Value Competition

Who Gets What: Social Preferences, the Creation of Social Surplus, and its Division among Managers, Workers, Shareholders, and Society

[Notes for a paper to be written with the above title...]

The Owner-Manager Plays the Insist-Yield game with His Employees

The key to prevailing in the game is a credible commitment to insist, against which the other player will rationally yield.   A "this business is mine," "my way or the highway" state of mind comes more naturally to the owner-manager, it is reasonable to assume, than it does to the employee-centered manager or the shareholder-centered manager.   Accordingly, one expects more credible commitments based on owner-managers having that kind of unyielding character than from the other types.

The problem with a "this business is mine" commitment to having things the owner's way is that it may well not be seen as ethically acceptable by the employees, in which case conflict is likely.  The contentious and occasionally bloody history of nineteenth century capitalism may be seen as involving exactly that type of conflict, with owner-managers who strongly asserted their prerogatives giving rise to angry movements of workers fighting against total control by owner-managers. 

A second, gentler way to prevail in the insist-yield game is to value the other side's payoffs in the situation in which both of you insist on getting your own way.  By doing that, you can wind up in the same place as the dognatic "I will always insist" player, but without the unpleasant, conflict-provoking dogmatism.

So which side is better equipped to value the other's payoff in the insist-insist situation?   Though  no absolute answer can be given, I would suggest that workers in the owner-manager business are in better shape to appreciate the owner's payoff for insisting than the owner-manager is to appreciate the worker's payoff for being feisty.

As long as the owner has not marked himself as unreasonable by being dogmatically insistent, it is not a difficult stretch for workers to understand and even feel for an entrepreneur-owner who has created a business.  It is a much  more difficult stretch for the owner-creator to feel a parallel empathy with the payoffs of rebellious workers.

If the foregoing is correct, it is harder for the owner-manager who has built a business to have a character that is altruistic in a useful way than it is for the worker.  The owner-founder, altruistic as he or she may be in certain ways in caring about the welfare of others, is likely to have difficulty in empathizing with workers who rebel. A  limited caring about the owner helps the workers to get their way against the owner, whose difficulty in  caring for the workers leads him to lose out in the "gentle commitment" game.

 

 

How to Overcome Obstacles to Broader Entrepreneurship: Another Contentious Answer

[The following perspective on what needs to be changed to get us to a better Smith-Hume future matches the one in the previous post, but with an anti-right instead of an anti-left valence...]

"First, we need to open up the possibilities for economic entrepreneurship by decisively blasting out hierarchical conservative practices and values that consign some people and some groups to passive, acted upon status while elevating others to dominant, active, innovating status.

Second, we need to open up the possibilities for cultural entrepreneurship by moving away from a stolid, deadening conservative traditionalism that puts people into boxes, with only a few people seen as artists, scientists, and as creators more generally, and the rest of us classified as mere workers of various kinds.

Finally, we need to open up the possibilities for social entrepreneurship through thrusting aside conservative norms of deference and passivity in the lower orders in favor of feistiness across the social spectrum.  As to the theory that opening up opportunities for political entrepreneurship for those further down will be enhanced by diminished political faith among those at the top: The idea is a dubious one--there is a certain unpleasant, resentment-based quality to it.  But even if its premises were granted and we wanted to reduce elite political faith, it is reasonable to think that elite conservative disdain for liberal hopes and elite conservative market evangelism are bigger problems to be addressed than hopeful elite liberalism is."

Two observations: 1) I take it that the relative merits of the contentious center-left claim as to the way forward and the previous contentious center-right claim are only determinable empirically rather than in some more sweeping fashion; 2) it's interesting (if not surprising) the way the aspiration to take down politics a peg among the elite to give more space to the people has its own competing political interpretations.

 

How to Overcome Obstacles to Broader Entrepreneurship: One Contentious Answer

[The following argumentative answer to what blocks a better future and thus needs to be changed is one that has considerable personal plausibility to me as a 1977 graduate of Harvard University and a 1981 graduate of Harvard Law School.  That background conditions me to see the current order of the world as one in which the attitudes of people within my old school and others like it occupy a central position, and a potentially better world as one in which those attitudes have undergone substantial rectification. 

At the same time, I strongly believe that the way the world looks to me, though one hopes not altogether detached from reality, captures only a part of reality of what the world is.  If Smith-Hume for the 21st century is to be a viable vision, it needs to be one that works for people who see blockages to progress in places other than the ones my personal experiences and my personality incline me to see them.  So if you find yourself irritated by the grafs below, fair enough...stay tuned for the next post...]

"First: To encourage econonomc entrepreneurship and accomplishment among more people all across the economic spectrum, a key thing that needs to happen is the blasting out of the antipathy to money-making as a goal that was at the core of Marx and that remains intertwined with the way many left of center people think and feel.  Only if deep-seated left ambivalence about economic entrepreneurship can be firmly consigned to the scrapheap of history as decisively as the old, dead vision of a nationalized, post-capitalist economy has already been can we really move forward. 

Second: To encourage cultural entrepreneurship and accomplishment among more people, a key thing that needs to happen is the blasting out of a unionist, "it's just a job," clock-oriented mentality.  Though that reactionary, resentful state of mind is found among all kinds of people in all kinds of positions, its political home is on the left and its practical base lies in teacher's unions and other groups allied with the left. 

Finally: To open up more room for people lower down in the socio-economic spectrum to be social entrepreneurs, it would be a very good thing if the elite in our society turned their moral fervor away from politics toward some other arena.  Just as the decline in religous faith among the elite empowered ordinary people, so too with an elite decline in political faith.  The heart of elite political fervor lies on the left, and so here as in the other domains it is encrusted left ideology that presents the greatest obstacles to a more open, more entrepreneurial, more successful future."

 Stay tuned for an opposing approach...

 

Carrying Forward the Practical Utopianism of the Scottish Enlightenment

Let us assume that Smith and Hume basically got the path for social progress right in the late 18th century: The way forward is to blend practicality and aspiration in a way that is conducive to the expansion of opportunities and accomplishments for and by a widening circle of people.

What follows for us?  Three major things, it seems to me.  First, in the area of economic productivity, we need to figure out ways for many more people to enjoy the ongoing sense and reality of creativity and innovation that a relatively small proportion of people now do.  We don't want as large a majority of our population a hundred years from now to be, say, highly paid but perhaps disillusioned cogs in big corporations, government offices, or professional firms who do not themselves engage in entrepreneurial economic activity.  Not everyone could or should be an economic entrepreneur, and we should be deeply grateful for the rise of organizations that have freed people in wealthy nations from grinding micro-entrepreneurship--and yet, a better future will be one in which a much larger proportion of people than now are economic entrepreneurs in at least a part of their lives. 

Second, in the area of cultural productivity defined by often hard to monetize accomplishments in the arts and sciences, we similarly want to have a substantially larger proportion of people who are cultural entrepreneurs.  Not everyone could or should be a cultural entrepreneur painting pictures, writing songs, conducting scientific experiments, and so on--and yet, a better future will have such activities being a part of the lives of a much larger proportion of adults than is now the case. 

Third, in the area of social productivity defined by morally infused activity with other people and individually, we could similarly use a broadening of entrepreneurial spirit and a resultant expansion of social accomplishments.  Again, we will not all be social entrepreneurs--but it would be very nice indeed if a significantly higher proportion of us took on the role for part of our lives.

Let's assume (a big assumption, to be sure) that that 21st century reformulation of Smith and Hume in terms of expanded economic, cultural, and social entrepreneurship is a good form of practical utopianism.   That leads to two matched question: What are the obstacles to getting there?   And how can we overcome those obstacles?  

It seems to me there are two (no doubt more) plausible responses...I'll try to lay them out in the next two posts...

 

 

 

 

 

North, Wallis & Weingast on the Natural State and the Open State

Violence and Social Orders is not a good book formally, in that its sometimes intensely detailed micro-level history on matters such as English land law mixes uneasily with its sweeping macro-level perspective, announced in the subtitle: "A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History."  (I deeply empathize with the problem, having tried unsuccessfully to write a book on political ideology that blended narrative historical sweep, case studies, and modeling.)  It is a good one substantively, though.  The account it gives of the transition from the elite bargains of traditional or "natural" states to a more open order of perpetual organizations and widespread competition is a worthwhile contribution to the Adam Smith-Charles Tilly-Francis Fukuyama tradition.

I have an issue, though.  The open access order we live in feels to me not like the end of history but like a yet more mature natural state, with all the segmented, bargaining elites--academic, religious, military, financial, manufacturing, etc.--of the old order mitigated by greater impersonality and access, but still very much present.   There are a lot of different 1 percents (or .01 percents), but the world we live in is very much a world of elites and others.

Maybe that is not something to be grumpy about.  But maybe it is...[to be continued]

 

NJ Transit Conductors: The Rule-Followers and the Relaxed

The conductor on my train from Newark to New Brunswick today didn't charge me the $6 step-up that railroad rules say is supposed to be charged when a rider shows a pass for South Orange to Newark, which is my regular commuter route.  That's a frequent occurrence, and it leads me to wonder about the degree to which the relaxed attitude of many of the conductors toward the rule is part of an optimal "yin-yang" balance with their many colleagues who do follow the rule...

My intuition is that a revenue-maximizing railroad does want some nonenforcement, partly for practical situational reasons, such as a crowded trains with a short time between stops.  I also suspect it should want some level of broader, "we're mellow and not enforcing the rule" nonenforcement.  The basic point is that rule enforcement creates in some cases a high level of tension between the RR and the patron.  Patrons who are aware that the RR makes errors in their favor are likely to be much mellower and less likely to abandon or otherwise dis the RR when it makes rule-enforcing errors against them, as will inevitably be the case. 

That's the way it works for me.   Some of the time, conductors misread their cards and charge me more than $6--for some reason, $9 is the usual erroneous figure.  I don't complain by pointing out the right number and embarrassing them in front of other riders.  I would if some conductors didn't let me off the hook altogether.

So is the level of nonenforcement optimal?  I have the "reform government" intuition that it's not.  My guess is that I get away w/ not paying the step-up substantially more than I should.

I also intuit/guess/suspect that if NJ Transit had a better labor system instead of the "job security after a probationary period" system I suspect it has and shares w/ most government agencies, the proportion of conductors enforcing the step up rule would go up by a fair amount.

At the same time, I don't think the optimal rule enforcement rate is close to 100%.  Even in a hypothetical world where all the conductors have all the time in the world to enforce the rule, are indefatigable workers, and don't mind doing the enforcement and taking the heat at all, the rule should sometimes not be enforced.  The RR has an interest in having some conductors who are mellow (and/or conflict averse) and let the riders off the hook some of the time. 

 

 

 

The Division of Leadership between the Visionary and the Executive

Some morning-or-two-afterthoughts in relation to the selective altruism paper...possible material for including in a revised version for journal submission...

First (and maybe last) thought of the day: Does the selective altruism analysis cast any light on the standard business practice of having both a big picture CEO and an executing President (as well as having a policy-making board and employees of the firm; corporate life can be described as a nested series of visionary-executive combinations), and on parallel practices in politics (e.g., political appointees and career employees in agencies) and in the government and non-profit sectors (e.g., policy setting school boards and implementing superintendents)?  

A subquestion of particular interest to me as an administrator in a business school department that has a major concern with operations issues:  Does selective altruism cast any light on the reality that it is the visionary as opposed to the executive who is at least nominally on top in all these dyads?

Okay...let's think...

Maybe selective altruism does shed light here, at least in regard to the second question.  A key issue with the selective altruism model of leadership, as with others, is whether one can in the end prevail on everything as a leader, or whether there is a division of labor with the preferences of the follower prevailing on plenty of things or even most things.  The second view seems plausible to me for normative and practical reasons.  Selective altruism I believe should take that into account.  Servant leaders and the other types don't simply win by their selective altruism, as in the paper.  Some of the time they actually do wash the feet of the followers.  Otherwise, it is hard to see how in the end all the types avoid collapsing into the masterful leader, who for all his considerable virtues is also a troubling character and whose consistently commanding style should be only one way to lead, not the way.

So, on why the executives report to the visionaries rather than the other way around: It is plausible to me that a commitment to lead based on one or another character type is less abrasive to others when it relates to intangible matters of vision than when it relates to concrete matters of operations.  Relatedly, it is plausible that a character type with a commitment to lead as to vision finds it easier to pass the screen of ethical acceptability than a type with a commitment to lead as to specifics.  The latter type has some obvious advantages in the struggle for life, and we should expect it to be an important character type with a number of variations.  But it is a type that finds it difficult to pass the screen of ethical acceptability.

Another way to put the point: Egalitarian, forgiving, sympathetic, and servant leadership are all readily translated into types of visionary leader that pass an ethical screen, bu are not so readily translated into operational leaders.   The masterful leader is the reverse: very easily translated into operational leadership, but with greater difficulty in passing the acceptability screen. 

One way for masterful leaders to pass the acceptability screen is by getting extraordinary results; that greater pressure on the masterful type to perform to overcome its ethical deficiencies leads to an empirical prediction that the results associated with masterful leaders will be better than those from the other selectively altruistic types.  I hasten to note such an empirical relationship would not necessarily show that organizations should prefer masterful leaders; what the hypothetical relationship would show in my view is that masterful leaders are more likely to get weeded out when they perform badly, not that the type is better at the creation of value than other leadership types.  It does seem to me, however, that such an empirical relationship could lead an organization in that direction; a boss who is masterful would more readily be held accountable all else equal than the other types of selective altruists and thus should be preferred in hiring and promotion.   The counter I take it is that compared to a Smithian sympathetic manager who cares about highest joint value outcomes, the masterful leader is likely to entrench himself and to in fact be difficult to remove.  Accordingly, certain other types of selectively altruistic leaders may wind up being more accountable.

Much as submissiveness and deference are very important parts of our makeups, human beings are nitty about being ordered to do things.  The visionary leader who avoids that type of direct order is thus advantaged as a type over the operational leader. 

Violence and Hunting as Leadership Games

Instead of seeing violence as an outcome of a PD in which both players have a predatory incentive to kill and steal or of a Trust game in which both players fear that the other will be aggressive, violence can be seen as an outcome of a Leadership game in which the players will do best if one of them leads and the other follows, adequately but not well if neither one leads, and disastrously if they fight one another for leadership.  Sample payoffs for such a "Lead or Yield" game are shown below:

                                                  Other

 

                                  Yield                               Fight to Lead

    Yield           Non-violent Disorder (0, 0)           Order (5, 10)

Self

  Fight to Lead        Order (5, 10)                Violent Disorder (-50, -50)

In a Leadership game, your best response to pacifism or aggression by the other player is opposite what it is in Trust.  In Trust, the best response to aggression is aggression, while in Leadership the best response is to yield.   The best response to pacifism in Trust is pacifism, while in Leadership the best response to pacifism is aggression--or assertion, if one wants to use a more positive term to reflect the value added by the combination of leadership by one player and following by another.

Hunting can also be modeled as a Leadership game rather than a PD or a Trust game.  The best results from the hunt come from one player leading and the other following, with worse results if there is no leadership or a leadership struggle.  Sample payoffs are below:

                                                   Other

                               Yield                                         Lead

    Yield           Lack of leadership (2, 2)            Organized hunt (5, 10)

Self

  Lead               Organized hunt (5, 10)          Leadership struggle (0, 0)

 

 

 

Hunting as a Trust Game or a PD Game

Important as it is, the negative-sum violence game just described is, one hopes, less common than positive-sum games such as trading or hunting in which the players are likely though not certain to achieve a positive payoff of some kind.

Below is a hunting game in which both players face a choice between cooperating and finagling, and the payoffs follow the PD:

 

                                                                          Other

                                                Cooperate                             Finagle

                Cooperate                     5, 5                                   0, 10

Self    

                 Finagle                       10, 0                                   2, 2

As always in a PD, you are better off finagling no matter what the other player does.

Now, the hunting game with Trust payoffs:

 

                                                                         Other

                                                Cooperate                             Finagle

                Cooperate                    10, 10                                   0, 5

Self    

                 Finagle                          5, 0                                   2, 2

Here, as in Trust games in general, both of you do best by cooperating; you have a reason to finagle only if the other player is going to finagle.

Compared to the violence game with its relatively clear picture of aggression, the meaning of finagling or cheating in a hunt is open to interpretation.  If finagling is outright theft of the killed animal, the PD payoffs work in immediate material terms.  But in that case, I would suggest that the future-discounted payoff for the thief may well be lower than the payoff when both players cooperate, given the likelihood that the hunters know one another very well.  In that case, the game is a Trust game, not a PD.  In any case, in the hunting game as in the violence game, the players are unlikely to see themselves as having PD payoffs.  They are likely instead to see themselves as having Trust payoffs, and as feeling pressure to finagle not because they can get their best outcome from doing so but from concern the other player will do so and leave them with their worst outcome.  (Obviously, both players cannot successfully finagle by stealing the captured animal; one way to interpret the situation in which both finagle is that they abandon cooperation in favor of pursuing lower-value game individually, which makes the game a Stag Hunt, one of the variants of Trust.)

Instead of outright thievery, finagling in the hunt game can be interpreted instead in terms of harder to detect "cover your ass" or CYA behavior that minimizes the risks for the CYA player, who, say, does not take the same chance of getting gored by the tusked boar that the cooperator does and in doing so makes the hunt more dangerous for the cooperator and less likely to result in success.   If finagling is CYA behavior rather than outright thievery, the immediate material payoffs for the players as well as the future-discounted ones are likely to follow Trust rather than the PD.  The finagler lowers the probability of success to a degree that hurts him as well as the cooperator; that means his payoff for taking advantage of the cooperator is less than his payoff for mutual cooperation; that in turn means the game is Trust and not the PD.

My intuition is that hunts by our ancient ancestors and by ourselves are more likely to feature finagling in the form of CYA behavior than finagling in the form of outright thievery.   Accordingly, it seems to me that the immediate material payoffs associated with cooperating versus finagling in a hunt are usually better described as Trust games than as PDs.   Further, even if the immediate material payoffs of cheating are accurately described by a PD, the future-discounted payoffs seem likely to be better described by Trust than by the PD.

 

 

 

Hunting as a Trust Game or a PD Game

Important as it is, the negative-sum violence game just described is, one hopes, less common than positive-sum games such as trading or hunting in which the players are likely though not certain to achieve a positive payoff of some kind.

Below is a hunting game in which both players face a choice between cooperating and finagling, and the payoffs follow the PD:

 

                                                                          Other

                                                Cooperate                             Finagle

                Cooperate                     5, 5                                   0, 10

Self    

                 Finagle                       10, 0                                   2, 2

As always in a PD, you are better off finagling no matter what the other player does.

Now, the hunting game with Trust payoffs:

 

                                                                         Other

                                                Cooperate                             Finagle

                Cooperate                    10, 10                                   0, 5

Self    

                 Finagle                          5, 0                                   2, 2

Here, as in Trust games in general, both of you do best by cooperating; you have a reason to finagle only if the other player is going to finagle.

Compared to the violence game with its relatively clear picture of aggression, the meaning of finagling or cheating in a hunt is open to interpretation.  If finagling is outright theft of the killed animal, the PD payoffs work in immediate material terms.  But in that case, I would suggest that the future-discounted payoff for the thief may well be lower than the payoff when both players cooperate, given the likelihood that the hunters know one another very well.  In that case, the game is a Trust game, not a PD.  In any case, in the hunting game as in the violence game, the players are unlikely to see themselves as having PD payoffs.  They are likely instead to see themselves as having Trust payoffs, and as feeling pressure to finagle not because they can get their best outcome from doing so but from concern the other player will do so and leave them with their worst outcome.  (Obviously, both players cannot successfully finagle by stealing the captured animal; one way to interpret the situation in which both finagle is that they abandon cooperation in favor of pursuing lower-value game individually, which makes the game a Stag Hunt, one of the variants of Trust.)

Instead of outright thievery, finagling in the hunt game can be interpreted instead in terms of harder to detect "cover your ass" or CYA behavior that minimizes the risks for the CYA player, who, say, does not take the same chance of getting gored by the tusked boar that the cooperator does and in doing so makes the hunt more dangerous for the cooperator and less likely to result in success.   If finagling is CYA behavior rather than outright thievery, the immediate material payoffs for the players as well as the future-discounted ones are likely to follow Trust rather than the PD.  The finagler lowers the probability of success to a degree that hurts him as well as the cooperator; that means his payoff for taking advantage of the cooperator is less than his payoff for mutual cooperation; that in turn means the game is Trust and not the PD.

My intuition is that hunts by our ancient ancestors and by ourselves are more likely to feature finagling in the form of CYA behavior than finagling in the form of outright thievery.   Accordingly, it seems to me that the immediate material payoffs associated with cooperating versus finagling in a hunt are usually better described as Trust games than as PDs.   further, even if the immediate material payoffs of cheating are accurately described by a PD, the future-discounted payoffs seem likely to be better described by Trust than by the PD.

 

 

 

How the Trust Game Can Replace the Prisoner's Dilemma

One may fear that the other player sees the violence game in the PD terms Pinker postulates.  If one is facing a player who sees violence in PD terms and for whom aggression is a dominant strategy, aggression is the optimal strategy for oneself. 

The higher the payoffs for ongoing mutual cooperation, the less likely it is that victory through smash and grab aggression will yield a higher return than mutual cooperation.  That should increase both players' confidence that they are playing a Trust game rather than a PD game. 

Pinker represents the effects of commerce as a lifting of the upper left payoffs for both players so that they exceed the payoffs for victorious aggression.   In other words, the game is now a Trust game, not a PD.  

The same conversion of a PD to Trust can take place when the underlying game is a positive-sum cheating game as opposed to a negative sum violence game.   To be continued...

Pinker's Violence Game and Mine

A key issue in considering social preferences and advantageous altruism is whether one sees the basic state of individual-individual and group-group interactions in terms of a Prisoner's Dilemma game or a Trust game.   My own belief is that the Trust game is often a better representation of reality than the PD game.  Further, Trust represents players as motivated in a way that the players themselves would likely accept, while the PD takes a cynical view that the players themselves would not likely accept, much as it may be true for certain individuals and situations.

Let's make the point concrete by considering the basic violence matrix that Pinker introduces under the label of The Pacifist's Dilemma (Figure 10-1, p. 679); your payoffs followed by the other's payoffs are shown in the parentheses:

 

                                                       Other

                            Pacifist                                   Aggressor

    Pacifist         Peace (5, 5)                     Defeat/Victory (-100, 10)

Self

  Aggressor    Victory/Defeat (10, -100)         War (-50, -50)

This negative-sum game is a PD, in that no matter what the other player does, you are better off being an agressor.  You get 10 instead of 5 if he is peaceful, and -50 instead of -100 if he is an aggressor.

Now consider a Trust game, which I'll call Trust or Fight:

                                                        Other

                            Pacifist                                   Aggressor

    Pacifist         Peace (10, 10)                     Defeat/Victory (-100, 5)

Self

  Aggressor    Victory/Defeat (5, -100)         War (-50, -50)

 

The payoffs here are the same as in Pinker's game with the significant exception that the best outcome for both players is peace between them rather than victory over a peaceful other. 

The Trust game accords with what a great majority of modern humans (and I suspect a large majority of current and ancient hunter-gatherers as well) would be willing to describe as their payoffs.  Successfully raiding a neighboring band to kill the men and steal the sheep and the women is not a higher payoff outcome than living in peace.  By contrast, the PD weighing of violent victory as the most preferred outcome defies what people would claim about themselves--which I believe is true most though not all of the time for the vast majority of humans.

It is quite right that some of the time the PD captures the potential for violence in a given dyadic interaction in a way that Trust does not.  But far more of the time, I believe Trust captures the reality and the PD does not.  A very large majority of the time--certainly now, and I believe for all the time modern homo sapiens has wandered on the planet--people do not follow a psychopathic payoff function of valuing the killing of innocent others and the theft of their possessions over peace.  It is certainly true, as Pinker writes, that some portion of the time people are violent and attack others, impelled by pure predation, by a righteous downgrading of the other, or by fear of the other.  But that violent state strikes me as the exception not the rule.  Human beings are so made, I would suggest, such that predatory violence is not appealing to most of us most of the time.  Rather, most of us most of the time would prefer to live in peace with the other, even if we knew we could get away with killing and robbing him. 

Or, to put it in terms of the Republic and Glaucon's questioning of Socrates: For most of us most of the time, the best outcome is not to do injustice to another successfully, but to live justly with another who lives justly with us.  The psychopath's perspective that a violence game based on the PD implicitly adopts is one very important reality of human nature in the past and the present.  But the ordinary person's perspective that deeply fears the worst outcome of being killed and robbed and that does not value killing and robbing the other over peace is a much more common and also highly important feature of human nature.  My personal preference is for a Trust game modeling of violence that adopts the ordinary person's self-professed payoffs as the norm, rather than a PD modeling that eschews the payoffs ordinary people would profess in favor of payoffs psychopaths would profess.

None of the foregoing is meant as an empirical point about the historical changes that are the focus of Pinker's book.  It is possible that I am right about the Trust game as the better one to describe the problem of violence in all or most modern societies, while Pinker is right about the PD as the better one in classical Greece and all other societies circa 300 BCE.

Was Shared and Monotheistic Religion Pacifying in its Time?

Did life for the Jews and their neighbors become less violent as local myths gave way to the more sweeping tales of Yahweh, Baal, and other deities with a wider scope than their predecessors?  Did Greece become less bloody when local gods were replaced by a more or less shared religous pantheon, even as it remained politically divided?  Did the Dark Ages spread of Christianity across Europe lower homicide and war deaths, or at least make any increases caused by the collapse of the Pax Romana smaller than they would have been?

Pinker's tables in The Better Angels of Our Nature do not directly deal with this issue; his summary of the bloodcurdling contents of the Old Testament implies a negative answer.

My own intuition is that the move away from local gods and toward shared and monotheistic religion was pacifying in its time; raiding your neighbors at night to steal their sheep, kill their men, and abduct their women is less likely to appeal when that neighboring band's gods or god are also yours.

Indirect support for the shared religion as pacifying hypothesis can be found in Pinker's tables. It's interesting to compare Figure 2-3 on p. 53, which shows an average yearly war deaths rate of around 500 per 100,000 people in various 19th and 20th c. non-state hunter-gatherer and hunter-horticulturalist societies like the Hiewa of New Guinea that I suspect have fairly local gods to Figures 3-1, 3-2, and 3-3 on pp. 60-63, which show annual homicide rates per 100,000 in England and other European regions from 1200 to 2000.  The European homicide figures for 1200, when shared religion prevailed but central authority was weak or very weak, are a great deal lower--around 20 to 90 per 100,000--than the war-only estimated death rates for the societies in New Guinea, etc.

Pinker's New Book

The Better Angels of Our Nature is excellent.  Three reasons why:

1) Pinker's ability to combine his broad argument about the ongoing pacification of the species with telling details is admirable.  For an example of the latter, consider Figure 7-14 on p. 411, showing the overall decline in homicides of intimate partners in the US from 1976 to 2005, along with a much sharper decline in male than female victims, and P's concise and reasonable explanation of the graph on pp. 411-412;

2) P's defiance of the norm that one argues by poor-mouthing the situation of one's own side is refreshing.  It's nice to read a book that decisively rejects the "Things should be at least 50-50 our way, and we've got much less than 50 so give us more!" style in favor of "Peace and reason are winning, and that's wonderful!";

3) Related to #2: P's confidence reinforces the case for the humanitarian values he espouses: Why torture or execute if the bad guys are pathetic figures on the wrong side of history?  Why not be tolerant, mellow, and reasonable?   Why not, indeed?

Pinker's book is as good as it is partly because it should cause readers of almost all persuasions to disagree with at least parts of it.  Three things I disagree with:

1) P suggests that the good Enlightenment of Locke, Hume, the American Revolution, Kant, etc.  embodies the true spirit of modernity and that bad phenomena that have occurred over the last few hundred years such as the Terror, Marxism, Communism, and fascism are atavistic in one way or another and contrary to a basically benign ethos of modernity.   I disagree.  Ideology that is rationalizing as well as demonizing seems to me much more of a distinctive problem of modernity than an aberration from modernity.  After reading P, I remain a believer that modernity as it has developed over the past few centuries involves (among other things) a strong ratcheting-up of ideological moralism that fuses the traditional groupishness of human beings with a rationalized "our values are better than yours" stance.  That rationalized groupish ideological moralism can be found, it seems to me, in the good groups as well as the bad groups of modernity, in classical liberals as well as fascists, in liberals and conservatives as well as Marxists, ultra-nationalists, and Communists.   A view of modernity as Faustian seems to me right; our modern ratcheting up of moralism to include rationalized rather than supernatural ideological value systems brings us a great deal of good in both practical and moral terms--as P very nicely chronicles--but it also risks much.  

2)  P implies--to me at least--that enlightenment can be universal at some point.  I disagree.  I believe that even if the whole world becomes Sweden and Sweden itself becomes the most advanced liberal suburbs of Stockholm, there will still be more disciplined and reasonable people and less disciplined and reasonable people in all countries; that members of certain socially salient groups, such as middle class people and working class people, will on the average be closer to or further away from the rule of reason and nonviolence; and that those who are more peaceful and reasonable will owe that desirable state partly to a group-based sense of moral superiority to their less disciplined and reasonable compatriots.  

3)  P implies--to me at least--that the right substitute for theistic religion is a faith in humanitarian values and human enlightenment over time.   I disagree.  As a politics, belief in humanitarian values and human progress is an agenda I'm very happy to subscribe to.  As a modern religion, though,I would plump instead for a yin-yang faith in opposites and in competing and complementary values in oneself, society, and the cosmos.  If a modern religion of progress and humanity is identified with the political left or center-left, it is too sectarian and too prone to its own demonizing moralism.  If it is identified with three cars in every garage and everyone a college grad, it is too materialistic and mundane to be satisfactory as a religion, much as it may be an estimable practical politics.  If it is identified with the feats of Darwin, James Joyce, Steve Jobs, and other modern gods it is too elitist, too little in touch with the part of the religious impulse that raises up the lowly and humbles the exalted. 

 

 

Three Games in Which Altruism Can Be Advantageous

[more adv. alt. notes]

In the Prisoner's Dilemma, the egoist has a dominant strategy of defecting.  Given that, there is no way that altruism in the Dilemma can help the altruist in a one-shot game.  The egoist will defect regardless, and the altruist will wind up with either his or her worst or second possible payoff.  (footnote--There are five additional games in which the egoist also has a dominant strategy and thus cannot be affected by altruism on the part of the other player.  In those games, though, unlike the Prisoner's Dilemma, the dominant strategy for the egoist is either clearly optimal for both players or very possibly optimal.  Accordingly, these five games--which could be termed Harmony Games because of their benevolent payoff structure--do not present  the significant difficulties for egoism that the Prisoner's Dilemma does.)

In six other games, though, the egoist has no dominant strategy.  In all of these games, altruism can be potentially useful to the altruist as well as to the two players together.   Three of the six games may be called assurance games.  In these games--Trust, Schelling, and Stag Hunt are the labels that will be used here--both players earn their highest payoffs if they both trust.  But if the other player does not trust, you are better off if you also do not trust.  (footnote--The three games differ among themselves in two major respects.  In two of them--Trust and Stag Hunt--if you trust when the other player does not you get your worst possible payoff, while in the third, Schelling, you get your third worst payoff.  In two of them--Schelling and Stag Hunt--both players get their second-best payoffs from both not trusting and going it alone, while in one, Trust, both players get their third-best payoffs from both going it alone.)

In the assurance games, altruism has the potential to be helpful if it leads to the altruist committing to trust.  Such a commitment leads the egoist to trust, since trust-trust is the best outcome for both players. 

Interestingly, full altruism does not do the trick in leading to commitment to trust.  As we will explore further, only a form of selective altruism that values the trust-distrust payoff for the trusting player highly will work.

A Smithian Admission and Avowal: In the Morality Sweepstakes, We Are and Should Be #2

[more notes for the adv. alt. paper]

The question of whether the advantageous altruism with which this paper is concerned is morally worthy or not cannot be elided, whether or not it can be answered.  From a Smithian/Humean/Aristotelian perspective, the answer is yes.  Morality only makes sense if in some broad sense it aligns with interest, and the historical growth in respect for anonymous others, to the extent it has indeed occurred, is a function of respect, trust, and benevolence being in people's interest now in a way that they once were not.  From a Jesus/Kant perspective, the answer is no.  The beauty, truth, and supreme goodness of morality inheres in its challenge to mere common sense, complacency, and calculation as well as to outright evil.  Only if one is as a little child, or as a god-like follower of duty who kills inclination and evil even to point of killing himself can one truly reside at the right hand of the father in the kingdom of heaven or the kingdom of ends.

The differences between the Smithian and the Jesus/Kant perspectives are intensely felt by partisans on both sides.  Not only is there the contempt of the idealist for the seeker of advantage; there is also the contempt of the practical man for an idealism that the practical man sees as a cover for the power-seeking that the practical person suspects is the actual meaning or "cash value", to borrow William James's phrase, of the moralist's idealism.

My personal sympathies in the ideological opposition between the practical man and the idealist lie mostly on the former side.  I believe that future progress not only in practical standards of living and everyday morality but also in scaling the pinnacles of theoretical ethics is much more likely to come from developments on the Smithian side than the Kantian side of modern ethics, and I have a similar belief about the generally impressive if highly zig-zag progress our species has achieved over the past several hundred years.

At the same time, I as one who is on the Smithian side both as a matter of methodology and as a matter of sympathy have an apologia to make to Kantian friends and opponents who may well be offended by the calculating spirit of this paper:  You are right, in a very important sense.   Absent a clear disclaimer, you are warranted in believing that the Smithian argument of this paper is one little piece in a bigger claim that the truth, goodness, and beauty of morality lies on the Smithian side.  I strongly disclaim any such belief.  I affirm on the contrary a belief that the bulk of the truth, goodness, and beauty of morality lies on the Kantian side, not on my own Smithian side.  Lest this be taken as a much stronger renunciation than it is actually is, I also hasten to affirm a belief that morality is only one piece of life, and not necessarily the most important piece at that.

To put the point another way: I strongly agree with and affirm the Joshua Greene claim that Kantianism gets and articulaters the human moral gut in a way that utilitarianism does not.  I  also empathize with what I take to be Greene's bent toward utilitarianism, which I share.  But--although I may be reading him quite wrong--I do not agree with what seems to me his implicit Kantian argument that utilitarianism is nobler for philosophers (though not for merchants) because it rises above our guts just as Kant counseled, while Kant himself does not.   I'm with Smith, or where I take Smith to be, all the way down.  Human nature is okay, even pretty good.  To the extent it's not, let's imagine that it's a bit better than it is and use our moral imagination as a basis for our getting along a bit better with each other.  Being pretty decent along with other people who are pretty decent is pretty good.  And yet: A Jesus who is truly impelled by duty, love, self-sacrifice, justice, etc. is indeed a much finer type than me and thee.  Jesus and Kant not only rule the moral world; they deserve to.

The Combined Value of the Idealistic and Practical Types

[more advantageous altruism notes]

One with a Jesus/Kant idealistic bent will likely find the "we're all right" upbeat practicality of Smith's take on human nature complacent and jejune at best, and at worst complicit in a crass culture of materialism and moral squalor.  On the other side of the moral fence, one with a Smith/Hume bent will likely feel a combination of respect and amused disdain for the soaring aspirations of Jesus and his secular idealistic successors.  This paper, though it is written from within the Smith/Hume tradition, assumes that both the anguished, self-critical sprit of Jesus and Kant and the optimistic, practical spirit of Smith and his great friend and contemporary David Hume are key constituents of positive human nature and of normative ethics.

Making a broad case for the viability of the assumption stated in the last paragraph would be a very large project indeed.  The point to be made here is a smaller, subsidiary one: The practical, limited altruism of the Smithian type can be usefully challenged at the margins to be nicer and more forgiving by the idealistic altruism of the pure Jesus type. The practical Smithian will shrug off the pure Jesus type's idealism when doing so is costly, but will be very open to changes in a more altruistic direction when they can be incorporated into a practical routine of reciprocated trust and generosity that is helpful to both players and to society.  The pure Jesus type, as opposed to the partially forgiving Jesus type of this paper, lacks the skills to differentiate between advantageous and disadvantageous altruism that the Smithian type has in abundance.  But the strong Jesus type usefully challenges the Smithian type to be altruistic in new ways that benefit the Smithian player, the egoist, and society.

A parallel should be noted here between the practical and idealistic sides of Greek virtue ethics represented by Aristotle and Plato respectively and the practical and idealistic sides of modern ethics represented by Smith/Hume and Jesus/Kant respectively.  The all too practical spirit of Aristotle's great-souled man was usefully challenged by the idealistic spirit of Plato's guardian.  To be sure, both were elite types who dominated the ordinary person; to adopt Nietzsche's provocative terminology, Greek ethics was master morality, not slave morality.  But if one can detach oneself from both disdain for the elitism of the great Greeks and from defensive upholding of their eternal wisdom, one can see in the combination of Plato's and Aristotle's versions of advantageous altruism a desirable check and balance to leaders who are either unrealistic fools committed to ideals with no purchase on reality (for Aristotle whatever else he is is no fool, and no one to suffer fools) or all-too-practical seekers of advantage with no ideals (for Plato whatever else he is is a true believer in ideals). 

With the Greeks viewed with a proper measure of sympathy and dispassion, one may also gain perspective on our current situation.  For all the aspirations of modern ethics of both the Smith/Hume wing and the Jesus/Kant wing to be a universal morality rather than a master morality of those who lead and rule--aspirations which here will be assumed to be entirely correct, and which I share--modern ethics is in part a guide to leaders and rulers, just as Aristotle, Plato, Confucius, and Lao Tzu were. 

The elevated position of the leader now as in classical times is justified, if it can be, by a greater concern on the part of the leader for followers, for others in general, and for the whole than is found among more egoistic, narrower, less elevated non-leaders.   Again, if one can detach oneself both from indignation at the degree to which modern ethics remains elitist and of indignant defense of elitism as an eternal verity, one can see in the combination of Jesus and Smith a highly useful set of restraints and incentives for modern leaders that is lacking in either type alone.  Smith will not be a fool. much as he is far nicer than Aristotle about suffering them. Jesus will not suffer hypocrites, much as he is far nicer than Plato about those who fail to live up to ideals.  In the combination of the two modern types as in the combination of the two classical types, one finds usefully ambivalent leaders who are neither slaves to ideals nor to advantage.

How Smithian Sympathy Leads to Success

[more notes for my advantageous altruism paper, this time for the section on sympathy]

Instead of forgiving another for messing up, one can experience a combination of fellow feeling with the presumed regret of the other for making a mistake that harms both players along with a moral superiority glow for having not messed up oneself.   The results of sympathy for the other who makes a mistake combined with a sense of superiority to the other turn out to be the same as those of forgiveness for the other who makes a mistake, as we shall now see. 

In the three assurance games (Trust, Schelling, and Stag Hunt), the sympathetic player feels for the other who plays distrust and causes both players to lose their best payoffs for lower payoffs.  Because of that feeling of sympathy for and superiority to the player who makes a mistake, trust for the sympathetic altruist is a dominant stategy in these games.  Knowing that, an egoistic player will also trust, resulting in both players receiving their best outcomes.

The result--a useful commitment to trust--is the same for the sympathetic player as it is for the forgiving player, but the psychological mechanism is quite different.  The "Jesus" player experiences an exalted "forgive them Father" glow when the other messes up that makes her fine with that outcome.  The "Smith" player experiences a more prosaic blend of sympathy and superiority.   The bottom line, though, is the same.  The Smithian is fine with the outcome in which he trusts and the other player does not, just as the Jesus player is.   Accordingly, the egoist who knows the type he is playing with trusts in a game with the Smithian, just as he does in a game with the Jesus player. 

In the two pure leadership games (Leadership and Battle of the Sexes), the sympathetic player feels for the other who deviates from the strategy that is the best for the two together and that gives the sympathizer his or her highest payoff.  As a result of sympathy, the sympathizer's payoff for both players leading is greater than his or her payoff for following when the other leads.  That means that leading is dominant for the sympathizer when the combination of the sympathizer leading and the other player following is the best overall for both players.  Knowing that, the other player will follow the sympathizer when doing so is the highest joint value choice. 

Once again, the outcome just described for the Smithian player is the same as the outcome for the Jesus player, but with a quite different psychological mechanism.   For "Jesus," a (partial) indifference to the things of the material world supports valuing the outcome when the other player messes up by the failing to follow.   For the materially-oriented and practical "Smith," on the other hand, what makes that outcome fine is the combination of fellow feeling for the presumed regret of the other and a warm feeling of being better than the other, a feeling that the practical "Smith" is not internally conflicted about to the same degree that the idealistic "Jesus" is.

Though the empirical issues lie beyond the scope of this paper, I would suggest that "Smith" is likely a much more common type in wealthy modern societies with high levels of day to day, routine trust among strangers than "Jesus" is.  The idealistic bent of "Jesus" makes the type's altruism hard to cabin and confine to advantageous forms.   Why exactly, the introspective "Jesus" type may wonder, should he be so made that he only has a powerful feeling of forgiveness when doing so is helpful or netural to him?   Why not have it in the Prisoner's Dilemma and in other situations in which forgiveness is not advantageous?   Why, indeed.  By contrast, the practical Smithian type can look at himself and pronounce his mixed blend of egoism, altruism, and competitiveness good, much as the real Smith does in The Theory of Moral Sentiments.  

 

 

 

What's Beyond Good and Evil and Beyond Good and Bad?

Suppose Nietzsche is right that there has been a transition from the old master morality of good and bad, strong and weak, noble and base to a Jewish-Christian-liberal morality of good and evil that in some ways reverses the high and low of the old morality. 

Suppose further that the old morality of good and bad isn't coming back to rule us, and that in fact it will continue to decline. 

Suppose further, contra Nietzsche, that that's a very good thing, in that good and evil for all its unpleasantly demonizing and hysterical aspects is by and large a profound improvement on the old master morality.

Then what?

I'm not sure at all, as a positive matter.  I have a hope, though: Good and good. 

Does that mean yin and yang, the dao, etc.?   Kind of, and kind of not.  The daoism of Lao Tzu is at least as much of a master morality of noble and base as the virtue ethics of Aristotle and Plato are, and I'm not rooting for the rise of that aspect of daoism.  But I do hope for the future rise outside East Asia of the central part of daoism that posits competing and complementary goods.  

 

Turning the Other Cheek as a Winning Strategy

[Working on my advantageous altruism paper for the 1/10/12 Academy of Management deadline and then for business ethics journal submission...some draft notes for the "Jesus" section of the paper follow...comments welcome as always]

If your enemy hits you on the cheek, turning your other cheek, rewarding as it may well be in giving one a satisfying sense of moral superiority, does not seem to have much potential as a way of getting ahead in the world.  The fact that a preacher of a gospel of turning the other cheek and loving one's enemy became the central figure of the world's most widely followed religion, though in some sense a confirmation of the idea that altruism can in some fashion redound to one's practical benefit, is also a profound challenge to that idea.  Compared to Plato and Aristotle, with their successful lives and their notion of a virtuous character whose self-interest lies in following the good, Jesus with his disastrous end and his notion of radical self-sacrifice is on the face of it a great rebuker of the notion of advantageous altruism.   Think not of the morrow...be not like unto the Pharisees...it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God: In all of these maxims attributed to Jesus one senses a spirit radically opposed to calculation and to a morality of egoistic prudence and self-advancement.

And yet, the logic of relative success and resultant Darwinian advantage in cultural reproduction is not simple.  It can be the case that the way to get ahead is to disdain getting ahead, and that the way to win is to disdain winning and indeed to embrace outcomes in which one loses.   In what follows, I will trace out a claim that the Jesus of the Sermon on the Mount can be reasonably understood as advocating not only self-sacrifice that loses in practical if not moral terms, as he indeed does, but also as advocating a form of altruistic forgiveness that is highly advantageous to the forgiver in his interactions with an egoist.  Further, I will suggest that this advantageous form of forgiving altruism has two great virtues compared to the egalitarian altruism of Plato and the masterful altruism of Aristotle.   First, forgiving altruism solves an important family of assurance (or trust) games that are not solved by the Platonic or Aristotelian forms of altruism.  Second and even more important, forgiving altruists do well with other forgiving altruists.  Not everyone can be a successful egalitarian guardian or great-souled man, but everyone in a society can be successful together as forgiving altruists playing games with other forgiving altruists.  

The basic idea of advantageous forgiving altruism can be stated as follows: You as the forgiving altruist have a deep positive feeling for the other's payoff, for yourself, and for the situation when you as the forgiving altruist choose an action that could or should result in the highest combined payoff for both of you (with either the best payoff for you and the second best for the other, or the second best payoff for both of you), but the other player "messes up" by choosing an action that gives both of you lower payoffs than you could have enjoyed.   The basic concept is expressed much more succinctly in Luke 23:34: "Jesus said, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do." 

Forgiving altruism as just defined is helpful to the forgiving altruist because it amounts to a commitment to play a strategy that is as good as or better for the forgiving altruist as it is for the other player when the other player responds optimally to the commitment.  It is also good for the other player--though not quite as good as it is for the forgiving altruist--because the other player receives no worse than her second best payoff, and may well receive her best payoff along with the forgiving altruist. 

Although forgiving altruism is not an approach that wins for the altruist or for both players collectively in all games, it has a considerably broader sweep than egalitarian altruism and masterful altruism do.  While those two types of selective altruism are effective in three out of the seven games of interest, forgiving altruism is effective not only in Leadership and the Battle of the Sexes, but also in the three assurance games--Trust, Schelling, and Stag Hunt.  The only games on which it has no purchase is the Prisoner's Dilemma, where no form of selective altruism can have any purchase given the dominance of non-cooperation for the egoist, and Chicken. 

In Chicken, the Greek altruists rule the roost because of their commitment to lead, which causes the egoist to yield.  By contrast, the forgiving altruist as defined here does not commit to lead, because doing so would stick the egoist with her second worst payoff.  (footnote--A less nice variant of forgiving altruist--Jesus with more Aristotle in him?--who commits to the highest value outcome when it is best for him even when it would stick the other player with a second worst outcome does win Chicken with an egoist.  Further, that un-nice but forgving altruist avoids lead-lead wrecks in Chicken with another un-nice forgiving altruist because both commit only to a highest joint value outcome.)  The result is that the game is up for grabs with a forgiving altruist and an egoist (or two forgiving altruists), just as it is in a game with two egoists.  (footnote--Socially, the "up for grabs" outcome in Chicken in which both players play mixed Nash is not as good as the outcome in which the leader gets first best and the follower gets third best.  That is the one case in which the Greek altruists socially outperform the forgiving altruist in interactions with an egoist.)

The Greek altruists clean up in the two pure leadership games.  By comparison, the forgiving altruist takes a smaller though still preponderant share of the pie in Leadership and Battle of the Sexes games with an egoist.  The reason is that the forgiving altruist as defined here, unlike the Greek altruists, does not play the strategy that gives her the highest payoff if it is not also the strategy that has the highest joint value.  That restraint has the very considerable virtue of allowing two forgiving altruists to do very well indeed in playing leadership games with one another.  (footnote--One will get his or her highest value payoff, and the other will get her second highest value payoff.)  But it also means that the forgiving altruist will not commit to leading if the highest joint value outcome is for the egoist to lead.  In those situations, the game between a forgiving altruist and an egoist is up for grabs, as it is in a game between two egoists.  (footnote--A nicer type of forgiving altruist than the basic type defined here has a warm glow when the other messes up by deviating from an outcome in which the forgiving altruist earns her second highest payoff and the other earns her highest payoff.  That type does not beat the egoist in leadership games; combined with the fact that the basic type as defined here does not beat the egoist in assurance games, the result is that the nicer variant on forgiving altruism does not prevail over the egoist overall, though it also does not lose to the egoist.)

In the three assurance games--Trust, Schelling, and Stag Hunt--the forgiving altruist as defined here does not beat the egoist.  In these games, the best payoff for both players comes if they both trust.  The "forgive them" commitment by the forgiving altruist to play trust leads to both players getting their best outcomes, not to a win over the egoist by the forgiving altruist.  (footnote--A less nice variant of the forgiving altruist that is only committed to trust when his cardinal payoff is at least as high as the other player's will prevail over the egoist.  Such a less nice or competitive forgiving altruist will not throw away value in playing assurance games with another un-nice forgiving altruist, since both players will recognize and follow the other's commitment and coordinate on trust-trust.) 

Overall, the forgiving altruist does not take the egoist to the cleaners the way the Greek altruists do.  But the forgiving altruist does indeed outperform the egoist.  And crucially, the forgiving altruist does even better in interactions with another forgiving altruist than she does with an egoist.  In contrast with the guardian and the great-souled man, who are both elite types, the forgiving altruist is an excellent candidate to be a general or universal type.