Direct democracy blows: part I.

Consider the following quotation from a textbook on early modern Europe:

“Drawing on the traditions of Plato and Calvin, he [Rousseau] defined freedom as obedience to the law. In his case, the law to be obeyed was that created by the general will. In a society with virtuous customs and morals in which citizens have adequate information on important issues, the concept of the general will is normally equivalent to the will of a majority of voting citizens. Democratic participation in decision making would bind the individual citizen to the community. Rousseau believed the general will, thus understood, must always be right and that to obey the general will is to be free. This argument led him to the notorious conclusion that under certain circumstances some people must be forced to be free. Rousseau’s politics thus constituted a justification for radical direct democracy and for collective action against individual citizens.”*

A couple of things here: firstly, Rousseau was crazy. Really, I don’t think that is an exaggeration. But brilliant as well. So much of what he said went up against the accepted assumptions of his time that he is one of those rare birds that manages to break out of the supposedly all-encompassing thought structure of any given period.

That being said, a lot of that was for the worse, refuting some of the best lessons of the Enlightenment. As soon as we get going with the above quote, we run into trouble. Anyone who bases any of their political thought on Calvin immediately gives causes for suspicion. Calvinism, one of the most morally stringent forms of Protestantism and also the one that gives the least in return, in terms of psychological and theological comfort, does not sound like a practical place to start when figuring out a political system that needs to deal with dirty, human interest. ** Needless to say, our modern democracy here in California hardly qualifies as having “virtuous customs” in the way Rousseau imagined them (which would include, by the by, a total separation of the spheres between men and women). Thus, direct democracy as we practice it today would look like a farce to Rousseau, since he would probably take issue with everything, from the inequalities built into the voting system to the fact that we like to vote ourselves tax cuts. (Individual profit as motive is no good here, you see; nor is large amounts of private property.)

That being said, I can’t help wondering what those conservatives who think that something like Prop 8 is constitutionally and/or philosophically sound would think when confronted with the implications of this quote. Because really, what Prop 8 did was exactly what Rousseau intended the “general will” to be empowered to do: enable “collective action against individual citizens.” When you argue that the will of the people has passed Prop 8, and therefore Prop 8 is right, it would be well to inform yourself not only of all the times the “will of the people” has voted to do things much more horrific than stripping citizens of legal equality but, what the philosophical implications are in such a statement.

Personally, I’d rather have activist judges any day over Rousseau’s inescapable, omniscient “general will,” closed to reconsideration, reason, or exception.

[Perhaps more on this latter: the “tyranny of the majority” problem can also be well addressed by a look at Madison.]

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* The Western Heritage, Donald Kagan, 569.

** Not for all people, obviously, otherwise there would be no attraction to him; but personally, reveling in the thought of my total inability to comprehend any moral order because the order of God is so beyond my comprehension and thus, giving up on the only tool I have, reason, as a mode of finding answers to the most basic questions of human existence? Not my cup of tea, and, I would argue, while perhaps theologically attractive to some, not a very useful place to start when coming up with political constitutions.

Of course, a lot of people would point to groups like the Puritans and place the origins of much modern democracy in covenant theology of Calvinist origin; fair enough. But that’s not what Rousseau is taking out of Calvin, is it? At least certainly not a select, covenanted communion with a Christian God that has religious tests for membership, considering he was a Deist. And furthermore, I would argue that while the covenant theology/origins of democracy obviously has some validity, especially in America, that it had just as much and probably more to do with British political culture operating in the backwaters of America where representative assemblies and local modes of government needed to be created somehow, in any case, and in New England this was often facilitated by religious organization.

Talking about economics with someone who knows very little (next to nothing) about economics.

That is, me. Yesterday I attended the “Stimulus Smackdown” debate, which pitted this guy (Bradford DeLong) and this guy (Michele Boldrin) against each other. I was interested in attending because I know very little about the actual contours of this debate (when held amongst intelligent people, that is; I know plenty about the argument, ‘why should we be bailing out welfare queens and people who bought houses they couldn’t afford’ genre) and I wanted to hear two very informed people try to convince me of more or less opposite arguments. So, I will try to summarize both the main points and questions I came away with.

- Firstly, it seemed that Boldrin didn’t really think the stimulus package was going to do irreparable harm; again there wasn’t a lot of ideological nonsense going on here; but that according to how he reads available evidence, if you put in say, 1% into the economy from government stimulus, you’re only going to get 1% back, or break even, more or less. Furthermore, the problem is with the financial system itself, and that is not going to be fixed, as Boldrin somewhat dismissively mocked, by building hospitals in rural Wisconsin or what have you. The stimulus package “propaganda” redirects public attention away from the real problem, offering a quick fix and thus extending the time we’ve already wasted on not addressing the real fundamental issues.

- DeLong argues that new research shows that the return on government stimulus is more like 3 to 1, and furthermore argues that neither he nor the Obama administration is billing the stimulus package as a fix to the broken financial system itself, but as a way to “stop the bleeding” before the unemployment caused by the financial system breakdown gets out of control and a downward spiral continues. It is stabilizing the patient, in other words, in order to give time for a diagnosis and treatment. (I couldn’t help imagining during these metaphors, of course, what Dr. House would do about this metaphorical patient.) This makes a whole lot of sense to me, but it leads to another disagreement between the two:

- DeLong makes this argument on the assumption that the stimulus package will create jobs. Boldrin, I think, is not convinced because he argues that the areas hardest hit, say for example the construction business, are not going to be directly provided jobs by this stimulus package, and so the unemployment will not really be significantly reduced – or, as he put it, if a patient has an injury on his arm you don’t put a band aid on his butt, or, you can’t make a nurse out of a construction worker. But DeLong thinks the work force is more flexible than Boldrin realizes.

There were a lot more topics discussed and, subtleties addressed which I don’t have the expertise to really follow. One of the more interesting qualities of the debate, however, was this running joke about the awfulness of macroeconomics, which both DeLong and Bouldrin agreed is self-referential and based on theoretical models instead of dealing with real economic phenomena as is. It got to the point where almost every expert which got up to ask a question made a joke about whether he was or wasn’t a macro economist.

This tension is compelling to me; I love the “models vs. pure empiricism” argument that takes place not only in economics, apparently, but also social science and definitely history. I can see the points on both sides, and I liked how cheerfully the attending macro economists embraced their much maligned professions, seemingly interested, nonetheless, in improving the field and yet still having faith in the tools they had learned. How does such a split within a profession develop, and what are the advantages of either approach? I recall MarxistBob complaining about the lack of social science in our history department; does he have a point? Are historians too unwilling to use models and theories because they fetishize their ability to answer small questions but find some misplaced virtue in insisting on the impossibility of answering the larger ones?

So where did I find myself leaning at the end of the debate? Well, in terms of evidence presented, I felt like both sides broke pretty even. I’ve read too much of Eric’s stuff lately not to be compelled by his counterfactual – that if a huge amount of government money spent on wartime can pull a nation out of a deep depression, why do you necessarily need the war?, why can’t you stimulate any industry in this manner? This argues, I would think, that you do not see more than 1 to 1 returns on government stimulus most of the time, because there is a high tipping point here, and it takes a lot of spending, more than the political culture of even more conservative European countries let alone America could countenance.

That being said, DeLong did not hit Boldrin with a huge amount of graphs or numbers to fundamentally disprove what he was saying, that, given the situation and the type of spending we are looking at, there is not much reason to suspect that it will substantially jump start the economy. However, that being said, I am also convinced by DeLong’s argument that something must be done; even if the stimulus package doesn’t get a great return on the investment, any bleeding stopped is better than a deluge of jobs and confidence. Even if this were to get us to just break even, hold steady at where we are now, I would think it is worth it. Because it seems to me, looking at both this situation and with the Depression in mind, that nothing is more damaging than getting into a downward spiral of fear and lack of confidence; indeed, as all we have to fear is fear itself, all the hope we can get is useful, insofar as if it might not create a job for every dollar spent, maybe it will create one more dollar spent by the already employed that otherwise would have been saved.

Finally, let me conclude by posing my fundamental question both going in and going out: how can they disagree about this stuff? I understand that economies are complex systems with a million different variables, but aren’t you still dealing with sheer data and empirical questions? It’s not philosophy, it seems there should be way to prove or disprove certain assumptions; so how can two very learned economists come to considerably different conclusions about the value and/or effect of fiscal policy? I didn’t ask this, of course; there was not much time for audience questions and I wasn’t going to muddy the very technical questions that were being asked with this vague, almost philosophical question, but I still wonder. I suppose economics is just more muddy and less straight forward than I realize, but that seems a depressing thought – I understand that we still can’t grasp the infinity of the universe or the source of our consciousness, but I would like to think we could at least figure out how our own financial systems operate. I suppose I can take comfort in that fact that at least I have done a little, in the midst of a very unpleasant cold, in making myself a little less ignorant about the contours of the debate that insists on existing.

Philip Glass.

I went to see Philip Glass a few weeks ago at the Mondavi Center. This was quite exciting for me as he is one of my favorite composers.

The experience was definitely a net positive, although there were mixed moments. The performance opened with Glass performing two of his piano pieces, the latter of which I knew very well. This was a thrilling experience – Glass’s piano pieces are my favorite of his work, I realized sitting there listening to the beautiful notes trip and spill over into each other. In the distance there was a small, nearly frail looking man merely sitting on a bench while this mesmerizing music filled the auditorium. I found my glance resting on the huge strokes of light playing on the large walls of the theatre rather than, like a previous attendance for a sympathy performance of Beethoven, at the performers on stage. These were pieces based on Kafka’s Metamorphosis, and I found it delightfully challenging to see how the fast paced cascade of notes could make one think of waking up one morning as a giant insect.

The second performance, however, consisted of a rather lengthy cello performance. I am sure the musician (not Glass) was the best there is to be had and, another more musically educated individual understands what to look for and why it is beautiful. But I was bored by the second minute mark; long, drawn out cello notes following one upon the other with no apparent direction or melody failed to grasp my senses, and I was thinking about banalities by the end of it.

Luckily the rest of the performance made up for this. Perhaps my favorite were songs from a French play about the French occupation of Algeria; Glass had written a score for a performance of the play a decade or two ago. One of the songs must have been to a scene where someone was strolling along an Algerian street, because the percussionist had all sorts of fun toys to play with, from rolling sticks to stroking wind chimes, which suggested the noises one must hear in a busy market place, in my imagination lit up by moonlight.

Being able to listen to Glass speak was lovely as well; he was much older than I imagined, although considering he was born in the 1930s I don’t know why I didn’t realize how old he is by now; and his demeanor differed as well. For some reason I’ve always imagined him as self-assured and somewhat standoffish; instead he seemed gentle, kind, and even shy. He cracked a joke at one point, and the audience liked it, and so did I.

There was, of course, an encore, and a song called “Closing,” was played. I suppose I was tired by this point because I rested my head against my hand and closed my eyes. The song was beautiful and sounded of longing, and as part of me drifted off to sleep another was busy collecting memories and images, mostly from San Diego I think; sitting in front of my computer with one eye on my blog, another on my wine and my mind’s eye on the Van Gogh painting behind me; driving down southern freeways with luke warm air outside and trying to steer through my loneliness; and then the last thing I can clearly remember is recalling an imagined scenario that used to haunt me while I was there. I would listen to one of my favorite Glass pieces from The Fog of War soundtrack, and see myself lying on the bottom of a silently swirling spa. My eyes would glance up while the water shifted this way and that, seeming to represent all the philosophers I longed to connect to and all my unsettled thoughts. The small pool would swell and swell, until the water was pouring out onto the edges in all directions, searching for some other crack or space to fill itself into, but finding instead merely a vast, unresponsive desert of concrete.

And it must have been at this point that I started crying, and thus waking up a little. My eyelids were fluttering as each tear went streaming down, and with each I woke up a little more, finally fully coming to when the piece was finished and realizing my face was soaked. By the time I made it to the bathroom I realized I didn’t entirely remember what had just happened, and how. Somehow I had started out resting my eyes to a piece of music and had woken up half dreaming, somehow remembering something painful enough to still well up when I’m not looking directly at it. It was as though the water from that lonely pool had welled up within me and out through my eyes, when a moment before all I had been thinking about was going home.