Robin Hanson replies to my take on single moms
Now Bryan is clearly right — this is in fact a choice. But Karl is also right — it is a choice made in the face of relatively strong desires. The key question is: how weak do temptations have to be to make the choices they influence unworthy of charity? We feel only weak inclinations to help people who choose poverty, and could easily have chosen otherwise. But we feel much stronger inclinations to help folks who could have avoided poverty only via quite unusual levels of self-control and determination. Where in this spectrum does the temptation to single parenthood lie?
Central to Byran and somewhat shockingly to me – Robin’s – thinking is whether or not the single parents deserve charity.
On Facebook I think Robin framed the question as “how weak do temptations have to be before they make people less deserving of charity”
My clear answer would be that there is no level so low. Human suffering is bad. Reductions in human suffering are good.
Why humans are suffering is of concern to us in knowing when our interventions might be productive but it doesn’t affect whether they are warranted.
In the extreme, take the example of Fred, who is suffering because he constantly turns on the water in his bathtub too hot. When asked why, Fred answer I don’t know, I just do. Hot baths always seem good right before I step in, and then I burn myself.
The key question here are
1) Is there anything productive we can do to help Fred
2) Will our resources be more productive in helping someone else.
However, the seeming absurdity of Fred’s behavior is itself not and issue. It feels like an issue because our sentiments are proxying for (1) and (2). Trying to help someone who could help themself is usually unproductive or at least less productive than trying to help people who can’t help themselves.
However, using our intellect we ought to be able to see through our sentiment and realize that these practical questions are what lie at the heart of it all.
In my mind this is all important because as Bryan can well attest to, for the most part people are born and they are what they are. Importantly, they didn’t ask to be born and they didn’t ask to have the preferences or constraints that they have. This was all imposed on them.
You can’t have a philosophy that blithely imposes life upon people and then ignores the consequences of that imposition.
All that being said, I agree with Robin’s conclusion that helping the global poor has a higher marginal product than helping poor natives. This is why free trade and open immigration are our most powerful anti-poverty tools.
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Monday ~ October 3rd, 2011 at 3:37 pm
Psychohistorian
This ignores feedback effects. There’s a difference between someone who can’t do something and someone who won’t. If Bob wants a candy bar that is five feet away from him, but is too lazy to get up and get it. Giving Bob the candy bar would increase his utility, but it would also discourage him from helping himself and encourage him to rely on others helping him. If the cost to him helping himself is low and the cost to helping him is relatively high. This is even worse from a forward-looking perspective: if Bob knows he is eligible for a candy-bar getter if he elects to be a lazy person, then he will be encouraged to decide to be a lazy person.
If a person faces choice A, which involves more work and more reward than B, subsidizing B will encourage people to choose B and will reduce aggregate welfare. If women can either (A) use birth control and not have kids until they or financially stable, or (B) not use birth control and have kids when they are not financially stable, then subsidizing B will encourage women to choose B. Indeed, it may cause them to repeatedly choose B because they don’t bear the cost of supporting the kids they would without the subsidy.
This, I think, is what the concept of “deserves” gets at; it may increase individual utility in the short run while decreasing aggregate utility in the long run.
Monday ~ October 3rd, 2011 at 3:58 pm
todd
What exactly do you think you are saying in (2) that is distinct from the concept of “deserve”? Do you imagine that Robin is asking about the level of temptation in some hypothetical world in which charitable resources are unlimited?
Monday ~ October 3rd, 2011 at 4:12 pm
todd
Also, can you elaborate on where you think the contradiction lies in the philosophy that assumes that ignores the consequences of innate preferences and constraints when determining the appropriate reaction to the manifestation of those traits? It sounds like you are suggesting that we should consider the moral implications of gravity. If there is no external person responsible for “imposing” innate characteristics, how can anyone other than the actor have responsibility for actions driven by those characteristics?
Monday ~ October 3rd, 2011 at 4:26 pm
Aaron Miller
Am I the only one who started reading this post thinking it was going to relate some behavioral research about increased altruism after eating dessert?
I agree with Karl. The issue is efficient resource allocation, not an arbitrary threshold of dessert (the deserving kind, not the sweet kind). Phrased another way:
1. What’s the best way for me to help Fred?
2. Can I afford to help Fred considering greater needs elsewhere?
There should be no human suffering undeserving of help. Of course, the kind of help matters, but the necessity of help still holds.
Monday ~ October 3rd, 2011 at 5:14 pm
todd
“There should be no human suffering undeserving of help.”
What about the shoplifter who fears being apprehended as he leaves the store? Is his fear a valid form of suffering? Should we help him abscond safely?
What about the single mother who petitions for assistance to feed her child, uses the charity to purchase cigarettes, and then reapplies for aid?
In general, what happens if other people have a different prioritization of suffering? At what point does the experience become sufficiently foreign so as to render (1) unanswerable?
Monday ~ October 3rd, 2011 at 5:29 pm
Overcoming Bias : Charity And Temptation
[...] Added 5p: Karl Smith responds: [...]
Monday ~ October 3rd, 2011 at 8:54 pm
Becky Hargrove
On the face of it, people do not always understand why foreigners would be helped first. But people have limited resources to help and they are looking for the places where their help can actually make a difference. Today, when people lose jobs in this country, they fall into a sort of black hole in which no amount of money or assistance seems to help. This is why – besides the need for free trade and open immigration, we also need to construct economic scenarios in which individuals with highly limited sources of income can still find ways to thrive. In such a scenario, the individual needing charity would not be the extreme leaky bucket (from which all help leaks out) that they are now.
Tuesday ~ October 4th, 2011 at 7:19 am
Hyena
Helpfully, Hanson has walked his position back to meet yours at “ability” rather than dessert. Obviously, all human suffering deserves our charity and our consideration, but that does not mean we can productively target someone or that we can, under constraint, justify using charity uselessly. However, it seems disingenuous to suggest that we are constrained so much that the choice is truly between the suffering of natives or foreigners rather than between our own gratification and the alleviation of suffering.
Tuesday ~ October 4th, 2011 at 1:52 pm
Ryan P
I’m not sure Caplan & Hanson is just trying to answer the question, “For which parties A & B would a transfer from A to B increase a utilitarian social welfare function?” I read them as asking, “For which parties A & B does A have a moral duty to pay B?” I don’t think anyone believes the first question answers the second one (especially not economists who work with optimal tax models)
Tuesday ~ October 4th, 2011 at 3:28 pm
Rhadamanthus
Here is why thoughtful people ask whether someone “deserves” charity: because of the (short-run) zero-sum nature of the game. If you consider only private charity, then each donor inevitably applies some rule (even if it’s only “first come, first served”) to apportion his limited charity expenditures. If you consider “public assistance,” which is a euphemism for “resources forcibly extracted from some people and given to others by the government,” the government must apply some rule(s) to apportion both burdens and benefits.
Obviously, private actors should be left to do as they please. But the question of government action is different.
You wrote:
You appear to intend the words “we” and “our” to refer to the government, which implies you think the government owns all private resources and may dispose of them at will, especially by giving them to people who ask for “help.” That is a very strong assumption. Even the “social contract” theory of government doesn’t assume that everyone is a mere slave of current political office-holders, with no private property of their own.
What if I think my component of (what you call) “our” resources will be most productive helping me and my family, not some single mother too filled with baby-longing or too lazy to utilize readily available contraception? (Note, incidentally, that while I do not discount the power of baby-longing, I believe on empirical evidence that even the decisions of young women are influenced at the margin by economic considerations–and giving money to impecunious single moms strongly encourages single non-moms to get pregnant. Refusing “help” to single moms wouldn’t reduce their numbers to nil or anything close, but would shrink their numbers quite a bit.)
That is why the question of “deserves” comes up. Most of us want to apply a rule which asks “does someone ‘deserve’ the help which some people propose to provide to them by confiscating the necessary resources from other people at gunpoint if necessary (the IRS isn’t all milk and cookies, you know)?” If the recipients don’t “deserve” the help pretty clearly, then (most of us think) the providers don’t deserve the bill for it.
Wednesday ~ October 5th, 2011 at 5:39 pm
The Spamlist! » Charity And Temptation
[...] Added 5p: Karl Smith responds: [...]
Sunday ~ October 9th, 2011 at 4:58 am
docmerlin
“My clear answer would be that there is no level so low. Human suffering is bad. Reductions in human suffering are good.”
You are missing the point. They are asking “By making the threat not to subsidize the suffering can you reduce overall suffering.”