The world is not an engineering problem - an argument against technocracy

Chris Dillow has an interesting blog post about the problems with what he calls 'liberal technocracy':

This urge to express all arguments in consequentialist terms is an admission that liberal technocracy has won. The only acceptable arguments for any policy, it is believed, are consequentialist ones – ideally, along the lines of making us materially better off. And everybody seems to accept Mill’s harm principle, and thus argue for bans on the – often elusive – grounds that the activity in question does indeed impose harms onto others.

You only need look at the new found 'neoliberalism' of the Adam Smith Institute to see the onward march of this "what works is what's right" approach to policy-making. Dillow speaks of how some things are, as it were, felt rather than analysed - the "best case for Brexit is an intrinsic one – that it’ll give us a sense of independence and sovereignty" and when advocates try to set out economic utilitarian gains from leaving their argument weakens. I once wrote a similar thing about Scottish independence:

It's the idea of Scotland in that quote from Henry Scott Riddell's 'Scotland Yet' - not about some idea of superiority, certainly no hatred or dislike, just a message of pride, joy and love for the place. And the nation - that thing we try to define with grand words - is all those who share those emotions, that association.

When Kipling wrote about men having small hearts it was about these feelings - we cannot love everywhere and we cannot expect everyone to love the place we love. But we can share that love with those who do and that is nationhood. No government, no kings, no lords, no oil, no First Minister. Just people placing their boots in the soil and saying "this is my country and I'll work with you to make it better".

If you want independence for reason of blood, for reason of hatred or for reason of greed then you deserve to lose. But if you want independence for pride, joy and love of the place that is Scotland then - for what it's worth - you have my blessing and I wish you well.

The idea here is something we've lost from our thinking, one of those virtues Deirdre McCloskey writes about, the idea of faith, that there are things we have to take as felt not as demonstrated by science. This rejection of maximising utility as the only purpose of public policy is perhaps the single most important thing in McCloskey's triology on bourgeois virtues - that ideas matter as much as science does. And it is true since the things we feel cannot be defined by utilitarian or consequentialist argument - here's economist Don Boudreaux:

There are no scientific ‘solutions’ to society's problems. This reality is so in part because in many cases people legitimately disagree over what arranged changes are desirable and which are undesirable. For example, some people join me in celebrating marijuana legalization; other people disagree sincerely and deeply even if there is no disagreement over the predicted health and behavioral effects of marijuana use. There is no scientific ‘solution’ to this disagreement or to any other disagreement that turns on differences in values and preferences.

This reminds me of P J O'Rourke speaking of his politics - "I'm personally conservative" says O'Rourke but believes government, public policy, should be as libertarian as possible. So a man who believes drinking and smoking are sinful can, at the same time as holding these views, support the liberalisation of their use. But, it is more likely that such a person for reasons of faith - belief without evidence - will oppose liberal drinking laws and even propose stricter temperance or prohibition.

Back at university we coined the term "soft loo-paper conservatism" to describe the approach to student politics where the only care was the good management of the student union and its services to the student body (such as, hence the phrase, insisting on better toilet paper in the union buildings' loos). Management was all that matters - Boudreaux quotes a cynical comment from James Buchanan on economists and public policy:

Once he has defined his social welfare function, his public interest, he can advance solutions to all of society’s economic ills, solutions that government, as deus ex machina, is, of course, expected to implement.

The problem is that politics just doesn't work like this - people have views, felt experiences, faith meaning that the answer might be a different one from that produced through the expert's systems. Nor can we ever be perfectly sure that the expert's answer isn't sub-optimal - there are plenty of examples of technocratic solutions to perceived problems that have failed or, in solving one problem, merely acted to create three new ones. Raising the duty on fags seems to work as a means of reducing their consumption but there's a point at which it creates an opportunity for criminal arbitrage - the cost of making a cigarette is so much lower that the sale price it's worth the risk for the criminal to create a black market.

It seems right that government should seek the 'right' solutions in its policy-making but this assumes that there is such a solution and, indeed, that the negatives of such a policy don't outweigh the benefits of the solution. After all, if we take the utilitarian argument in its entirety, it begins to make the case for a sort of Huxley-esque benign authoritarianism, a Singapore-on-Steroids. For my part, I prefer things a little messy because not only are the solutions so often dependent on coercion but they also require that the ordinary citizen's faith and feelings are denied. Maximising utility seems a good thing but it is not the main reason why people do things like set up business, create charities, build village halls, paint, sing, create or innovate. Technocracy treats the world as an engineering problem when it's an unfolding story, explorers in a dense jungle not white-coated scientists in a laboratory.

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Why shopping your neighbour to the authorities is against your interests

A thought has been bothering me for some while. And it takes the form of a question:

Why are there so many people so willing to shop their neighbours to the authorities?

Hardly a day passes without at least one story where a member of the public reports another member of the public to the police or the council or the taxman or…

We read of ringtones, photographers, local councillors and smokers all grassed up by their neighbours. I want to explore why this might be so. And, dear reader, I will be (as is my wont) taking something of a utilitarian approach to the assessment. What precisely might I gain from reporting you to the authorities for some minor infraction of the rules?

Let’s suppose that you cut me up on Alwoodley Lane doing about 65mph in your BMW. And, rather than shrug and carry on, I take your number and (having safely pulled over to the side of the road) ring the police informing them of your appalling and dangerous act. What do I gain from that act? There are several possibilities:

Some sort of personal advantage – this might be the case if I know who you are and your problem might be to my advantage. Say, for example, you’re a Labour councillor and the act of reporting might create a nice negative story to my party (and my) advantage.

Future protection – your lunatic driving is clearly a menace and will end with some innocent motorist being killed or injured. And of course that motorist might be me – providing the needed self-interest

Advantage from ingratiation – I want (and believe this to be in my interest) the authorities to think well of me, to see me as being on their side against those who would break the rules. Rules that were introduced for the “good of us all”. Importantly, I see this – rightly or wrongly – as a form of insurance against the possibility of someone reporting me.

Advantage from collective protection – by reporting your bad driving, I am protecting the group (me and other road users).

What we need to understand is that the reporting of someone to the authorities is never done as a selfless act of citizen duty. Never. It is always self-interested – which explains the popularity of anonymity. And it shows no pity to the person reported – the very act of you grassing them up proves your moral superiority to them and, more importantly, their sin.

One of the most common appeals to authority is that based on offence – what someone says or done ‘offends’ you in some way. It is, of course, impossible to deny offence – I may not have intended offence but you saying you are offended means that ipso facto I am guilty of offence. And, even where you are not offended, you can complain about my words on the basis that someone might be offended – especially if that someone belongs to a defined minority of some sort.

But understand that this appeal to offence is – just as in the speeding example above – only resorted to when the individual seeks some personal gain or advantage from the act. Even if that advantage is merely being seen as a ‘good citizen’ by those in authority. And authorities encourage and promote such behaviour through setting up telephone lines, enacting complex codes of conduct, providing the screen of anonymity and mitigating punishment through the shopping of others.

So next time you are tempted to tell the authorities – be it the boss, the police, the taxman, the benefits office or some standards quango – think about why you’re doing it. Do you just want to “get” that individual so as to obtain advantage? Or are you cravenly sucking up to those in authority for your own protection?

If the former, I feel rather sorry for you as you aren’t a very nice person. If the latter, all you do is encourage more interference, more ‘shop your neighbour’ campaigns and more busybodies charged with interfering in how we exercise our freedom. I guess I’m saying – don’t shop your neighbours, colleagues or the lunatic in the black BMW. It doesn’t serve you well at all whatever you perceive as the short term gain.

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