Resurgence of Ayn Rand?

Ayn Rand, author of Atlas Shrugged and Fountainhead, seems to be popping up everywhere I see her. Here are a few samples of the rekindled interest in Ayn Rand.

• Two recent books on Ayn Rand: Ayn Rand and the world she made by Anne C. Heller and Goddess of America: Ayn Rand and the American Right by Jennifer Burns. Burns looks at Rand’s interactions with and influence on the American “right”, a term she uses broadly for all forms of free-market and small-government political philosophies, including libertarianism and conservatism. Heller is more interested in the personal influences on Ayn Rand and how these influences shaped the characters in her novels. For those who want to know more from the authors themselves, check out this Cato Institute Book Forum on the two books.

• An article by Jennifer Burns in Foreign Policy (November 2009) on the surprising popularity of Ayn Rand in India.

• Coverage of Ayn Rand by Reason magazine and the Reason Foundation: An article by Brian Doherty and a special event on November 2 dedicated to Ayn Rand (this has many further links).

• Other reviews of Ayn Rand: New York Magazine, New York Times, Time magazine, The New Republic, and The New Yorker (a blog post). The New Yorker has also dug out two old pieces from its archive.

A conversation about race

I recently came across this interesting video (transcript here), which is a segment from the Jim Lehrer new hour on PBS, a television channel in the United States.

The conversation participants are Matt Welch of Rason magazine (who, along with Nick Gillespie, covered a protest march in Washington D.C. on September 12, 2009), Melissa Harris-Lacewell (associate professor of politics and African-American studies at Princeton University), John McWhorter of the Manhattan Institute, and Cornell Belcher, a pollster for the Democratic party. The moderator was Gwenn Ifill. As best as I could tell, Matt Welch was the only white person and all the others were black.

What I find interesting about the conversation, as I’ve found about a lot of such conversations, is how it shows the great diversity of viewpoints within the so-called “black community”, and how one’s job and affiliation often reveal more about one’s views than the color of one’s skin. McWhorter’s views are reasonably predicted by the fact that he works for the Manhattan Institute (though, of course, each person has different specific beliefs) — see for instance this very insightful article by him about Harvard or this one about Joe Wilson and opposition to Obama. Harris-Lacewell’s views (as for instance in this article) seem reasonably typical of a person in an African American studies department — a la Henry Louis Gates (who recently acquired fame/notoriety due to a misconception). And Cornell Belcher’s views seem reasonably in line with a pollster for a party who is trying to paint opposition to that party’s agenda as something racist. Finally, Matt Welch’s views seem in line with those of Reason magazine.

Unfortunately, many people try to get away with claiming that the particular political ideology, perspective or viewpoint they hold “represents” their community. It is currently considered taboo in the United States to openly say that something hurts the “white community”, but other equally dubious spokespersons persist — for instance, people who claim to speak for the “black community”, “middle America”, “undocumented workers”, “women”, “the working class”, “Christians”, “Jews”, “ordinary Americans” and so on. The United States is hardly unique in this respect — dubious spokespersonship for religious groups, genders, age groups, racial, ethnic and regional groups exist in plenty. In some cases, conflicting “spokespersons” cancel one another out, leading to the pleasant cacophony of diversity, but in other cases, certain kinds of viewpoints get the upper hand, even though they do not necessarily represent the majority viewpoint within their “minority” community. At times, there may be active ostracism of the minorities within minorities — people within the minority community who fail to toe the line of some self-declared leaders may be considered traitors or sell-outs.

Fortunately, in a free society, such labels cannot be used to suppress such speech. Thus, we see black economists such as Thomas Sowell who works for the Hoover Institution, who describes himself as a libertarian (though he doesn’t toe the libertarian line on torture), is highly critical of the welfare state. Or, Walter Williams of George Mason University, who wrote a book titled The State Against Blacks where he blamed licensing laws, minimum wage legislation, and the welfare state (as opposed to, or much more important than, racism by individuals) for the poverty and crime among blacks (he also made a three-part video series about themes from the book back in the 1980s). This isn’t to say that the views of people like Sowell or Williams are shared by a majority of blacks or whites or any other community, but the existence of such views shouldn’t be viewed as being a “sellout”.

Bonus: Here’s a nice video put together by Reason about a fight for school choice in Los Angeles. Affiliation, rather than skin color, seem to be the determinant of the stand a person takes. Unsurprisingly, teachers and representatives of teacher association are against it, while parents are for it.

Consumerism

In a comment to an earlier post of mine, my friend Anirbit wrote: “… your over-the-board praise of consumerism and people working for self-interest somehow magically resulting in global development”.

This struck me as somewhat strange because that particular post wasn’t intended as a strident defense of consumerism and its virtues or the glory of self-interest. Rather, it was intended as a criticism of the twisting and at times mis-stating of facts in the story of stuff video. In the cases where I was only guessing, or expressing an opinion that was ideologically tinted as opposed to plain facts, I tried to make clear that these were guesses. My hope was that the critique would make sense to people regardless of their specific views about the environment, consumerism, and society. Nonetheless, since there seems to have been a creeping bias in my post, I thought I’ll make my own views on the matter more explicit.

There are some aspects of consumerism, notably “conspicuous consumption”, that I discussed in an earlier blog post, so for brevity I will not repeat those points. But those who think of “conspicuous consumption” when they talk of consumerism are encouraged to read that blog post.

An array of choices

Since “consumerism” comes under lots of criticism, I want to emphasize here what kind of consumerism I really am for. Basically, I am a strong supporter of freedom, choice, and options in how people choose to live. Some of this freedom come through the protection of individual liberties and property rights, where governments play a role. Within that framework of freedom, further choices usually come through a combination of personal wealth and the availability of options in one’s surroundings. Both personal wealth and the diversity of the market are functions of economic prosperity.

Glenn Beck

Glenn Beck, who runs a show on Fox News, a talk radio show, publishes a magazine (sort of) on his website and has been publishing top-selling books with provocative titles such as Common Sense and Arguing with Idiots. He appeared on the cover of TIME magazine, was interviewed by Katie Couric of CBS, and answed questions at the Washington Post.

You know who this guy reminds me of? Barack Obama.

Superficially, there are hardly any similarities. Beck is a Christan Mormon libertarian while Obama is a socialist, left-of-center progressive (in the twisted jargon of American politics). Beck has little trust in politicians and the power of government — Obama has had quite a bit, specially since January 2009.

So what are the similarities? Well, what I really have in mind is not the Obama of 2009, but the Obama of the campaign trail of 2008. Obama 08 thinks it is important to take “our” government back. Glenn Beck agrees that “we” need to take “our” country back. Obama believes that “community organizing” and “national service” can “fundamentally transform” America, while Glenn Beck has started the 9-12 project, which was one of the responsible factors in encouraging the massive 9/12 rally in Washington D.C. in 2009. Obama and Beck both believe that with honest people in office, corruption will go away.

I find Beck fascinating and mesmerizing even when I don’t agree with him, much the same way as I found Obama fascinating and mesmerizing even when I knew he was spouting nonsense. [DISCLOSURE: My political ideology aligns me more closely with Beck than with Obama, though I am not really close to either of them.]

ALSO OF INTEREST:

I know a lot of people are put off by Beck’s style that appears over-the-top, exaggerated, and to some, filled with racist overtones. This is quite understandable — however, there seem to be a lot of people who’ve never watched or listened to Glenn Beck but still hate him. See this video by Penn Jillette with an interesting take on the matter.

Some have also argued that Glenn Beck is inciting fringe groups into violence. See an interesting take on this by Reihan Salam.

Norman Borlaug

Norman Borlaug, commonly known as the father of the Green Revolution, died on September 12, 2009.

For those who haven’t heard of him, a quick summary of Norman Borlaug’s main achievement: he pioneered the introduction of High Yielding Varieties (HYV)s of wheat and rice into India, Pakistan and Mexico, doubling food production and dramatically increasing food security in these countries. Some say he has saved more human lives than any other living person. For more, read:

• Borlaug’s Wikipedia entry says “Borlaug’s discoveries have been estimated to have saved over one billion lives worldwide.”

• World Food Prize on Borlaug

• New York Times article on Borlaug, after his death: Excerpt: “Dr. Borlaug’s later years were partly occupied by arguments over the social and environmental consequences of the Green Revolution. Many critics on the left attacked it, saying it displaced smaller farmers, encouraged overreliance on chemicals and paved the way for greater corporate control of agriculture. In a characteristic complaint, Vandana Shiva, an Indian critic, wrote in 1991 that “in perceiving nature’s limits as constraints on productivity that had to be removed, American experts spread ecologically destructive and unsustainable practices worldwide.” Dr. Borlaug declared that such arguments often came from “elitists” who were rich enough not to worry about where their next meal was coming from. But over time, he acknowledged the validity of some environmental concerns, and embraced more judicious use of fertilizers and pesticides.”

• The Wall Street Journal (Opinion Journal) on Borlaug: Excerpt: “Who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970? You may be forgiven for not remembering, given some of the prize’s dubious recipients over the years (e.g., Yasser Arafat). Well, then: Who has saved perhaps more lives than anyone else in history? The answer to both questions is, of course, Norman Borlaug. Who? Norman Borlaug, 92, is the father of the “Green Revolution,” the dramatic improvement in agricultural productivity that swept the globe in the 1960s. He is now the subject of an admiring biography by Leon Hesser, a former State Department official who first met Mr. Borlaug 40 years ago in Pakistan, where they worked together to boost that country’s grain production. “The Man Who Fed the World” describes, in a workmanlike way, how a poor Iowa farm boy trained in forestry and plant pathology came to be one of humanity’s greatest benefactors.”

• Ron Bailey of Reason Magazine on Borlaug, after his death.

• An interview Borlaug gave to Reason Magazine in 2000: Excerpt: “Reason: Would you say the Green Revolution was a success? Borlaug: Yes, but it’s a never-ending job. When I was born in 1914, the world population was approximately 1.6 billion people. It has just turned 6 billion. We’ve had no major famines any place in the world since the Green Revolution began. We’ve had local famines where these African wars have been going on and are still going on. However, if we could get the infrastructure straightened out in African countries south of the Sahara, you could end hunger there pretty fast….And if you look at the data that’s put out by the World Health Organization and [the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization], there are probably 800 million people who are undernourished in the world. So there’s still a lot of work to do.”

• DNA India on Borlaug after his death: Excerpt: “Nearly 40 years later, the situation is not too different. Hunger still stalks many parts of the world. We are particularly grateful in India that his successful methods of pest- and drought-resistant wheat seeds have changed the face of Punjab and of the country, and it is this green revolution that made famine a distant memory. It is interesting to remember that Borlaug’s methods were adopted with the same success and around the same time in Pakistan as well. He believed that hunger and poverty caused much strife among nations, and he reached out to many countries in Asia and Latin America.”

• David Boaz of the Cato Institute on Borlaug, after his death: Excerpt: “But that’s not the way journalists and historians see it. Just think of the people who have gone down in history as “the Great“: Alexander the Great, Catherine the Great, Charles the Great (Charlemagne), Frederick the Great, Peter the Great — despots and warmongers. Just once it would be nice to see the actual benefactors of humanity designated as “the Great”: Galileo the Great, Gutenberg the Great, Samuel Morse the Great, Alan Turing the Great. So just for tonight, drink a toast to one of the great benefactors of the poorest people in the world, Borlaug the Great.”

A critique of “the story of stuff”

A couple of months ago, I received an email linking to this fascinating video titled The Story Of Stuff by Annie Leonard. The video had received front-page coverage in the New York Times on May 10, 2009 (view the NYT article online). It also has its own Wikipedia page (this is not a very big deal, but the fact that Wikipedia considered it notable is notable).

I found the video interesting but, unfortunately, poorly researched and misleading in many contexts. I’ll begin with a summary of the gripes I have with specific statements made in the video. I’m using Annie Leonard’s footnoted transcript (PDF).

Note: I am not the first one to critique The Story of Stuff. A blogger and video creator, Lee Doren of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, who claims to be a libertarian Republican has produced a four-part critique of the Story of Stuff. While some of my criticisms overlap with his, the bulk are different.

UPDATE: Lee Doren’s critiques seem to have caught more media attention than mine. In September 2009, he appeared on the Glenn Beck (Fox) and Lou Dobbs (CNN) shows to opine about the video.

Generic problems

Poor sourcing

Leonard’s transcript is extensively footnoted, so at first sight, she seems to be providing sources for all her assertions. A closer examination, however, reveals these poblems:

• Leonard often links/cites friends and environmentalist groups that are not primary sources, or even published or reputed academic secondary sources, even in cases where perfectly good primary sources exist and could easily be linked to. For instance, footnote (4) on page (1) gives a link to a website called warresisters.org (specifically, this page). First, Annie Leonard’s own data doesn’t match up with what the website shows, for the simple reason that the website shows data for the current year while Annie’s footnote refers to data collected for her year. Second, warresisters.org is not a primary source for such information. Even if Annie learned about the information from warresisters.org, she could have spent a few extra minutes going to the reliable source linked to from warresisters.org and linked to that. (She could additionally have credited the warresisters.org website for highlighting this information to her). There are many similar examples, that I talk about at different points, where Annie only credits the source from where she got the information rather than taking the effort to go to a primary source and verify the information.
• Related to the previous problem is the problem of not separating fact from opinion in her footnotes. In other words, she makes no distinctions between facts she is citing from public data and numbers that others have pulled out based on their personal opinions. Moreover, numbers tentatively put out by others and treated by Annie as solid facts (many examples of this will be discussed).

Specific problems

To cross-check and verify everything I’m saying, please open the footnoted transcript (PDF). I will use page numbering and footnote numbers as given in the transcript.

Note also that there are many other minor areas where I disagree with Leonard’s formulation or consider it hyperbolic, but I have stuck here to cases that I consider problematic and where I can marshal clear arguments rather than just a sense of unease.

Privileges versus incentives

I recently came across this seminal article by Peggy McIntosh on unacknowledged privilege. “Unacknowledged privilege” is today a not-uncommon term used to describe how people within a privileged group often fail to acknowledge that their success, or their being relatively well-off and not having to worry about various things, is a form of privilege. Two examples of unacknowledged privilege often found in the U.S. literature are “male privilege” and “white privilege” — men not acknowledging all the ways they benefit by being male, and whites not acknowledging all the benefits they enjoy by being white.

Privileges — the coarse end

When it comes to listing unacknowledged privileges, the privilege of being white or male seems to pale in comparison with the privilege of mere existence. How many of us acknowledge the privilege of simply existing, being alive — an event that in itself seems to be one of extremely low probability? Even if we take our (admittedly temporary) existence for granted, how many of us acknowledge the privilege of having enough food and water to be able to survive over a somewhat longer period of time?

Even if existence and survival are taken for granted, how many of us acknowledge the privilege of being born in an era where we have access to facilities such as electric lighting that didn’t exist two hundred years ago? For those of us who cherish the ability to read, how many of us acknowledge the privilege of being able to read?

The very word “privilege” is loaded, because it usually suggests a reference point, and it isn’t clear why we should pick one reference point instead of another. Why not pick the person who didn’t exist — the sperm that never met the egg, or the fetus that got aborted, to compare ourselves against? Why not pick the chicken that was slaughtered yesterday night as a reference point?

Privileges — the fine end

I don’t know how many people seriously believe that the playing field is level for everybody. I suspect that nobody seriously believes this. Everybody plays on a different field, and has a unique combination of circumstances that give that person some privileges and some liabilities. In addition to “white privilege” and “male privilege”, we may add the privilege of being born to a well-to-do family, not being beaten up or sexually harmed by abusive family members, not having had any disfiguring accidents in childhood, and many others. Or, we can talk about positive privileges such as having found good friends, having had inspiring teachers, having managed to get into college, having found a good job, and many others.

Some interesting points about affirmative action

“Affirmative action” refers to a set of policies to ensure that certain disadvantaged groups get equal access to certain kinds of opportunities. It is typically used in the context of lowering standards, in the sense of giving opportunity to people from disadvantaged groups whose credentials in other respects may be lower than those of people from other groups.

The system of reservations for Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST) in government jobs and college admissions practiced in India is an example of affirmative action at its most explicit. A fixed fraction of the available seats is reserved for the group that is considered to be at a disadvantage. Competition within this fraction of the seats, as well as in the “general category”, is through the same procedure. Thus, if a college selects students through an entrance examination, the same examination is administered to all candidates. The admission cut-off for general category students and for SC/ST students, however, is determined separately. Thus, an SC/ST student may get selected even though he/she scored lower on the admission test than a general category student who did not get selected.

In principle, it could happen that the cut-off in the SC/ST category is higher, or more stringent, than the cut-off in the general category. In such a situation, a separate cut-off is not implemented, and a common cut-off point is determined. I am not aware of any instance in which this has happened, indicating that the disadvantaged/backward status is far from redundant.

Recently, I had a chance to read Tim Harford’s book The Logic of Life, where Harford devotes a chapter to affirmative action and related issues. In the chapter, Harford talks of the work of Roland Fryer, an economist now at Harvard University (Fryer is also mentioned in passing in Freakonomics, the famous book on economics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner). Curious to learn more, I visited Fryer’s faculty page. A quick link to his papers led me to discover a wealth of insights on affirmative action. This paper by Fryer and Glenn Loury on the myths surrounding affirmative action was particularly enlightening. I’ll take the liberty of highlighting some of the points I found particularly interesting and giving my own take on them.

Over-resentment?

A reservation or quota for people in a certain disadvantaged group can mean that certain other capable people in the non-disadvantaged group are deprived of opportunities. This is particularly true, for instance, for cases where there are strict entry limits and that are highly competitive.

However, if entry into a place is highly competitive and the number of positions is limited, then allocating a small fraction of that to a certain disadvantaged group deprives at most that small fraction of people of opportunities. For instance, a university that has an intake of 5000 students, and sets aside a quota for 1000 students, deprives at most 1000 people of potential positions in the university. Thus, the size of the set of people who resent the quotas should be limited to 1000. In practice, the degree of resentment far exceeds the number of people deprived.

Why? Fryer offers the “parking” analogy. Imagine a parking lot where one slot is reserved for parking for cars with people needing wheelchairs. Suppose all other slots are full. Every non-handicapped driver who arrives at the parking lot finds all slots except the wheelchair slot empty, and curses the “reservation” system that prevents him/her from taking the empty slot. In fact, if the slot had not been reserved, only one driver would have been able to park there. In other words, each driver ends up over-resenting because he/she assumes that he/she “just missed it”, rather than being more realistic.

Similarly, students applying for admission and employees seeking jobs may tend to believe that they “just missed getting in” and hence may believe that they are in the narrow window of people who have been adversely affected by the quota.

Dumb quotas versus blind affirmative action

Suppose a university has an affirmative action target. The university needs to get at least 20% of its intake from a specified disadvantaged group. There are two options the university can use: first, an explicit quota that simply ranks all disadvantaged people and all other people according to the same criteria but chooses different cut-off levels to meet the quota. This is the admission test scenario I described earlier.

Second, the university can try to tweak its admission criteria in order to ensure that a larger fraction of disadvantaged people get through. In fact, before determining its precise admission criteria, it can examine and data-mine the applicant pool and then determine a formula for weighting different factors to achieve the quota as best as possible.

The former is what Fryer calls “color-sighted” affirmative action, while the latter is what Fryer calls “color-blind” affirmative action, because it does not explicitly acknowledge any quota (Fryer discusses color-blind affirmative action in a separate paper with Glenn Loury). Fryer’s key insight, which is again one of the things that should be obvious after a little thought, is that color-blind affirmative action is always worse than its color-sighted counterpart.

The reason is that in the color-sighted case, choices within each group are made optimally. Thus, among the disadvantaged group, the correct criteria are used, and ditto for the non-disadvantaged group. However, tweaking the criteria too much can result in making bad choices in both groups. When the disadvantaged group is not too disadvantaged compared to the other group, then the problem is not so severe, since only a little tweaking is necessary.

It gets worse. If criteria are tweaked too much away from the criteria that determine what a good student or employee should know and be, then this alters the incentive systems, both for the disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged. For instance, a criterion that relative ranking within one’s school should be given undue weight so that people coming from poor schools have a fighting chance, may lead students across the board to get obsessed with beating their school fellows on tests, which is arguably not a good thing. Similarly, a criterion that favors certain extra-curricular activities for no good reason other than that people in the disadvantaged group are more likely to do those activities, may lead a lot of people to waste their own time doing such activities to bolster their admission chances.

I think there is one situation in which tweaking criteria in the light of affirmative action might be good. This is where the spirit of the affirmative action policy really requires an application of new criteria that change the meaning of the value or relative worth of a student. For instance, affirmative action for a disadvantaged group that has been historically poor may result in a realization that factoring in the family’s poverty against the student’s performance may result in better quality decisions even for general applicants.

Good people do not discriminate against others, or discrimination is not something that we do, so we should not be subject to affirmative action

A classroom experiment by Fryer, along with Goeree and Holt, discovered something eerie. In the experiment, there were two kinds of workers — “green” and “purple”, and a bunch of employers. The employers were given information about whether a worker was green or purple, and the worker’s score on a test. The test score was in turn determined by how much “education” the worker got (workers had to “pay” for education) along with some random factor. The more education a worker chose to purchase, the higher the likelihood of a good test score. The employer’s goal was to try to hire the “best” workers in the sense of those who had the most education — but the only thing the employer saw was the color and score.

It so happened that on the first round, the purple workers ot somewhat lower test scores. This made employers more reticent to hire purple workers. Employers started hiring more green workers. Even purple workers with high test scores started getting by-passed because employers found the color a stronger indicator of ability than the test score, which was partly random. After a few rounds, purple workers stopped bothering to purchase an education. By the end, purple workers were shouting at the employers that they weren’t being hired, and employers were shouting at the purple workers that they weren’t getting educated enough.

This discrimination arose spontaneously, from an equal beginning, with just a bit of randomness tipping people off.

Discrimination usually hurts employers — but it is in their best interests to do so

Gary Becker, a professor at the University of Chicago and also a Nobel Laureate in Economics, pioneered the economic analysis of discrimination, back in the 1950s, when such subjects were considered outside the domain of economics. Becker made a simple observation, backed by statistical analysis and arguments: discrimination against a certain group of workers usually improves the bargaining power of the workers competing with them, but hurts potential employers, because they have a smaller labor pool to draw from. For instance, laws that forbid blacks from mining in South Africa were good for white miners but bad for mining companies that were forced to pay higher rates because competition in the labor market was reduced. This led Gary Becker to make the bold prediction that the more free and competitive the market, the more the pressure to discriminate less.

The study of discrimination has advanced a lot since Becker’s original work on the subject. A new understanding of discrimination has surfaced, whereby in the short run, employers benefit from discriminating. Tim Harford calls this “rational discrimination”. Others have called it “statistical discrimination”.

The idea behind rational discrimination is that employers, faced with limited information about employees, and limited resources to collect more information, are likely to use demographic and other statistical factors that correlate well with effective employees. This does not merely apply to employers. It also applies, for instance, to insurance providers. Health insurance is cheaper for non-smokers, auto insurance is cheaper for women, even though certain men may be very careful drivers and certain non-smokers may be very callous about their health in other ways.

This creates a vicious cycle, because once people in the disadvantaged group feel that their application will not be given fair consideration, they become less inclined to work to acquire the credentials needed. This is precisely what happened in the classroom experiment. The classroom experiment described above in fact demonstrates how a small initial accident got perpetuated into something collectively destructive, even while each player was acting fully rationally.

The way to get out? One thing that can be done is to have true information about employee capabilities more easy for employers to access and verify. In fact, related ideas have been proposed in many other related areas. For instance, some recent work has suggested that if employers are allowed to have access to the criminal record of potential employees, they may be more inclined to hire people from the disadvantaged groups who do not have a criminal background. The precise criminal record makes “racial profiling” more redundant.

Nationalism?

A politician who runs in an election on a platform of racial segregation, religious segregation, or narrow regionalistic jingoism may well win the election, but such a politician is rarely hailed by the media or “educated elite” as an exemplar. Definitely, politics of this kind is rarely viewed in a positive light by people of other religions or races. And yet, nationalistic politics continues to be viewed, by many influential people, as something positive and, to a large extent, exemplary. More touchingly, such politics is often admired by people in other countries, even when it harms the interests of those other countries.

Take, for instance, the typical platforms of electoral candidates in the United States. Senator John McCain, a war veteran and Republican politician, had “national security” as one of his top themes, and one of his campaign slogans was “Country First”, while his opponent Barack Obama, who is now the President of the United States, showcased a policy of providing tax breaks for companies that “create jobs in America” rather than ship them overseas. Bashing foreign countries is a favorite pastime of U.S. politicians, and Obama and McCain are perhaps far from the extreme. Consider, for instance, George Bush’s “Axis of Evil” that comprised Iran, Iraq, and Syria (never mind the enmity between Iran and Iraq). Or John Kerry’s proposal to prevent poor U.S. workers from having their jobs stolen by people in Bangalore and Beijing, thus converting India and China from poor, populous countries to be pitied to greedy cheaters and thieves who need to be punished.

I used to believe that only (some) Indians harbor under the illusion that Indians are qualitatively different or superior compared to others (thanks to our “rich cultural heritage”, including, among other things, the zero). But such lines seem to be even more widespread among U.S. politicians, with Obama and McCain affirming in their presidential debates that the American worker is the most hardworking in the world (never mind the genetic/racial superiority arguments implicit here, and the total absence of supportive evidence).

Economic nationalism

Putting the “country first” in the economic sense rarely seems to raise eyebrows. Consider, for instance, that the United States, one of the world’s richest countries, has politicians who actually think they can get brownie points among the public by claiming that people in poorer countries such as India and China, are doing something immoral by “stealing jobs for American workers”. If these politicians stand by the doctrine that every human life is equally precious, then, of course, such statements make little sense. First, the fraction of such jobs that are “stolen” in the sense of being illegal is probably too low to make a difference. Second, the Indian or Chinese worker is winning simply because of certain comparative advantages (greater desperation and hence willingness to accept lower pay, a time lag that helps with certain kinds of work, and in some cases, better qualifications). Third, there are net gains here for a lot of people — including people in the U.S. and many other countries who can enjoy cheaper products.

The United States is not the only country that practices such nationalism. “Buy British” is a common theme in the United Kingdom, trying to tap in on people’s patriotism to make them buy national products. In India, which is considerably less regulated than the pre-1991 era, buying desi stuff still has positive connotations.

Shorn of its rhetoric, “country first” politics rests on some premises that are rarely put explicitly: first, that the people of one country are in some way intrinsically superior and their lives are more valuable than those of the people of another country. Second, that the people within the country are incapable of making their own decisions about how to live, work, and trade, and they need a government to help protect their interests from the people of other countries.

This seems, at least in principle, similar to racial and Hindu caste segregation: that the people of one caste are intrinsically superior to those of another caste, and an individual within a caste (even a “superior” one) is not allowed to breach the borders of caste. Thus, a high-caste person is forbidden from marrying a low-caste person, even when the two are passionately in love.

Put this way, it becomes clear that “country first” politics, while most obviously harmful to the people of other countries, are often very harmful to the people of that very country, and the people who’re actually helped are usually a very select few — politicians and people who control the political rules.

In fact, the benefits to them are often indirect. Consider, for instance, that dictators in countries, seeking to make their reign more powerful and terrifying, may often court sanctions by other powers, because cutting off of trade links and personal exchange only weakens the opposition within their country. Saddam Hussein, the now-deceased ex-president of Iraq, was probably in this category. While Saddam’s direct atrocities claimed many lives, the indirect deaths of innocent people due to sanctions with Iraq probably claimed a fair number of lives as well.

This is not to suggest that democracies and dictatorships are equally ruthless in their implementation of “country first” policies. Both face very different incentives. Democratic governments often use “country first” rhetoric but, if they have the sense, will not translate such rhetoric into action because they’re accountable for results. Dictators may or may not need to bother with “country first” rhetoric, and their main incentive in using such rhetoric is to protect themselves from the international integration that may challenge their reign.

Some recent history

Obama comes from an interestingly diverse background. In the 1980s, he worked as a community organizer in Chicago, putting him in direct contact with people whose lives and communities had been disrupted by the closing down of steel mills. Thus, he probably has natural empathy for people who go through economic hardship due to a contraction in demand or manufacturers shifting overseas. At the same time, Obama’s father hails from Kenya, and he spent his childhood in Indonesia living with his mother and stepfather. Obama also studied at Harvard Law School and taught at the University of Chicago Law School, and hence was exposed to very libertarian viewpoints.

Given this diverse background, I suspect that Obama may be a better candidate than many for considering a more global and less “nationalistic” perspective. Nonetheless, some of the recent policies of the administration include policies that specify that “stimulus money” be spent on creating American jobs and preference be given to American workers, seem suspicious to me. After all, people receiving a limited amount of stimulus money should have incentives to put it to the best possible use. If the administration believes this not to be the case, they should make it harder to get stimulus money by requiring greater stringency in meeting the specific requirements rather than adding their own general-purpose requirements. If this use involves hiring Americans, they’ll hire Americans. If it involves hiring people from other parts of the world, they’ll hire people from other parts of the world. The provision makes even less sense when applied to research grants for colleges, where a significant fraction of graduate students may be foreign students (such as me).

More disturbing than policy specifics is the general rhetoric tone that Obama the presidential candidate and Obama the president have taken: aiming to project this as an issue of “protecting American workers from foreigners out to steal their jobs”. That such rhetoric is deemed necessary in one of the richest countries is not a good indicator.

More nationalism

Nationalist rhetoric as a political tool to gain traction with voters is not what I’d call exemplary, but its harm is limited. What I think is even more harmful is the use of nationalist rhetoric to significantly expand the scope of government by telling people what they should do and what they shouldn’t do in order to protect them from the evil foreigners. Of course, the use of nationalist rhetoric to expand the scope of government does not require painting foreigners as evil, but the latter helps. Particularly in times of crisis, when people look to the government, it helps to blame the matter on foreigners and increase government control.

Not all governments may have malicious intentions, but hidden behind any attempt to take the reins of the country and prevent people from making their own decisions in the name of “nationalism” is either malice or hubris. Malice, if the goal is to cynically exploit the situation. Hubris, if the politicians genuinely think that, with the reins of the economy in their hands, they can save their people.

Military nationalism

Military nationalism is the even less benign cousin of economic nationalism, with governments using xenophobia as an excuse to conduct war and expand the scope of government. The Bush government has often been accused of unfairly exploiting the post-9/11 sentiment to conduct an ill-timed war in Iraq, and to use the wars as a cover to expand the powers of the executive and breach citizens of rights.

Just like economic nationalism, military nationalism could take two forms: one, where it is restricted largely to rhetoric without actually harming anybody, and two, where it actually leads to action, that is inevitably harmful. In the first category come activities such as political rhetoric that seeks to gain political mileage from existing military strength. In 1998, after India conducted nuclear blasts in Pokhran (something that scientists had been preparing for for quite some time) the then-in-power BJP and their extended family, the Sangh Parivar, used it as an occasion to celebrate the great achievements of India, the Hindu nation, and used it to extol the great virtues of their own leadership. This political exploitation of what was largely a scientific achievement that had little to do with the party in power had little direct damage, though it might have contributed to the rise of “Hindu nationalism” that arguably had a number of other negative effects.

Nonetheless, I’d argue that even the first form of military nationalism — the kind that doesn’t directly harm a lot of people, contributes to the kind of nationalism and jingoism that we could well do without.

Can nationalism be useful?

Is there a positive side to nationalism? I certainly think that having a national community is a useful concept, because it creates a natural “division of labor” and “place to focus on”. Each of us may feel somewhat more responsible for the upkeep and maintenance of our locality than for neighboring localities, and thus, can concentrate our limited efforts on a particular locality. Similarly, having a national community that we belong to and that can provide a framework for our efforts is useful.

However, nations typically claim to be a lot more than extended communities. People are expected to, even admired for, laying down their lives for their nations, but few people are admired for laying down their lives for the suburb in which they live. Nations also claim to have some sort of collective identity and voice, and each nation claims to have a different voice from the others. Thus, we ascribe beliefs and value systems to nations, and argue that different nations should not interfere with each other’s value systems, even when those value systems infringe on the rights of individuals that would be considered inalienable in other nations. This collective identity and collective voice seems, to me, to largely be a useful myth that enhances the power and influence of politicians.

Unfortunately, unlike racial and caste segregation which, though alive, are clearly acknowledged by many as evils to be tackled, nationalism is very far from being considered evil. Even the imposition of nationalism on people against their will is not considered evil.

Think!

It distresses me when people use a combination of “logical reasoning” and “emotional hype” to come to conclusions that would, in the ordinary course of things, require a lot more data, input, understanding, and a lot better “feel” of the situation. I see this all the time — people coming to conclusions about things saying “it’s just that simple” when those very same things have so many different facets and when such little information is available.

I remember how, a couple of years ago, there was huge anguish about a policy of “reservation” for the OBCs in post-secondary educational institutions in India. For those who don’t come from India and haven’t heard of reservation, it basically comprises marking off a certain fraction of the admissions in the educational institution for people from a certain community. In this case, the communities were certain backward castes in India, as per the oppressive and unjust caste system that evolved in Hinduism, a dominant religion in India.

For those familiar with affirmative action in the United States, reservation’s a bit like that — except that instead of having loose guidelines for universities to proactively seek students of color or students from backward communities, reservation imposes fixed percentages.

Till 2006, there was 22% nationwide reservation for people from the most deprived castes: the so-called Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs). A government ruling in 2006 sought to provide an additional 27.5% reservation for Other Backward Classes (OBCs), who were oppressed, though not that much. This raised the total reserved fraction of seats to 49.5%. Not surprisingly, there were immediate nationwide protests, from students in these educational institutions, who argued that “equality” and “merit” were being compromised. Newspapers and TV channels caught on quickly by holding debates on “Caste versus merit”. Most notably, students made a protest outside AIIMS, India’s leading medical institute and an important hospital, and blocked the gates, forcing patients to climb walls to seek treatment. Adding to the confusion and chaos, I blogged about this.

Recently, while reviewing the contents of my mailbox, I came across this alarmist message that had been sent to me:

Subhash Srivastav an AIIMS
student died at 6:44 pm on 20/05/2006, because of hunger strike protesting
against reservation. Media is not allowed to cover it. Please pass this
to all and help not to let down his sacrifice.

WHEN WILL THE GOVERNMENT RISE TO THE SIMPLICITY OF THE PLAIN AND SELF
EVIDENT TRUTH AND NOT LET THE EVIL OF RESERVATION GOBBLE UP THE
FUTURE OF ACADEMICS IN INDIA …..

MAKING AN EARNEST PLEA TO THE NATION TO RISE AGAINST THIS MENACE OF
RESERVATION …..

MAKE THIS SACRIFICE WORTH ITS VALUE .

Now, let’s parse that. Somebody didn’t like reservations. Therefore that person went on a hunger strike. Nobody was forcing that person to go on a strike. The person went on a strike due to certain personal beliefs. Then, that person died. if a person goes on a hunger strike against something and then dies, that doesn’t mean that “something” is evil. This is false logic at its best.

The greater irony, though, was that nobody had died. This “Subhash Srivastava” was somebody’s fabrication, in an attempt to garner attention and gain support for the cause. Yet, the many forwards and circulations of this information (and I got them through multiple online sources) seemed oblivious to the burden of verifying the truth of the statement.

The larger point here isn’t whether reservations are justified or not (which is a deep and complex question, and certainly outside my area of specialization). My point here is about the tools that people use to spread their message about the harm of reservation. I got a lot of emails from people urging me to sign certain “Youth For Equality” petitions, and while not all of them were in capital letters, they focused on “simple premises”. Here’s an intelligible piece from the Youth For Equality website:

Current policy of reservation is unjust and dangerous
-Caste based reservations can only accentuate the already existing divisions in our society.
-Caste based reservation have failed the SCs and STs in past 60 years. They are unlikely to succeed in future.
-Such reservation are like providing crutches to those do not need them and often, to those who do not seek them.
-Most important, these reservation are actually a ploy to deviate attention from inability to provide quality primary education

This sounds like an excellent list, but note that none of these simple premises have any justification attached to them. It’s possible (and probable) that the author of this piece (Dr. Vishal Sharma, UCMS, Delhi) had some solid reasons and research behind his statements, but he didn’t choose to share those with readers. The general idea here seems to be that most of these points are incontrovertible.

But if you think about it a little more, there’s very little that principle, logic and reason can tell one about the impact of reservations on an educational system. For instance, a lot of great institutions manage to take in a small fraction of their students based on huge fees or because of their political connections — a “reservation” of sorts and a compromise on merit (this is true for some American institutions; for instance, Princeton has historically been a place for politicians to send their children, yet the quality of its research remains unquestioned). There has been a huge spectrum of results for the introduction of different kinds of schemes to give preferential treatment in admission policies for students from deprived backgrounds. I’ve heard people tell me that the quota system in Tamil Nadu has helped, to some extent, to reduce caste barriers, at least in the big cities (this is hearsay, and I don’t have a lot of first-hand experience). Then, there’s also the contention that once a few people from some backward communities make it to an educational institution, others will aspire harder to get there. While I again don’t have personal experience with this on a large scale, I do know that having one person from a place go somewhere or do something, increases the chances of other people doing that thing. (For instance, after I qualified the Indian National Mathematical Olympiad and went to the International Mathematical Olympiad, there was an interest in my school in the next 3-4 years regarding the Olympiads, and 2-3 more students from my school made it through the national Olympiad. And many of the people who came to my not very well-known undergraduate institution CMI told me that a crucial factor in their decision was the input of another person from their community, or village, who had also been to CMI.)

Social inequality too can take subtle and not-so-subtle forms as I described in an earlier blog post. So it’s possible for people living in cities, in high-status, high-caste families, to be largely oblivious to the “other side” of the picture.

This isn’t to offer arguments in favor of reservations per se, but rather to point out that the issue is extremely complicated, and “simple premises” need to be treaded on carefully.

Of course, people on the other side of this issue don’t seem to lack “simple premises” either. Here’s one favorite pro-reservation simple premise: “In a truly equal society, representation of different castes in society should be by their representation in the population. Thus, reservations just help make the society truly equal”.

I can go on about arguments resting on simple premises and drawing “simple” conclusions, but I’ll just give a list and leave it to interested people to look at the arguments:

1. A certain person said something positive about a , that person is evil and bad. Read this criticism of Larry Lessig, Creative Commons founder, and if you’re left utterly bewildered, you can check out this criticism of the criticism.
2. A lot of people are starving while a few people have huge houses — so the people with the money are the evil ones.
3. People with money are people who were smart and hardworking and earned it.
4. A certain country does something you don’t like so that country is against the values and goals of the world.
5. Theft is when you actually deprive somebody of something. When making digital copies, you’re not depriving anybody of anything, because they keep the original. So piracy isn’t theft.
6. Intellectual property = property, so piracy is stealing, so piracy should be punished as theft. Thus, any circumvention of DRM tools is illegal.
7. Any criticism of Wikipedia, the blogosphere, or modern culture is a criticism of “THE PEOPLE” so if you dare to criticize Wikipedia you’re an elitist and credentialist and you’ve got a big fat head.
8. Anybody who reads Wikipedia or blogs is a shallow person who cannot understand in-depth arguments.

There are many other examples, but one thing they all have in common is: they start out with some simple premises that are questionable, then make some leaps of logic that are questionable, then state a moot conclusion, and finally top it up by something that associates some kind of insult to people who don’t agree. I’ve heard arguments like “any sane person would …” for things where, in fact, people could be in a lot of disagreement.

So how do we tackle situations where people present these kind of arguments to us? How do separate fact from hype, and remove false logic from the scene?

The answer is simple: think! That doesn’t quite mean that every question can be resolved by thought and analysis — in fact, analytical thinking is severely limited in solving complex social problems. However, analytical thinking does usually reveal gaps in simple premise-logic, and makes you realize how little logic and reasoning and “principles” can guide one in a world of uncertainty.

Secondly, gather data. it never hurts to gather raw, boring information, rather than condensed opinions sans raw data. The Internet is a great source for condensed information, with Wikipedia leading the way and a number of bloggers keen to summarize and have the final word. But the Internet is also a great source of raw data. So if you are serious about understanding or forming an opinion about something, go through it in excruciating detail. For instance:

1. Read original, primary sources. Before forming an opinion about a book, read some pages of the book. View some videos by the author of the book. Before forming opinions about the reservation or caste system, go ahead and learn more about how the caste system came into play, what the original motivation and plan for reservations was, and how things have evolved.
2. Use diverse methods of reading secondary sources. Do not restrict attention to specific secondary sources. Use web search, library search, personal communication, attending lectures, and other tools to try to capture sources in all kinds of ways, so as better to be able to triangulate on the truth.
3. Be on the lookout for “simple premise” logic. While listening to it, make a note not to be unduly influenced by it.

More about why people present simplistic arguments

Why do people present simplistic arguments? First, it is an attention-grabbing device. The complexities of most of the issues we deal with are breathtaking, and frankly, if you’re already handling a lot of complexity in work and personal relationships, you don’t want to add to that the complexity of larger problems. So, a simplistic argument has a lot more appeal than a huge collection of raw facts, arguments and ideas.

Secondly, the nature of media and presentation strongly supports simplistic arguments. Newspapers and TV channels have been constrained by column width and time length respectively. Ironically, the Internet is in principle a complete solution: you can have very long articles and very long videos without taking up too much of people’s time (because they can watch or read a bit and shift out if they’re not interested). But, while the amount of in-depth material that can be accessed via the Internet has increased considerably, the majority of the Internet remains quick-see-quick-do. That means that if you want to make an impression, the same principles apply as they do to poster design or slogans: be simplistic.

Thirdly, simplistic arguments are in some cases cover-ups for other reasons or interests. This may happen in a subconscious or indirect way. In the politics-industry nexus, money from lobbyists could result in politicians making simplistic arguments in favor of the lobbying parties. People threatened by a certain change make simplistic arguments that paint that change as bad, the motivation partly coming from the very concrete threat they feel, rather than the abstract and simplistic argument they present.

Fourthly, it is a prisoners’ dilemma. If we force our leaders and people in positions of authority to present their views with intellectual integrity rather than relying on hype, and if we exact these standards from people seeking to appear in the news, then people seeking to present simplistic arguments will be at a loss. If, however, everybody else is keen on creating sound-bytes or offering easy quotes, then it doesn’t pay to be a lone voice offering a more complex, refined and balanced argument.

Do simplistic arguments mean there’s no substance?

No. Often, simplistic arguments are offered in situations where a more complete and balanced picture could be provided (for instance, I’m offering a simplistic argument here, while I could offer a more complete and balanced picture). But there are constraints of time and space, and user attention. Finally, there’s the fact that to spread something enough so that it reaches people who’ll actually appreciate your argument, you need to first get it across to lots of people who may not care too much about the details but like the sound and feel of the argument.

Simplistic arguments have a flip side, though: they alienate people who want to get the detailed picture. So my suggestion to people who’re trying to package their experience and thoughts into easy-follow stuff, is to give links, or references, to more in-depth explanations. For instance, Lessig’s videos, which have a style of simplicity that makes their key points well-imprinted, do offer a substantially more shallow and less balanced treatment of his ideas than his excellent books. (For instance, the videos about copyright and remix culture end up showcasing some particular remix videos. If you don’t like those videos (which I didn’t) then the speech seems to have been a tad lame). But since Lessig offers up his books for free, and since his videos do give some hints about the fact that he isn’t keen on being simplistic, I can then go ahead and read his books to get a deeper understanding of what he’s saying.

Doesn’t everything have a simple explanation? Why create unnecessary complications?

Probably, a lot of explanations can be packaged to sound simple. What gets left out, though, is a lot of the other explanations that sounded equally simple and equally plausible but were just plain false. A simple explanation has appeal but isn’t sufficiently self-referential: it doesn’t explain why it is right.

I’m not against the all-important need to simplify and abstract and provide easy bytes. I’m against the converse: just because somebody gave you an easy-sounding explanation of something, doesn’t mean it is necessarily right. Simple things are rarely arrived at “simply”, they’re usually a process of careful elimination, soaking oneself in the situation, and drawing on a lot of experience.

Apologies if this post was too simplistic — probably, it proves its own point .