Power is not something that you take. Power is something that you have.
Arnold Kling writes
In an actual business, you are not given a demand curve and a cost function; instead, you grope. The internal alignment of an organization cannot be taken for granted; instead, a lot of time and effort goes into just trying to keep people focused on common goals. Day-to-day life in a organization is a soap opera, with individuals and departments often working at cross-purposes. No one, including the CEO, has full knowledge or control.
When I came to think of every organization is a dysfunctional family, it affected my mental model of markets and government. I don’t assume that organizational units know what they are doing. Instead, I ask: what institutional pressures exist that ensure that more effective units survive and less effective units disappear? That in turn leads me to be relatively pessimistic about government as an institution, because I see the tools of voice (elections and representative democracy) as less effective than the tools of exit (consumer choice, leading to profit and loss).
MIT’s contribution to producing technocrats was what it did not teach. It did not teach humility. It did not teach that the world is too complex for technocrats to control.
There is a lot here that I agree with, but I want to push back against the sentiment I suspect underlies the last sentence, in particular.
One cannot not govern. This is true on a meta-physical level. On a more practical level I would point out that even Lassize-Faire must be enforced at the point of a gun.
Violence exists. The government must chose how when and where to suppress violence and when to execute it. Even the choice to never suppress and never to execute is a choice with some set of real consequences.
As such the question is always: what is my best guess at the best use of my power. Humility proper plays no role in the question. You could believe yourself a fool. It does not make the question any less pressing or your decision any less consequential.
If you chose Laizze-Faire and you must chose, then you do so with the belief – well informed or not – that this is the best policy. If you are an idiot and you know you are an idiot then you do this knowing that this may very well be an idiotic choice. But, you must make some choice nonetheless.
To ground this a bit more, the choice of a free society over a totalitarian society is in no way a more humble choice on the part of the leadership.
In both cases your action or inaction will lead to some world. You must believe that this world is better than the world that would have arisen with a different action or inaction. The case for not acting cannot be that it is more humble, for it presumes consequences just as real as acting.
It must be that to not act is better.
Moreover, this is an argument that is not common sense in the cases we often bring up. That to refrain from restricting trade in goods is better than to restrict trade is not a common sense notion.
Therefore, not only is it not less humble on some fundamental, it is not even likely to be advocated by humble people. To think the masses are wrong and you are right requires a fair bit of arrogance.
Lastly, one cannot escape this even by rejecting patterned outcomes altogether. Here you are simply moving the problem to a meta-consequential level. However, you still must say that I believe that this theory of the good is superior to its alternatives, knowing that this choice has real consequences. Either the good will be enacted or it will not.
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Monday ~ January 16th, 2012 at 2:11 pm
Axel
“In both cases your action or inaction will lead to some world. You must believe that this world is better than the world that would have arisen with a different action or inaction. The case for not acting cannot be that it is more humble, for it presumes consequences just as real as acting.”
Neron when he wanted to burn Rome was not believing it would improve the state of the world. He didn’t care. Most of human actions are not coming from a rational brain process.
May be being humble would be to put aside it’s own desire/feeling about action to be taken, to allow only rational reasoning to analyse which outcome would be best. Because rationality is the only decision process we (can) all share together.
Being arrogant thinking free trade is best, could become a pb if this arrogance drives you into neglecting some precise facts showing there is a trade war against your country and your losing by inaction and pride.
Monday ~ January 16th, 2012 at 2:28 pm
Mr. Violet (@EuropeanViolet)
“However, you still must say that I believe that this theory of the good is superior to its alternatives, knowing that this choice has real consequences.”
how do you establish objectively that these consequences are good or bad?
Monday ~ January 16th, 2012 at 3:49 pm
Ken S
There is a more complete argument applying this sentiment to free markets at http://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/2011/06/why-free-markets/ , but I also felt the need to go meta when criticizing it, even if I partially agree with the observations about regulatory capture. But the post could have just as easily been titled “Why Better Regulators” and started with a different introduction, IMO.
Monday ~ January 16th, 2012 at 6:27 pm
Alex
I suppose it depends on how you construct a framework for ‘not acting.’ If a person in a position to make a decision is risk averse, they may decide ‘not to act’ (In this case being defined as holding the status quo constant) because they are operating in a world of uncertainty and are more comfortable with the SQ, not because it is optimal, but simply because they know with more certainty what the consequences of the SQ will be. Of course, in this case it is still a policy choice.
Monday ~ January 16th, 2012 at 11:21 pm
zmil
I’m not sure if this is strictly an argument against the concept of humility in public policy, or whether ends up arguing against the concept of intellectual humility in general. Which disturbs me, because I really really like the concept of intellectual humility.
Tuesday ~ January 17th, 2012 at 6:35 am
Mr. Violet (@EuropeanViolet)
one more note:
“Humility proper plays no role in the question. You could believe yourself a fool. It does not make the question any less pressing or your decision any less consequential.”
Well, there is also something about what we mean by humility. I mean maybe we can mean it more as ‘being open to feedback’ than ‘believing ourselves as fool’. Well, actually the second one, at least in my personal view, isn’t humility, but just a kind of ‘negative’ narcissism.
Mhm, but perhaps being open to the feedback is more a consequence… I mean maybe we can just establish in ourselves or agree it someway in a public convention that ‘been open to the feedback’ is good. Now we need to understand what makes us to be open to the feedback. Maybe Mr.Kling was thinking in these terms: arrogance blinds to feedback so as a technocrat I won’t be able to acknowledge my mistakes and correct them, and this is bad. So better to be humble.
Mhm, but also with arrogance, what we mean by it? I mean, if we intend humility as believing ourselves a fool what would be its opposite? just not believing ourselves as a fool or believing ourselves as a genius.
Mhm, perhaps the whole thing could be better expressed in terms of comparison.
We can mean arrogance to be the belief in being superior to others… but how we can establish that a human being as a whole is superior to an other human being as a whole?
If I were a professional swimmer who has won a gold medal at Olympics and you were a beginner swimmer, I think it would be quite plain to say that I am better then you *at swimming* but it would be difficult to stand saying that I am a better human because of that.
Also maybe we can go still deeper and look at what makes me a better *swimmer*… actually what makes me a better swimmer? Who decided what is a better swimmer? For making a comparison we need a common standard of measurement. But in swimming we’re measuring the output of a performance, or the average of a set of performances. So why am I a better swimmer? Because I am faster? Because I was faster on that occasion? Because *usually* I can swim longer without feeling tired? But if I catch a cold perhaps I won’t be able to swim today at all… Am I a worse swimmer today than yesterday because of this? Or in general, am I a better swimmer just because when I meet beginners I don’t go there bulling and teasing them in order to show how great a swimmer I am (while incidentally bringing shame to the whole profession of swimmers)?
It depends on what we’re going to measure and how we measure it, isn’t it? But I am still measuring an output by a human not a human in itself. And also my measurement isn’t absolute, it depends on many things and it can change during time, isn’t it?
Also an other interesting question is: once decided what we’re measuring and how and given the measurement of my output, how do we establish that I could have performed better? Better than what? But if I could have performed better, why I didn’t do that? And: is that making me a worse swimmer? A worse human?
Also the whole thing becomes still more tricky when we come to measure the capacity of someone to establish what is the objective good for all of us, isn’t it?
Tuesday ~ January 17th, 2012 at 11:40 am
reason
“That in turn leads me to be relatively pessimistic about government as an institution, because I see the tools of voice (elections and representative democracy) as less effective than the tools of exit (consumer choice, leading to profit and loss).”
That is assuming that the two things (government and markets) have the same purpose. I don’t think they do – so why try to compare them. The question is in both cases – what can we do to make them work better.
Tuesday ~ January 17th, 2012 at 4:22 pm
Psychohistorian
This whole argument seems to be misconstruing the meaning of “humility,” which is admittedly vague.
If humility is something akin to “knowing your limits,” then the quoted statement is entirely compatible with this objection to it. It doesn’t seem to me that Kling is advocating throwing one’s hands up and going home early because something is hard. Rather, he seems to be advocating not assuming that you are capable of solving a problem. If you assume you are capable of solving problems that you are not actually capable of solving, then you will attempt to solve that problem and necessarily fail.
It would be like being disappointed your teen-aged son is too short and aspiring to make him six inches taller. You cannot succeed; almost all attempts will be expensive and ineffective at best and expensive and harmful at worst. Similarly, where technocrats lack humility and believe there is a solution where none exists, they will waste resources and quite likely cause harm, since they will take aggressive actions that will create imbalance in market forces. See, e.g. the War on Drugs, and probably the War on Terror.
Wednesday ~ January 18th, 2012 at 11:42 am
reason
“Rather, he seems to be advocating not assuming that you are capable of solving a problem. If you assume you are capable of solving problems that you are not actually capable of solving, then you will attempt to solve that problem and necessarily fail.”
????
I don’t quite understand this obtruse argument. The question becomes – how do you know if you are capable of solving a problem if you don’t try to solve it? It seems to me the problem is not with lack of humility it is with stubbornness.
Wednesday ~ January 18th, 2012 at 4:49 pm
Psychohistorian
I am not 6’5″. Even if I believe this is a problem, it is not one I can solve (given that I do not consider raised shoes a solution). Any effort I make to solve it is wasted and is likely to be harmful even beyond being wasteful. More generally, there are people who believe that X can be solved (or that X can be solved cheaply), without actually having evidence to support that belief.
I don’t think Kling is advocating some kind of ritualistic, excessive humility – he is not saying that people should think, “We have good reason to believe that we know how to solve this problem, but only God is perfect, so why bother trying?” Rather, he disapproves of, “Well, it’s a complex problem that has persisted for centuries, and all I’ve done is browse the wikipedia entry on it, but I’m confident that I know exactly how to solve it and come in under-budget, because man, I am awesome.” That’s an exaggeration, of course, but that’s the general type of thinking Kling is expressing disapproval of. He isn’t advocating, “Can’t win, don’t try,” as Mr. Smith seems to think.
Wednesday ~ January 18th, 2012 at 11:44 am
reason
Also, I’m a bit puzzled why
1. imbalances in markets is such a terrible thing (markets are tools not targets)
2. what market is targetted by the war on terror.
Thursday ~ January 19th, 2012 at 4:38 am
reason
One thing that strikes me about Kling’s argument is that it is an argument based on the idea that CEOs aren’t very powerful. Well if they aren’t powerful, why do we pay them so much. What side does he take on the argument about CEO pay?