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.

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.

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.

Frankly, I don’t see how I can be anti-choice given the freedom with which I exercise choices and the fact that I derive great personal happiness and satisfaction through the exercise of these choices. To take just a few examples. Food: From where I live in Chicago, close to the University of Chicago, I have access to grocery and produce stores where I can get almost all the fruits and vegetables that I used to get in India (and a few more). I can buy, at prices easily affordable to me, Mediterranean and mid-eastern foods such as pita, hummus, baba ghannouj, and couscous, Mexican tortillas, olive oil made in Italy, and Italian-style bread. many of these foods are in my list of regular purchases. In addition, I have access to Indian, Chinese, Thai, Japanese and Mediterranean eateries within walking distance, in addition to the usual pizza, burger, and coffee outlets. And if I were willing to travel a bit more, I could get to top-quality Indian, Mexican, Italian and Ethiopian restaurants.

Now, it so happens that I don’t eat out too often, and the few items that I choose to purchase at the grocery store are but a small fraction of the wealth of items available. Does this mean that all those other items are useless and shouldn’t be there? Of course not. Most of those items are there because somebody wants them, and surely one reason why the grocery stores stack such a diverse range of items is because of the diversity of tastes of their customers. And this diversity gives me the freedom to switch to other foods if it turns out that I get tired of pita, hummus, and couscous.

With greater diversity in food availability, people can choose diet regimes and lifestyles that most suit their taste buds, health needs, energy requirements, or political orientation. For instance, people can choose to become vegans, become organic-only eaters, follow a juice-based diet, or buy and cook food in the style of another country.

Consumer culture is often equated with the drinking of world-famous cold drinks such as Pepsi and Coca-Cola. But these form a very very thin sliver of the kind of things people drink, even if they are the most conspicuous. On the rare occasion that I visit stores that stock cold drinks, I see Pepsi and Coca-Cola jostling with their own “Diet” versions, Sprite and Mountain Dew, fruit juices such as those offered by Tropicana, sparkling mineral water, and a host of other items. Not to mention the many beverages available at restaurants and cafetarias.

This is not meant as a glowing testament to the diversity of food availability as of now in this world. In many parts of the world, even basic food availability is poor. In many parts of developed countries, stores with produce and groceries are harder to find than fast-food joints. Generally, poorer places offer less diversity (because a diverse inventory means more expense) and thus often make it difficult for people to pursue diet regimes that are different from the mainstream of the region. There are two points, however.

First, in the time I lived in Delhi, Chennai and Bangalore (Indian cities) I have seen diversity of food availability growing, and this growth has been more with an increase in either the population of the region or its prosperity. (for instance: whole wheat bread, fat-free milk, off-season fruits and vegetables). Even in my short stay at Chicago, and in the narrow range of foods that I am interested in, I have seen an improvement in the range of food available. Extrapolating from this purely anecdotal evidence, I conjecture that the diversity of foods available has generally been increasing throughout the world, and the increase is correlated with prosperity.

Second, I see this diversity as a force for positive good, primarily because it enhances peoples’ choices.

For people who consume information more voraciously than they consume food, the steady increase in diversity of information is likely to have helped them get more of the information they are interested in. I find it hard to believe that until three years ago, my parents did not have a broadband Internet connection at their home. Today, the Internet allows people in one country to read the newspapers in another country. Twenty years ago, only a few wealthy Indians read the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal in print. Today, links to articles that appear in these or in the Guardian or in publications in other nations are often forwarded by Indians to their friends. This may seem a trivial thing but it means that people have access not only to what their national media choose to consider printworthy, but also to what people in other nations consider printworthy. Also, it is harder to get away with xenophobia in newspaper articles that now have the entire world as their audience.

Add to this the fact that with the Internet, small organizations and magazine publishers who were once much smaller voices than the big newspapers can now access the entire world. What this means is that people who are interested in certain specific kinds of news can very easily access that news. This means greater choice and a better fit. For instance, in the United States, explicitly ideological magazines such as Reason, The American Prospect, National Review, The New Republic, Mother Jones, The Nation can now compete with the more mainstream magazines such as Time and Newsweek. Not to mention the many upstart web-only publications such as The Huffington Post, Daily Kos, or Pajamas Media. The ability to read the news as collected by people with similar ideological predispositions can be very valuable. More simply, even finding that there is a wealth of news, opinion and commentary that matches one’s ideological predisposition can make a person feel good, particularly if that person is ideologically an outcast. For instance, many libertarians in the United States have discovered their libertarianism by reading Reason magazine in the days of print. With the advent of the Internet, this magazine is accessible not only to those who happen to chance upon a print copy but also people, across the world, who stumble upon a web link to an article in the magazine.

Again, what one person considers news may not be news for another. People can follow celebrity news, sports news, mathematics blogs/news, news on the culture or anthropology, or any specific subject very easily today.

Some choices good, other choices bad?

It is ironic that some of the critics of consumerism themselves choose to live lives that involve high degrees of specialization and unconventional choices that wouldn’t have been possible in a society that didn’t offer such a huge diversity of choices. Some of these critics argue that the choices that they have made are the good ones that everybody should be making and all the other choices available on the market are unnecessary or even harmful. For instance, “nationalists” in various countries often want to ban foreign-made products, or product affiliated with foreign brands.

Some people (not including me) have a preference for organic foods, since they feel that such foods are healthier and more wholesome in various ways (though I am aware of no clear-cut advantage that has been demonstrated for organic foods). While most such people are content with using their preferences only for their personal consumption decisions, some people who prefer organic foods feel that food grown using pesticides, artificial fertilizers, or genetically modified crops should be banned by their governments.

Many people, including me, have a revulsion for cigarettes or any form of smoking, and would not only abstain from it but would also discourage others from using it. Some would like to go ahead and get governments to ban smoking. In a similar vein, we have the prohibition or strict regulation of alcoholism, the prohibition of drugs, and the regulation of other evils.

I see the increase in choices and diversity as having two advantages: one, giving people more control of their lives and more of an ability to sketch the path of their lives, and two, letting people live lives that are healthier or objectively better in some sense because of the “superiority” of the new choices that they finally make. The first could roughly be called a libertarian argument and the second a utilitarian argument. What some of the above examples illustrate is that, in some cases, the utilitarian argument may fail, or at least there may be many reasons to suspect that it could fail. But in so far as there are situations where people are freely choosing to do things that are against their best interest, the best solution seems to be to make them aware of the consequences of their choices, as opposed to taking their freedom away. I say this not just because it is less coercive, but also because of the very real possibility that if you feel that I am choosing something that is bad for me, you may very well be mistaken and I am best equipped to decide.

Too many choices, save me!

Yet another common complaint against the plethora of choices available in some markets and some places is that too many choices can itself prove a headache. This was taken up in great detail in Barry Schwartz’s eminently enjoyable book The Paradox of Choice (Amazon link) where he began by having to confront a wide range of choices on the kind of shorts he wanted to buy. Schwartz offers a lot of useful tips and tricks on how to avoid falling into the trap of wasting a lot of time trying to get the best deal.

Another recent popular book called Nudge, by Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler, pokes fun at the Just Maximize Choices. In their words (Page 9):

Many people who favor freedom of choice reject any kind of paternalism. They want the government to let citizens choose for themselves. The standard policy advice that stems from this way of thinking is to give people as many choices as possible, and then let them choose the one they like best (with as little government intervention or nudging as possible). The beauty of this way of thinking is that it offers a simple solution to many complex problems: Just Maximize (the number and variety of) Choices — full stop! The policy has been pushed in many domains, from education to prescription drug insurance plans. In some circles, Just Maximize Choices has become a policy mantra. [...] We believe that their skepticism is based on a false assumption and two misconceptions.

The false assumption is that almost all people, almost all of the time, make choices that are in their best interest or at the very least are better than the choices that would be made by someone else. We claim that this assumption is false — indeed, obviously false.

The book goes on to suggest that in addition to, or instead of, simply expanding the range of choices, it is also important to help people make better choices. How can such help be provided? Create useful default rules, allow people to compare options easily etc. But these are hardly revolutionary suggestions. Google’s search page is an ode to simplicity, even though there are a number of advanced search options. Supermarkets put plenty of thought into shelf placement so that people don’t have to search too hard and long for what they want. Over the last few years, some of the products with the fastest growing market share are products touted for their simplicity — think of the iPhone and the iPod.

In fact, increased diversity depends on improved navigation. The Internet can offer such great diversity precisely because the URL offers very easy navigation. So, improving choices goes hand in hand with simplifying the most common ones.

Externalities

Another common critique of consumerism is the critique involving externalities. Loosely, an externality is a cost or benefit imposed on an entity that was not part of the transaction. So, for instance, when a factory pollutes the air, the owners of the factory experience a very very small part of the pain that society experiences in the form of increased air pollution. This is a “negative externality”, or “external cost”. Similarly, getting a vaccine against a disease not only makes me safe but also makes the people around me safe. This is a “positive externality” or “external benefit”.

What does increased choice have to do with externalities? Not much directly, but the general argument goes that as people consume more stuff, (a la story of stuff), they are imposing unbearable stresses on the planet. I don’t want to go into the details of resource stresses on the planet, since that is a very tricky issue. My understanding is that while there certainly exist resources that are stressed, there is no reason for generic panic of apocalypse.

But the main point that I would like to make is that consumerism and increased choices does not necessarily mean a greater consumption of material resources. It is definitely true that, up to a point, the use of certain kinds of material resources increases with prosperity. But the relation is not positive all through. First, increased prosperity allows for more efficient use of resources due to improvements in technology. Second, many of the resources of value to rich people are composed of “bits” rather than “atoms” — books, music, movies. While the creation and propagation of these “bits” requires “atoms”, the quantity of atoms needed is likely to be much lower and hence pose less resource stress per unit of happiness produced.

Currently, a large fraction of the world’s population is poor and for them to get rich, consumption of many material resources will probably need to increase and this should place more stress on the resources. The question then is whether resource stresses are so great and severe as to keep people in poverty (I think the answer is no).

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, 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.”

• Bowled over by Bollywood, an article in the Guardian (UK) about how Bollywood (India’s Bombay-centered Hindi movie industry), and Western television programs are leading people in Afghanistan to increasingly choose love marriages over arranged marriages.

• Who Partitioned India?: India Today looks at the various actors involved in the partition of India.

• Richard Stallman criticises the Spanish Wikipedia for disallowing links to rebelion.org, reports Noam Cohen in the Bits blog of the New York Times. He claimed that this was a political decision, but Spanish Wikipedia administrators contested that assertion, saying that the links were banned because rebelion.org is an aggregator and Wikipedia’s policy is to link to original news sources when possible.

• Are private schools charitable? A discussion centered around the United States: Felix Salmon, Matthew Yglesias, Conor Clarke,Adam Schaeffer.

• Picture worth a thousand words? Depictions of certain cartoons were removed by the Yale University Press from Jytte Klausen’s forthcoming book, The cartoons that shook the world. The New York Times and The Chronicle of Higher Education report. Statement issued by the Yale University Press.

• A study at the University of Chicago shows links between testosterone and women’s choice to enter careers in finance. The links seems to be stronger at lower levels than at higher levels of testosterone.

• The Free Software Foundation sends letters asking companies not to upgrade to the upcoming version of Windows, reports The Register (UK). It has sent letters to all the Fortune 500 companies except Microsoft.

• Talking of hair — the New York Times on hairstyles for black women (US-centric).

• Researchers in India call for more oversight to reduce and punish plagiarism, reports the Chronicle of Higher Education.

With recent furore in India over the right to education bill and the recent moves in the United States towards “health care for all”, we hear arguments that the right to health care and the right to education are universal rights. So are the right to food, water, employment, reasonable living standards, good amenities, love, peace, security, freedom to pursue one’s hobbies, and many other things. Is there a flip side to this expansive view of human rights?

What can the flip side be? Essentially, the broader we consider the definition of a right, the less serious we make each right. Thus, introducing rights that are more and more peripheral crowds out the rights that we might argue are more basic.

We see different conceptions of rights in different constitutions and charters. Also, different terminology, such as “fundamental right”, “human right”, “natural right”.

For instance, the Constitution of India lists six fundamental rights, each having a number of parts. The six fundamental rights are right to equality (in the sense of equality before law, equality in matters of public employment, etc.), right to freedom, right against exploitation, right to freedom of religion, cultural and educational rights, and right to constitutional remedies. There is also a list of ten fundamental duties that includes strange duties such as “to strive towards excellence in all spheres of individual and collective activity so that the nation constantly rises to higher levels of endeavour and achievement” and also “to value and preserve the rich heritage of our composite culture”. We also have duties such as “to cherish and follow the noble ideals which inspired our national struggle for freedom” and “to abide by the Constitution and respect its ideals and institutions, the National Flag and the National Anthem”.

In contrast, the United States Declaration of Independence has a far more concise line on human rights:

We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness—-That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Ignoring the politically incorrect language ( “all Men” ), one key difference here stands that these rights are considered “unalienable” in the sense of granted by some universal principle, and government is useful only in so far as it protects and upholds these rights. Thus, one might argue in this conception that the role of government is viewed only as an upholder rather than as a granter of rights. There is no mention of “fundamental duties”.

It’s worth noting that, despite the many problems with implementation of these principles, these lines from the U.S. Declaration of Independence have probably played a far more significant inspirational role than the longer and more “comprehensive” list of rights and duties in the Indian Constitution. One might argue that this is simply because the U.S. Declaration of Independence came in 1776, being among the first of its kind, while India’s vastly superior enumeration of fundamental rights in 1949 was already widely accepted by the time it came about. I think, though, that there is also an argument to be made for brevity and conceptual compactness. The words “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” here refer to ideals that can easily be translated to and expanded in any context.

There are really two questions:

• Does the formulation of fundamental/human rights influence the way people behave, or the way legal systems are designed?

• If it does, what are the advantages or disadvantages of an expansive view of human rights versus a more skeletal view. If a skelettal view is to be preferred, what skeleton should be chosen?

In the blog post poverty is not a human rights violation, William Easterly of the Aid Watch blog argues why he thinks freedom from poverty should not be considered a human right. He follows this up with a later post.

A book that substantiates on Easterly’s point (and referred to by Easterly in his blog post) is this book by Jean-Pierre Chaffour (I have linked to the e-book downloadable with payment from the Cato Institute’s website as a PDF; hard copies are also available). See also a book event organized by the Cato Institute on the book.

A different perspective, that could perhaps be considered a softer and fuzzier approach to human rights, is to be found in the book Development and Freedom by Amartya Sen. Sen is interested in the substantive freedoms that people enjoy, which go beyond the rights guaranteed by the state and include their abilities and access to money and goods. While Sen’s viewpoints are to some extent opposite to Chauffour’s, it is worth noting that Sen is not advocating that all the freedoms that he considers worth measuring should be encapsulated in a human rights framework.

Some interesting stories over the past week:

• The Whole Foods controversy: Whole Foods John Mackey writes a piece in the Wall Street Journal titledThe Whole Foods Alternative to ObamaCare (August 11), discussing his views on health care and the direction of reform the United States should take. Olivia Jane at the Daily Kos urges viewers to sign a petition for boycotting Whole Foods products. Don Boudreaux at Cafe Hayek sums up the debate and links to other views.

• A fascinating piece by David Goldhill on health in the United States: The author makes a number of fascinating points.

• An interesting article on the self-contradictory transportation policy of the Obama adminitsration in the United States.

• The threat of swine flu grips India’s elite English-language newspapers, even as a hundred times that many people die of respiratory and infectious diseases. Swami takes this on in his Swaminomics column.

• Yet more evidence of the total lack of perspective of the Indian media: front-page coverage of the questioning of Bollywood icon Shahrukh Khan at Newark’s Liberty Airport in the United States. Chidambaram needs to step in. Shahrukh Khan’s distress is understandable, but as a TOI blogger himself points out, this is not exactly front-page news (doesn’t stop TOI, though). A fairly comprehensive summary is available in this blog post. Compare that to the New York Times coverage of India, where the top news headline is violence in Kashmir.

Some weblinks:

• Is the recession over? Over at the Becker-Posner blog, Becker offers one view while Posner offers another. Krugman is already congratulating the Obama administration, while Arnold Kling offers an interesting perspective.

• Amit Varma blasts Indian mainstream media for not putting tsunami alerts on their websites.

• Malcolm Gladwell on Atticus Finch and southern liberalism: For those of you who don’t know/remember, Atticus Finch is the lawyer for the black accused in To Kill A Mockingbird, a classic by Harper Lee.

• Sasa Vucinic talks at TED about investing in free press across the world.

• Paul Romer’s TED talk on charter cities: See also this blog post on charter cities.

• Socialism and school choice in India: A Cato@Liberty blog post by Swaminathan, saying that Indian legislation may create the world’s largest school choice experiment.

Thorstein Veblen, an economist-cum-sociologist working around 1890-1920, was responsible for coming up with the notion of “conspicuous consumption” — spending on goods and services with the purpose of establishing one’s income and wealth, conveying social status, impressing others, or causing envy. His work, The Theory of the Leisure Class, can be downloaded from Project Gutenberg.

In more recent times, economist Robert H. Frank, a New York Times columnist and professor at Cornell University, has argued strongly that a lot of goods are positional goods, whose value is determined primarily by what position one is in. Such goods lead to what are called “arms races” — people rush to stockpile more and more of these goods, thus leading to a waste of precious resources.

Similar ideas are found in the theory that education serves primarily a “screening” function — people go in for expensive higher education to prove to potential employers how smart they are to have managed to enter a higher educational institution and survive it, rather than for any intrinsic value such higher education is providing.

“Conspicuous consumption”, “positional good”, and “screening” are different but related ideas. They all share a common theme — a lot of wasteful and destructive expenditure is undertaken simply in order for people to establish their status or rank. Some might argue that this wasteful expenditure shows that “people are stupid” while others may argue that while individuals are making the best decisions given their circumstances, the system as a whole is stupid and wasteful.

Here is just a small sample of things that can be explained through this spectrum of theories:

• People eating too many unhealthy foods? Conspicuous consumption of food. Eating more food may be an indicator of higher status and societal position.

• People eating too little food? An arms race of getting thin in order to appear the most healthy and attractive person around.

• People getting bigger and bigger houses? Conspicuous consumption of housing. One’s house is an indicator of one’s social status, and a bigger house means a bigger social status.

• People traveling in private jets and private cars instead of planes and public transit? Conspicuous consumption of transportation.

• Poor people sending their kids to private schools instead of “free” public schools? Conspicuous consumption of schooling.

While I think there is some truth to both conspicuous consumption and arms race theories, there are a lot of caveats we need to keep in mind before readily applying such an explanation to any phenomenon we do not understand.

High versus rising

Steven Landsburg, an economist, made this wonderful point in Chapter 9 ( Go Figure) of his book More Sex Is Safer Sex: The Unconventional Wisdom of Economics:

For the past three decades, only one economic variable has exhibited steady growth year in and year out: the size of shopping carts. [...] Bigger carts, according to Mr. [Ralph] Nader, were designed to shame consumers into bigger purchases.

Even if we accept the dubious presumption that a normal shopper would be embarrassed to have the neighbors see him roll up to the checkout line with a half-full cart, Mr. Nader’s explanation lacked fundamental logic. At best it explains why carts are big, not why they’re getting bigger. As soon as some clever grocer figured out that big carts mean big purchases, cart size should have jumped up all at once, not gradually over time.

And later, he elaborates upon the high versus rising confusion:

[people are] confused about the difference between a high price and a rising price — just as Ralph Nader and some of my students were confused about the difference between a large shopping cart and a growing shopping cart.

The “high versus rising” confusion is very important to keep in mind when discussing issues of “conspicuous consumption” or “status-seeking consumption”. Just as rising prices demand an explanation of a different nature compared to high prices, rising consumption of something demands a different explanation compared to high consumption of something. Thus, an explanation for more conspicuous consumption should be accompanied by an explanation of the cause for the increase, which may for instance be because of an increase in the desire for social standing along that particular dimension.

Since human nature (specifically, the desire for status or positional goods) changes a lot more slowly (if at all) than technology and prices, changes in technology and prices are likely to be much better indicators of changes in consumption patterns.

Putting oneself in other people’s shoes

Another problem that specifically bedevils assumptions about conspicuous consumption is that it is hard for one person to put himself or herself in another person’s shoes and experience the many private gains and losses of the other person. For instance, a bigger house may appear like “conspicuous consumption” (showing off to the neighbors) to the neighbors, but it feels like a bigger house to the people inside. By definition, outsiders get a better view of the “conspicuous” side of things than the inconspicuous side.

Similarly, the only thing that is directly visible from an education to outsiders is a degree, but education brings about a lot of private gains. Some of these remain completely private, and hence are best judged by the individual himself or herself. Others leak into measurable outcomes (such as workplace competence, income, ability to manage finances) over the somewhat longer term, but there are so many other factors at play that it is hard to isolate the effect of education. For instance, analyses have shown that liberal arts major in U.S. universities usually overtake engineering majors in terms of salaries after 10-15 years of work experience. Thus, despite lower starting salaries, they are able to overtake the engineers over the long run. Whether this is a result of their education may be contested, but it is certainly plausible, and if so, this “consumption” is certainly “inconspicuous”.

Keeping up with the Joneses, and the exchange of ideas

What’s the problem with arms races? Apparently, it seems that the “keeping up with the Joneses” mentality can lead people to overconsume. Think about two families, the “Joneses” and the “Guptas”. The Joneses and the Guptas don’t initially have refrigerators. The Joneses then buy a secondhand refrigerator. A member of the Gupta family goes to the Jones home and sees fresh produce, frozen meat, and cooked food all being stored in the refrigerator. But the secondhand refrigerator has inadequate temperature controls. The Guptas go ahead and decide to buy a firsthand, mid-range, branded refrigerator.

A few months later, the Jones’s refrigerator starts malfunctioning. It is not keeping things cool enough. Should they buy a new refrigerator? As the family ponders this question, they are invited over to the Guptas and they see the better-quality mid-range refrigerator. A member of the Jones family inquires into the price.

But when the Jones family looks up the refrigerator prices, they find that prices have fallen. And, they’ve got quite a lot of money. Why not buy something state-of-the-art, large enough to handle the family’s needs, with the best temperature controls. They decide to go in for the Subzero Pro.

Is this an example of conspicuous consumption or an arms race? If so, is it negative? I don’t think there is much negative to it. At the heart of the matter is the fact that, in an imperfect market, people with limited time and energy cannot always do all the research needed to figure out what to buy and when to buy it. So, they look to their neighbors for these ideas. They copy the ideas that their neighbors are following that they think have improved the quality of lives of the neighbors. The Joneses learn from the Guptas (sometimes the right lessons and sometimes the wrong ones) and the Guptas learn from the Joneses. They choose each other as people to learn from because the similarity of lifestyles and economic circumstances makes it likely that a choice that worked for one family would work well for the other. Thus, neither family looks at homeless single individuals or wealthy billionaires for ideas on what to consume.

Contempt for others: rich, poor, foreign, young, old

A sizable minority of the critiques of conspicuous consumption seem to come from an unwillingness to engage with the circumstances and challenges facing specific people that lead them to make certain decisions, and a desire to impose one’s own preference framework or moral outlook on disparate people. Thus, a middle-class single person might find it just right that she moved to a somewhat larger studio apartment, while critiquing a rich person for engaging in “conspicuous consumption” by building a garish bungalow and simultaneously being contemptuous of a poor person who indulged in an unnecessary expansion of his family home when he had more pressing things to do with his money.

In his fascinating book The Beautiful Tree: A Personal Journey Into How The World’s Poorest People are Educating Themselves, Professor James Tooley of the E.G. West Centre describes how some of the world’s poorest people are educating their children using private schools, in countries such as India, Nigeria, Kenya, and Ghana (see also a shorter article by Tooley (PDF) on the subject and a book event on the book by its publisher, the Cato Institute). Throughout the book, Tooley puzzles over why aid and development experts have such a severe dislike for private schools for the poor. Here is a fascinating excerpt from his book, describing a conversation between Tooley and an official in Nigeria (page 128-129):

I asked her why poor parents apparently—how could I put this, strangely—seemed to prefer to send their children to private schools in the shantytown, rather than to this rather nice public school building. (Actually, she had said it was a rather nice building—I found its architecture austere, imposingly grim, and Stalinist. But I went along with her characterization for the interview.) She didn’t mince her words.

‘‘There are many reasons. Parents don’t have the information that the public schools are free; some of them they chose private schools because they are near their homes.’’ So much by way of introduction. ‘‘But the most important point is fake status symbol, in quotes ‘fake status symbol’’’—she said this, without any sense of irony, standing above her Mercedes. In fact, at about this moment in the interview she moved to rest her arm on the balustrade, probably coincidentally, but it did have the effect of blocking out the car beneath from camera view. Relaxing now, getting into the swing, she continued: Poor parents ‘‘want to be seen as rich parents, caring parents, who take their children to ‘fee-paying’ schools supposedly better.’’ But these poor parents, as we all know, are completely fooled. Poor parents, she said, are ‘‘ignoramuses.’’

I tried not to flinch as she spat out her contempt for the people I’d been working with. Why? I asked. Because the private schools, far from being any good, ‘‘are very poor in facilities, because there is no way you can compare these poor, ill-equipped private schools with government schools where all the teachers are qualified, fully qualified.’’ The private schools, she said, are in ‘‘three categories— the good, the bad, and the very ugly.’’ It was clear in which category the private schools in the shantytown fit: ‘‘. . . these poorly, ill-equipped unapprovable private schools, ‘mushroom’ schools, they are causing a lot of damage, a lot of damage,’’ she continued. ‘‘At the end of it the children will come out half-baked, they are not useful to themselves, they end up in occupations like their parents are doing, they don’t progress further, so that’s two generations, three generations, wasted.’’

What should we do?

The hype notwithstanding, conspicuous consumption concerns point to some plausible issues: first, people may imitate each other’s consumption patterns too much (whether to establish social status or simply copy best practices) resulting in “bad habits” catching on. Second, poor choices that came about due to chance or a historical-institutional framework may persist because it is in each individual’s personal interest to toe the line rather than to break the system. As James Surowiecki describes in his book The Wisdom of Crowds, individual smartness can lead to collective dumbness. These are classic collective action problems.

In so far as these problems do exist, deciding what to do about it should be based on an understanding that often, there are a lot of other “inconspicuous” consumption factors as well. For instance, a person may start smoking for conspicuous consumption reasons, because of peer pressure, or simply imitating the “best practices” of peers and colleagues. But the continuation of smoking and its formation into a regular habit have more to do with the (very private and inconspicuous) addiction to nicotine. Factors like solidarity with other smokers also play a significant role, but surely addiction is the problem, rather than conspicuity.