I'd also like to add that, in fact, a GMI doesn't mean all wages increase. Some companies would need to pay more to retain employees. However, some companies would be able to pay their workers less. Studies into efficiency wages have shown money and other extrinsic motivators are only effective up to the point where the person feels financially secure. Additional extrinsic motivation does not seem to improve productivity, but intrinsic motivation - the feeling that your work is meaningful, personally significant, improves your status, etc. - does improve productivity. Companies that extrinsically motivate their employees won't need to pay them as much, because they are financially secure by other means.

Pointless dead end McJobs, abusive managers, general ****heads though? Hell yeah, they'll need to pay.

This is what a free market actually looks like.

I disagree with this very strongly. There are definitely anti-intellectualist elements to American conservatism, don't get me wrong. But what is conservatism in America if not an ideological tradition? William F. Buckley through National Review did devised an ideology that had legs and was politically significant (and conservatives have other periodicals, such as Commentary, or Weekly Standard). Even during the Bush 43 years, conservatives and Republicans were much more capable of tracing their policy ideas back to first principle philosophical arguments than Democrats were.

I don't personally consider post hoc rationalization a form of intellectualism.

Yeah, I think anyone looking at the 2016 Democratic primaries and their fallout will naturally conclude that Democrats "agree on basically all issues".

Anyway, Reid, I think you do really have a tendency of trying to undercut Republicans by making arguments against them that are just as true as Democrats. Many people -- dare I say, the vast majority of people -- are formed by the circumstances into which they happened to be born, either because they identify with them, or because they came to their own point of view by rebelling against them. That's not specific to Republicans in any way. The reasons why a person ends up with the political perspective they have has to do with a lot of factors: beliefs of parents, relations with parents, relations with siblings, grandparents, socio-economic status, influential teachers, local town context, state context, regional-national context, national context, religious affiliation, pivotal moments in history that occur during formative periods in people's lives, influential teachers, travel during formative periods in one's life, election losses that shift perspective, growing up with connections to the military, connections to other countries through familial relations, personal trauma, etc. Never mind that on top of all the ways in which we are the products of circumstance, we also have natural dispositions.

I mean, these are just some of the things that are going to condition perspective in subtle ways when we encounter political ideas and narratives. There is no dis-intermediated, decontextualized way of relating to ideas.

What do you consider post hoc rationalization, and why do you think these conservatives are engaged in it?

It seems pretty obvious to me that economic elites who benefit from the economic status quo are going to believe that the economic status quo is the best system, and thus they will devise a worldview that is reflective of their interests, whether they are aware of it or not, because, after all, they have a stake in preserving it, and it's been so good to them. And non-elites who don't benefit from the economic status quo are going to believe that there should be economic reform, because reforms would be in their interest, and improve their lives, even though they will likely argue that it is good for society as a whole.

Both are going to argue that what is best for themselves is actually best for the whole of society. Neither side is wrong to do this. It seems very natural to me that a person should think that whatever economic system is best for them is best for the whole of society. We have prejudices that stem from our socio-economic status. There's nothing wrong with that. But it seems like much of our thinking is "post hoc rationalization". There's no objective, impartial, Archimedian point (like the one that Descartes sought) that is can be the foundation for our thinking about what the best kind of society is, and which transcends differentiating features of our identities.

Post-hoc rationalization is when you look for data to fit your conclusions, rather than fitting your conclusions to the data.

Take Reagan's tax cuts, for example. Back in the 1970s, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld were tasked with finding some economic argument to support deep tax cuts their party had already planned to do. So they met up with Arthur Laffer, a compliant fellow if there ever was one. He sketched out their expert argument on a napkin: given the increasing marginal utility of free time, reducing taxes would increase revenue because people who make more after-tax money per hour will choose to work more, and therefore pay more taxes. It wasn't even a new idea - Keynes had previously articulated it, but for obvious reasons didn't consider it significant - but Laffer did make an original contribution, and that was a groundless claim that the United States was on the right side of the curve. This is, fair enough, an actual economic theory - despite the recklessness of the policy recommendation that came with it. However, the science didn't precede the policy. Republican policy dictated the need for the theory, rather than the theory informing Republican policy. (The real revenue-maximizing tax rate for the United States is closer to 70%, by the way, per actual research done on this dumb subject by actual scientists. Although some models suggest the revenue curve monotonically increases until near 100%. I discussed why that's rational earlier in the thread; e.g. the "pile of stuff".)

Devising intelligent-sounding rationalizations for existing desires is the bread and butter of the conservative intelligentsia. Nobody in the conservative movement seems interested in changing their mind based on evidence. In fact, they frequently act to minimize the availability of data that might contradict their predetermined agenda. Stephen Harper in Canada, the former Conservative Prime Minister, expended much of his political capital damaging the federal government's ability to collect and retain data about the country. Among other things, he defunded environmental data collection programs, closed government libraries forcing them to discard or destroy historical hard-copy data before it could be digitized, and ended the mandatory long-form census, which prior governments found invaluable for informing policy.

This behavior isn't unique to Canada or the United States, it's how conservatives work everywhere. Basically what passes for thought leadership in conservative movements is getting smart people to say smart-sounding things about how smart their ideas are, but they're not actually interested in using the ideas of smart people. It's not even recent! Conservative businessmen in England hundreds of years ago paid scholars to write apologia for their business practices. There is where classical liberalism comes from!

Contrast this to even mainstream liberal economists - those neoliberals I ***** about constantly - and you see a different picture. As you should expect, because you can't get an economics paper published in 2018 unless it has a ****load of math in it. But even Karl Marx made a good effort of basing his conclusions upon tested observations, and whether you agree or disagree with his policy recommendations (N.B. I strongly suggest you disagree) his observations and statements about capitalism are the backbone of modern economics. There's nothing from the "right wing" that comes anywhere close.

If you want the gold standard of post hoc rationalization (heh), look no further than Austrian economics, which takes as an axiom that conservatives are right and progressives are wrong.

Kind of. I've really tried to describe the qualitative features of identity politics that irritate me and that I think are bad for society. You should know that I'm opposed to identity politics only to the extent that it has those flaws that I point out (and maybe some others). But I'm not opposed to the principle of people organizing into identity groups of various kinds. In fact, I wish America did more to promote that kind of diversity. Some of my issue is just the superficialness of the political tactics of "identity politics": anyone who thinks that they're engaging in politics and empowering the little guy by attacking Bari Weiss online for a tweet she made quoting Hamilton is deluding themselves. I'm absolutely in favor of people fighting for their interests, whatever they are. I'm absolutely for individuals organizing collectively by their distinguishing identities and expressing themselves through collective action -- I'm a Zionist, after all, and a universalist one at that, so I don't think it is a zero-sum game. I'm against people telling others that their interests aren't important and that they should be self-effacing about who they are, which is what I think much of the left's identity politics does.

So there you go. I'm someone who read Charles Taylor's Multiculturalism and find the communitarianism critique of Rawls' liberalism to be convincing and attractive. In another time, that would have pushed me to the left of most Democrats. Yet in today's political environment, it means that my embrace of identity politics isn't radical enough, so I'm confused for being a conservative. Go figure.

Bam. A bunch of opinions tossed off at random.

That's a highly charitable view and I absolutely do not share it.

Look, at the end of the day, it works like this. When liberals want to tweak the tax rate, they talk to economists to try to understand how it's going to affect the economy. How will it affect government revenue, how will it affect the deficit and credit rating, will the extra government spending crowd out private investment, how will it affect small business and employment, etc.?

When conservatives want to tweak the tax rate... they just drop it. Because it's good for them. End of discussion. Look at Trump's tax cut. Taxpayer associations and economists sounded the alarm about what it's going to do to the deficit, CEOs said thanks for the free money p.s. we aren't raising wages, economists saying it will have no long term effect on the economy, finance warning that much of the benefit will go to overseas US equity holders, Federal Reserve warning that it'll cause inflation and they'll have to raise rates too fast, military warning that the planned deficits may harm national security. But they don't care, they cut the taxes anyway. Despite the data, despite the experts.

If you care about informed policy, one side is clearly in the right and one side is in the wrong. It sounds perfectly fair and reasonable to suggest that both progressives and conservatives are a product of their environment and subject to the same cognitive defect, and who knows what truth is anyway??, but these sides are absolutely not on the same footing. At least when it comes to economics. I don't really want to get into an argument about how they're ****ty and bad on social issues too.

Since we were on the topic of me a little while ago, I think the part of me that was educated in Canada is a Red Tory (which is why I'm sympathetic to social conservatism, or at least want it to have a place in society, although not the dominant place). And the part of me that has lived in countries outside of North America has developed a highly idealized fondness of both the United States and American internationalism, which is at war with the Canadian part of me, which is anti-American. But the American part of me was always pretty contrarian and contemptuous of American politics to begin with (there's reason why I wanted to live in Canada in the first place!). I'm contemptuous of American politics, yet admire the national idea.

So I really don't belong anywhere in American politics. There's only one political commentator that I reliably agree with, who's also basically a communitarian Democrat who strongly disagrees with many of the Democratic party's orthodoxies, and thinks the chief fault of the left is that we don't understand the legitimate grievances that are animating the right, but nonetheless would never vote Republican.

Oh, I identified as a Red Tory for a long time. Until I got really interested in economics. I wouldn't say that I drifted away from being a Red Tory, so much as I came to recognize Blue Tories as an all-consuming world-ending cancer that needs to be stopped at any cost.


Edit: Americans have no idea what these words mean, so I'll explain briefly. Both are conservative in the British tradition, but Red Tories believe in noblesse oblige, and Blue Tories absolutely ****ing don't. And at the risk of going down a rabbit hole of obscure-to-Americans European political terms, noblesse oblige basically means that the rich and powerful earned their station by the blessing of the people, and they're obligated to repay their people with kindness and generosity. In other words, Red Tories believe there should be elites, but those elites need to pay care for their country. Blue Tories believe there should be elites and also FYGM.

Arguably, both American political parties are Blue Tory. The Republicans are unambiguously so. I'd trust an American to decide whether the Democrats are Red Tory or not, but personally I don't think they are.

Anyway, the Conservative Party of Canada was formed by a union between the Red Tories (Progressive Conservatives) and the Blue Tories (Canadian Alliance, briefly known as the Canadian Reform Alliance Party until someone gave them the bad news, but previously it was the Reform Party). Since then, the Red Tories have been virtually exterminated from the Conservative Party, leaving only the Blue Tories behind. What few Red Tories survive are the useful idiots of the Blue Tories, the few members of that party who don't have punchable personalities to match their punchable faces.

So, uh, the Red Tories vote Liberal now I guess?

I agree that my philosophical education is definitely leading me to a relativism and that it's unfortunate I don't have an economics education to correct it. But the American left isn't incapable of placing ideology before data (or information). To my mind, however well-intentioned the Obama administration was when it reached out to Iran, the fallout from the Iran deal is the clearest example that the left isn't always in the right, and that the left's policies can rest on assumptions about the world that are just as dubious. Unfortunately on most issues I can't actually delve into the weeds on policy, because I'm not well enough educated to actually adjudicate. Really, a shame, because I'm pretty well educated.

Well, at the risk of being accused of no true Scotsman, the Democrats aren't exactly a Liberal party either. Other than their attitude on a very narrow set of social issues, they are just as profoundly imperialistic and devoted to the oligarchy as the Republican Party. And despite controlling the entire government at the time, Obama didn't make any real effort to raise taxes. In fact, he made most of Bush's expiring tax cuts permanent. Neither party is interested in following the data and correcting their revenue problem.

I'm sure it's very frustrating to hear a foreigner look at your only two democratic options and say "lol, de-facto one party state", but it's how things are in practice. It might change. I hope it does.

When it comes to foreign policy I think a wide band of Americans acknowledge that there's enough consensus among foreign policy elites that we effectively have a one-party (well, bipartisan) consensus. Many more Americans would agree to that we have one-party rule on foreign policy than would say we have one-party rule on economic issues, although both are probably true because of similar ideological commitments and historical factors.

The way I'd put it though is that the two parties are so similar because they're both fundamentally liberal parties.

By an ancient standard, sure, or within a narrow context that no longer exists.

I mean, yeah, clearly the United States is founded on a liberal philosophy, but it’s not unique for that. The world has moved on. The Republicans today embrace tradition and the Democrats vigorously defend the social order, members of either party would be welcomed by any modern Tory party. Few would find the NDP so welcoming.

I'm also not sure that I'd oppose imperialism to liberalism. There's an argument to be made that the United States is a liberal empire.

Let’s be clear on that. This “liberal empire” idea doesn’t mean an empire that is somehow liberal, it comes from English mercantilists who wanted to use the military and machinery of the British Empire to expand classical liberalism and the rule of law that elevated them. It was about protecting the foreign investments of the oligarchy, not about spreading high-minded liberal philosophy around the world. The recipients of British liberalism certainly didn’t have the choice of whether or not to accept it, which kinda makes it... not liberal?

So in terms of the United States using its influence and military empire to spread its culture and historical liberalism worldwide, yes, absolutely, they satisfy the above definition of liberal empire. But that doesn’t mean the US doesn’t have ambitions upon the world or that such ambitions should be considered liberal. After all, nobody would ever make the mistake of calling the British Empire liberal, and I don’t think people should call the American empire liberal in the way you meant it either.

I think the only thing I meant by liberal was devotion to rule of law (which is relevant when you have imperial administrations), open borders for trade and migration, cosmopolitanism and maintaining dominance through rule over global commerce.

And for America, there's also democracy promotion...

promoting human rights through internationalist institutions...

But yeah, point taken. A empire that dominates nations through commerce may be more benevolent than a nation that dominates others through conquest, but it's still going to act to serve its own parochial interests at the expense of those other nations.

You know, there are people who vote Republican, are quite wealthy, and believe strongly in noblesse oblige. I think liberals/Democrats often associate government activism and intervention with a patriotism, which they'd define as collective action for the care of fellow citizens. I think those same people believe that those who are opposed to those using government for the collective good are loners who want to go their own way (perhaps even at the expense of their fellow citizens).

I think something to keep in mind is that many conservatives do in fact have a strong sense of duty to their communities, and genuinely believe that individuals should work together for the common good, but that government isn't the preferred instrument for pursuing the common good.

I think liberals get uncomfortable when they see that the incentive structure doesn't incite (or even coerce) the wealthy to share their wealth, because they think that without the right incentives the wealthy won't be generous. I've come across conservatives with a strong conscience and a strong sense of obligation and civic service who are deeply committed to helping others, even though they want the government out of their lives, and that's actually where they put their money.

Yeah, conservative and liberal are relative. The United States was liberal for 1776, when most European countries were monarchies.

Heh... no! What Jon was saying before about these terms is precisely the opposite: that they're not relative terms (non-ordinal is the word he used). They're qualitatively different visions for society.

Look at the Wikipedia article; it's not wrong:



America wasn't more liberal in 1776. It's just that these ideas were more revolutionary then, and required a dramatic upheaval in society in order to implement. Now they're the status quo, for the most part, although people still disagree over what equality means and the extent to which equality is something we should strive for. In some countries, liberalism is still a radical political program. Many of the so-called "moderates" whose protests against the Assad regime launched the Syrian Civil Wae were just liberals: people who want the government to ensure basic individual liberties for citizens. In an authoritarian regime, that's a radical idea, even in the 2010s, but it's only implementing a vision of society that already exists in the West.

Conservatism may be a relative term. At least it's more diffuse and more nation-dependent. (Although the term liberal also means different things in different national contexts.)

One way in which liberalism is an antiquated term is that government services have become much more robust, and westerners expect their government to provide for the general welfare of citizens in a way that they didn't in the past. That expansive role of government, and the expansion of the public sector and the bureaucracy that it entails, isn't something that liberal theorists in the 17th-19th centuries envisioned. Still, I think liberalism has adapted to accommodate that change. There are some core tenets at the heart of liberalism, but I don't want to suggest that it's an immutable, super-historical term.

Sorry, I didn't mean relative to each other, I mean relative to history.

I'd disputed that too, though...

Of course there are tensions, but Democrats cluster around pretty similar answers to polling questions.



I don't hold any special place for Democrats. What I said was Republicans are the prime example of a political party hijacked by the wealthy to push their agenda. That doesn't mean the Democrats aren't hijacked.

The only real qualitative distinction I'm making is, there's at least some genuine democratic tendencies in the Democratic party, even if they're really restricted. The Republicans have zero democratic tendencies whatsoever.

What do you mean by democratic tendencies?

Also, that's a quantitative distinction.

Everyone in America hates their boss, but very few why they have a boss at all.

I am mildly disappointed that this conversation has taken a turn toward something more nuanced and civil than I am capable of appreciating.

Just to play devil's advocate here, what would they have instead? Different bosses? I'm sure this is a dumb question in context but I guess my curiosity has the better of me here.

I guess Trump made pro-gun control comments recently and his supporters have exploded.

"Take the guns first, go through due process second."

He's not actually very conservative if you look at his comments from a decade two ago. He's been pro-choice in the past too.

Also, how does one "go through due process second"? Maybe I don't understand the meaning of the phrase properly?