Do moral instincts always promote human flourishing?

There is strong evidence that moral beliefs come from a small set of intuitions that evolution has prepared the human brain to develop. Morality, like sexuality and language, can be seen as emerging from the child in response to guidance from family and culture, rather than placed into the child as a result of these external influences. People have a preparedness to acquire certain kinds of moral knowledge and a resistance to moral teaching that is not consistent with these intuitions. The evidence has been presented in an article by Jonathan Haidt and Fredrik Bjorklund in their paper entitled, ‘Social intuitionists answer six questions about moral psychology’ (here) and has been recently summarised by Steven Pinker in a New York Times article (here).

On the basis of examinations of moral virtues and concerns that are common in the world’s cultures, Haidt and his colleagues suggest that five sets of intuitions should be seen as the foundations of ethics: dislike of pain and suffering in others; fairness (reciprocating favours, rewarding benefactors and punishing cheaters); respect for status hierarchies; concerns about purity (related to the emotion of disgust) and concerns about the boundaries between in-group and out-group.

There is, however, a great deal of scope for moral virtues and concerns to be pursued to advance the interests of some at the expense of others. Some people believe that they are acting morally when they seek to use the coercive powers of the state to reciprocate favours and to advance the interests of their families and communities at the expense of others citizens. Some people are so concerned about the pain and suffering among some groups that they seek to use the coercive powers of the state to redistribute the ownership of property and or modify contractual obligations. Some people are so disgusted with the behaviour of fellow citizens, including the clothes they wear or don’t wear, that they attempt to use the coercive powers of the state to prevent the behaviour that offends them, even though this behaviour does not interfere with their own rights.

What is it that holds modern societies together in the face of the ongoing pursuit of moral objectives that were shaped by evolution to protect self, kin and clan? When societies do hold together there seems to be a great deal of respect for decision-making processes that require people to state their case in a way that treats others as moral equals. Steven Pinker suggests that the core of this idea – the interchangeability of perspectives – keeps re-appearing in histories best-thought-through moral philosophies, including the golden rule, Spinoza’s viewpoint of eternity, social contract theories, Kant’s categorical imperative and Rawls’s veil of ignorance.

However this does not explain why in some societies many people have high regard for conventions that treat others as moral equals, while in others such people are in a small minority? Such rules of conduct seem to have gained a foothold in various parts of the world through accidents of history, but it is no accident that when they do gain a foothold people tend to flourish. F. A. Hayek made the point that the rules of conduct that make society a positive sum game have evolved through the successive relaxation of prohibitions. For example, bartering with outsiders, recognition of private property, enforcement of contractual obligations, competition among fellow craftsmen, variation of customary prices and the charging of interest on loans, were all initially infringements of customary rules ( Law, Legislation and Liberty, 1982, V 3, p 161).

I think Hayek was correct when he argued that “one of the most important tasks of our intelligence is to discover the significance of rules we never deliberately made, and the obedience to which builds more complex orders than we can understand” (p 163).

Does climate change have implications for freedom and flourishing?

The most obvious implication of climate change has to do with adaptation. There is nothing new about adapting to climate change. Our ancestors managed to survive ice ages and periods of global warming, and to flourish by making changes in the way they went about their lives. No doubt our descendents will face similar challenges.

How can we best adapt? It seems to me that collectivist adjustment strategies that involve putting all our eggs in baskets designed by government agencies would be highly risky. The overall outcome is likely to be much better if individuals have maximum freedom to adjust as they see fit.

Does it make any difference if the challenge of climate change that our descendents face is attributable to human activity – namely, global warming due to greenhouse gas emissions? It seems to me that there are two ways in which it may make a difference. The first concerns personal ethics and the second concerns public policy.

There are not many individuals who would feel happy about pursuing a lifestyle that is likely to be seriously detrimental to the interests of their children and grandchildren. So, why aren’t we all making efforts to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions or to take action to offset them?

An excuse that some of us have is uncertainty about the science of global warming. In November 2007 I wrote: “ I now accept that the probability of net adverse consequences following from growing greenhouse gas emissions is somewhat higher than zero. I may be wrong.” Five months later, I think I might have been wrong. In a few months time I could change my mind again. I am easily swayed by the latest research findings.

What attitude should a climate change waverer, like myself, have toward environmental puritans who not only accept that there is an emerging problem of climate change caused by human action but also take action to minimize their own contribution to the problem? Some of my sceptical friends make no secret of the fact that they think these people are being foolish because their individual actions have an insignificant effect on the global problem that they perceive to exist. I think my sceptical friends should mind their own consciences and leave the environmental puritans alone – provided, of course, that environmental puritans are prepared to reciprocate.

Before ridiculing those who seek to minimize their own contribution to greenhouse gas emissions we should consider whether the fact that an individual’s actions have an insignificant effect on outcomes is seen to absolve her/him from responsibility for personal actions in other areas of conduct. It isn’t. For example, we do not view pilfering as being ethically OK for individuals who work in large firms, even though the amounts each individual steals may represent an insignificant proportion of the total costs of the firm.

So, let us have some respect for the environmental puritans who act conscientiously. In my view we should reserve our ridicule for the hypocrites who seek to impose restraint on others – through use of the coercive power of the government - without first exercising restraint themselves.

When government action is proposed this is not just a matter of saying: “Let us all agree to adopt a lifestyle that involves less emission of greenhouse gases so that our consciences can be clear”. It actually involves saying: “Let us make a collective decision that will induce people to emit less greenhouse gases whether they want to or not”. When governments make that decision they are disadvantaging some people who do not support the objective they are pursuing. Furthermore, the objective they are pursuing of reducing global greenhouse gas emissions cannot be achieved by the Australian government acting alone.

No amount of reduction in emissions by Australia can be anything more than a drop in the bucket relative to the global greenhouse gas emissions. If our government gets ahead of the rest of the world on this issue, citizens of this country risk the worst of all outcomes – bearing the cost of involuntary emission reductions without benefiting from any amelioration of any adverse effects on our climate.

It seems to me that until the world develops something approaching a global consensus in favour of reducing greenhouse gas emissions the Australian government would be wise to view this issue as a matter for individual conscience. However, I doubt whether this point of view will find much favour with our prime minister, Kevin Rudd. It seems more likely that he will prefer to follow the inner voice urging him to lead the world in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. After all, he has probably been in office long enough by now to believe that this inner voice is the collective conscience of all Australians.

Postscript: 28 April, 2008.
 Two years on it is now apparent that I owe Kevin Rudd an apology. The rhetoric that led me to fear that he wanted Australia to lead the world in reducing greenhouse gas emissions turned out to be just political spin that led nowhere. It seems that Rudd's inner voice has told him that Australian voters would not like pointless increases in electicity prices that could be sheeted home to his policies. The government has suspended its proposals to reduce greenhouse gases for a couple of years. I don't imagine the proposals will re-surface until there is a strong lead from the U.S. that might actually result in a significant reduction in global emissions.
I promise that I will be much more careful in future before assuming that Kevin Rudd's rhetoric is anything more than political spin.

Can government be restrained by transparency requirements?

I ended my last post by suggesting that procedures that promote transparency can be an important constraint on the expansion of government if voters understand their importance and expect governments to comply with them (see here).

The expansion of government is often discussed as though it is perfectly obvious to everyone who are the net gainers from redistributions and who are the net losers. In fact, however, when we look at government programs we find that the redistributions they involve are often far from transparent. Non-transparent redistributions are often favoured in order to hide redistributions that are difficult to justify in terms of widely accepted ethical standards. It seems to me that procedures that promote transparency can therefore be an important constraint on the expansion of government.

What I had in mind were things like: legislative requirements for governments to specify monetary and fiscal policy objectives publicly and make public any departures from those objectives; requirements for publication of formal coalition agreements to make governments less vulnerable to attempts by minor parties to extract additional concessions at times of their own choosing; and requirements for governments to refer matters to independent public review before introducing measures (such as tariff changes) that assist some groups at the expense of others.

Such procedures certainly cannot be relied upon to restrain government from doing things that are popular with a majority of voters, or things that governments feel that they must do to preserve their tenure of power.

However, it seems to me that democratic governments can be deterred from over-turning inconvenient transparency procedures if they believe that such actions would contravene the concerns of voters about procedural fairness.

It is obvious that the concerns of voters about procedural fairness must encompass some transparency requirements if you consider how voters would react to a proposal for future government budgets to be secret. It would be reasonable to expect widespread opposition to such a proposal, including among government supporters, because of concerns that the removal of the limited transparency that publication of budgets provides would enable members of the government to enrich themselves at public expense without anyone knowing.

How far can transparency requirements protect against the expansion of government? The concerns of voters about procedural fairness clearly do not provide much protection against redistributions that are widely perceived to be equitable. I agree with Gerald Gauss that “for many citizens, their understanding of moral norms related to fairness endorses government-made rules over-riding the conventional rules of property” (here).

Nevertheless, many government programs involve redistributions that seem to me to be inconsistent with widely accepted moral norms. An example of the kind of thing I have in mind is the way the provision of universal services by government without charge to users (e.g. public education and health services) discriminates against people (including low-income people) who elect not to use these services. I think there would be less support for such redistributions if they were made more transparent through procedural requirements e.g. for periodical independent reviews to consider whether stated objectives are being met efficiently and equitably.

The important point is that voters’ concerns for procedural fairness can reinforce transparency procedures that can help to raise concerns about fairness that, in turn, can help to restrain the expansion of government.

Can government be bound?

Anthony de Jasay has recently written an essay for Cato Unbound entitled ‘Government, bound or unbound?’ (see here). This essay is a sequel to a widely-quoted article he wrote twenty years ago entitled ‘Is limited government possible?’.

The essay discusses the important question of whether democracy (or, more precisely, representative government with majority rule) is compatible with the classical liberal ideal of a government that acts as a guarantor of liberty, using coercion only to enforce rules of just conduct.

In the first part the essay the author argues that constitutions cannot be sufficiently strong to restrain governments from doing what they are anxious to do or must do to preserve their tenure of power. The basic problem is that, notwithstanding the so-called separation of powers, the enforcement of constitutional rules that provide that government shall not do certain things lies ultimately in the hands of government. Judges are appointed by governments. I agree with this reasoning.

I also agree with most of the second part of the essay, in which the author discusses circumstances and events that may place limits on collective choice. He suggests that several factors may place contingent limits on government.

• The need for political candidates to obtain donations from higher income donors in order to get elected. This constraint is obviously weakened where campaign funding is subsidized by government. Even without such subsidies, I doubt whether this is an important constraint in countries with strong union movements.
• The desire of the winning coalition to remain in power limits the extent to which marginal supporters can be taxed and its desire to maximize long run tax yield prevents it from imposing high rates that would chase away “the goose that lays the golden eggs” (i.e. avoiding a brain drain and flight of capital).
• When government expands beyond some point an increasing proportion of voters may perceive that continuation in this direction will result in a bleak future. This may result in the election of a reform government with a mandate to pursue market-friendly policies.
• Finally, human motivation is influenced by factors other than identifiable interest. The author suggests: “Perhaps the purest and strongest limit on government is the standard, non-interest motive arising from superstition or taboo”. He gives the example of the balance budget as a standard that was followed reflexively for about a century and a half prior to Keynes’s General Theory.
  
  I have two objections to the idea that we can rely on superstition or taboo to limit government. First, it is difficult to see how a taboo can be maintained in any area of public policy unless political leaders can explain why it exists and their explanations have fairly widespread support among relevant professionals. Second, as James Buchanan has suggested, the ethical constraints required to protect liberty are closely related to rules of reciprocity in interpersonal dealings (“Why I, too, am not a conservative”, 2005, pp 81-2). The rules of reciprocal respect extend beyond markets to include the political sector when people consider themselves to be engaged in politics to obtain publicly provided goods and services in exchange for tax payments (rather than to obtain distributional gains at the expense of others). The benefits of adherence to rules of reciprocal respect are obviously not beyond human understanding and adherence to such rules is likely to be enhanced by more widespread understanding of the purposes they serve.
  
  The final comment I want to make about this excellent essay is that I think the author’s list of constraints on expansion of government omits one that has potential to be important. I think that transparency rules can be an important constraint on the expansion of government if voters understand their importance and expect governments to comply with them. I will write more about this in my next post