Monthly Archives: October 2018

the regime that may be crumbling

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Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan would be pleased that Trump has signed a massive tax cut, presided over deregulation, and saved NAFTA by essentially reenacting it after running for president against it. Nevertheless, his worldview and his coalition are inconsistent with their legacy.

The regime that they founded has had the following characteristics:

  1. Political elites widely agree that government programs, especially redistributive welfare programs, are inefficient and counterproductive. It was Bill Clinton who announced “the era of big government is over” and ended the federal welfare guarantee. It was the Socialist President François Mitterand who led France into austerity (“la rigeur“) in 1983. What characterizes this period is not the electoral victory of pro-market parties, but the fact that the opposition also criticizes the welfare state.
  2. Progressive movements channel most of their energy into opening capitalist institutions to women, people of color, and sexual minorities, rather than overturning capitalist institutions. Progress means being able to be who you are at work or in school. That is a broadly libertarian impulse.
  3. Many huge countries liberalize and deregulate their economies, fully entering the competitive global economy. Whether as a result or by coincidence, they see rapid and sustained improvements in human development (education, health, longevity). Of the 135 countries with data, 132 have seen improvements in the Human Development Index since 1970, many to a startling degree.
  4. International flows of capital rapidly increase. So do rates of economic migration, albeit at a slower rate than capital. Developed nations become more diverse as a result of immigration.
  5. Developed nations deindustrialize, with the losses of manufacturing jobs concentrated in certain cities. For example, Detroit’s population falls by more than 50%.
  6. Unions practically vanish. Union density falls from more than 30% of US workers in 1955 to 10% now (6.7% in the private sector).
  7. Many countries get “tough on crime,” expanding the use of prisons.
  8. Some nations that are capitalist and authoritarian become magnets for capital. Of the world’s nine Alpha+ and Alpha++ Global Cities, five are located in authoritarian states: Singapore, Hong Kong, Beijing, Dubai, and Shanghai.
  9. The US and NATO countries spend heavily on the military (with most of the money flowing to defense industries). They are especially prone to intervene in the Persian Gulf, where the oil comes from. We should also acknowledge that the chance of dying in a war during this period is the lowest in human history. One interpretation is that the US and its allies have locked things down in ways that really do reduce violence, albeit also to the advantage of multinational corporations. Terrorism is a feature of this period, but it kills an infinitesimal number of people compared to war.

I believe that most of the trends enumerated above were popular. I am familiar with the Martin Gilens/Benjamin Page argument that the US is an oligarchy–responsive to lobbies, not to ordinary voters. I think that explains why specific bills are blocked even though they are popular. It does not explain a much deeper and broader trend toward a certain kind of global corporate political-economy.

Reagan was elected in a country with a large White majority that was affluent by historical and global standards. A voting majority was suburban, Christian, and bourgeois. To a rough approximation, they got what they voted for. Every indication is that Chinese citizens appreciate the progress generated by their version of a neoliberal regime.

The questions now are: 1) Are people revolting against the current order? How many people? How effectively? 2) What is most likely to replace it? New versions of egalitarianism? Ethnonationalism and authoritarianism? Davos Man strikes back? And 3) How to move forward? It is generally a lot harder to build things up than tear them down, and we don’t just need new governmental policies; we also need new institutions in civil society.

(I see that I’ve addressed the same topic once before, offering a different list: what is the political economy that people are revolting against?)

defining equity and equality

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You can find authoritative explanations of the differences between “equity” and “equality,” but I think the definitions of these words vary, and there is no objectively correct distinction.

However, we can generalize a bit. To say that something is “equal” does not imply a positive value-judgment. Some people are taller than me. That means that our heights are unequal, but it is not an injustice. Nor does making things more equal always improve justice. Procrustes stretched his prisoners who were too short and lopped the feet off those who were too tall to make all their bodies an equal length. That was not an example of justice. “Equal” has a meaning in mathematics (already attested in Chaucer), and when it’s transported to social and ethical contexts, it retains its mathematical flavor of value-neutrality.

It’s true that the word has long been used as a synonym for fairness. Milton:

… till one shall rise
Of proud ambitious heart; who, not content
With fair equality, fraternal state,
Will arrogate dominion undeserved
Over his brethren, and quite dispossess
Concord and law of nature from the earth …

But Milton has to say “fair equality.” Out of context, without such a modifier, inequality may not imply injustice.

In contrast, the word “equity” has a positive valence, whether in the law (a “court of equity”), in ethics, or in social analysis. If something is equitable, to that extent it is fair. The question becomes: What constitutes fairness? Answers vary depending on people’s philosophical beliefs, social roles, and cultures.

Interaction Institute for Social Change | Artist: Angus Maguire.

In this well-known picture, several things are equal (the heights of the boards that make up the fence, the altitude of the ground at all points, the sizes of the three boxes, the height of all the heads in the second picture). Some things are unequal, especially each person’s body height.

Despite its label, the first situation is not equal in every respect. But it is inequitable according to three reasonable standards of fairness: everyone should get what he or she needs, everyone should have equal opportunities, and everyone should be a full participant in the activity. These standards can diverge–or they may not even apply in some circumstances–but here they converge to rule the first situation unfair.

The second situation, meanwhile, illustrates equality in some respects. All the heads are the same distance above the fence; the fence is level. But that picture also illustrates equity because it meets several reasonable standards of fairness.

In this case, giving everyone an equal upward boost is inequitable, because their needs are different. But that is only one way in which equality can diverge from equity. If one person really deserves or merits more than another, then giving both people the same amount would be equal yet would violate equity. If Procrustes came along and violently made these three people the same height, that would be equal but not at all equitable. And if we hacked a portion of the fence away to let the short kid see, that would be equitable among the viewers but perhaps unfair to the owner of the fence. In fact, we only celebrate the solution in the second picture if we think it is fair to be able to watch a game for free from over a fence.

The main point is that “equity” always requires an account of fairness: what fairness demands in the circumstances. Equality, on the other hand, always requires measurement. Sometimes when a given measure is equal, that demonstrates equity, but sometimes it doesn’t.

See also: we are for social justice, but what is it?; trends in egalitarianism and sorting out human welfare, equity and mobility.

was Lincoln trying to tell us something?

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The penultimate paragraph of Lincoln’s “Lyceum Address” (Jan 27, 1838)

[Memories of the sacrifices of the American Revolution] were the pillars of the temple of liberty; and now, that they have crumbled away, that temple must fall, unless we, their descendants, supply their places with other pillars, hewn from the solid quarry of sober reason. Passion has helped us; but can do so no more. It will in future be our enemy. Reason, cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason, must furnish all the materials for our future support and defence.–Let those materials be moulded into general intelligence, sound morality, and in particular, a reverence for the constitution and laws: and, that we improved to the last; that we remained free to the last; that we revered his name to the last; that, during his long sleep, we permitted no hostile foot to pass over or desecrate his resting place; shall be that which to learn the last trump shall awaken our WASHINGTON.

“Trump” here means to summon loudly like a trumpet, as in John Keble’s Christian Year (1827): “Awake—again the Gospel-trump is blown.” It probably doesn’t mean “To give forth a trumpet-like sound; spec. to break wind audibly (slang or vulgar),” although the OED attests that sense from 1425 onward.

In all seriousness, Lincoln’s address is a timely reminder that high ambition may have motivated the founders to create a republic, but the ambitious gain no renown from keeping an existing republic going. The irony is that Lincoln ended up with a massive memorial on the National Mall because history gave him the opportunity to save and re-found a union imperiled by others.

See also: ambition: pro or con?  and hearing the faint music of democracy