Bi-Weekly "Metapolitics" Discussion
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This is a continuation on our discussion from last time on the psychology & sociology of libertarianism & individualism, but this time we'll be taking a broader look at anti-authoritarian political alternatives besides the mainstream forms of right-wing libertarianism common in the US. This means we'll be analyzing issues pertinent to philosophies like left-libertarianism, left-market anarchism, and libertarian communism, which we'll be contrasting against the more commonly known positions of right-libertarianism.
As usual, I've linked a ton of articles and I don't expect people to read them all. I've done my best to summarize them so you can get the general gist of them for our discussion...
- Are Progressive Millenials Best Thought of as Libertarian Socialists?
Recent surveys of Millenials political beliefs by Harvard & Pew Research have exhibited a combination of beliefs that have baffled some researchers because young people now seem opposed to "capitalism" but in favor of the "free market", and in favor of more social welfare programs but suspicious of Big Government. Nate Silver thought this might suggest a similarity between Millenials attraction to both Ron Paul & Bernie Sanders, and several anarchists expressed hope that progressive Millenials might be implicit libertarian socialists:
Nate Silver, "Why Young Democrats Love Bernie Sanders. Part I: They have a lot in common with Ron Paul supporters."
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-young-democrats-love-bernie-sanders/
Kevin Carson, "Who’s Confused About Capitalism?"
https://c4ss.org/content/44786
and "How Libertarians Should — And Should Not — Approach Millennials"
https://c4ss.org/content/29297
Malcolm Harris, "Millennials’ politics are shaped by our dysfunctional system"
http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/7/millennials-politicalviewslibertariansocialist.html
- Risk Tolerance, Part 1: Openness, Uncertainty Avoidance & Entrepreneurship Rates:
One of the common claims by right-libertarians is that they are more "risk tolerant" since they are in favor of allowing people to make their own choices on social issues like sex & drugs where there's a possibility of harm, and they're also in favor of more economic freedom which includes taking risks as an entrepreneur that end up benefiting all of society when they pay off. Left-libertarians are generally in favor of allowing social freedoms & their attendant risks, but do not see "economic freedom" in the same way, and often argue that laissez-faire capitalism represents a diminishment of human freedom. Let's dig deeper into this...
Noah Millman's article, "Libertarians and Risk Aversion", takes issue with the idea of right-libertarians as highly risk tolerant, arguing that may be true for some "liberal-tarian" entrepreneurs but that many of the goldbugs & anti-government survivalist-type libertarians seem to be rather risk averse but are too cynical & pessimistic to believe that government could do anything to help:
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/millman/libertarians-and-risk-aversion/
Left-libertarians & anarchists may also exhibit either high or low risk aversion depending on whether they have a trusted social circle and are optimistic about change or are alienated from society & pessimistic. In general, however, left-libertarians & anarchists seem to prize risk-taking through the value they place on "direct action". And anarchists are not entirely opposed to entrepreneurship. Many anarchists value grey & black market forms of entrepreneurship that evade or disrupt the system; for example, cryptocurrencies, dark web markets, the free software movement, food coops, and non-capitalist versions of the sharing economy. This is commonly known in anarchist circles as "agorism" or "counter-economics." Jeff Rickettson at C4SS calls it "Schumpeterian entrepreneurship" - referencing the economist who touted the "creative destruction" of the free market - and compares it to anarchist "direct action" in the social & political spheres - https://c4ss.org/content/26284
On a personal level, risk tolerance usually correlates with Opennness, a trait both liberals & libertarians share. On a cultural level, one of the ways to test the idea that risk tolerance and libertarianism might be associated is by looking at Hofstede's "uncertainty avoidance index" that measures people's risk tolerance across cultures. We see that the US is in the middle of the pack, with not only free market powerhouses like Hong Kong & Singpaore being more risk tolerant, but also several social democracies like Denmark, Sweden, UK & Ireland. Meanwhile, Switzerland, which is often considered a libertarian country, looks fairly risk averse:
http://www.clearlycultural.com/geert-hofstede-cultural-dimensions/uncertainty-avoidance-index/
Entrepreneurship is a major form of risk-taking that right-libertarians value, but interestingly enough entrepreneurship rates are not necessarily higher in the type of free market capitalist economy right-libertarians favor. As Jordan Weissmann pointed out in The Atlantic that although the US is still the #1 spot for venture capital investment, the US startup rate now comes in second to last among the 25 OECD nations. He explains: "There isn't a whole lot in common between the countries that outperform us... The countries that fare best on this measure tend to be poorer, which may simply mean that it's easier for them to grow since they're starting with a smaller corporate base. Yet that doesn't explain away our ranking vis a vis wealthy nations such as Sweden, Austria, or the Netherlands."
- Risk Tolerance, Part 2: Agreeableness, Care/Harm, Labor Freedom vs. Worker Protections:
Another argument that right-libertarian often make is that employer's should have the right to hire & fire employees at will, and that workers should have the freedom to accept working for low wages or in dangerous conditions. This is often called "labor freedom" or "freedom of contract", and its now the only type of economic freedom where the US ranks in 1st place according to the Heritage Foundation's Index.
Definition of Labor Freedom - http://www.heritage.org/index/labor-freedom
Country Rankings: http://www.heritage.org/index/explore?variable=laborfreedom
While we don't have the type of psychological tests available for left-libertarians & anarchists that as we did for right-libertarians via Jonathan Haidy's study, it's reasonable to assume they are more like liberals in scoring higher on some factors of Agreeableness & valuing the Care/Harm moral foundation. We can see this in left-libertarian critiques of right-libertarian conceptions of "economic freedom". Kevin Carson & Phil Ebersole criticize the right-libertarian definition of freedom and argue that this form of risk-taking is not voluntary for workers:
Kevin Carson, "What Economic Indexes Leave Out" (critique of Heritage Foundation's definition of "Labor Freedom") - https://c4ss.org/content/22251
Phil Ebersole, "Free to Choose In Bangladesh" (critique of Matt Yglesias's defense of workers being "free to choose" to work in dangerous sweatshops)
https://philebersole.wordpress.com/2013/04/29/free-to-choose-in-bangladesh/
- Conscientiousness & Attitudes Towards "Nanny State" and "Libertarian Paternalism"
A major factor that separates left-libertarians & anarchists from mainstream liberals & progressives is opposition to Big Government. We can see from the above articles that left-libertarians take the threats posed by Big Business to workers seriously, but it doesn't motivate them to want to use Big Government as a counterbalance. If we were to posit a psychological motive for this, it may be that left-libertarians & anarchists score lower in Conscientiousness, since this is the trait that is associated with a desire for law & order and social conformity. In this sense, they would be similar to the right-libertarians in Haidt's study.
The following articles are rather long & tangential to our overall discussion, but they are a good follow-up to discussions of risk. Even while left-libertarians & anarchists criticize the type of risk-seeking and "economic freedom" right-libertarians favor, they are also skeptical of Big Government solutions favored by many mainstream progressives. Left-libertarians ideally want a localized, grass-roots safety net through "mutual aid" without the burden of an intrusive & oppressive regulatory/administrative state.
James C. Wilson - "An Anarchist Reads Conservative Nanny State" - https://c4ss.org/content/36289
Kevin Vallier - "Reasonable Libertarians Worry About Nudging" - http://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/2014/03/reasonable-libertarian-worries-about-nudging/
- "Locus of Control" and Attitudes Towards Agency:
Concepts of agency divide left- & right-libertarians. This is related to what psychologists call "locus of control". Locus of control is one of the four dimensions of "core self-evaluations" – one's fundamental appraisal of oneself – along with neuroticism (emotional stability), self-efficacy & self-esteem.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locus_of_control
Julian Sanchez, a right-libertarian from the Cato Institute, argues that poor children are unintentionally victimized by parents & teachers who indoctrinate them into the "tyranny of low expectations" by teaching them their chances of success are low and that they're mostly victims of chance. Meanwhile, an "internal locus of control" - i.e. a belief in personal responsibility for outcomes - is one of the lucky outcomes that affluent parents pass on to their children.
http://www.cato.org/blog/social-mobility-locus-control
Will Wilkinson, a left-libertarian with the Niskanen Center, analyzed the conflicting views of the Tea Party & Occupy Wall Street and found that a lot could be traced back to the psychology and ideology of responsibility. He argues that the Tea Party's emphasis on personal responsibility & Occupy's emphasis on solidarity & a social safety need should be combined. Wilkinson concludes that "in plenty of circumstances in which people are suffering due to no fault of their own, I think they need both material assistance and the conviction that they can improve their lives if they really try."
Note that while left-libertarians & anarchists typically reject the "boostrap myth" (a.k.a. "Horatio Alger myth") for individual success, they do believe that small communities can be successful without the help of a larger nation-state & big government. This is the central point of Kevin Carson's book "Desktop Regulatory State" - https://c4ss.org/content/43816
- Attitudes Towards Power Distance, Income Inequality & Social Status:
One of the key differences between left- & right-libertarians is their attitude towards social status and hierarchy. Left-Libertarians favor egalitarianism and collectivism, while Right-Libertarians favor meritocracy and individualism. We covered the individualism/collectivism aspect of Hofstede's Cultural Dimensions Theory last week, but it's worth covering "power distance" as well. The Power Distance Index is defined as “the extent to which the less powerful members of organizations and institutions accept & expect that power is distributed unequally.” Here's the Wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_distance
It's interesting to compare the Power Distance Index to the economic inequality measured by the Gini Coefficient Index: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality
You'll notice there are some social democratic nations like France that have lower income inequality than the US but higher power distance, which tends to be expressed in cultural & political norms.
Egalitarian societies that favor a lower degree of power distance often have social mechanisms for preventing any one individual from becoming too powerful or high status. In Australia, this is often called the "tall poppy syndrome" and in Nordic countries (especially Denmark) it's referred to as "Jante law."
While individualistic Americans often speak of the tall poppy syndrome in entirely negative terms as forms of mass envy, I was able to find a couple interesting articles that are a bit more sympathetic & show how these social norms can be limit authoritarian tendencies & encourage cooperation:
LabStategy - "Australianness and Identity" http://thelabstrategy.com/insights/australianness-and-identity
Christopher Harris - "The Law Of Jante: How A Swedish Cultural Principle Drives Ikea, Ericsson And Volvo, And Beat The Financial Crisis"
Will Wilkinson at the left-libertarian Niskanen Center has recently noted that many social-democratic nations outrank the US on things like the Heritage Foundation's Index of Economic Freedom and the Fraser Institute's Human Freedom Index, because while they have higher taxes & higher government spending on social programs, they otherwise have freer trade and a greater ease of doing business. He argues that "Denmark shows us that a much larger public sector and a much more robust social-insurance system need not come at the expense of a dynamic market economy. In other words, Denmark shows us that capitalism and a large welfare state are perfectly compatible and possibly complementary... Denmark may be beating the U.S. in terms of economic freedom because it’s easier to get people to buy in to capitalism when they’re well-insured against its downside risks."
https://niskanencenter.org/blog/double-edged-denmark/
Robert H. Frank responds to Michael Shermer's libertarian critique of his book "The Darwin Economy" and argues libertarians should embrace many forms of government intervention. One of his major arguments is that status-seeking creates an "arms race" in societies that is costly & pointless, and that government intervention can nip this in the bud. Frank sees Pigovian taxes as a more libertarian solution to social problems rather than outright prohibition.
http://evonomics.com/why-libertarians-should-embrace-many-forms-of-government-intervention/
- Attitude Towards Authority, Elites & Experts:
Anti-authoritarianism is one of the key traits of libertarians & anarchists on both sides of the political spectrum. Unfortunately, there's not nearly as many studies of anti-authoritarianism as their are on the "authoritarian personality." However, there are a few...
William P. Kreml, in his 1977 study "The Anti-Authoritarian Personality", found that although there were stylistic similarities between authoritarians and anti-authoritarians (dogmatism, rigidity, etc.), construct variables like (a) the relative need for order, (b) the relative need for power, (c) rejection or acceptance of impulse, and (d) extroversion versus introversion, differentiated the two types and could underpin a full-spectrum psycho-political theory. Anti-authoritarians have a low need for order, does not identify with power figures, accept their natural impulses as good, and tend towards introversion & introspection - https://books.google.com/books?isbn=1483157911
A recent study by British psychologists tested self-identified anarchists & found they exhibited different & stronger brainwave patterns on an EEG when reacting to political stimuli. This suggests that anarchists may be neurologically different than political moderates. However, we're left with the chicken-and-the-egg problem since we can't distinguish the effects of nature & nurture on the test subjects. Do they exhibit react stronger to political stimuli because they've adopted anarchist beliefs, or have they adopted anarchist beliefs because they naturally have a stronger reaction to political stimuli?
http://scan.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2011/03/18/scan.nsr009.full
The anarchist psychologist Bruce E. Levine has argued that young people labeled by the psychiatric establishment as having ADD/ADHD and "oppositional defiant disorder" are often unconscious anarchists with a healthy resistance to oppressive authority:
http://www.alternet.org/personal-health/anarchists-oppressed-psychiatry-and-underground-resistance
Interesting enough, a recent study of American voters based on their preference for 6 of the presidential candidates (Trump, Cruz, Rubio, Kasich, Clinton, Sanders) found that Bernie Sanders' fans showed the most anti-authoritarianism & anti-elitism, but showed the most trust for experts. Meanwhile, Trump's fans showed no more authoritarianism than Cruz or Rubio's followers, but showed almost as much anti-elitism as Bernie fans and the most mistrust of experts of any group. Trump's fans also showed a strong sense of American identity while Bernie fans showed the least. The researchers concluded that Trump's fans were best understood as "populists" while Bernie's are best described as "cosmopolitan socialists". The only thing the two contingencies have in common is that they both see the system as corrupted by economic elites. Bernie fans generally trust experts & intellectuals, but they don’t trust ordinary Americans and show only light attachment to Americanism as an identity, whereas the opposite is true for Trump fans.
Bi-Weekly "Metapolitics" Discussion