The Righteous Mind Review

More and more in our political discourse, it seems that many of us are forgetting the value of disagreement. We definitely still like to argue against people who disagree, but the goal of those arguments seems to be more about winning than about learning. I’m right. They’re wrong. That’s the end of it. Jonathan Haidt, in his excellent book The Righteous Mind, offers a  counterpoint to this mindset. The book is a plea to “disagree more constructively,” to set aside our differences and find points of commonality, and, even when we do come to find irreconcilable moral or political disagreement, to recognize that the other side has value.

A series of metaphors guides the structure of the book. In the first section, Haidt argues that “intuition comes first, strategic reasoning second.” To illustrate this point, he compares human thought to a small rider trying to guide a large elephant. Since the rider (the rational part of our brain) can do little to actually steer the elephant (our intuition), instead he just makes post hoc justifications for the elephants actions. In other words, in political and moral arguments, we usually come to the answer before we figure out the reason. Although we often claim to be forming our opinions based on a fair reading of the evidence, I think most of us can admit to sometimes simply looking for evidence that conforms to our preconceived judgements.

The second piece of the book argues that human morals are aligned across six “moral foundations:” care/harm, fairness/cheating, loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, sanctity/degradation, and liberty/oppression. Here he uses the metaphor of a tongue with six taste receptors. Liberals tend to focus on the care/harm and fairness/cheating axes while conservatives draw from all six. More importantly, Haidt draws on his own experience observing different cultures in India to argue that different moral systems make sense for different societies and different times. Some actions that seem morally repugnant (like eating your dog after it got hit and killed by a car) are actually somewhat difficult to explain in a consistent moral framework. They just seem wrong to us. The case for a universally correct moral standard, in Haidt’s view is quite weak.

Finally, the last section, and perhaps the one I found most interesting, talks about humanity’s tendencies towards group behavior. He describes humans as “90 percent chimp and 10 percent bee.” Each of us generally acts towards our own self interest, but occasionally our “hive switch” is turned on and we act in the way that’s best for the group. He cites Emile Durkheim’s observation that being a member of a group can generate a “‘collective effervescence,’ which describes the passion and ecstasy group rituals can generate.” Haidt points to the feeling you get when you observe incredible views in nature, or participating in raves or sporting events, as examples of this Durkheimian hive switch being flipped.

He then extends this observation to explain people’s attachment to religious communities. “Religion is a team sport,” he quips as he notes the similarities between the “rituals” involved in cheering for a sports team (songs, superstitions, traditions, etc.) and those of religious groups. Although Haidt himself is atheist, he does not take the view of many atheists that religious people have simply been duped into believing. Instead, he sees religion as a natural way to get people to flip their hive switch and think in terms of groups. Religious societies have been more successful because they cause people to create moral, caring communities where individual benefits can sometimes be pushed aside in favor of group success. He writes. “If you think about religion as a set of beliefs about supernatural agents, you’re bound to misunderstand it.” Instead, its best to see religion as a way to “suppress cheating and increase trustworthiness. Only groups that can elicit commitment and suppress free riding can grow.”

Haidt presents each of these concepts in an incredibly convincing style. His arguments are well written and well researched. Even more, he does an excellent job at giving a fair shot to both sides of every argument. Although its clear he has his own biases (he is just a rider trying to control an elephant as well), I never felt that I wasn’t getting the full story on any of his points. Each conclusion he makes feels like one of careful deliberation, of considering the best work that has been done on an issue and providing a clear justification for agreeing or disagreeing. Haidt’s memories of how his own views were challenged or changed over time give the reader a look into his own inner intellectual struggle with these ideas and help provide a balanced view on many issues.

This balanced approach is especially apparent in the final section of the book where he discusses the “yin and two yangs” of American politics. The “yin” being points liberals tend to get right, and the two “yangs” being the best points of libertarians and conservatives. While I certainly have some room to quibble with his “liberal wisdoms” (focused on the benefits of regulation), he does a better job of defending the conservative and libertarian positions than many self described conservatives and libertarians could do themselves. Haidt could almost certainly pass an Ideological Turing Test, which cannot be said about most people of any political background.

I particularly liked his summary of the conservatives’ strength with the principle that “you can’t help the bees by destroying the hive.” He writes, “liberals are trying to help a subset of bees (which really does need help) even if doing so damages the hive.” Although this idea unfortunately seems to be losing its place at the center of the current Republican Party, I do think it is a good description of the foundation of conservative thought. Tradition, family, American values. Preserving the institutions that, for lack of a better term, made America great, is the main priority for conservatives. Policies that help individuals in the short run should be viewed with suspicion if they threaten to wear down these institutions in the long run.

Protecting the hive is also a distinctly Hayekian idea (even though he claims he was not a conservative). Hayek takes an evolutionary view of societal development. The institutions that have developed across history were not designed. We shouldn’t honor tradition and norms because people in the past were smarter or more moral than we are. But we should respect them because “the result of the experimentation of many generations may embody more experience than any one man possesses” (The Constitution of Liberty). To challenge existing social structures requires a careful consideration of the reasons they developed and the consequences of removing them. These reasons are usually not obvious and we should therefore be wary of attempts to upend the status quo.

There is far more in the book than can be discussed in a blog post, and I highly recommend it to anyone who has trouble understanding where their political opponents stand (no matter what side they are on themselves). I strongly believe that it is as important to listen to what the other side has to say and not to pretend that those who disagree are just uninformed or unintelligent. As Haidt concludes in the final line of the book, “we’re all stuck here for a while, so let’s try to work it out.”

Don’t Think About Money. Think About Stuff

There has been a lot of fuss in the last few weeks about the ridiculously large wealth of Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos. Bloomberg recently reported that Bezos has increased his wealth by $67 billion just this year ($8 million per hour!), which is about 8 times as much as the other 499 billionaires Bloomberg tracks have increased their wealth combined. So you could say he’s doing pretty well for himself.

Of course, this insane achievement has brought out the usual suspects (and even some unusual ones). Bernie Sanders has been on a crusade against Bezos for a while now and has proposed a bill to force Amazon to pay for its workers welfare benefits. It’s literally called the “Stop BEZOS” bill (BEZOS here is an acronym for “Bad Employers by Zeroing Out Subsidies” – how creative). While Sanders’s views are not surprising, Fox pundit Tucker Carlson is also getting in on the Bezos-hating action. Here’s Carlson:

Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, is worth about $150 billion. That’s enough to make him the richest man in the world, by far, and possibly the richest person in human history. It’s certainly enough to pay his employees well. But he doesn’t. A huge number of Amazon workers are so poorly paid, they qualify for federal welfare benefits. According to data from the nonprofit group New Food Economy, nearly one in three Amazon employees in Arizona, for example, was on food stamps last year. Jeff Bezos isn’t paying his workers enough to eat, so you made up the difference with your tax dollars. Next time you see Bezos, make sure he says thank you.

I don’t want to get into the economics of Sanders and Carlson’s statements. Others have taken care of that (hint: Sanders’s tax isn’t going to do what he thinks it will). Instead, I want to touch on this point that the rich owe us something. That they should be thanking us. The reality is exactly the opposite. Next time you see Bezos, make sure you say thank you.

And I think the reason so many people have this concept exactly backwards is because we’ve been trained to think about everything in terms of money. Don’t think about money. Think about stuff.

Looking at Bezos’s monetary wealth on its own misses half of the equation. Sure Bezos has a ton of money. But the way he got that money was by creating an incredible business that revolutionized the retail market. Bezos gets $150 billion in pieces of paper (or more realistically, lines on a computer). We get Amazon. We get stuff (delivered across the country in 2 days or less). Now, of course Bezos does spend some of his wealth, and that’s not so good for our stuff. And his wealth does entitle him to a lot of our future stuff if he wants it. Maybe we’ll be worse off at the time. As for now, we’re making out like bandits.

Unfortunately I think what a lot of people have in mind when they think about the wealth distribution is a big pot of money. If Bezos takes $150 billion out of the pot that’s $150 billion the rest of us can’t use. This metaphor is absolutely the wrong way to think about wealth. Imagine Bezos never existed at all. His $150 billion is never created in the first place. The wealth doesn’t go back to the pot. It’s just gone. Half a million Amazon employees have to find other work. Hundreds of millions of consumers have to go back to shopping at Walmart. Now, there is another option, which is to redistribute Bezos’s wealth after he creates it. That’s a more justifiable policy than preventing him from ever earning it, but it can only be taken so far before it starts reducing the incentive to create – reducing the incentive to make stuff.

The same kind of mistaken thinking shows up in many other policy discussions. Take funding for higher education. Bernie Sanders’s solution is again focused on money. Pay for everyone to get a college education. But what about the stuff? Only so many people can go to Harvard. UCLA only has so many seats in a class. They already reject the vast majority of people who are willing to pay tens of thousands of dollars to attend. Making college free doesn’t do anything to change those facts (and actually it exacerbates the issue). Perhaps increased demand for education services would lead to an expansion of supply on the lower end, but college degrees only work by being somewhat exclusive (especially if the value of education is all signaling). It’s pretty hard to think of a solution that increases the supply of real educational services.

International trade is another good example. If the US imports from China, China gets a bunch of US dollars. The US gets a bunch of Chinese stuff. If we think about the US trade deficit, its essential to remember that it’s just a monetary deficit. But that money deficit gives us a huge stuff surplus. Is either side winning that transaction? China gets more dollars it can use to invest in US assets. US consumers get more cheap products from China. Unless you think you are getting ripped off by Amazon when you trade your dollars for a product, there’s no reason to believe the US consumer is getting a bad deal here either.

There is some nuance here that I’ve been deliberately avoiding. We don’t live in a pure exchange economy, which means money does matter. In economics, we sometimes make the mistake of going in the other direction by only worrying about stuff and never thinking about money. And sometimes it’s worth thinking about money, especially when it doesn’t work so well (as I’ve discussed in other posts). But even then, discussions of money should only be allowed if they’re in the context of figuring out how to get more stuff.

It’s really easy to get people more money. We can quite literally print it whenever we want. It’s a lot harder to get people more stuff. But stuff’s the stuff that really matters.