Matthew Parris tells the story about devouring the book that made him become a Tory at the age of ten.
Older readers may remember this series. Younger readers should know that Pookie was a small winged rabbit with blue trousers, rescued in distress by a loving, poor but honest girl called Belinda, who lived alone in the wood, made Pookie a padded bed in a sort of shoebox, and helped him grow wings. The pair became the greatest friends.
One late autumn day, Winter — drawn as a scary giant with icicle fingers — arrives. There’s a great storm. Trees blow down. Burrows flood. All the animals in the wood (Pookie’s friends) are devastated; homes destroyed, food stores ruined, wings and paws wounded. Pookie and Belinda take in the casualties, warm them by the fire and feed and tend to them. But Pookie (with whom I identified) strides out into the storm in a rage and, shaking his little paw at Winter, tells him to stop being so cruel, go back to the North Pole and never return.
And to Pookie’s shock, Winter withdraws. Pookie is briefly feted. Autumn is followed by spring. Then all nature is thrown into confusion. Flowers have no time to prepare to flower again; dead leaves and branches have not been cleared, nor animals refreshed by hibernation. Now all the woodland folk protest, and Pookie becomes a figure of hate.
So, in the biggest adventure of his life, Pookie flies all the way to the North Pole, nearly perishing in the attempt. He confronts Winter a second time (this full-page picture was so frightening I kept it under my pillow to sneak glances in the night). Pookie confesses he had been wrong, apologises, and begs Winter to return. The little rabbit now realises that the seasons have a purpose, that lazy or foolish animals with ill-sited burrows or nests have to be shown their folly, and every creature given an incentive to work hard, prepare and store.
Admiring Pookie’s courage, Winter relents, agrees to return, and wafts the exhausted bunny home on a storm cloud.
Being a confirmed enemy of winter as we all know it and a believer in directing human ingenuity toward a tightening of winter to the length of one month and a radical reduction of the shortened winter event to immaculate winter wonderland conditions, I would tend to extend the lesson to be learned from the above story to approximate more of a conservative-progressive compromise: let us respect personal responsibility as a pivotal means for changing the world in unheard-of ways. Let us not just brave what is, but achieve what is not yet. And let us not be too shy to do it collectively.
"The idea of wind chill indicates how cold it feels on the skin's surface as opposed to the actual temperature," explains Steve Cleaton, forecaster for BBC Weather. "Wind chill relates to a combination of three things - wind speed, moisture content or humidity and the air temperature. Conditions feel coldest on your skin when they are particularly windy and dry. This is because the moisture on our skin evaporates readily in dry air compared to moist air, causing evaporative cooling on the surface of the body. Our bodies work harder to maintain its core temperature, leading us to feel colder."
Absence of Nuisance, Increased Options, and Happiness
I am reading Arnold Kling's recommendable Learning Economics. Perusing his chapter on "Can Money Buy Happiness?" prompted me to rephrase my view of the happiness-matter. I wrote these encapsulating comments in the margins:
Happiness is finite in all stages of human and civilisatory development -- unlike the inclination of human beings to extend freedom from nuisance and increase the options available to pursue one's developing interests and preferences. One cannot be infinitely happy or content, but there are no limits to man's ability to improve his lot by shielding himself from nuisance and attaining better options.
Painless dental care or the right to choose freely among a large number of occupations rather than being forced to pursue one's father's occupation -- the attainment of aims such as these will not move the ceiling of happiness any higher than advancements achieved at earlier stages of human development. Yet, they will be pursued because they remove nuisances and widen the range of options from which one may choose.
This assessment is based on my anthropological views, whose core tenet states that
man is the animal that adjusts to its environment by constantly developing new desires, needs, interests and preferences.
Humans are neither built to enjoy permanent rapture, nor is their personal and social weal dependent on constantly high levels of happiness. What is far more important for human wellbeing is (a) the absence of nuisances and (b) the presence of fruitful avenues for personal development; both of which conditions will be accompanied predominantly by low levels of emotional involvement - think of the meditative quality of much of what one likes doing -, though they may lead to an overall situation associated with words such as "happiness" or "contentment".
Two Meanings of Happiness
Happiness as the object of assessment and happiness as an emotional state are two very different kinds of animals. The former will tend to refer to a cluster or series of episodes most of which do not involve high levels of emotionally present happiness.
While writing this post, I am largely free from disturbances and enjoy the pursuit of a large range of options (to argue this or that, to do something else) allowing me to apply myself to activities that I feel drawn to. None of these components of the overall activity are of an emotional quality that I would designate as "happiness". In fact, it is not rare that pain and effort are involved, as when I fail to find the right words or discover contradictions in my beliefs.
It is the overall activity, including the satisfactory result brought about by it, that I tend to refer to when speaking of happiness - happiness as the object of assessment. And this seems to be rather in keeping with my anthropological theory: to be in balance, man does not so much need a permanent stream of ecstatic feelings but the ability to adopt to his environment by creating and fulfilling new desires, which is why I do not read the same book a million times and do not stop playing tennis after the first match, but look for renewed challenges.
So, happiness can be either (1) a localised feeling, mostly of high intensity, or the object of a broader assessment, in which latter sense it is (2) the expression of a balance between our manifold human faculties and the surrounding in which we find ourselves. In its second import, happiness is not necessarily an event of high emotional intensity; in fact, it may be deemed pleasant precisely because it lacks the grip of passion.
At any rate, while happiness as a localised feeling, mostly of high intensity, is finite both in its intensity and frequency, and a mere component among many other components of wellbeing, happiness as expression of a balance between the human and her environment is infinite in its permutations, a challenge to be approached in an infinite number of ways, and a complex achievement comprising many components of very different kinds. Striving for happiness in this sense is part of human nature, and does not lose its high significance for a person because she has surpassed a certain level of income or wealth.
Happiness Research and Behavioural Economics
Happiness research and behavioural economics tend to be popular with those who believe in a world view that seeks to infantalise and hospitalise the average man, i.e. turning him into the subject on which political paternalism is eager to perform its human experiments.
The happiness researchers' perfidious argument then runs like this: our studies show that an income/wealth level above $ 50.000 does no longer increase happiness; so it is fine to take income/wealth above that threshold and to redirect it to those who at lower levels still stand to enhance their happiness either by receiving the redistributed funds directly or by the help of authorities thus funded.
"The rich" are thieves of happiness; they misappropriate resources that are needed to make other people happy. Wastefully happy, "the rich" are denying "the poor" their share of happiness, as the latter are lacking the very resources squandered on the richmen's exhausted capacity for happiness.
Headline: "Economic Research Shows Politics Needed to Achieve Just Distribution of Happiness" - when in fact, there is no economics involved whatsoever, but a highly biased, agenda-driven, and ill-thought through concept of happiness.
Behavioural economists, in their turn, work ardently on "proving" that human beings are (far more) irrational (than previously thought) and hence dubious candidates for responsible action that need to be taken custody of.
I think, this is a very creative question, and good exercise for one's mind:
Whenever I interview someone for a job, I like to ask this question: “What important truth do very few people agree with you on?”
His rationale for asking the question is that if you cannot be truly contrarian, then you cannot be an innovator.
My answer would be that I believe that the Fed has very little influence on inflation and interest rates. I think it is fair to say that very few people agree with me on that.
Image credit, and more on "The River" by Alessandro Sanna. The journey is the reward. In German, we actually say "der Weg ist das Ziel" - "the way is the goal."
In disputes upon moral or scientific points, ever let your aim be to come at truth, not to conquer your opponent. So you never shall be at a loss in losing the argument, and gaining a new discovery.
“the best antidote [for the] tendency to caricature one’s opponent”: a list of rules formulated decades ago by the legendary social psychologist and game theorist Anatol Rapoport, best-known for originating the famous tit-of-tat strategy of game theory. Dennett synthesizes the steps:
How to compose a successful critical commentary:
You should attempt to re-express your target’s position so clearly, vividly, and fairly that your target says, “Thanks, I wish I’d thought of putting it that way.
You should list any points of agreement (especially if they are not matters of general or widespread agreement).
You should mention anything you have learned from your target.
Only then are you permitted to say so much as a word of rebuttal or criticism.
... this is actually a sound psychological strategy that accomplishes one key thing: It transforms your opponent into a more receptive audience for your criticism or dissent, which in turn helps advance the discussion.
Edward Elgar publishers, in association with the Institute of Economic Affairs, are about to launch a revised Second Edition of the must-read-book by my favourite economist Steven Kates: Free Market Economics. An Introduction to the General Reader.
The author gives us a little personal background information on the book's cover:
That is very likely the mill from which the plaque has been modelled. I wished to have a cover that showed a water mill made of clay because the two most important influences on me have been John Stuart Mill and the English economist, Henry Clay. My wife, bless her, found just such a combination on the net as the plaque was being sold just then. I therefore bought it, photographed it and now the clay representation of a mill is on the cover. I also like it because it is both nineteenth century and part of the productive apparatus of an economy. And it fits in with my understanding of Jean-Baptiste Say whose factory producing textiles was driven by a water mill. Finally, I just think it’s beautiful. I could not think of a better cover. My profound thanks to Ant for conjuring the origins up.
Looking behind the veil of money, Patrick Barron gives us a good rundown of the Austrian (economists') objections to contemporary Keynes-inspired central banking policies.
Keynes' dogma, as stated in his magnum opus, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, attempts to refute Say's Law, also known as the Law of Markets. J.B. Say explained that money is a conduit or agent for facilitating the exchange of goods and services of real value. Thus, the farmer does not necessarily buy his car with dollars but with corn, wheat, soybeans, hogs, and beef. Likewise, the baker buys shoes with his bread. Notice that the farmer and the baker could purchase a car and shoes respectively only after producing something that others valued. The value placed on the farmer's agricultural products and the baker's bread is determined by the market. If the farmer's crops failed or the baker's bread failed to rise, they would not be able to consume because they had nothing that others valued with which to obtain money first. But Keynes tried to prove that production followed demand and not the other way around. He famously stated that governments should pay people to dig holes and then fill them back up in order to put money into the hands of the unemployed, who then would spend it and stimulate production. But notice that the hole diggers did not produce a good or service that was demanded by the market. Keynesian aggregate demand theory is nothing more than a justification for counterfeiting. It is a theory of capital consumption and ignores the irrefutable fact that production is required prior to consumption.
Central bank credit expansion is the best example of the Keynesian disregard for the inevitable consequences of violating Say's Law.
One of the problems with freedom is that her child civil society works so well, we can afford - that is without all hell breaking lose at once - to despise and antagonise both.
Arnold Kling advises:
If those of you who are graduating today go on to attend a liberal arts college, you will hear constantly from people who equate moral character with political expressions of approval for non-profits and disapproval of business. They judge you not be [sic] the content of your character but by the conformity of your political expression. I urge you to reject their doctrines.
If you undertake community service, do so quietly, without righteousness. Do not celebrate community service. Do not give a special place of honor to community service. Above all, do not demean those who serve the community by helping to provide ordinary goods and services through profit-making enterprises. Their community service is honored not by wealthy donors or by doctrinaire teachers. Instead, their community service is honored by ordinary people who voluntarily choose to spend money to obtain what the profit-seekers have to offer. These willing consumers are all the evidence that is needed to show that the occupation of those in business has decent moral worth.
Richard Epstein argues thus in favour of classical liberalism:
Unlike those on the left and right, the proponents of limited government offer viable solutions to our nations most pressing problems.
The single most important fault line in American constitutional law dates back to 1937. In that year, the Supreme Court granted several important victories to the progressive movement, which in the first third of the twentieth century displaced the more classical liberal movement of the so-called old court. The bedrock assumption of the progressives was that a combination of inclusive democratic politics and administrative expertise could forge a more prosperous economy while simultaneously reducing the economic gulf between the rich and the poor. To reach their goals, the progressives needed to win on two key constitutional issues. The first was a broad reading of the “commerce clause”—“Congress shall have the power . . . to regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian Tribes”—so that virtually all productive economic activities, from agriculture and manufacturing to transportation and communication, would become subject to centralized regulation from the national government. The second was to narrow the scope of economic liberty and private property so they could not block the will of the administrative state.
In my first encounter with progressive thought in college and law school in the 1960s, I thought that the progressive agenda was unpersuasive, both for its cavalier disregard of specific constitutional texts, and for its uncritical embrace of large government. I fancied myself a libertarian who insisted that the sole function of government was the control of force and fraud. Over years, my position evolved toward classical liberalism, which regards it as proper for government to also supply public goods like courts and infrastructure, to regulate monopoly, to tax to raise general revenues, and to use its eminent domain power to acquire specific assets needed for public use. My objective was to take the middle path between anarchy on the one side and state domination on the other. Classical liberalism stands in opposition to both hard-core libertarian minimalism and the unbounded progressive state. My new book, The Classical Liberal Constitution: The Uncertain Quest for Limited Government, offers a comprehensive synthesis of the common law origins of individual rights, the key provisions of the United States Constitution, and the classical liberal theory that undergirds both.
...
[M]y view is that we can only understand and interpret the document [the US Constitution, G.T.] by explicit resort to its common law, or judge-made, foundations of individual rights and their correlative duties. One strong focus of the common law is on two-person disputes: A has hit B, or C has not kept his promise to D. In these cases, the equities between the parties loom large relative to the litigation costs needed to resolve them. Accordingly, a libertarian framework that prohibits the use of force and fraud and prizes voluntary cooperation helps us analyze particular cases.
Eventually, however, we must move beyond two-party disputes to those legal conflicts that implicate large numbers of people. Consider, for example, the case of pollution, a common form of nuisance, which may come from many sources and harm many people simultaneously. When that happens, ordinary two-party litigation becomes too costly relative to the benefits it generates. As a result, well-crafted direct regulation steps in to control the harmful externalities from pollution at a far lower cost than individual lawsuits. At the same time, many forms of noise or odor pollution are both low-level and widely distributed, such that it is best to adopt, as I argued in 1979, “the live-and-let-live approach” that Baron George Bramwell articulated so brilliantly in his 1862 masterpiece in Bamford v. Turnley.
The logic behind Bamford was that each landowner was forced to relinquish some of his property rights against all neighbors, in exchange for which they had to release their rights of action against him. Each release from others thus supplied in-kind the just compensation needed to offset the loss of property rights, so that everyone was better off than before.
These forced exchanges for mutual benefit became, in my view, the calling card for collective action. The broad application of the just compensation principle thus supplied the intellectual bridge between private and public law. In the classical liberal framework the government could force exchanges of property rights so long as all parties were left better off than before. That principle is connected to welfare economics through the notion of Pareto improvements, which favor any social change that leaves at least one person better off and no one worse off. It also links to the just compensation provision of the Fifth Amendment, “nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”
As I argued in my 1985 Takingsbook, the Fifth Amendment marks a major advance over standard Lockean theory, which sought to ground limited government in the notion of consent. But if individual consent is required for each government action, then the government is paralyzed. If the majority can wipe out the minority, then factions are given free rein. However, if you allow the government to take only if it supplies an equivalent to the property taken, then you neatly avoid the twin problems of holdout and expropriation. The link between public and private law thus runs through this middle way.
Acting precautiously is not the same as ensuring risklessness. Put differently, precaution depends on a sense of proportion, a sensible trade-off between cost and remaining risk. In political debate one often hears of the "precautionary principle", but rarely is the reference accompanied by a clear and sensible account of the cost-benefit relations attending the "precaution" in question. Often one ends up with a lot of pre(-payment) and little caution in the way of what one is paying for.
Of course, calls for unspecified or all-out "precaution" are an indispensable part of the statist's toolbox.
Next time you hear of the "precautionary principle" or "Earth day" remember what Edward Calabrese has to say below:
The first Earth Day, in 1970, was celebrated after a wave of environmentalism swept the nation. Many give credit to Rachel Carson’s 1962 book, Silent Spring, which popularized the notion of large-scale chemical pollution, for igniting the movement.
But she was really feeding off of a concept developed a few years earlier. The “precautionary principle” was conceptualized when the National Academy of Sciences proposed a radical change in the risk assessment of exposure to radiation and carcinogens. It recommended changing the regulatory paradigm from a “threshold dose” model to a linear one.
The threshold paradigm was what one might call common sense. It held that humans could tolerate small doses of things that, in larger doses, could be harmful.
Sunlight is a perfect example. Low doses are actually required for survival, as ultraviolet radiation — the same general type that causes sunburn — catalyzes the formation of Vitamin D. But, as is obvious to anyone who lives in a sun-drenched area, excessive exposure can lead to death in the near term (from dehydration) or the longer term (from skin cancer).
The “linear model” assumes that just a single molecule of a carcinogen or a single ionization from an X-ray can induce cancer. The enthusiasm spawned by Earth Day soon gave us brand new regulatory agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. The EPA routinely applies the linear model to carcinogens.
“Environmental regulations based on the “linear model” are having a negative impact, not only on societal costs, but on our health as well.”
The linear model is a case study in the unintended consequences of the desire to do good. In this case, an ideologically driven scientist, Nobel Prize laureate Herman Muller, whose research formed the basis for EPA’s model, led the charge. A very powerful figure in health physics, he is now known to have marginalized and obstructed the publication of any research that provided evidence counter to the linear model.
If that sounds like the way senior climate scientists were found to behave in the famous 2009 “Climate-gate” emails, it should.
The regulatory agencies fell in line, as did a compliant scientific community and a media that was afraid to dig deeper. Every country followed the U.S.’ lead.
The linear model is rigid, absolute and wrong. We now know that there are so many flaws or holes in the linear dose response model that it looks more like Swiss cheese. The resulting environmental regulations are having a negative impact, not only on societal costs, but on our health as well.
Recent Comments