and sustainability.

I know of no country, including the Nordic countries, which presumes that every job in every circumstance should provide a "livable" income "unsubsidized" by the government. The minimum wage is a temporary introductory wage people earn as they develop skills and experience. Few earn it for more than a period of a few months. Excessively high introductory wages compel businesses to adapt in ways that reduce the amount of this labor they use and decrease the opportunities for the least-skilled to find an on-ramp into the economy.

So while precisely replicating the Danish or Nordic model in a large, diverse nation like the United States may not be feasible, there are lessons here. To the degree the Nordic models have worked, they have done so because they have successfully married security and growth. This is a managed polarity for them, like breathing embraces both inhaling and exhaling. In America, our partisan factions grasp one polarity pole and demonize the other. To the degree they succeed, we are in deep trouble. That is the lesson I learn from double-edged Denmark.

 

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Tom's Shoes: A Closer Look (Adam Ruins Everything)

This video is funny and disturbing at the same time. Good intentions, stereotypes, and warm fuzzies can be destructive. Thinking with an economic lens that evaluates actual outcomes is essential. Yet, attempts to introduce such a lens are usually met with strong resistance. It feels so right; how could it be wrong? As I've said repeatedly - We need to do mission with warm hearts and cool heads. We need to think and observe, not just emote and respond.

The Enduring Myth of Black Criminality

The Atlantic: The Enduring Myth of Black Criminality

"In his upcoming October cover story, Ta-Nehisi Coates explores how mass incarceration has affected African American families. "There's a long history in this country of dealing with problems in the African American community through the criminal justice system," he says in this animated interview. "The enduring view of African Americans in this country is as a race of people who are prone to criminality." You can read the full story on September 15, 2015."

Looks like an interesting series.

Why People Oppose GMOs Even Though Science Says They Are Safe

Scientific American: Why People Oppose GMOs Even Though Science Says They Are Safe

... In the paper, we identify several intuitions that may affect people's perception of GMOs.Psychological essentialism, for instance, makes us think of DNA as an organism's "essence" - an unobservable and immutable core that causes the organism's behaviour and development and determines its identity. As such, when a gene is transferred between two distantly related species, people are likely to believe that this process will cause characteristics typical of the source organism to emerge in the recipient. For example, in an opinion survey in the United States, more than half of respondents said that a tomato modified with fish DNA would taste like fish (of course, it would not).

Essentialism clearly plays a role in public attitudes towards GMOs. People are typically more opposed to GM applications that involve the transfer of DNA between two different species ("transgenic") than within the same species ("cisgenic"). Anti-GMO organizations, such as NGOs, exploit these intuitions by publishing images of tomatoes with fish tails or by telling the public that companies modify corn with scorpion DNA to make crispier cereals.      

Intuitions about purposes and intentions also have an impact on people's thinking about GMOs. They render us vulnerable to the idea that purely natural phenomena exist or happen for a purpose that is intended by some agent. These assumptions are part and parcel of religious beliefs, but in secular environments they lead people to regard nature as a beneficial process or entity that secures our wellbeing and that humans shouldn't meddle with. In the context of opposition to GMOs, genetic modification is deemed "unnatural" and biotechnologists are accused of "playing God". The popular term "Frankenfood" captures what is at stake: by going against the will of nature in an act of hubris, we are bound to bring enormous disaster upon ourselves.

Disgust also affects people's attitudes towards GMOs. The emotion probably evolved, at least in part, as a pathogen avoidance mechanism, preventing the body from consuming or touching harmful substances. We feel repelled by things that possibly contain or indicate the presence of pathogens such as bodily fluids, rotten meat, and maggots. This would explain why disgust operates on a hair trigger: it is better to forego an edible meal under the misguided assumption that it is contaminated, than to consume sickening, or even lethal, food that is erroneously thought to be safe. Hence, disgust can be elicited by completely innocuous food. ...

... The impact of intuitions and emotions on people's understanding of, and attitudes towards, GMOs has important implications for science education and communication. Because the mind is prone to distorting or rejecting scientific information in favour of more intuitive beliefs, simply transmitting the facts will not necessarily persuade people of the safety, or benefits, of GMOs, especially if people have been subjected to emotive, anti-GMO propaganda.

In the long run, education starting from a young age and specifically targeted at tackling common misconceptions might immunize the population against unsubstantiated anti-GMO messages. Other concerns can be addressed and discussed in the wider context of agricultural practices and the place of science and technology in society. However, for now, the best way to turn the tide and generate a more positive public response to GMOs is to play into people's intuitions as well. For instance, emphasizing the benefits of current and future GM applications — improved soil structures because herbicide resistant crops require less or no tilling, higher income for farmers in developing countries, reduced vitamin A deficiency, virus and drought resistance, to name a few — might constitute the most effective approach to changing people's minds. Given the benefits and promises of GM technology, such a change is much needed.

This is one of the most insightful articles I've read. I think his advice in the last paragraph is particularly important and needs to be heeded when dealing with any number of unjustified oppositions to factual realities - from climate change to vaccinations to nuclear power. Yet our propensity is to shout the facts louder and use opposition to the facts as a rallying cry for our tribe versus the "anti-science" dolts from the other tribe.

Fair Trade: Does It Help Poor Workers?

From Marginal Revolution University.

Food Deserts Are Not The Problem

National Bureau of Economic Research: What Drives Nutritional Disparities? Retail Access and Food Purchases Across the Socioeconomic Spectrum

Food deserts are not the problem when it comes to poor nutrition for low-income people, at least according to this study.

Jessie Handbury, Ilya Rahkovsky, Molly Schnell

NBER Working Paper No. 21126
Issued in April 2015
NBER Program(s):   HE

The poor diets of many consumers are often attributed to limited access to healthy foods. In this paper, we use detailed data describing the healthfulness of household food purchases and the retail landscapes in which these consumers are making these decisions to study the role of access in explaining why some people in the United States eat more nutritious foods than others. We first confirm that households with lower income and education purchase less healthful foods. We then measure the spatial variation in the average nutritional quality of available food products across local markets, revealing that healthy foods are less likely to be available in low-income neighborhoods. Though significant, spatial differences in access are small and explain only a fraction of the variation that we observe in the nutritional content of household purchases. Systematic socioeconomic disparities in household purchases persist after controlling for access: even in the same store, more educated households purchase more healthful foods. Consistent with this result, we further find that the nutritional quality of purchases made by households with low levels of income and education respond very little when new stores enter or when existing stores change their product offerings. Together, our results indicate that policies aimed at improving access to healthy foods in underserved areas will leave most of the socioeconomic disparities in nutritional consumption intact.

China and India Overtake Mexico for Inflow of Foreign-Born US Residents

Conversable Economist: China and India Overtake Mexico for Inflow of Foreign-Born US Residents

Americans, Led by Democrats, Get Friendlier With Free Trade

Conversable Economist: Americans, Led by Democrats, Get Friendlier With Free Trade

" ... I welcome the overall shift toward a more positive view of foreign trade among Americans. As I've argued on this blog before, the next few decades seem likely to be a time when the most rapid economic growth is happening outside the high-income countries of the world, and finding ways for the US economy to connect with and participate in that rapid growth could be an important driver of US economic growth in the decades ahead.  In a broad sense, US attitudes over foreign trade mirror the behavior of the US trade deficit: that is, when the US trade deficit was getting worse in the early 2000s, the share of those viewing trade as a "threat" was rising, but at about the same time that the US trade deficit started declining, the share of those viewing trade as an "opportunity" started to rise.

However, I feel considerable uncertainty over how to interpret these findings. For example, it's not clear to me why Democrats and Independents are shifting their opinions about trade more strongly than Republicans. This shift doesn't seem to reflect the political divisions in Congress, where it seems that Republicans are more often the ones to be pushing for agreements to reduce trade barriers and Democrats are more likely to be opposing them."

From Live Aid to Live Trade

Thirty years ago this July, Bob Geldof helped organize Live Aid, a concert to help victims of a lengthy famine in Ethiopia. Months earlier, he was behind releasing the song Do They Know It's Christmas? that raised money for Ethiopia as well. While clearly well intended, both ventures - and the Aid ventures they would spawn - reflected a highly Western-centric and paternalistic view of Africans, portraying Africans as dysfunctional and helpless without the help of the Great White Hope. Their welfare is contingent on Western benevolence, not their own initiative and creativity.

Pope John Paul II said that poverty is not a lack of wealth. Poverty is exclusion from networks of productivity and exchange. The solution to poverty is an appreciation for the God-given creative capacity in each person and the inclusion of everyone in networks of productivity and exchange.

Now, thirty years later, some of these rockers are seeing the light. Bono of U2 has been singing the praises of entrepreneurial capitalism for a few years now. (Bono: 'Capitalism Takes More People Out of Poverty Than Aid') And now we learn Bob Geldof himself has entered the venture capital business. (Rock Star Bob Geldof Spearheads U.S. Private-Equity Push Into Ethiopia)

Below is a video interview with Geldof about his ventures. Note that right out of the gate, the interviewer challenges Geldof because Geldof will be making a profit off of his ventures. Yes! That is exactly right! That is because profit for all parties happen when equals - creative, productive people - specialize and exchange goods and services. Their profits are invested in expansion or new ventures, creating wealth, jobs, and higher living standards. Instead, the interviewer's paradigm is of a patron to an inferior, an inferior with nothing of value to produce and exchange. Maybe some of our paternalism will begin to fade as these high-profile celebrities begin to embrace economic development and exchange.

Welfare is Key to Entrepreneurship and Economic Growth

The Atlantic: Welfare Makes America More Entrepreneurial

A common perspective among political conservatives, especially of the libertarian and Tea Party varieties, is that welfare is a drag on economic growth and a disincentive to initiative. Paul Ryan wants a safety net and not a safety hammock. Some libertarians don’t even want the net. It would be better to let people take their own risks. Money taxed away by the government is money that people could have used to buy goods and services and boost the economy.

I do not dispute that government programs could be a drag on the economy, but this conservative narrative is grossly incomplete! Entrepreneurship and economic innovation are, at the heart, calculations about risk. By taking a bold step, what are the chances I will be better off (however I measure that), and what are the chances I could lose everything? Do the chances of being “better off” outweigh the status quo, especially if I could lose even what I have now? So here is the key point: By reducing the risk of losing everything, we tip the risk calculation toward taking more risk and economic growth.

... Take food stamps. Conservatives have long argued that they breed dependence on government. In a 2014 paper, Olds examined the link between entrepreneurship and food stamps, and found that the expansion of the program in some states in the early 2000s increased the chance that newly eligible households would own an incorporated business by 16 percent. (Incorporated firms are a better proxy for job-creating startups than unincorporated ones.)

Interestingly, most of these new entrepreneurs didn’t actually enroll in the food stamp program. It seems that expanding the availability of food stamps increased business formation by making it less risky for entrepreneurs to strike out on their own. Simply knowing that they could fall back on food stamps if their venture failed was enough to make them more likely to take risks. ...

... The rate of incorporated business ownership for those [CHIP] eligible households just below the cutoff was 31 percent greater than for similarly situated families that could not rely on CHIP to care for their children if they needed it.

The same is true of recent immigrants to the United States. Contrary to claims by the right that welfare keeps immigrants from living up to their historic role as entrepreneurs, CHIP eligibility increased those households’ chances of owning an incorporated business by 28 percent.

The mechanism in each case is the same: publicly funded insurance lowers the risk of starting a business, since entrepreneurs needn’t fear financial ruin. (This same logic explains why more forgiving bankruptcy laws are associated with more entrepreneurship.) ...

... American men were more likely to start a business just after turning 65 and qualifying for Medicare than just before. Here again, government can make entrepreneurship more appealing by making it less risky. ...

... Sometimes, though, a robust safety net may serve to discourage entrepreneurship. The best path in such cases, however, may not be to cut the program, but rather, to reform it. When France lowered the barriers to receiving unemployment insurance, it actually increased the rate of entrepreneurship.. Until 2001, citizens on unemployment insurance had little incentive to start businesses, since doing so would terminate their benefits. Instead of gutting the program, the state simply decided to let anyone who founded a business keep drawing benefits for a limited period, and guaranteed that they would be eligible again if that business failed. The result: a 25 percent increase in the rate of new-firm creation. ...

Other examples are reported. You get the picture. Here is the conclusion.

... The evidence simply does not support the idea of a consistent tradeoff between bigger government and a more entrepreneurial economy. At least in some cases, the reverse is actually true. When governments provide citizens with economic security, they embolden them to take more risks. Properly deployed, a robust social safety net encourages more Americans to attempt the high-wire act of entrepreneurship.

The challenge is not the particular size of government. The issue is the precise programmatic design of any given program. Markets generate a real-time feedback loop that allows independent individuals to prioritize their choices. Government has fewer effective ways of being adaptive and responsive. I lean toward market solutions where practical. Yet, there are some deliverables that markets alone cannot generate. How this mix should all come together is a topic on which reasonable people can disagree. But the idea that government cuts necessarily lead to more economic vitality is no more valid than the idea that wildly throwing money at welfare programs helps people. The real world is far messier than ideologues are willing to grant.

Why We Reject Facts & Embrace Conflict

Real Clear Science: Why We Reject Facts & Embrace Conflict

There is a growing body of research suggesting that when beliefs become tied to one’s sense of identity, they are not easily revised. Instead, when these axioms are threatened, people look for ways to outright dismiss inconvenient data. If this cannot be achieved by highlighting logical, methodological or factual errors, the typical response is to leave the empirical sphere altogether and elevate the discussion into the moral and ideological domain, whose tenets are much more difficult to outright falsify (generally evoking whatever moral framework best suits one’s rhetorical needs).

While often described in pejorative terms, these phenomena may be more akin to “features,” than “bugs,” of our psychology. ...

For instance, the Machiavellian Intelligence Hypothesis holds that the primary function of rationality is social, rather than epistemic. Specifically, our rational faculties were designed to mitigate social conflicts (or conflicting interests). But on this account, rationality is not a neutral mediator. Instead, it is deployed in the service of one’s own interests and desires—which are themselves heavily informed by our sense of identity. ...

... Accordingly, the best way to reduce polarization is not by obscuring critical differences under the pretense of universalism. Instead, societies should aspire to lower the perceived stakes of these identity conflicts.  

For example, rigidity, polarization and groupthink are much less common, and more easily addressed, in deliberations within an identity group; closed-mindedness is largely a response to a perceived threat from outside. In heterogeneous contexts, many of the benefits of this enclave deliberation can be achieved by engaging interlocutors in terms of their own framing and narratives, mindful of their expressed concerns and grievances. That is, identity differences should not be suppressed, avoided or merely tolerated, but instead emphasized, encouraged and substantively respected—emphasizing pluralism over sectarianism. This can create a foundation where good-faith exchange and intergroup cooperation are feasible. Or put another way, the problem isn’t cultural cognition, it’s the lack of cross-cultural competence.

Excellent article!

Why People "Fly from Facts"

Scientific American: Why People "Fly from Facts"

Research shows the appeal of untestable beliefs, and how it leads to a polarized society ...

“There was a scientific study that showed vaccines cause autism.”

“Actually, the researcher in that study lost his medical license, and overwhelming research since then has shown no link between vaccines and autism.”

“Well, regardless, it’s still my personal right as a parent to make decisions for my child.”

Does that exchange sound familiar: a debate that starts with testable factual statements, but then, when the truth becomes inconvenient, the person takes a flight from facts. ...

... We presented 174 American participants who supported or opposed same-sex marriage with (supposed) scientific facts that supported or disputed their position. When the facts opposed their views, our participants—on both sides of the issue—were more likely to state that same-sex marriage isn’t actually about facts, it’s more a question of moral opinion. But, when the facts were on their side, they more often stated that their opinions were fact-based and much less about morals. In other words, we observed something beyond the denial of particular facts: We observed a denial of the relevance of facts. ...

... These experiments show that when people’s beliefs are threatened, they often take flight to a land where facts do not matter. In scientific terms, their beliefs become less “falsifiable” because they can no longer be tested scientifically for verification or refutation. ...

... While it is difficult to objectively test that idea, we can experimentally assess a fundamental question: When people are made to see their important beliefs as relatively less rather than more testable, does it increase polarization and commitment to desired beliefs? Two experiments we conducted suggest so. ...

...  So after examining the power of untestable beliefs, what have we learned about dealing with human psychology? We’ve learned that bias is a disease and to fight it we need a healthy treatment of facts and education.  We find that when facts are injected into the conversation, the symptoms of bias become less severe. But, unfortunately, we’ve also learned that facts can only do so much. To avoid coming to undesirable conclusions, people can fly from the facts and use other tools in their deep belief protecting toolbox.

With the disease of bias, then, societal immunity is better achieved when we encourage people to accept ambiguity, engage in critical thinking, and reject strict ideology. This society is something the new common core education system and at times The Daily Show are at least in theory attempting to help create. We will never eradicate bias—not from others, not from ourselves, and not from society. But we can become a people more free of ideology and less free of facts.

Excellent piece!

Groups Aim to Lure Conservatives Out of the Closet on Climate Change

Forbes: Groups Aim to Lure Conservatives Out of the Closet on Climate Change

This is an excellent article! Climate change and the left-wing narrative of "capitalism-is-exploitation" have been closely intertwined. Scientists tend to lean left-wing already, but when Al Gore became the official face of climate change, that relationship between science and ideology became cemented. The problem is that whenever you wed a scientific challenge to an ideology in a deeply partisan culture, you guarantee rejection by half the populous. The challenge is to find ways to build coalitions across multiple political "tribes."

"A new Republican-led group, the ClearPath Foundation, is angling to breach those prison walls [captivity to climate change skeptics] — not just for members of U.S. Congress, but for moderates and conservatives everywhere who yearn for a meaningful role in the climate conversation. ...

... [Low engagement is] not for lack of understanding, Powell noted. The problem, rather, is that messages on global warming tend to come from groups associated with the far left, and to a lesser extent, the far right of the political spectrum. In between sits a vast audience comprised of political moderates and conservatives who understand the science and, when asked, support many economic and entrepreneurial initiatives that would help curb planet-warming emissions. And yet, no one is speaking directly to them, Powell said — a realization that has provided ClearPath with its mission. ...

And this is key:

... Evidence emerging from the social sciences suggests that the strategy makes some sense — not least because scientific literacy has been shown to be a poor predictor of whether or not most people consider climate change to be an issue of concern. Much more telling are the shared value systems and general world-views that act as both the glue for intellectual tribes within the larger community, and the filter by which those tribes ignore or discount messages emanating from the outside.

Virtually everyone is susceptible to this sort of motivated reasoning, according to one 2012 study published in the journal Nature Climate Change, such that conservatives tend to hear undertones of "government overreach" in the words "climate change," while liberals tend to hear "insatiable corporate greed" when the discussion turns to economic and market-driven solutions to the problem.

From that 2012 study:

"[P]eople who subscribe to a hierarchical, individualistic world-view — one that ties authority to conspicuous social rankings and eschews collective interference with the decisions of individuals possessing such authority — tend to be skeptical of environmental risks. Such people intuitively perceive that widespread acceptance of such risks would license restrictions on commerce and industry, forms of behavior that hierarchical individualists value. In contrast, people who hold an egalitarian, communitarian world-view — one favoring less regimented forms of social organization and greater collective attention to individual needs — tend to be morally suspicious of commerce and industry, to which they attribute social inequity. They therefore find it congenial to believe those forms of behavior are dangerous and worthy of restriction."...

YES! YES! A thousand times YES! Thus these attempts to frame climate issues in a way that energizes conservative and moderate involvement.

... That's not to suggest, of course, that Republicans and Democrats won't continue to disagree on the best strategies for addressing global warming. It's a safe bet, after all, that many on the left will find GOP-sponsored solutions to be too slow, too shortsighted, or too mindful of industry interests — just as those on the right will view left-leaning initiatives as economically fraught, scientifically unwarranted and alarmist. Such is the cacophony of competing tribal values.

But for those seeking to bring Republicans more fully into the climate discussion, the efforts of ClearPath and other groups to nurture a conversation somewhere between the poles must be a welcome development. ...

I know my progressive and liberal friends don't want to hear it, and it irritates them every time I say this, but I am more convinced than ever that the more you insist on exclusively using capitalism-is-exploitation narratives to solicit support for climate change action, the narrower will be the support. Many progressives are either so insulated that they cannot see how their ideology bleeds through, or they are aware of their science/ideology linkage and climate change as a tool for promoting an ideological agenda is a higher priority than developing broad support for action. Good to see some activists trying to broaden the discussion.

Markets vs Government Mandate: What We Learned From Walmart on the Minimum Wage

The Week: Walmart's wage hike proves we don't need the government to raise the minimum wage

There are lessons here for both left and right.

First, this should show progressives that the government doesn't actually have to mandate a minimum wage hike for wages to go up. There are other, market-based ways to get wages to increase, like tightening labor markets.

For companies, raising wages is not an exercise in philanthropy. It's a business decision. They'll almost certainly make it up in higher retention and productivity. ...

But

... Whenever a problem arises that progressives want to fix with some heavy-handed government intervention, conservatives respond that the market will take care of it — and they're very often right. But here's the thing: "The market" is not a demigod who lives on the planet Neptune. The market is simply decisions made by individual human beings, and human beings can decide to do some things and not others.

The progressive demand for government intervention often arises from cultural failures, and cultural remedies do not spring up magically into existence. They have to be created. Sometimes conservatives risk adopting their own version of the left's materialistic Vulgar Marxism when they think of "the market" as an autonomous force that drives history and doesn't leave room for individuals to choose to drive it in one direction or another. As the economic historian Deirdre McCloskey and the philosopher Michael Novak have shown, a thriving free enterprise system rests on the exercise of virtues and not just the laws of supply and demand.

If we conservatives think the federally mandated minimum wage is a terrible policy (and it is), we shouldn't just explain why it is a terrible policy, and we shouldn't even just support alternatives like wage subsidies. We conservatives should also actively make the case to companies like Walmart that they should pay their employees more. Same thing with rethinking work-life balance and careers for women. It's striking that we almost never hear the expression "civic duty" anymore; the reason why the demand for regulation arises is because people are no longer expected to exercise private virtue.

Important points.

"Anti-Science" and Social Identity

Tom Jacobs has an excellent piece at Pacific Standard, Threaten My Group, and I'll Belittle Your Science. He writes:

Newly published research provides at least a partial answer. It finds scientific findings that challenge the assumptions of a group you strongly identify with motivate people to derogate the research in online comments.

When informal membership in a group—say, the anti-vaccine movement, or those opposed to genetically modified foods—informs your sense of self, and/or provides a feeling of pride and belonging, a perceived attack on its basic beliefs is grounds for a counterattack. Today, that often means writing nasty, dismissive comments online. ...

... While conceding that there are a number of reasons why gamers would choose to angrily argue with the science rather than seriously consider its implications, the researchers focus on one particularly interesting psychological framework: Social identity theory.

This school of thought contends that group membership (be it political, religious, or something as innocuous as being a fan of a particular sports team) is a significant source of our self-esteem. It follows logically that members have an interest in boosting the group's status (and degrading the status of competing groups), since its prominence, or lack thereof, rubs off on ourselves. ...

... Perhaps this discovery can provide an opening for educators and policymakers as they attempt to get around this frustrating psychological block. If scientific findings are to be accepted and acted upon, they have to somehow be presented in a way that does not trigger a defensive reaction. 

We remain, in many ways, a tribal species, and if you challenge my "tribe," don't be surprised if the response is a metaphorical poke in the eye.

To this, I would add that the reason a great majority of people hold a scientifically sanctioned position is not because of science but also because of social identity. Science affirms my narrative and my tribe. "Science" becomes a weapon to deploy against other tribes. It lets me beat my chest in defiant superiority. It becomes a club with which to bludgeon those who threaten my tribe. Advocacy of the "scientific" position frequently has precious little to do with a concern for science. I don't care if it is climate change, vaccinations, evolution, GMOs, nuclear safety, or other topics. It is far more about affirmation than information.

I'll also add this - if you think you are not affected by this dynamic, you are likely either Commander Data from Star Trek or delusional. ;-) It is inescapable. We are communal creatures, and tribalism is always a factor. The realistic response is to continually strive to be self-aware of our tribal issues and be more accepting of the tribal buttons we push in others. Only then can we move toward genuine dialog.

Pew: Major Gaps Between the Public, Scientists on Key Issues

From Pew Research: Major Gaps Between the Public, Scientists on Key Issues

An enlightening interactive chart showing major discrepancies between what scientists believe and what the public believes, segmented by various demographics. It drives home that being pro or anti-science is highly selective across demographic groups. The divergence on genetically modified organisms (GMOs) is particularly striking.

Invisible Fuel (and "Limits to Growth" Thinking)

Economist: Inivisble Fuel

THE CHEAPEST AND cleanest energy choice of all is not to waste it. Progress on this has been striking yet the potential is still vast. Improvements in energy efficiency since the 1970s in 11 IEA member countries that keep the right kind of statistics (America, Australia, Britain, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands and Sweden) saved the equivalent of 1.4 billion tonnes of oil in 2011, worth $743 billion. This saving amounted to more than their total final consumption in that year from gas, coal or any other single fuel. And lots of money is being invested in doing even better: an estimated $310 billion-360 billion was put into energy efficiency measures worldwide in 2012, more than the supply-side investment in renewables or in generation from fossil fuels.

The “fifth fuel”, as energy efficiency is sometimes called, is the cheapest of all. A report by ACEEE, an American energy-efficiency group, reckons that the average cost of saving a kilowatt hour is 2.8 cents; the typical retail cost of one in America is 10 cents. In the electricity-using sector, saving a kilowatt hour can cost as little as one-sixth of a cent, says Mr Lovins of Rocky Mountain Institute, so payback can be measured in months, not years.

The largest single chunk of final energy consumption, 31%, is in buildings, chiefly heating and cooling. Much of that is wasted, not least because in the past architects have paid little attention to details such as the design of pipework (long, narrow pipes with lots of right angles are far more wasteful than short, fat and straight ones). Energy efficiency has been nobody’s priority: it takes time and money that architects, builders, landlords and tenants would rather spend on other things. ...

Whether we are talking about climate change or peak resources, the tendency is to project current economic dynamics - like a ratio of energy usage per unit of GDP - indefinitely into the future and then make dire predictions of impending doom.

However, continuous innovation teaches us that such relationships are alterable. Until the early 20th century, there was a consistent linkage between the acreage in agricultural production and human population. It would have been unsustainable with the level of growth the next century would bring. One hundred years later, we now see that the global demand for agricultural land has flattened – and may even decline – even as the global population continues to grow, albeit at an ever-slowing rate.

Similarly, energy use and GDP have typically been closely related. What we see now is that energy and GDP are decoupling. Both are increasing, but energy is at a slower rate than GDP. Even as both global population and living standards rise, it does not follow that energy and resource usage will inevitably follow suit. Through innovations in engineering, nanotechnology, and recycling, nearly everything we use can eventually be made of renewable materials. We have only scratched the surface of power sources that are available to us. Dramatic innovation is underway in energy storage, transmission, and usage.

There unquestionably are challenges, but predictions of impending and inescapable collapse are not justified.

For more on decoupling and a link to an excellent video by Bjorn Lomborg on the fallacy of limited growth thinking, see my post, Limits to Growth: Still Wrong, Still Influential - Bjorn Lomborg.

The Law of Asymmetric Insight Versus the Law of Assymetric Insight

Arnold Kling recently posted Pete Boettke on Ideology and Economics. The economics in the article is interesting, but I particularly liked this sentence:

"Keep in mind, however, the Law of Asymmetric Insight: when two people disagree, each one tends to think that he understands his opponent better than the opponent understands himself."

I suspect a measure of this is unavoidable. If I do not think my view has greater merit, and therefore other views are flawed, why would I hold my view? The trick in addressing a disagreement is dealing respectfully with others, valuing them, and maybe asking more questions while issuing fewer pontifications. I'm trying to be better a this. Sometimes I learn the Asymmetry of insight is not always in my favor.

The challenge is to avoid the Law of Asymmetric Insight, which is the Law of Asymmetric Insight, with an addendum: When two people disagree, each one tends to think that he understands his opponent better than the opponent understands himself, and he is therefore justified in behaving like an ass.

In short, have convictions but don't be an ass.

Low-income communities are not needy -- they have assets

Faith and Leadership Blog: John McKnight: Low-income communities are not needy -- they have assets

Most people and institutions that want to serve poor communities are focused on what the residents lack. “What are the needs?” is often the first question asked.

John McKnight says that approach has it backward.

“I knew from being a neighborhood organizer that you could never change people or neighborhoods with the basic proposition that what we need to do is fix them,” he said. “What made for change was communities that believed they had capacities, skills, abilities and could create power when they came together in a community.”

McKnight is co-director of the Asset-Based Community Development Institute and professor emeritus of communications studies and education and social policy at Northwestern University.

He and his longtime colleague John Kretzmann created the asset-based community development (ABCD) strategy for community building. Together they wrote a basic guide to the approach called “Building Communities From the Inside Out: A Path Toward Finding and Mobilizing a Community’s Assets.”

McKnight also wrote “The Careless Society: Community and Its Counterfeits” and, with co-author Peter Block, “The Abundant Community: Awakening the Power of Families and Neighborhoods.” ...

McKnight spoke to Faith & Leadership about asset-based community development and the role the church can play in helping people identify and leverage their strengths to empower their communities. The following is an edited transcript. ...

Excellent piece on asset-based community development. Read the whole thing. More churches need to learn to think this way.

I Stand With My Friends ... Black and Blue

There is an old joke about a mealy-mouthed politician who says, “Some of my friends are for this measure. Some of my friends are against it. As me for me, I stand with my friends.” I’ve always loved that joke, but through the years, I’ve learned that there are circumstances where standing with my friends is the right response.

Today I am told I must choose between supporting police officers and supporting minorities who tell of problems in dealing with law enforcement. Each camp points to the most extreme behavior of opponents to justify dismissive and dehumanizing responses. Yet one of the most challenging articles I’ve read came shortly after the Ferguson verdict. (Why I Feel Torn About the Ferguson Verdict) Safiya Jafari Simmons, a black woman who is the wife of a police officer and the mother of a black son, writes of her dilemma in telling her husband to do what he has to do to come home safe each night while also worrying about what may happen to her son through profiling or a misunderstanding by police. The choice between supporting law enforcement and supporting minorities with frustrations is false.

As we mourn the loss of the two murdered NYPD officers, let us pray for God’s shalom to be made full, especially as we celebrate the birth of the Prince of Shalom. And let us pray that God would reveal to each of us our role in realizing that shalom.

#bluelivesmatter #blacklivesmatter

Race and Justifiable Homicide by Law Enforcement

Stanford psychologist Jennifer Eberhardt recently recounted this conversation between her and her son:

I'm on an airplane with my son. And he looks up and he sees a black man, and he says, "Hey, that guy looks like daddy."

And I look at the guy, he doesn't look anything like my husband, and I notice he's the only black guy on the plane. And he says, "I hope he doesn't rob the plane."

And I said, "Well, why would you say that?"

And he looked at me and he said, "I don't know why I said that."

And so we're living with such severe racial stratification that even a 5-year-old can tell us what's supposed to happen next.

Children (even black children!) learn that black men are suspect as early as five years old. One recent study showed that more than 40% of people think many or most black men are violent. It was 15% for white men and black women and even lower for white women.

Another interesting study flashed a picture to a group of people. Two white men were fighting. One was holding a knife. When asked who had held the knife, most of the subjects gave the correct answer. A second picture featured a white man and a black man. The white man was holding the knife. When asked about this second picture, most people (black and white) incorrectly identified the black man as holding the knife. Deeply engrained biases actually alter what we see. What might this mean for law enforcement?

I have documented that the rate of justifiable homicide by law enforcement has been increasing since 2000, even as the crime rate has been falling. I take this as a proxy indicator for more violence in general being used by law enforcement. I have also noted two possible contributing factors. First, "Broken windows" policing came into vogue in the wake of a crack cocaine epidemic twenty-five years ago. Minor violations were enforced to restore order in beleaguered neighborhoods. People wanted more aggressive policing. Second, 9/11 has moved our collective psyche toward viewing ourselves as continuously living with imminent threats. Policing tactics become more aggressive in an emergency, which may spill over into everyday policing. I would suggest a third factor upon more reflection. The economy's collapse in 2008 has left many people with much less confidence in the government's ability to work well and protect them. Domestic events like Sandy Hook and international events like ISIS beheadings create a sense of the world running amok.

These factors may explain why justifiable homicides have been increasing, but why should this have a disproportionate impact on blacks killed by police relative to the rate of crime in their communities? Some activists see a calculated race war against African Americans. Law enforcement is only one step removed from Bull Connor or the KKK. Studies suggest that about 25% of Americans have openly hostile attitudes toward African Americans. Law enforcement officers are drawn from society, so they are undoubtedly represented among law enforcement. With 17,000+ law enforcement agencies in the U.S., I have no doubt particular law enforcement agencies can come under the sway of such attitudes. But the idea that law enforcement community is part of some orchestrated act of oppression goes much too far. All the evidence points to most police officers being highly dedicated people who genuinely want to serve all the public well. Does this mean that apart from a few bad apples, there is no racial component to what is happening?

As I listen to conversations about recent controversies, I hear a common refrain from many in the white community. If there was no explicit exclamation of racial animus by a police officer, then there was no racism. Any attempt to raise race as a piece of the problem is viewed as "reading things in," or even worse, an attempt at race-baiting or playing the race card. This seeing racial bias purely in terms of conscious motivations of individual actors errors in another direction.

I think race is an issue in the rise of justifiable homicide rates in at least three important ways. First, look at the strategies and tactics we use. Neighborhoods most at risk from becoming bases of serious criminal activity are poorer neighborhoods. Minorities make up disproportionately high percentages of these neighborhoods. Any aggressive policing strategy, like broken windows, will disproportionately impact minorities. Confrontational interactions between law enforcement and citizens will rise, and more interactions mean more opportunities for lethal force. In some cases, our policing strategies set the stage for disproportionate negative impacts on police regardless of the motivations of any particular officers.

Second, we have deep-seated perceptions about black communities and black men. Officers have the discretion to use lethal force when they feel threatened. Like the young black boy on the airplane, a black man will be perceived as a greater threat. The threshold for an officer to act or react will be lower. Without any willful malice toward black men, race will have impacted the death of some black men. Studies show that, with good training, officers can learn to ignore irrelevant issues like race, but how widespread and effective is that training?

Third, there are bad or incompetent actors in law enforcement who do not belong there. Law enforcement is difficult disciplined work, and, as with any human organization, unqualified people will slip through even the best screening process. So let us not ignore that some officers harbor ill will. Aggressive protocols allow the expression of this will.

So even absent conscious malice by individual players, race is thoroughly "baked in" to our law enforcement decisions. It is easy for me to be emotionally detached from this problem as a middle-aged white guy, but when your whole life is peppered with what feels like constant harassment by law enforcement, it is a different story. Marry to this frustration the living memory of once pervasive lynching and miscarriages of justice done with impunity toward the black community, and visceral reactions are unsurprising. Justifiable homicide is just an extreme example of a more pervasive reality.

So I will conclude this series of three posts suggesting that what we have is not a law enforcement problem but a societal one. There are bad apples and incompetent players in law enforcement, just as in any human institution, but law enforcement mostly consists of dedicated people who want to serve well. The difference here is that when officers mess up, people can get killed. Standards must be high. But law enforcement is also responsive to the public's demands. And if our fearful demands lead to policies that have unintended negative consequences, should we be blaming law enforcement for those consequences? Better collection of data and reforming a process where the final determination on justifiable homicide is being made by law enforcement agencies and prosecuting attorneys who exist in a symbiotic relationship are two reform measures being discussed. But even before that, we need to reflect on to what degree fear drives us to make bad policy decisions.

But there is another societal problem. Racial perceptions permeate our society. As law enforcement draws its officers from our society, its ranks will reflect society's views. We certainly need to work to drive racial bias out of law enforcement behavior, but foremost we need to work to drive bias out of society. That would, in turn, rectify law enforcement behavior. And to that end, I would suggest that white Americans stop looking to every excess by either rioting protestors or self-aggrandizing activists as a basis for being dismissive of black voices. I'm now moving beyond the issue of justifiable homicide, but we are kidding ourselves if we think we can solve problems like these with a narrow focus on reforming law enforcement.

The two previous posts:

Justifiable Homicide by Law Enforcement by the Numbers

Why the Increase in Justifiable Homicide by Law Enforcement?

Why employees earn more at big-box chains than mom-and-pop shops (and other observations)

PBS News Hour has a piece Why employees earn more at big-box chains than mom-and-pop shops.

Contrary to widespread belief, big-box stores and chains have increased wages in the retail sector as they have spread, according to “Do Large Modern Retailers Pay Premium Wages?” (NBER Working Paper No. 20313). Retail wages rise markedly with the size of the chain and the individual store, according to the study by Brianna Cardiff-Hicks, Francine Lafontaine and Kathryn Shaw. As retail chains’ share of establishments has risen from one-fifth in 1963 to more than one-third by 2000, the number of jobs that pay better than traditional mom-and-pop stores has proliferated.

Half of the difference in wages between large and small retailers appears to be attributable to differences in the average skill level of workers in the two groups of firms. On average, better workers find their way to the bigger companies. With more levels of hierarchy than small stores, larger establishments also allow better workers to move into management positions, increasing their pay even more.

“The increasing firm size and establishment size that are a hallmark of modern retail are accompanied by increasing wages and opportunities for promotion for many workers,” the authors write. “While retail pay is considerably below that in manufacturing, pay in retail is above that found in service jobs… [These results] contradict the image of the retail sector as one comprised of the lowest paying jobs in the economy.” ...

An anti-consumerism Dickensian narrative frequently emerges among critics of big box stores. Walmart (or another big box) moves into an area, drives out virtuous small businesses and their owners, drives down wages, and throws people into the cold, uncaring machinery of the greedy behemoth. The narrative is wrong at several levels.

First, considerable nostalgia and romance are built into the preference for small businesses. In reality, relative to big box stores, small businesses vary widely in the quality of management. Management and personnel policies are often subject to the quirky whims of the owners. Cross-training to improve skills and opportunities for advancement are minimal. Family nepotism frequently triumphs over meritorious performance. Wages are lower. Big box stores are better on all these fronts.

Second, stores like Walmart do not tend to drive out small businesses. Walmart’s major disruptive impact is on other discount store chains. In fact, Walmart can be a boost to small businesses. By creating high-traffic areas, small specialty businesses can open nearby and draw from the traffic generated by Wal-Mart.

Third, rather than drive down wages, these stores actually pay better wages than the mom-and-pop enterprises. They also offer substantially greater opportunities for learning and wage growth, even management opportunities. And if you think the stores are monolithic soul-sucking monstrosities, I’d invited you to read about Charles Platt’s experience as an editor for Wired, who went to work for Walmart to find out what it was like. See Life at Wal-Mart.

Finally, there is an additional indirect but significant, Walmart impact. Your standard of living can improve in two ways: Increased wages and lower prices. The article makes clear that big box stores like Wal-Mart raise wages. But Walmart also offers a wide range of quality goods at low prices. It particularly does so for food, clothing, household goods, and medicine. These items make up a much higher percentage of the monthly budget for low-income people. Through low prices, big box stores positively impact living standards that disproportionately benefits low-income people.

When Walmart stores open, it is not uncommon to have ten times as many applications as jobs. Wal-Mart tried to open a store in Chicago five years ago, and one source published a map that shows support for the idea by Ward (See here.) The strongest support came from the poorest wards, and support decreased as you moved up the economic scale. The big box stores offend the aesthetic and ideological sensibilities of the wealthy, but low-income people overwhelmingly embrace them.

I do not give a blanket endorsement to the big box stores, but if my wealthier and more intellectual friends are truly concerned about justice and poverty, they may want to dig a little deeper than their moralistic, anti-consumerism narratives take them.

Why the Increase in Justifiable Homicide by Law Enforcement?

The rate of justifiable homicide by law enforcement is much higher in the United States than in other developed nations. The number of incidents has increased since 2000, even as the crime rate has dropped markedly. (See Justifiable Homicide by Law Enforcement by the Numbers) Why is this so?

The reason for the high rate of justifiable homicide relative to other nations seems straightforward. America is a violent society. Blame it on our frontier heritage, or whatever you will, the fact is that American homicide rates are much higher than in other developed nations. Firearms are abundant. Confrontations have a much greater chance of involving lethal force. Our relatively high rate strikes me as a statement about our society, not about the law enforcement community. The

The challenging question is why the rate of justifiable homicide by law enforcement should be increasing while crime rates have been falling. I am not certain. I am not a criminologist. The criminologist I read say solid data is lacking. Definitive answers are hard to come by. Here are my speculations.

Verbal Judo

Several years ago, I read a book by a police officer named George Thompson called Verbal Judo: The Gentle Art of Persuasion. Thompson had been an English professor with a black belt in karate before going into law enforcement. He tells about his first night on patrol. He pulled over a man for a traffic violation. When the man got mouthy, Thompson forcibly subdued and arrested him. Thompson was summoned to his superior at the end of the shift. He anticipated praise for his work. Instead, his captain explained that such a stop should not have ended in an arrest. Thompson would never make it as a police officer if he could not learn how to deal better with people.

During his apprenticeship as a police officer, Thompson came to see karate and judo as metaphors for a policing mindset. Karate is about meeting force with force, while judo is about using your opponent’s momentum to throw him in the direction you want him to go. So how might this work with an irritable speeder?

Officer: “Sir, I need to your driver’s license and registration.” (The officer makes clear what compliance looks like.)

Speeder: “Seriously! What did I do? Fail to flip a freakin’ turn signal? Drug dealers on the street and terrorist blowing up buildings. Don’t you jackasses have something better to do? How many people’s houses are being robbed?”

Officer: (calmly) “I can appreciate that sir but I still need to see your driver’s license and registration.”

There might be two or three iterations of this interchange, with the officer calmly making clear what is required each time. The officer allows the offender to vent while still making clear the need for compliance. If compliance is still not forthcoming, the officer might say something like:

Officer: (calmly) “Sir, if you do not comply, I will have to arrest you. You will spend the night in a cold uncomfortable cell instead of in your nice warm bed. I will have to spend an hour or more, sitting in my car, filling out paperwork. Neither of us wants that. Please hand me your driver’s license and registration.”

The officer reiterates the need for compliance but is now making clear the consequences of noncompliance. He appeals to the direction the offender wants to go (home to a warm bed) as an act of verbal judo.

If the offender still does not comply, then the officer will say something like:

Officer: (calmly) “Sir, are you sure there is nothing I can say to gain your compliance?”

At that point, the officer and his partner are positioning themselves to spring into action to apprehend the noncompliant offender.

This is verbal judo. It applies to almost any position of authority. The subject is not required to like the person in authority or the demand. They have the space to voice opposition. The goal is to gain compliance by helping the person see the consequences of noncompliance and help them see that compliance is desirable. The aim is to defuse resistance, not escalate it. Most often, the person will comply before things escalate to using force.

My point is not the specifics of the technique. I am pointing to the mindset. “Verbal Judo” is a different mindset than rolling up on a scene, barking orders, and taking the least perceived slight as justification for escalating to tasers, takedowns, and lethal force. I believe most officers have typically embraced a defusing model of policing. I base that on my limited interaction with the few law enforcement officers I have known and for whom I have great respect. They genuinely see their job as a calling to serve and protect.

Unfortunately, I worry this sense of calling is eroding. It concerns me that too many officers may now see Thompson’s aggressive escalating rookie behavior as the optimal model. I cannot empirically substantiate this except that I see the rising rate of justifiable homicides as a likely proxy for violence by law enforcement. Furthermore, the Justice Department just completed a study of the Cleveland Police Department and found the following patterns:

• The unnecessary and excessive use of deadly force, including shootings and head strikes with impact weapons;
• the unnecessary, excessive or retaliatory use of less lethal force including Tasers, chemical spray and fists;
• Excessive force against persons who are mentally ill or in crisis, including in cases where the officers were called exclusively for a welfare check; and
• The employment of poor and dangerous tactics that place officers in situations where avoidable force becomes inevitable. (Source)

A former St. Louis police officer recently wrote:

… As a cop, it shouldn’t surprise you that people will curse at you, or be disappointed by your arrival. That’s part of the job. But too many times, officers saw young black and brown men as targets. They would respond with force to even minor offenses. And because cops are rarely held accountable for their actions, they didn’t think too hard about the consequences. …

… I, too, have faced mortal danger. I’ve been shot at and attacked. But I know it’s almost always possible to defuse a situation.

Once, a sergeant and I got a call about someone wielding a weapon in an apartment. When we showed up, we found someone sitting on the bed with a very large butcher knife. Rather than storming him and screaming “put the knife down” like my colleagues would have done, we kept our distance. We talked to him, tried to calm him down.

It became clear to us that he was dealing with mental illness. So eventually, we convinced him to come to the hospital with us.

I’m certain many other officers in the department would have escalated the situation fast. They would have screamed at him, gotten close to him, threatened him. And then, any movement from him, even an effort to drop the knife, would have been treated as an excuse to shoot until their clips were empty. … (Source)

I have listened to other ex-officers from other cities give similar testimony. Despite what I perceive to be most officers entering their work as a noble calling, the evidence seems to point to systemic problems beyond isolated individuals going rogue. I nominate two factors for consideration.

Broken Windows

First, broken windows policing. As I understand it, this model suggests that disorder in a community makes residents withdraw and isolate themselves. This creates opportunities for more serious criminal activity to move in. A downward cycle ensues. Broken windows policing focuses on addressing even minor problems to restore a sense of order, catalyzing a positive upward cycle.

The broken windows policy came into vogue with the crack-cocaine epidemic in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The crime rate did plummet after 1994, and this policy may have played a key role. But is there a point at which neighborhoods reach a semblance of health, and it is counterproductive to continue this policy? Does continuation begin to feel like harassment? Add to this that has typically been implemented in minority neighborhoods. Continued enforcement means minority residents are charged with violations routinely ignored in white communities. It is not hard to see how a cycle of escalating resentment between law enforcement and citizens could emerge.

9/11

Second, 9/11. Curiously, 2001 is where we see the divergence between a dropping crime rate and a rising justifiable homicide rate. Law enforcement must take extraordinary measures in crises. We give law enforcement officers considerably more latitude. Many perceive our society to have been in a perpetual crisis ever since the attack on the World Trade Center. Militarization and the equipment law enforcement agencies are acquiring are rising in mindset. Fear of terrorism has become wedded to a perception that crime and chaos are spinning wildly out of control. (As noted in the previous post, crime rates have plummeted to their lowest rates in fifty years, but the widespread perception is much different.)  (Related: Police Violence Is The Exception.)

In this environment, defusing difficult encounters becomes a luxury. I routinely hear conservative commentators characterizing those who the police shoot as “resisting arrest” when they do not instantly follow an officer’s direction. They justify law enforcement in aggressive confrontations. This could certainly be true in a crisis, but for jaywalking? For selling “loosies?” I absolutely agree that citizens should show respect for police officers, but I flatly reject that failure to show such respect necessitates escalation by an officer. Officers who do not know how to defuse situations, or are unwilling to try, are not qualified to be in law enforcement. George Thompson’s captain was right.

I’m not suggesting that these are the only two variables. For instance, a National Sheriff’s Association report points to an increase in encounters between police and people who have a mental illness. (Source) Still, I think broken windows and 9/11 are key contributors that set the stage for much else.

Now I have purposely been sidestepping the issue of race because I wanted to lay the above foundation before incorporating race. More in the next post.

What do you think?

 

 

 

 

Justifiable Homicide by Law Enforcement by the Numbers

It has been more than a week since a grand jury reported a decision not to indict Darren Wilson in the killing of Michael Brown. We have no indictment decision by a grand jury in New York for Daniel Pantaleo killing Eric Garner. These cases are essentially classified as justifiable homicide. I've been listening to the ensuing discussions and have some observations, which I will spread across at least two posts.

Anytime issues like these come to the fore, I find myself wanting to get a handle on the big picture. I've been doing some research on the topic, which is quite frustrating. Here is what I've learned.

According to the FBI's Uniform Crime Report (UCR), there were 461 justifiable homicides by police. (UCR) Let us assume this data is valid for the moment. How can we put that in perspective?

Let's compare it to three other countries. The number of justifiable homicides was zero in England in 2013, eight in Germany over the last two years, and about twelve per year in Canada. (Source) These countries are smaller than the USA, so let's increase their population to the size of the USA and assume justified homicides would rise by a corresponding number. Here is what you get:

England = 0

Germany = 16

Canada = 110

USA = 461

So we have a much higher rate than comparable nations.

However, I stipulated an assumption that the data is correct. It is not. The UCR only compiles crimes known to police in 750 of more than 17,000 law enforcement entities. Participation is voluntary and inconsistent across entities. (Source) Analysis of data from 105 of the submitting entities shows 47% more incidents than were reported. (Source) For instance, some entities do not consider justifiable homicide an "offense," so they do not report their data. Adjusting for this undercount would mean something like 680 justifiable homicides by law enforcement. But we need to go a step further.

There is no federal clearinghouse collecting data on homicide by law enforcement. On May 1, 2013, a Facebook page called Killed By Police was created that attempts to catalog every death that happens at the hands of police from news sources across the nation. It chronicles every kind of death, including someone who dies of a heart attack after arrest or in a collision with a police vehicle in a high-speed chase. The FiveThirtyEight folks analyzed the data, weeding out deaths unrelated to the process of an arrest, and estimated the number of deaths to be about 1,100 a year. (Source)

We simply do not know the exact number of justifiable homicides by law enforcement; therefore, we have no definitive means of measuring trends in the frequency of such cases. We do not know the characteristics of the people involved. That said, it seems likely that the rate of justifiable homicides by law enforcement has been rising.

If we assume the Uniform Crime Report data is from the same law enforcement entities using the same methods from year to year, we see an increase in justifiable homicides by law enforcement from 309 in 2000 to 461 in 2013. (The data only goes back to 1980. The 1999 and 200o stats were the lowest since a previous low of 300 in 1987.) (Source) If we then assume the UCR data as a proxy for what has happened in non-reporting areas as well, then the instances of justifiable homicides by law enforcement have risen by 50% from 2000 to 2013.

Note that the crime rate, as reported by the UCR, dropped by 20% during 2000-2013. The murder rate shows a drop of 5.5 per 100k population to 4.5, about a 20% drop. (Calculated from here.) But also remember that the UCR data is not the best measure of actual crime incidents. Victimization studies (annual surveys asking about victimization, whether reported to police or not) show a 50% drop in crime. (Source)

In short, justifiable homicide by law enforcement is far more common in the USA than in other advanced nations. And the perplexing reality is that it is getting appreciably worse each year, despite less and less crime. Something is not right.

What do you think is going on? In a follow-up post, I'll offer my thoughts, including how race figures into this, but I'm curious to know what you think.

Gossip is Good?

The Atlantic just ran an article called Have You Heard? Gossip Is Actually Good and Useful. The teaser was, "Talking behind other people's backs may not always be nice, but sometimes it can help promote cooperation and self-improvement." It is a very interesting read. You could discuss it from several different angles. This paragraph caught my attention:

As the study explains, "by hearing about the misadventures of others, we may not have to endure costs to ourselves," by making the same mistake. And because negative stories tend to stick better in the mind than positive stories, it makes sense that gossip about people who violated norms would be more instructive than gossip about people who are really great at norms. (What's more, one study found that sharing a negative opinion of a person with someone is better for bonding with them than sharing a positive opinion.)

It strikes me that a considerable portion of political discourse plays a similar role. A small group of people are having a conversation when someone offhandedly makes a disparaging remark about a politician, a political party, or a public policy. Joe says, "Did you see the news today that this is the 17th straight year where global temps have not increased? So much for global warming." (Or "Did you see the news about the ice caps becoming 10% smaller over the last year? How does anyone deny global warming?") Though it may appear on the surface that the remark invites discussion, most often, it is not. It is being deployed as a means of reinforcing social cohesion. And woe to you if you are not discerning enough to know the difference.

The "appropriate" response is to affirm what has been said with your own comments. Group solidarity is built as group members hear each other express affirming remarks. And as the article suggests, affirming negative opinions seems more potent. Knowing that we all have a common view on this one topic builds a basis for cohesion as we move on to more interaction. It isn't just a philosophical exercise to challenge the remark; it threatens group solidarity.

That leaves a dissenter in a difficult place, especially if he has been public at all with a differing view. If you join the affirming chorus, you may soon be outed as a hypocrite. If you challenge the remark, you will be seen as a troublemaker. If you say nothing, your views may later be discovered, and you will be perceived as deceitful. It is a bit of a minefield.

Another layer of this is that sometimes the person initiating the remark knows that a member(s) of the group has differing views. By disparaging remarks, she signals others to rally to her flag with affirming remarks, putting the dissenter in an awkward or defensive posture. It is an attempt to dominate and enforce solidarity.

The idea that talking about others behind their backs and sharing common disapproval of others generates social cohesion poses some challenging questions for discipleship. I once read that not every movement needs a god, but every movement needs a Satan. I doubt it is possible to escape this dynamic fully. I have no easy answers. But I suspect if we aim to love our neighbor as ourselves, then maybe the first place to begin is by deeply listening to our casual conversations, consciously evaluating what we intend to accomplish with the views we express in any given context.

The Illusion of 'Natural'

Atlantic: The Illusion of 'Natural'

... The definition of toxin can be somewhat surprising if you have grown accustomed to hearing the word in the context of flame retardants and parabens. Though toxin is now often used to refer to man-made chemicals, the most precise meaning of the term is still reserved for biologically produced poisons. The pertussis toxin, for example, is responsible for damage to the lungs that can cause whooping cough to linger for months after the bacteria that produce it have been killed by antibiotics. The diphtheria toxin is a poison potent enough to cause massive organ failure, and tetanus produces a deadly neurotoxin. Vaccination now protects us against all these toxins.

Toxoid is the term for a toxin that has been rendered no longer toxic, but the existence of a class of vaccines called toxoids probably does not help quell widespread concerns that vaccination is a source of toxicity. The consumer advocate Barbara Loe Fisher routinely supports these fears, referring to vaccines as “biologicals of unknown toxicity” and calling for nontoxic preservatives and more studies on the “toxicity of all other vaccine additives” and their potential “cumulative toxic effects.” The toxicity she speaks of is elusive, shirting from the biological components of the vaccines to their preservatives, then to an issue of accumulation that implicates not just vaccines, but also toxicity from the environment at large.

In this context, fear of toxicity strikes me as an old anxiety with a new name. Where the word filth once suggested, with its moralist air, the evils of the flesh, the word toxic now condemns the chemical evils of our industrial world. This is not to say that concerns over environmental pollution are not justified—like filth theory, toxicity theory is anchored in legitimate dangers—but that the way we think about toxicity bears some resemblance to the way we once thought about filth. Both theories allow their subscribers to maintain a sense of control over their own health by pursuing personal purity. For the filth theorist, this means a retreat into the home, where heavy curtains and shutters might seal out the smell of the poor and their problems. Our version of this shuttering is now achieved through the purchase of purified water, air purifiers, and food produced with the promise of purity.

Purity, especially bodily purity, is the seemingly innocent concept behind a number of the most sinister social actions of the past century. A passion for bodily purity drove the eugenics movement that led to the sterilization of women who were blind, black, or poor. Concerns for bodily purity were behind miscegenation laws that persisted for more than a century after the abolition of slavery, and behind sodomy laws that were only recently declared unconstitutional. Quite a bit of human solidarity has been sacrificed in pursuit of preserving some kind of imagined purity.

If we do not yet know exactly what the presence of a vast range of chemicals in umbilical cord blood and breast milk might mean for the future of our children’s health, we do at least know that we are no cleaner, even at birth, than our environment at large. We are all already polluted. We have more microorganisms in our guts than we have cells in our bodies—we are crawling with bacteria and we are full of chemicals. We are, in other words, continuous with everything here on Earth. Including, and especially, each other. ...

... Most of the pharmaceuticals available to us are at least as bad as they are good. My father has a habit of saying, “There are very few perfect therapies in medicine.” True as it may be, the idea that our medicine is as flawed as we are is not comforting. And when comfort is what we want, one of the most powerful tonics alternative medicine offers is the word natural. This word implies a medicine untroubled by human limitations, contrived wholly by nature or God or perhaps intelligent design. What natural has come to mean to us in the context of medicine is pure and safe and benign. But the use of natural as a synonym for good is almost certainly a product of our profound alienation from the natural world.

“Obviously,” the naturalist Wendell Berry writes, “the more artificial a human environment becomes, the more the word ‘natural’ becomes a term of value.” If, he argues, “we see the human and the natural economies as necessarily opposite or opposed, we subscribe to the very opposition that threatens to destroy them both. The wild and the domestic now often seem isolated values, estranged from one another. And yet these are not exclusive polarities like good and evil. There can be continuity between them, and there must be.”

Allowing children to develop immunity to contagious diseases “naturally,” without vaccination, is appealing to some of us. Much of that appeal depends on the belief that vaccines are inherently unnatural. But vaccines are of that liminal place between humans and nature—a mowed field, Berry might suggest, edged by woods. Vaccination is a kind of domestication of a wild thing, in that it involves our ability to harness a virus and break it like a horse, but its action depends on the natural response of the body to the effects of that once-wild thing. ...

... All of us who have been vaccinated are cyborgs, the cyborg scholar Chris Hables Gray suggests. Our bodies have been programmed to respond to disease, and modified by technologically altered viruses. As a cyborg and a nursing mother, I join my modified body to a breast pump, a modern mechanism to provide my child with the most primitive food. On my bicycle, I am part human and part machine, a collaboration that exposes me to injury. Our technology both extends and endangers us. Good or bad, it is part of us, and this is no more unnatural than it is natural. ...

Subsidiarity: Turning solidarity into social justice

Crux Now: Subsidiarity: Turning solidarity into social justice

... Yet despite these unfortunate attempts at redefinition, progressive Catholics who value Catholic social teaching should reexamine subsidiarity, as it is a principle that they can and should embrace.

Subsidiarity is an essential component of Church teaching. The catechism states that under subsidiarity, "a community of a higher order should not interfere in the internal life of a community of a lower order, depriving the latter of its functions, but rather should support it in case of need and help to coordinate its activity with the activities of the rest of society, always with a view to the common good." In terms of government action, "The principle of subsidiarity holds that the functions of government should be performed at the lowest level possible, as long as they can be performed adequately. When the needs in question cannot adequately be met at the lower level, then it is not only necessary, but imperative that higher levels of government intervene."

Subsidiarity helps us to translate our sense of solidarity into social justice. While it is solidarity that gives us the desire to achieve the common good and protect the most vulnerable members of our communities, the principle of subsidiarity is particularly useful in helping us to achieve this preeminent goal. It protects us from large corporations and excessive government invading the most intimate spheres of our lives and inhibiting our freedom to reach our full potential as persons.

Subsidiarity also protects civil society, the foundation of a strong democratic culture. It recognizes the inevitable need for communities between the person and the state, the inherent duties that exist within these communities, and the threat to these posed by tyrannical regimes, kleptocracies, and other forms of domination by powerful interests. ...

I don't endorse everything he says in this post, but I think his opposition to collapsing "subsidiarity" into a synonym for "states rights" is correct. There is an inherent tension between needing a vibrant local community and needing larger entities that bring order, address the destructiveness that can emerge in the local community, and sometimes do things that simply could not be done without bigness. There is considerable room for debate about how this should work, but an ideology that knee-jerk defaults to government intervention to solve each problem, or sees every government involvement as sinister, is destructive.