Race and the Free Market II

How many times have we heard that capitalism only benefits rich, white people? Or that Britain's early wealth was built off slavery? How many people know about John Bright? Britain's free trade champion, loved by Lincoln, advocate for the poor victims of Britain's protectionist Corn Laws, and was the leading British opponent of American slavery

Last post I mentioned how the classical liberal was compelled by ideology to reject exclusionary race policies in Australia. Along with many Christian activists the principles of classical liberalism was also opposed to slavery. Adam Smith makes his economic case against it in The Wealth of Nations. Specifically, that slavery is economically inefficient because the slaves have no incentive to work hard or innovate since they can not keep anything for themselves. Smith also morally condemns slavery and derides the owners of slaves in both TWN and The Theory of Moral Sentiments.

But even more of note is the story of John Bright. Bright was a champion of free trade, leading opponents of the early 19th century British Corn Laws that sort to protect British cereal produces from foreign sources.  Such protection benefited the wealthy cereal producing Aristocracy by imposing steep import duties that increased their profits and power but made bread more expensive for the masses. These laws were said to be the last remnants of British mercantilism before its passageway into full capitalism. In a display of just how motivated for the poor Bright was, here are the words of fellow Corn Law fighter Richard Cobden to Bright on the death of his first wife

There are thousands of homes in England at this moment where wives, mothers and children are dying of hunger. Now, when the first paroxysm of your grief is past I would advise you to come with me, and we will never rest till the Corn Law is repealed.

Such should demolish the mendacious claim that capitalists only care about the rich, likewise Adam Smith's TWN's title is dedicated mostly to the poor. Smith writes

No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, clothe, and lodge the whole body of the people should have such a share of the produce of their own labor as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed, and lodged.

Bright not only fought for economic freedom, he was also the leading British champion against American slavery. Biographer Bill Cash writes

Bright was the leading advocate in Britain against slavery throughout the American Civil War and who was highly esteemed by Abraham Lincoln for his advocacy in the run up to the Emancipation Proclamation – which had its 150th anniversary on 1 January, 2013.

Bright was also a huge intellectual and motivational influence on Abraham Lincoln and it was Bright more than anyone that prevented war between Britain and the US during the Civil War. I'll let Cash tell the rest of the story

It was testimony to Bright’s influence that Shuyler Colfax (who, as those who have watched the film will have seen for themselves voted for the constitutional amendment in 1865) and Henry Janney – both of whom were confidants of Lincoln – wrote to Bright after the assassination telling him that his portrait and only his portrait was in President Lincoln’s reception room. Lincoln had sent two portraits of himself to Bright, and of the two portraits hanging in Lincoln’s own office, one was of Bright...

...In 1863, Bright defeated a resolution in the House of Commons for an alliance between Britain, the Emperor Napoleon II of France, and the southern Confederate states against the North, as well as ditching the £16 million support raised in England to support the South – the equivalent today of $1.7 billion (estimated by reference to the UK retail price index) – with the British Navy ruling the waves, this undoubtedly would have tipped the balance against the North, particularly given the support of Prime Minister Palmerston, Gladstone and Russell for the South at that time.

So Britain's greatest champion for a free economy was also Britain's greatest enemy of American slavery. Hardly something you would expect to be true if the early capitalist industrial countries were built on the backs of slaves or that capitalism only served the rich few.

Mary Midgley the Maverick

Mary Midgley was one of the pioneer female philosophers of the 20th century. A long time scourge of Richard Dawkins and his simplistic reductionist form of evolution, she accepts human beings with all their lived experiences, dreams, hopes, and values, without deconstructing them into physical and chemical parts.

But what I find particularly interesting is she echoes Einstein and C. S. Lewis' sentiments on materialistic reductionism - that the physical universe is insufficient to supply our own thoughts with the reasons for the conclusions we draw doing science or any other investigative activity. She says in Science as Saviour: A Modern Myth and its Meaning (1992);

As may be plain, this topic is essentially the one which caused Einstein often to remark that the really surprising thing about science is that it works at all. Puzzlement does not arise out of some eccentric and optional religious enquiry, but out of the simple observation that the laws of thought turn out to be the laws of things. (14)

She was also, like Thomas Nagel, somewhat of a believer in the Aristotelian notion of teleology as pervasive throughout the universe and the antidote to the Cartesian rift between mind and nature;

Some people are therefore now beginning to suspect that the mind/matter rift may be better dealt with differently – perhaps in the way that Spinoza proposed, by not letting it arise in the first place. Perhaps there are not two radically different kinds of stuff, mind and matter, but just one great world-stuff which has both mental and physical attributes, that can then quite properly be viewed without contradiction from both these angles. Then it would not be surprising if a single tendency, or conatus, runs through the whole, so that our kind of conscious purposiveness is only one part of the goal-directedness of nature.

Race and the Free Market

With the fiasco surrounding L.A. Clipper’s owner Donald Sterling’s racist remarks uttered in private to his mistress it seems when race is involved proper due attention to important moral considerations goes out the window. His statements were deeply asinine but they were done in private. And it is troubling to think that the media that reported on this and those that leapt to condemn him seem to see no moral dilemma in reporting the private words of a man without his knowledge. Who hasn't said something in private that they would be deeply embarrassed if it was broadcast publicly? I could guarantee the editors at these newspapers have skeletons of their own they wouldn't want revealed.

I for one wouldn’t care if Barack Obama was deeply racist against whites in his personal life and said all sorts of vile things about whites in private. What matters to me are the man’s policies because he is important as the President of the United States, and it is his actions as the President of the United States that matters. Same with Sterling, as David Henderson points out, the market imposes costs on racists so there is every incentive for them to treat everyone fairly.

"What I find interesting about the case of Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling is how well it illustrates Gary Becker's insights on the economics of discrimination. Becker pointed out that the market makes people "pay" for discriminating on racial grounds. The white person who refuses to hire a black person who is more productive than a white employee (assuming the same wage for each) will find himself doing less well economically than if he hired the black person. Linda Gorman, in her article on Discrimination in The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics, lays out this insight nicely.

How does that apply here? Well, it seems fairly obvious that Donald Sterling is a racist. But you couldn't tell that by looking at the race of the players whom he has paid big bucks to hire. So, however foolish he might have been--tip for budding racists: don't make racist comments to a young lover whom it's clear you don't trust, and, even better, DON'T GO CHEATING ON YOUR WIFE--he was not so foolish as to try to win basketball games with an all-white roster. Indeed, take a look at the Clippers' payroll. The top 3 players alone made in salary this season a total of over $46 million while the payroll for the whole 18-person roster was $73 million. And guess what race these top 3 are.

In other words, the market disciplined Donald Sterling. In hiring players, he didn't discriminate against black men. Doing so would have been too costly."

 

I might also add that Sterling employs a black coach even though the majority of the coaches in the NBA are white. 

It's often heard that the American Tea Party with its emphasis on small government is racist, and in Australia those that object to welfare benefits for Aboriginals - no matter how ineffectual - are likewise denounced. But this belies the historical examples of who was on the right sight of the moral debate over race back during an era when racism was politically accepted. I don't think its a coincidence that many of the classical liberals of the past were also opposed to slavery and other racist policies. Take Australia's very own Bruce Smith, for example. Smith was a businessman, barrister and politician in the NSW parliament, he was also a follower of Adam Smith and wrote a defence of his principles in a work called Liberty and Liberalism in 1887. He was against high taxation, favoured free trade when it was less fashionable to do so, and believed the government should not interfere unnecessarily into the private property of its citizens.

Bruce Smith is also famous for being one of the most vociferous opponents of the White Australia Policy and thought women were deserving of equal pay. Being a former employer and a free marketeer, he believed that everyone should have equal opportunities and that labor should be able to cross borders as easily as goods. So the same person was both Australia's standout classical liberal and standout opponent of the WAP. 

Certainly not all the proponents of free trade were as opposed to WAP as Smith. Some, like William McMillan, believed not excluding certain races was a threat to "...the purity of our race and the future of our nation" (quoted in Nicholas Dyrenfurth, 2009; 254). But having said this, as Nicholas Dyrenfurth points out, he was pressured to justify his racism and to invent dire consequences for breaking white Australia taboos by his adherence to free trade principles. Dyrenfurth writes

"...McMillan appears to have worried more than any other member of the federal parliament that what Australians were doing in their immigration policiy could not easily be tallied with the ideal of open borders he advocated in connection with goods." (Ibid)

There's certainly plenty of evidence that Australia and the other English-speaking nations at the time were filled with racist sentiments - and just about every other nation on the planet for that matter - but to reiterate Henderson's point, the institutions that were at play in those countries were heavy restraints against all forms of racism.

 

Male and Female Sexuality

The feminist Left likes to claim that male and female is essentially the same. That it is only due to the way we socialise one another that makes our preferences one way or the other. There is no hard wiring for either of the sexes, both are maleable to go either way.

Well one very telling difference between men and women is their respective preoccupations with porn and romance novels. Psychotherapist Leon F. Seltzer draws on the extensive research of Ogi Oggas and Sai Gaddam's A Billion Wicked Thoughts: What the World's Largest Experiment Reveals About Human Desire (2011) and makes some very interesting points

• Men are overwhelming turned on by the visual where women are far more multidimensional in their attractions and there is evidence this difference is hard wired. 

To begin with, it’s essential to note that the literature specifically studying men’s arousal patterns (gay as well as straight) has repeatedly emphasized their sensitivity to visual cues. As soon as the lust-inspiring image registers in their brain, they become turned-on—not only physically but psychologically, too. Exposure to such erotic stimuli immediately activates the parts of their brain related to getting an erection. And, as Ogas and Gaddam suggest, "Men’s greater sex drive may be partially due to the fact that their sexual motivation pathways have more connections to the subcortical reward system than in women" [or, in short] "men’s brains are designed to objectify females."

•  Men's sexual affairs are more a solitary endeavour than's women's who need more interpersonal, social dimensions to sex. 

Additionally, the authors talk about male desire as 'a solitary affair.' That is, the single-minded pursuit of sexual arousal can exist totally independent of a relationship. 'Getting off' as such has precious little to do with emotional intimacy. A man can sit alone, half-mesmerized before his computer screen, as he intently clicks on images and videos in his hunt for what will immediately ignite his libido.

Unlike his female counterpart, he gives little or no thought to actually sharing his erotic predilections or experiences with friends. And searching for stimuli that will engender or enhance sexual excitement (and ultimately create a most pleasurable dopamine release) is quite apart from any tender feelings, or craving for a genuinely intimate human attachment.

• Women's romance novels display an innate desire for love, romance and long lasting, ideally marital,  relationships.

Doubtless, on the road to marital bliss, the romance formula will include a torrid sex scene or two, but still the tale doesn’t end with images of simultaneous orgasms but sounds of wedding bells—or at least “a long-term monogamous relationship.” This may be a woman’s ultimate fantasy, but it hardly seems to reflect a male’s, whose less judicious ideals are unquestionably more carnal than conjugal. How extraordinarily revealing that Ogas and Gaddam, in exploring the most frequent searches on Dogpile, discovered that the two most common queries ending in ”-ing” were, ahem, “wedding” and “f**king” (p. 106).

• Women are naturally attracted to dominant and authoritative males. Indeed women's natural response to such men is submission.

These heroes are virtually always alpha males, to whom a considerable majority of women seem almost magnetically attracted. And romance novels exploit this preference in various ways. It’s not simply the hero’s physical prowess that is so compelling to female readers: it’s also his “status, confidence, and competence” (p. 95). Each of these traits contributes to his overall dominance—and such male authority, or ascendance, is what most women appear hard-wired to be susceptible to, as well as willing to submit to. 

Ogas and Gaddam, observing that studies have repeatedly demonstrated the erotic appeal of alpha dominance to women—from the sensory cues of the male’s voice, to his scent, to his movement and gait, to his sharply defined facial features—

The True and the False

Bertrand Russell says this in his Preface to The Principles of Mathematics (1903):

"what is true or false is not in general mental"

This is true to a point. The proposition "the Cambrian Explosion occurred roughly 543 billion years ago" was as true back then as it is today when us late comers on the scene found out that this was a true statement. But then how does a materialist square this with his views? How do purely physical entities have truth values? Its true that human mental states don't make propositions true or false but they still seem like irreducibly mental categories to me.

So how does one assert the aforementioned proposition as true without positing a Super mental basis to the universe and the way it was created? (I believe the later Fregean philosopher Michael Dummett proposed an argument for God's existence in this way in his Gifford Lectures).

Darwinian Dating Scene

George Gilder made his mark during the 70's and 80's warning against some of the ill gains from the sexual revolution. One point that stood out for me was the dating environment becoming a sought of survival of the fittest with the older, wealthier males being predominant and older women at the bottom. Older men who are divorced have more money and maturity than younger men and so can swoop in for second, third, or fourth dibs at the pool of younger women. This leaves more younger and poorer males without a chance but especially the older class of women left behind by divorce.

Miranda Devine's new column gives a modern update of all this.

She has a treasure trove of human stories which tell of loneliness and disconnection between the sexes, and a series of brutal home truths - especially for single women, who outnumber their male counterparts in every age group from 30.

At age 25, women can afford to be choosy, with four single males for every three single females, because they are competing with older men.

But by age 44 there are six single women competing for every five single men of the same age.

The high school dufus unlucky in love turns out to be a great catch at 50, provided he has a decent job.

“Men are in a buyers’ market and they are just in clover,” Arndt said.

“They don’t know what’s hit them. I’m always talking to men who are getting 70 contacts (from women) a day. I know someone who had 80 in the first hour.”

That particular 65-year-old Lothario decided to target the “Mosman book club market” with a line in his profile that read: “Keep meaning to spend a year with Proust, but who doesn’t?”

Pretentious, you might think, but “he was knocked over in the rush,” Arndt said.

Spoiled for choice, some middle-aged men are falling prey to what demographer Bernard Salt calls “hotness delusion syndrome”.

Arndt sees the delusion translate into discourteous dating behaviour, with men failing to show up for a coffee date, for instance, or worse, turning up, taking one look and leaving.

The lesson? The sexual revolution had anything but an egalitarian outcome and younger women should be a little less willing to wait until their 30's and 40's to marry. 

Psychology and the Biblical Worldview - Part 1

Happened to be delving into some of the psychological literature surrounding addictions lately and there is some interesting material coming out that dovetails well with David Brooks’ recent The Social Animal.

In chapter 8 Brooks talks about three aspects to human decision making and self control. The first is the perceiving of the situation. The second is the use of reason to calculate the value of, and means to achieve, any goal related activity. And the third is the power of the will to execute or refrain from executing the decision.

Most notable for me was the first. Brooks mentions that throughout the last couple of centuries the reason and will has been given almost exclusive attention. Personally, I’ve only ever been aware of the second two and it was a revelation to me reading about this third vital component especially given its close biblical parallels on temptation and sin. “The lust of the eyes” is, of course, talked about in 1 John 2:16 and in Genesis Satan tempts Eve with fruit that was “pleasing to the eye”.

Much of temptation starts with the way we look on some thing, or some person of the opposite sex, perhaps. The best way to combat addiction or sin in general is not to put oneself in a position where the will and reason come up against the temptation (this is why the Bible tells us to “flee sexual immorality” 1 Cor 6:18). More often than not the latter will win out. One can know that following a particular course of actions is wrong and will have negative consequences, you can resolve to resist with all your might but there is a reason this rarely works. Just look at the dieting success rates!

But there is more to it than just the physical act of looking. One also has to concentrate on where their attention is being focused. Brooks mentions a fascinating 1970 study by Walter Mischel where he tested the abilities of a group of four-year-olds to resist the temptation to eat a marshmallow by promising that after he returns, if they are successful, they will get two. What was found was that the children that were successful employed methods to divert their attention away from the marshmallows by either pretending it wasn’t there or that it was something other than a marshmallow. Later experiments performed by Mischel employed similar mental techniques by children to focus away from the marshmallow with much greater success than those who focused on the marshmallow and just used sheer will to resist the temptation.

So it isn’t just taking in the scene with one’s eyes that counts but one’s actual mental focus and attentional bias. What priorities and goals one sets determines the level of intensity of the addictive stimuli that is encountered. It is not enough therefore, just to resist in the face of temptation but one has to assess one’s mental state several steps before coming face to face with the temptation. A change in goals, ideals, and even identity is necessary so that the attention is focused away from the stimuli in the first place. As this paper on addiction points out:

"That is, becoming committed to a goal pursuit makes the individual responsive to cues associated with those goals in the sense of potentiating emotional and cognitive responses to them, thus giving those cues increased priority in cognitive processing and leading to “attentional biases” for them. During the past 15 years, a considerable body of evidence has accumulated to suggest that substance use and abuse are characterized by biases in the attentional processing of substance-related stimuli. That is, substance-related stimuli acquire the ability to grab the user’s attention." (Field & Cox, 2008)

This isn't just fascinating material and helpful for combating addictions but illustrates just how relevant and prescient the Bible is on the human condition.