My personal blog-reading strategy is to cycle around, subscribing to any individual blog for a while in my newsreader and then dropping it after a while. You can’t read everything. So I used to read Matthew Yglesias, but haven’t been recently. I clearly need to start again, because this (via Brad DeLong) is extremely smart and powerful.
I’ve come to be increasingly baffled by the high degree of cynicism and immorality displayed in big-time politics. For example, Senators who genuinely do believe that carbon dioxide emissions are contributing to a global climate crisis seem to think nothing of nevertheless taking actions that endanger the welfare of billions of people on the grounds that acting otherwise would be politically problematic in their state. In other words, they don’t want to do the right thing because their self-interest points them toward doing something bad. But it’s impossible to imagine these same Senators stabbing a homeless person in a dark DC alley to steal his shoes. And what’s more, the entire political class would be (rightly!) shocked and appalled by the specter of a Senator murdering someone for personal gain. Yet it’s actually taken for granted that “my selfish desires dictate that I do x” constitutes a legitimate reason to do the wrong thing on important legislation.
It is kind of a mystery. Why is it a heinous crime for one individual to act directly against another, but business as usual for a powerful politician to act knowingly in ways that will bring harm to the nation or the world? Is it just that one death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic?
No offense, but this is not very deep, and in fact the stabbing comaprison is weak and logically flawed. Extremely smart? You must be easily impressed (and yes, I do believe global warming is a problem).
I was wondering how long it would take to get the first comment saying “No it’s not smart” without giving any argument. Thirteen minutes, hmm. Must be slipping.
I also think this is false comparison. What a legislator should do in a representative democracy when their personal beliefs conflict with the majority stance of their constituents is a a much more complex issue than whether to stab someone for personal gain. I will say, though, that words like “leader” or “leadership” are a hollow joke when referring to people who vote with the political winds.
Well, tons of tomes have been written on this and the many related issues. Suffice it to say that people can and do easily delude themselves.
Agree with others. It’s a pretty poor comparison. It’s at least arguable that a senator shouldn’t vote against a strong majority of his constiuants, not only for his personal election chances but because he’s supposed to be their representitive. I don’t think anyone would argue that stabbing a hobo is ethical, though.
Plus, I doubt the DC homeless population has very good footware. If your going to murder for shoes, wouldn’t you kill someone a little more well-to-do.
Well, I can’t personally be slipping, as I am not a regular poster (unless two posts make me a regular). Anyway, you might want to notice that you call it “extremely smart” without giving much of an argument as well. Your blog, your opinion, my comment, my opinion (how do you propose to objectively measure an IQ of a blog post?) But the stabbing comparison is weak and false, and was only made for its shock value.
I was also going to add something about the expectation value of shoes of a homeless person, but #5 beat me to it.
Wait, really? Almost all the commenters here so far want to argue that a congressperson should do whatever gets them re-elected, because that is what their constituents want, even if it’s clearly immoral? Huh. That’s… um… huh.
We could patch up the analogy people find problematic by saying that the congressperson has been specifically sent into the alley to stab the homeless person by a large group of residents from their hometown, who are standing at the end of the alley and cheering. It’s at least arguable that, having been elected to do this task by these people, the congressperson should do it, independent of its morality, right, #5?
Perhaps the best analogy would be that elected representative voting for legislation that will have people directly killed (to make it even less controversial, we’ll say outside of a war or cases of convicted murderers or rapists) vs. not voting for legislation that would save lives. Imagine that in both cases he or she was doing so for reasons of political expediency. Now at least we’ve got the classic action vs. inaction distinction, and a fairly straightforward comparison.
But even with that comparison, when you factor in constituency, representative democracy, rule of law (and the Constitution), etc., a whole host of thorny and complicating issues get raised. Yglesias’ point is well taken, if hardly original, and he was clearly using the analogy for rhetorical purposes, but a “smart” post would at least try to suss out some of the factors involved.
Follow the money…I know, its kinda cynical but I’m not a Senator either.
Basic psychology does need to be considered, as suggested. Murdering a person with your bare hands is indeed much more difficult than, say, giving an order to drop a nuclear bomb on a city. The indirectness, the lack of ability to appreciate the magnitude of large numbers (we tend to imagine quantities on a log scale, apparently). Moreover, in this case, there’s nothing like a direct cause-effect path to assign blame, and huge numbers of potential culprits between the legislator and the victims.
I agree there’s an irony here, but not much of a comparison.
The analogy could also be improved by noting that this is much like a firing squad… as an elected official, I am but one vote case to pass some legislation. In the end, which elected official pulled the trigger?
It goes almost without saying that Sean and Matthew’s take on this is amusingly simplistic and short-sighted. The discussion should move past that.
The analogy is truly terrible.
Focusing on the “self-interest” of Senators is inappropriate and highly misleading here. A Senator effectively has a contract to represent the desires of the population that elected him or her, and the promise of continued employment exists as an incentive for the Senator to honor that contract. If e.g. climate change is such a problem that the ordinary interests of the voters need to be sacrificed, then that’s a decision that the voters need to make themselves. (At least if you believe in democracy.)
Another important point to keep in mind about politics…sometimes winning an election at all costs is not necessarily at odds with trying to do the right thing.
For example if you want to give people universal healthcare (a good thing) you have to first win an election that gives you the power to do so. Winning this election may require you to lie, bribe, make deals with companies to raise money for your campaign etc…only so that ultimately you can win the election and help poor people by giving them medical care (a good thing).
Politics is VERY COMPLICATED and it is naive to think of it simply in terms of right and wrong. It’s no place for boy scouts. Have to disagree with this post…the analogy to murder is poor indeed.
Mary makes the best case for AGW and the best argument why AGW is bunk all in the same post.
Can anyone here tell me what the best and worst case scenarios, as predicted by the leading academics, for global warming is at the moment? I keep hearing reports that the negative effects are continually being reduced based on models of the next 100 to 150 years or so… is that even somewhat reliable? I would love a good list of science articles to read to really solidify my understanding of what the current state of thought is from the climate change circles. If anyone can supply me with that list then thanks in advance!
@ onymous #8:
It is immoral in the extreme for a politician to act against the wishes of their constituents. They are elected for one solo purpose: to do the will of those who elected them. Their personal morals and ethics should have nothing to do with it.
I’m reminded of a previous Canadian prime minister who pushed through legislation to legalize gay marriage even though he himself was strongly opposed to it (he was a devote, practising Catholic). He was opposed, but those who elected him weren’t. His personal opinion on the matter was irrelevant.
That’s how a representative democracy should work, but that’s not usually how it does work. In practise the personal morals and goals of the politician all too often interfere with their purpose for existence (service of the public).
So yes, if a congressman was informed by a significant majority of his constituents that he was to murder homeless people, he would *have* to do it, because he is nothing more than an agent of his constituents. In the context of his job he is not a person, he is merely a machine, there to do our will…. assuming that he is functioning within normal parameters, anyway;).
One caveat: politicians are very rarely presented with a situation where a strong majority of the population is in perfect agreement. Normally it’s something like a 40/40/20 opinion split. In those situations it is appropriate for the politician to look at all major opinions held by the population he serves, and then decide between them, using his own judgment. That is, however, the only situation (albeit a common situation) where a politician’s personal experience and opinions should way into making a decision.
I’m reminded of a previous Canadian prime minister who pushed through legislation to legalize gay marriage even though he himself was strongly opposed to it (he was a devote, practising Catholic). He was opposed, but those who elected him weren’t. His personal opinion on the matter was irrelevant.
Give me a break. Flip that around: suppose his constituents opposed gay marriage, and he supported it. If he does what his constituents want him to do, he’s acting immorally; it’s simply true that supporting gay marriage rights is the right thing to do, morally, whether you’re a politician or not. If a Southern politician in the ’60s opposed civil rights legislation because his constituents wanted him to, he was acting immorally. The same goes for climate change now. If the constituents are in the wrong, it gives a politician an excuse to do the wrong thing, but it doesn’t make it right. Indeed, a moral politician should be compelled to act against their constituents in such a case. The constituents have every right to vote them out of office in the next election, which is the price that one pays for acting morally if the public is opposed. It’s still the right thing to do. And this is Yglesias’s point: politicians are choosing to forego acting morally in order to give in to the public (at times, with a small fraction of the public), to avoid attacks that could cost them their re-election.
I guess I’m not enough of a moral relativist for the crowd here. Failing to act on climate change is just wrong; it’s very black-and-white. (The morality of specific types of actions to mitigate the problem is a lot trickier, as all sorts of things we do are complicit in various ways. But avoiding addressing the problem altogether, or denying that it exists? Unambiguously wrong.)
Search keyword: “monkeysphere.” I found it very funny and rather insightful.
First, delete comment #20. Second, what is the job of an elected representative: to vote for
what he thinks is best, to vote for what the majority of those who elected him voted for,
or to vote for what he thinks is best for those who voted for him? Politics is complicated; be
glad you do only physics. It’s no mistake that Newton wrote the Principia first THEN became
Master of the Mint.
@ onymous :
If you are a politician who cares deeply about global warming, then it is extremely important for you to remain in power so that you can take important steps to fight global warming. If you lose relection it hurts the cause of global warming. Staying in power may require you to make some deals or comprises with the opposition…it’s called losing the battle to win the war.
For example, you may make a deal with a senator that ultimately helps a certain oil company in exchange for his vote on far more important legislation to cut down on emissions from coal plants, factories, etc and imposes higher mileage standards. This may appear unethical to the “boy scouts” out there but is extremely necessary…it’s called politics!
The senator’s job is to vote the way his constituents would vote, if they were present, and had time to read the bill, etc. That it is also in his self-interest to do so is good, this means his job has well-alligned incentives.
The only exception to this I can see is for atrocities. The soldier’s job is to take orders, but we also expect him occasionally to refuse, when asked to partake in a massacre for instance. But it’s got to be pretty blatant before this kicks in, working to prop up a dodgy regime which impoverishes its people does not count, you have to be physically present at the genocide.
“onymous” seems to believe that gay marriage and climate change are issues of this magnitude, for which “just taking orders” would not be a defence for voting against his preferences (and mine!). I think this is crazy, these things are fairly normal issues. They are not so large that we should abandon democracy.
Of course the senator has the option of trying to educate his people, to explain why his view is correct. He also has the option of resigning, should he find the votes which it is his job to cast so at odds with his own views. (However the voters are likely to have already picked someone whose views are fairly close to theirs, on most issues.)
Yes, the evil dictator must have had the inside scoop…
The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic.
Joseph Stalin
A sincere diplomat is like dry water or wooden iron.
Joseph Stalin
Come election time, all politicians are diplomats.
Remembering the first George W. Bush election, I’m reminded of another Stalin quote:
The people who vote decide nothing; the people who count the votes decide everything.
Let’s ignore the two-party system which means that the majority of the people WHO VOTED
(if you don’t vote, you can’t complain) didn’t get whom they wanted. If the U.S. can’t go to
proportional representation, at least instant-runoff or something similar should be used to
avoid situations where Gore and Nader together had more than Bush, and probably all
Nader voters would have preferred Gore to Bush, but Bush won. The practical consequence
is that third-party candidates should not split the vote, leaving the playing field to just two
parties. (A two-party system is only marginally better than a one-party system.) But let’s
ignore even this atrocity. Get this: Gore has more of the popular vote, undisputedly.
Ignore even this atrocity as well and for the purposes of argument say the Electoral-College
system is fair. The votes are unclear, because of badly constructed voting machines. So
there is a recount. The recount is stopped when Bush is ahead by the Governor of Florida,
who is his brother. Even in a banana republic, politicians wouldn’t stoop this low, and even
there if they did they couldn’t get away with it.
Stalin is also a good example of good PR. Most people think of Hitler as more evil, but Stalin
killed TEN TIMES as many people. (I don’t think evil can be quantified in terms of the
number of people someone kills; the two are in some sense equally evil in my eyes.) And
while we’re on the subject of genocide, when asked if he thought he could get away with
the Holocaust, Hitler replied “Who remembers the Armenians?” Even today, the western
world still lays out the red carpet for the “strategic partner” Turkey, with the US
lobbying the EU to admit Turkey (a long-time NATO member, though last time I looked
it wasn’t near the North Atlantic), while within Turkey, even mentioning the Armenian
genocide will get you in jail.