Value Competition

Will the Parties Reach a Deal to Reduce their Allies' Power?

Assume both liberal and conservative parties have an incentive to reduce the power of their union or church allies as part of a corresponding reduction in the power of the other side's allies.  Will a deal between the parties be reached?  A key obstacle is that it is much harder to think of plausible public policies to curb the power of churches than it is to think of plausible public policies to curb the power of unions.  Reducing or eliminating collective bargaining and anti-discrimination protections given to private sector unions federally in the 1930s and to public sector unions at the state level are plausible if highly controversial public policy changes.  By contrast, a law that eliminated the charitable tax deduction for religions that maintain their members are divinely favored and/or maintain non-scientific beliefs is not a plausible legal change.  Given that asymmetry, it is hard to see that an implicit deal between the parties could be reached.  Absent such a deal, it is hard to see the reason for liberal politicians to support legal changes that would hobble their key allies in mobilizing lower-SES voters while keeping the key mobilizing allies of conservatives intact.

Robert Wright's Next Book

The Evolution of God is very good as a critical but sympathetic guide to the Abrahamic religions and their scriptures.  I would like to see Wright's next book be something that the current one isn't, namely an argument for God as a plausible scientific hypothesis.  That hypothetical book would challenge those of us who are secular in a way that his current book and related NYT op-ed don't, as Daniel Dennett points out in today's letters.  

How might that work?   In the book and the op-ed, Wright refers to the possibility that a divine presence arranged the algorithms of natural selection, presumably including the "non-zero-sumness" of reciprocal cooperation that Wright rightly regards as a central feature of the way history and evolution work.  My skeptical response is, "How could it be any different?"  That is, if the algorithms of natural selection, including the logic of reciprocal cooperation, have to be what they are regardless of the universe you're in, I don't see a case based for God based on those algorithms.  But if I'm persuaded that non-zero-sumness is like physical constants that could be anything but have to be just so for matter to coagulate as it actually does, then an advocate for God as a plausible hypothesis has an "isn't it amazing that things are so neatly arranged morally as well as practically in our universe" argument that a good scientific Bayesian has to engage.

Personally, I'm a skeptic about the "isn't the moral order wondrous" argument; my prior is that the algorithms of natural selection and non-zero-sumness--and the humbler algorithms of value competition that I try to tease out--are universe-invariant like math, not universe-variant like physics.  But I'm less than confident about that prior, and would love to read a book by Wright that tries to persuade me that I'm wrong.

The Future Evolution of God

Just finished reading Robert Wright's new book, which I liked a lot.  My guess/hope is that the God who eventually emerges as the one major God for the planet will be less austerely unitary than the dominant Jewish and Muslim versions and less male than all three major Abrahamic versions.  One way God might evolve to give Chinese yin-yang and Greek, Hindu, and other polytheisms or complex monotheism/polytheisms their due: There's a "male" component to the future God that embodies authority and its sometimes self-interested assertion but that also embodies distance between authority and the acted upon, and consequent freedom of the acted upon; we might call that component Zeus.  There's also a "female" component that embodies maternal authority exercised on behalf of the acted upon, with limited distance between authority and the acted upon--that would be Hera.  Within the necessary, cooperating, and also competitive "female" and "male" aspects of God, there are subaspects.  For example, there is a compulsive, technical, socially withdrawn but needy "male" component of God--Haphaestus.  There's a similar "female" divine component that is also withdrawn and skilled in crafts but is associated with nature rather than technique--Artemis.  There is an emotional, physically powerful and not always wise "male" component of God--Ares--and an emotional, physically beautiful, and not always wise "female" component--Aphrodite.   And so on through Apollo, Athena, and the rest of the faces of God.

No, the Greek pantheon will not return.  But a good thing it is, I believe, if God is seen in terms of having competing valuable principles/character features rather than as featureless, characterless, and homogeneous. 

The Analogy between Religion and Education

Is the economic analysis of religion creepy?   One can emulate Jeremy Bentham or Al Roth (the HBS professor who posts on repugnant markets http://kuznets.fas.harvard.edu/~aroth/alroth.html ) and stand up for consequentialism in its creepy as well as its mainstream manifestations.  Personally, though, I prefer trying to use analogies to reduce the sense of creepiness that extending economic analysis to new domains can engender.  

For an analysis of how unregulated religious markets can lead to market failures in the form of religions that fail to socialize their members effectively, I think the right analogy is to education.  In that sphere, as in the religious one, there's a generally accepted (and I believe correct) case that there are positive externalities of the activity that make certain public subsidies warranted.   In education, though, not even the most fervent supporter of vouchers argues for giving out the money without substantial quality control by the government.  Allowing that people feel differently about the direct provision of government dollars to education compared to the indirect provision of dollars to religion through property tax and income tax subsidies, there is a logical case for extending at least a measure of the quality control that people rightly expect in government-supported education to governmentt-supported religion.   Whether this argument gets people to change their minds on moving away from the highly hands-off stance the US now takes toward tax-supported religion or not, I believe it helps advance the case for doing so in a way that has less of a "creep-out" factor than a pure economic argument does. 

Three Approaches to Religion: Which Is Closest to Optimal?

(The first two of the three approaches described below are drawn from work by Chris Young, with whom I'm planning a paper on market failure in religious markets.)

Ideal type 1: "Perfect competition."  The government subsidizes religion (through, e.g., property tax exemptions for religious buildings and tax deductions for religious donations) without regard to its history, theology, or intellectual rigor (or the behavior of its followers).   Nation that approaches ideal type 1: United States.

Ideal type 2: "Monopoly."  The government forbids or heavily discourages all but one religion; in the extreme, intrabrand competition (e.g., between Sunnis and Shiites) is forbidden or discouraged as well as interbrand competition (e.g., between Muslims and Christians).   Nation that approaches ideal type 2: Saudi Arabia. 

Idea type 3: "Preferential subsidy for civic religion."  The government preferentially supports a religion or religions that is/are regarded as fostering the nation's civic culture and prosocial behavior by members; there are no barriers to entry for other religions, but they are not subsidized.  Nations that approach ideal type 3: Britain, Germany, Sweden, Italy, Spain, France.

Under a consequentialist, efficiency-oriented approach in which the desideratum is maximizing the positive externalities associated with religion, there is a plausible case that ideal type 2 is deficient, basically for all the standard reasons monopoly is suboptimal: lazy producers not subject to invisible hand discipline serve their interests rather than those of society.  Less intuitively, there is also a plausible case that ideal type 1 is deficient.  One way to model that argument: Free competition and universal subsidy leads to the flourishing of low-cost, low-quality religion that does not effectively discipline its followers, and that also deters the development within the nation of a strong shame or guilt culture that deters anti-social conduct.   One could support (though not prove) that argument by a comparison of levels of interpersonal violence in the type 1 US (relatively high) to the type 2 Saudi Arabia (relatively low, though underreporting of, e.g., violence against women may make the compaison tricky) and the type 3 UK (relatively low); within the US, one could support it in a different way with a comparison of the relatively high levels of interpersonal violence in certain regions and subcultures marked by a particularly high level of religious adherence and zeal (e.g., the South, African-Americans) compared to the relatively lower level in certain other regions and subcultures with a lower level of religious adherence and zeal.

The policy implication: On balance, the European model of preferential subsidy of civic religion is better than that the American perfect competition approach or the Saudi monopolistic approach. 

Policy consequences?   A type 1 nation like the US could move closer to type 3 by rearranging its system of religious subsidies to be contingent n, e.g., the intellectual level of the material the religion presents to its members, the adherence of its followers to social norms, and the religion's support for the nation and its civic culture.  Such an alteration of the current US model would be expected to produce a lower level of religious adherence and zeal (given that subsidized religion might well be regarded as dull and pallid, and intellectually low-quality religion forgiving of bad behavior by members would no longer be subsidized), but also a higher level of adherence to civic culture norms of avoidance of personal violence and theft (given that religions that forgive violation of these norms would no longer be subsidized and in their reduced form would present less of a challenge to the hegemony of social norms of nonviolence and honesty).   (Whether such changes would be compatible with US civic culture norms of nondiscrimination in matters of religion is a highly tricky and emotional issue, it must be acknowledged; as one brought up in that culture and respectful of its norms, I feel a tension between an economic model I think may accord with reality and my own personal attachment to the American approach to religion over the European one.)

For its part, a type 2 nation like Saudi Arabia might move closer to type 3 by retaining Islam in general or in a specific form as a state religion receiving preferential subsidies, while at the same time reducing or eliminating barriers to entry.   Finally, a type 3 nation like the UK that is worried about members of minority religions being permanently alienated from the civic culture could move toward a system of subsidizing religions other than the state church that meet civic culture standards; that type of movement in type 3 European nations likely would be considerably easier politically than a movement in the US away from the principle of neutrality in subsidizing religions.

A final note: All of the above is based on rational choice, rather than value competition.  Given my primary interest in VC rather than RC, I need to ask myself whether there's a helpful VC take on any of the foregoing. One idea:  A relatively intuitive way to put the basic VC analysis of politics is that suboptimal outcomes are highly likely when a policy struggle involves head-butting between groups as opposed to a situation in which groups are split by cross-cutting cleavages.  That means that the prospects for successfully reforming the American approach to religion are low if the reformers are, or are perceived as, carrying out a cram-down vendetta against Southern Baptists, black ministers, or new religions; the prospects for successful reform are much better if significant elements among the Southern Baptists, black ministry, and new religions support the move toward preferential subsidy.

The Tyranny of Egoism and the Tyranny of Altruism

In the elite-majority model of politics, the two basic kinds of suboptimality that need to be addressed by competing values are the tyranny of the majority and the tyranny of the elite(s).  For a model of optimal indvidual decision, the most logical candidates for suboptimality could be labelled the tyranny of egoism and the tyranny of altruism.

The problem of egoism being unduly strong is the more intuitively obvious one.  It makes sense for people to have a strong measure of self-concern from the perspective of utility maximization (not just that of evolutionary theory), given that such concern is a relatively cheap way to induce people to advance the whole by advancing their own interests.  But there are obvious pitfalls, in the form of egoistic disregard of negative externalities and of overemphasis on one's immediate as opposed to one's future welfare.

The problem of excessive altruism in the form of selves too oversocialized to be as helpful as they could be for social welfare is less obvious.  But it is also real.  A society of Peter Singers who gave away most of their earnings to the needy would arguably be a poor and futile society; a society of family and clan altruists who lacked concern about their own individual achievement would arguably also be plagued by poverty and futility. 

The point: As helpful as both altruistic and egoistic concerns are, both can lead to decisions by the self that are suboptimal for social welfare.  

The Coalition Politics of Altruistic and Egoistic Values

The optimality result in the elite-majority bargain model depends on a combination of altruistic and egoistic values/norms on the part of voters that align self-interested politicians with social welfare.  My intution is that a Weberian model of optimal individual decision will similarly rely on a combination of egoistic and altruistic values/norms, with competing control centers in the brain standing in for party politicians. 

Assuming such a result can be generated, there is an issue as to the plausibility of a combination of altruistic and egoistic norms in individuals.  For modeling purposes, one can simply assume such a combination.  But unless there is a plausible story one can tell about how egoistic norms such as "work harder for your gain than short-term self-interest would call for" and altruistic norms such as "obey the rules regardless" can arise together, the model is detached from reality.

A story that seems plausible to me: The inculcation of purely altruistic values (e.g., calculate and work just as hard for the utility of a stranger as one's own utility; follow the rules no matter what that means for you) is highly difficult and costly.  So, although perhaps less evidently, is the inculcation of purely egoistic values (e.g., overcome your resistance to hard work to pursue your own gain).   Why?  Envision the brain as divided roughly evenly into strong self and other emotions and intuitions.  The alteration of the existing balance in favor of new altruistic values splits the altruistic side, part of which views altruism in different or more limited terms than the new values do, and is opposed across the board by the self side, resulting in the new altruistic values losing a hypothetical brain vote.  A similar process results in the defeat of "work hard for your future" egoistic values, with the self side split and the altruistic side united in opposition.

The suggestion is that what can overcome the resistance of the brain to new altruistic and egoistic values is a fusion of the two types of values.  Egoistic striving for gain combined with rigorous adherence to duty can gain some support from both the self and other sides of the brain, creating the possibility of a coalition with enough support from both sides to win overall.   The Calvinist self that embodies a heightening of both egoistic and altruistic norms is a plausible self on this account, while a purely gain-oriented New Capitalist Man or a purely altruistic New Socialist Man are not plausible selves.

The Political Self and the Calvinist Self

 A central feature of a political or Madisonian model of norms in the self is competition between two or more control centers, each of which has an interest in coming up with policies for the self that enhance the prospects of that control center enjoying the perquisites of control in the future. The key modeling issue is whether the self-interest of control centers is aligned with enhancing social welfare. If so, the competition between or among the centers will lead to value-enhancing though not necessarily optimal outcomes. If not, competition will not necessarily produce improvement over the non-competitive or dictatorial situation in which a single control center in the brain enjoys the perquisites of control and acts on its own behalf rather than that of the self as a whole or the social system as a whole.

In order for competing control centers not to enter into a cartel in which they expropriate the benefits of control for themselves to the detriment of the self and society, there is a need to have barriers to cartelization. Such barriers--antitrust policy for the brain--might be supplied by having control centers that work on such different principles that fusing them is costly or impossible, or by otherwise limiting possibilities for cooperation between the centers. A difficulty of doing so is that uncooperative control centers in the brain impose their own costs in terms of potential divisiveness and incoherence within the self.

To what degree can Weber's depiction of self-denying asceticism and self-aggrandizing worldliness in Calvinism can be related to the just-stated political self propositions about internal competition and aligning incentives with social welfare?   For Calvinism to be value-enhancing under the political self framework, it must contribute to better alignment and/or harder work by at least two competing control centers. For example, if Calvinism simply enhanced the intensity with which a calculative control center of the brain can work but did nothing for the intensity with which a competing cultural/rules/rights/duties control center can work, the benefits from Calvinism are expected to be limited, since the calculative center of the brain will work no harder than is necessary to defeat the cultural center.  Since Weber's argument is plausibly interpreted as a claim that the impetus given by Calvinism to calculative rationality was matched by the impetus it gave to non-calculative rules and duties, it readily can be restated in political self terms, at least if the competing control centers in the brain are viewed as calculative and cultural reason.

Modeling Weber

In "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism," Weber famously argued that the development of capitalism owed a great deal historically to the development of worldly asceticism among the Calvinists and certain other Protestant sects.   Belief in one's worldly work as a calling, Weber contended, led both Calvinist capitalists and Calvinist workers to a high level of striving that was irrational by the lights of other religions, and more broadly irrational by the lights of tradition and established norms of human behavior.   At the same time, strong, religiously-backed commitments to truth-telling and promise-keeping helped Calvinists succeed in a way that a simple commitment to work alone would not have.

Weber suggested that the original Calvinist fusion of utilitarian calculation and adherence to divinely-ordained moral duties atrophied over time in favor of a utilitarianism in which once-rigorous moral rules became the creature of utility.  Benjamin Franklin's maxims in "Poor Richard's Almanac," which form a central part of Chapter 2, "The Spirit of Capitalism," are products of a Calvinist culture, epitomized by Franklin's Calvinist father, that has turned in a utilitarian direction, exemplified by Franklin's own rationalist deism.   Given the decline in belief in inflexible moral rules, the continued spread of capitalism from Franklin's time to the present has been supported by institutional and legal structures that uphold promise-keeping and other moral rules no longer supported by individuals' rigorous religious beliefs.

I believe Weber's argument can be modeled in terms of whether individuals act in a way that enhances social welfare.  It would be important for such a model to include a representation of how suboptimal decisions can be made by an individual without a combination of egoistic, "work harder on your own behalf" values and altruistic, "adhere to your duties" values, along with a representation of how optimality or a closer approach to it is achieved by a certain combination of egoistic and altruistic values.  Even if the decision process thus represented is mostly or entirely notional because it would be too costly for the brain as a whole to work that way, at least all of the time, the optimality result is important, because it can be used to support a claim that a small part of the brain involved in controlling a decision will be incentivized to act in accord with social welfare rather than its own welfare.  The key step is that the controlling part is motivated to act in accord with the interests of the whole if it, like a politician in a democracy, is subject to losing its control position in the brain and the perquisites associated with it.

Some other features that the model could usefully have: 1) deriving (or if necessary assuming) the nature of the control center(s) in the brain; 2)  deriving (or assuming) a self-other split in the brain; 3) deriving (or assuming) the point that a combination of egoistic and altruistic values can more readily be adopted by the brain than either kind of values alone; 4) deriving (or assuming) the role of calculative or utilitarian reason and rule-oriented, duty-oriented, rights-oriented reason in the brain and its control center(s

If the Weberian model works, it should generate the result that optimality is achieved (or approached) with a combination of self-oriented and other-oriented calculation and rules.  Other expected results of a Weberian model: Neither utilitarianism alone nor duty alone works; neither self-orientation nor other-orientation works; finally, calculation must be both self and other-oriented, as must rules, for optimality to be approached as closely as possible.  Unlike the others, the last result is not taken from Weber, since he can be interpreted as equating calculation with self-orientedness and rules with other-orientedness; nevertheless, I believe a Weberian model will come out that way.

Markets and Market Failures in Religion

Just as liberals tend to worry about economic market failures, conservatives tend to worry about cultural market failures.  One useful way to model that concern--for which I'm indebted to Christopher Young, a Ph.D. candidate in the Rutgers Division of Global Affairs  http://dga.rutgers.edu/about.html whose thesis committee I'm on--goes like this, and is worth reflecting on regardless of one's political predilections:

In a free market for religion in which consumers choose religious products from producers, the usual logic of eonomic exchange will result in producers making the product as cheap and as rewarding as possible to the consumer.  Unfortunately, given a self-interested human nature along the lines insisted upon not only by St. Augustine and much of traditional religion but also by much of neoclassical economics in both its pro-market and pro-regulatory wings, there are substantial negative externalities involved in that process of exchange.  Given a monopoly, religion that is demanding of self and hence socially useful can flourish.  But in a competitive religious market, consumers will not demand religious products that require self-sacrifice on behalf of others and the community. 

The model can be expressed in value competition terms: A useful balance in the basic internal opposition between egoistic and altruistic values can be lost as the result of a decline in social institutions, notably consensually adhered to religion, that support the latter type of values.  Balance can also be lost from a rise in social institutions, such as stock exchanges and for-profit corporations, that support the former type of values.

The model can also be countered in both value competition and rational choice terms.  A VC counter I don't find especially plausible is that social institutions are not important in affecting the balance between egoistic and altruistic values, since an optimal balance is strongly hard-wired in human nature.  A VC (and RC) counter I find more plausible is that religious institutions in a competitive market do as well at inculcating altruistic values as monopoly religious institutions.  The individual consumer of a religious product is buying affiliation with a group, and the consumer's desire to be viewed as a fit member by others in the group will motivate altruistic behavior and values on the part of the consumer. 

A policy implication of the RC and VC models and countermodels of religious markets: Contrary to what one might think, traditionalist conservatives have a significant reason to regulate religious leaders to see that their operations are not actually shams of one kind or another.  Liberals for their own reasons might well agree, making it plausible that at some point in the future there will be a deal struck between the sides for a kind of "SEC for religion," providing that the legal problems posed by the free exercise clause can be managed.