I don't know much about law in academia, but a lot of what I see seems quite a lot like moral philosophy. That makes sense, because if we are considering new laws, the morality of them is obviously important.
In that vein, the Legal Theory Lexicon has this excellent new entry on justice, including brief primers on consequentialism, deontologicalism and virtue ethics. I suspect most of our readers already know what these are, but it is interesting to see them (and other ideas) explained from a legal perspective, as opposed to a purely philosophical one.
Spontaneous (Dis)Order
Today William Easterly at his great blog Aid Watch argues that the Pope, like many, is suffering from what he calls the 'Man in Charge Fallacy' - a false assumption that the economy is or can be centrally run.
This fallacy is related to something Udayan discussed a while back on this blog; the way people like to assume design when there is none. Economist readers will no doubt recognise the links to Hayek's 'spontaneous order' theory of the economy (or perhaps Adam Smith's Invisible Hand), but an perhaps even more fundamental application of it is in our own evolution, where amazingly complex order arises without any design at all.
It is not surprising that the head of a major religion has a tendency to see design in non-designed processes. But the rest of us should be wary of making the same mistake.
This fallacy is related to something Udayan discussed a while back on this blog; the way people like to assume design when there is none. Economist readers will no doubt recognise the links to Hayek's 'spontaneous order' theory of the economy (or perhaps Adam Smith's Invisible Hand), but an perhaps even more fundamental application of it is in our own evolution, where amazingly complex order arises without any design at all.
It is not surprising that the head of a major religion has a tendency to see design in non-designed processes. But the rest of us should be wary of making the same mistake.
Free Book
They say there's no such thing as a free lunch, but you can always get someone else to pay for you. Become a fan of Sir Roger Douglas on facebook (which you can do here) and he will send you a copy of his latest book. I have no idea what the book is about (although the title is suggestive), but something in me can never say no to a free book. I have therefore become a fan, and my book is apparently on its way.
Depending on your politics and friend circles, you might argue that publicly becoming his fan is the cost, which you bear to your reputation. That's probably true; I probably wouldn't, for example, become a fan of Hitler to get a free copy of Mein Kampf. Still, if you have non-judgemental friends, it looks win-win.
No word on whether he does overseas shipping. If he doesn't, is that protectionism?
Depending on your politics and friend circles, you might argue that publicly becoming his fan is the cost, which you bear to your reputation. That's probably true; I probably wouldn't, for example, become a fan of Hitler to get a free copy of Mein Kampf. Still, if you have non-judgemental friends, it looks win-win.
No word on whether he does overseas shipping. If he doesn't, is that protectionism?
Amateur Philosophers at BERL
I assume that most people who read this blog also read the excellent Offsetting Behaviour, which is why I haven't really commented on Eric Crampton's devastating critique of the BERL report on the social costs of alcohol. If you're not up on it, economic consultancy group BERL wrote a report on the costs of alcohol with (som say) some poorly defended assumptions, and some heavily misleading conclusions. It got some play through high-up lobby groups, so Crampton and Matt Burgess wrote a heavily critical response. Recently though, one of the authors defended the report in a particularly interesting way:
a) It should be done explicitly, rather than hiding it in leading assumptions.
b) Economists aren't generally the best people to do it.
You would think economists out of anyone would understand the benefits of division of labour.
In any case, the only (secular) case I can see for opposing consumption of alcohol prima facie in the same way we oppose murder would be a cost benefit analysis. It would be good if BERL defended their report on these grounds, and left the poorly-considered analogies out of it.
So for example someone who murders someone, from the individual’s point of view, Eric would be, I presume, quite comfortable with that. The person who decides to murder someone else makes an evaluation of what are the benefits and costs to me of this action? Society says ‘well some people do murder other people’, but society says ‘that’s not good.If BERL's report was on whether or not society thought people should drink alcohol regardless of the costs, Mr. Slack (who's quote this is) would have a point. But it wasn't a x-phi survey on folk morality, it was an economic analysis. That Mr. Slack has the two confused is perhaps revealing to the approach BERL took to the analysis. Moral philosophy has an important role to play in analysis of public policy. But:
a) It should be done explicitly, rather than hiding it in leading assumptions.
b) Economists aren't generally the best people to do it.
You would think economists out of anyone would understand the benefits of division of labour.
In any case, the only (secular) case I can see for opposing consumption of alcohol prima facie in the same way we oppose murder would be a cost benefit analysis. It would be good if BERL defended their report on these grounds, and left the poorly-considered analogies out of it.
Follow-up on Pay Equity
In a previous post I argued that at least part of the difference in pay between men and women (for the same job) would be attributable to social attitudes about pregnancy (and the physical realities of it).
Obviously it's given that women are in modern societies paid less than men. But are they paid less after correcting for all the other factors that affect income? My hypothesis suggests that they would be, but not by much. Unfortunately cross-sectional data with all the necessary variables is really hard to find, presumably because of privacy laws, etc. So my question is, does anyone know of any good data? It would be interesting to run a multiple regression on it to see what effect gender actually has on income, ceterus paribus.
The other thing I alluded to briefly is that I think 'pay equity laws' (currently popular with the New Zealand Left, and unpopular with the Right) are kind of like minimum wages, with the same sorts of costs and benefits. On the benefit side, obviously many women would receive higher wages. On the cost side, the number of women employed is likely to drop, as the proposal will not change the shape of the demand function for labour (and there will be an oversupply of labour). Whether or not the total amount of money paid to women increases will depend on the elasticities. There is some evidence that shows that small increases in the minimum wage don't lead to redundancies at all, but I suspect a 'pay equity' law would be a substantial enough increase.
On these grounds, perhaps a pay equity law is a good idea, particularly if you are a woman with a secure job. But like in my last post, I think it would be a better idea to try to correct the fundamentals which cause the inequity. This can be done through affirmative action scholarships for higher education, attempts to change societal prejudices (such as they exist), and so forth. To me, compared to these things, pay equity law seems crude and post-hoc. Perhaps it is intended to be a short-term solution. But I see no indication of this from its supporters.
Obviously it's given that women are in modern societies paid less than men. But are they paid less after correcting for all the other factors that affect income? My hypothesis suggests that they would be, but not by much. Unfortunately cross-sectional data with all the necessary variables is really hard to find, presumably because of privacy laws, etc. So my question is, does anyone know of any good data? It would be interesting to run a multiple regression on it to see what effect gender actually has on income, ceterus paribus.
The other thing I alluded to briefly is that I think 'pay equity laws' (currently popular with the New Zealand Left, and unpopular with the Right) are kind of like minimum wages, with the same sorts of costs and benefits. On the benefit side, obviously many women would receive higher wages. On the cost side, the number of women employed is likely to drop, as the proposal will not change the shape of the demand function for labour (and there will be an oversupply of labour). Whether or not the total amount of money paid to women increases will depend on the elasticities. There is some evidence that shows that small increases in the minimum wage don't lead to redundancies at all, but I suspect a 'pay equity' law would be a substantial enough increase.
On these grounds, perhaps a pay equity law is a good idea, particularly if you are a woman with a secure job. But like in my last post, I think it would be a better idea to try to correct the fundamentals which cause the inequity. This can be done through affirmative action scholarships for higher education, attempts to change societal prejudices (such as they exist), and so forth. To me, compared to these things, pay equity law seems crude and post-hoc. Perhaps it is intended to be a short-term solution. But I see no indication of this from its supporters.
Gender-Based Pay Discrimination and Pregnancy
It is a commonly-cited fact that in New Zealand (and around the world), men and women have different incomes; with women usually, if not always, receiving lower pay. Whether women receive lower pay for doing an identical job or are simply less present in 'high powered' jobs is unclear; I think it is likely a mix of the two. However, simply citing this fact doesn't prove the existence of residual sexism (although this may also exist). There are important (but not irremediable) differences between women and men in the current labour market which at least partially account for this difference in pay.
The one I want to focus on is pregnancy and childcare, which is an interesting problem of asymmetric information. Suppose that at a particular company, a woman and a man both work, and both add the same amount of value to the workplace. Their employer knows this, and so hasn't discriminated based on gender so far. The employer however knows that both the employees are young, and likely to have children at some point. Moreover, the employee cannot know estimate the exact probability of a person having a child; marriage is no longer a good guide, as many children are born out of wedlock. The only guide (that I can think of) would be age, which I will discuss later. So the employer, to maximise expected return from the employees, has to guess, using averages.
On average, women spend more time off work during pregnancy (because they physically have to), and (I suspect) spend more time off after pregnancy as well to look after newborn babies. This means that even if they are equally good at their job, a women's expected value to their employer is lower, even if they don't plan on getting pregnant (because the employer probably doesn't know this). This means that even in a world free of sexism and any other reason to discriminate through pay, women will be paid somewhat less than men (After some basic algebra and wild guesses I very provisionally estimate this to be by about 5%).
What should we do? A popular solution is so-called 'pay equity laws', which force employers to pay women the same as men. This seems intuitive if you think the problem is sexism, but if you (like me) think there are at least some other factors involved, what you are essentially doing is placing quite an onerous minimum wage, which is likely to result in less women being employed, and probably perpetuate differences in earning power. We obviously can't make men give birth, and we can't stop people having babies. What might be a better solution (to the problem I have outlined here) is that we try to encourage more men to take on equal (or to cancel out pre-pregnancy inequalities, slightly more) responsibility for newborns post childbirth. Maybe this goes against biology, I don't know. But I suspect that if this did happen, women's pay would start to close the gap.
Note: Obviously this shouldn't be the case with older women, as after a certain age they are unable to give birth. In fact we might expect to see the effect reversed, as men can still impregnate women up to a very old age! In reality I doubt we would however, as inequalities are likely to be entrenched by late-middle-age, and older people are probably less likely to have babies at all, making the numbers relatively insignificant.
The one I want to focus on is pregnancy and childcare, which is an interesting problem of asymmetric information. Suppose that at a particular company, a woman and a man both work, and both add the same amount of value to the workplace. Their employer knows this, and so hasn't discriminated based on gender so far. The employer however knows that both the employees are young, and likely to have children at some point. Moreover, the employee cannot know estimate the exact probability of a person having a child; marriage is no longer a good guide, as many children are born out of wedlock. The only guide (that I can think of) would be age, which I will discuss later. So the employer, to maximise expected return from the employees, has to guess, using averages.
On average, women spend more time off work during pregnancy (because they physically have to), and (I suspect) spend more time off after pregnancy as well to look after newborn babies. This means that even if they are equally good at their job, a women's expected value to their employer is lower, even if they don't plan on getting pregnant (because the employer probably doesn't know this). This means that even in a world free of sexism and any other reason to discriminate through pay, women will be paid somewhat less than men (After some basic algebra and wild guesses I very provisionally estimate this to be by about 5%).
What should we do? A popular solution is so-called 'pay equity laws', which force employers to pay women the same as men. This seems intuitive if you think the problem is sexism, but if you (like me) think there are at least some other factors involved, what you are essentially doing is placing quite an onerous minimum wage, which is likely to result in less women being employed, and probably perpetuate differences in earning power. We obviously can't make men give birth, and we can't stop people having babies. What might be a better solution (to the problem I have outlined here) is that we try to encourage more men to take on equal (or to cancel out pre-pregnancy inequalities, slightly more) responsibility for newborns post childbirth. Maybe this goes against biology, I don't know. But I suspect that if this did happen, women's pay would start to close the gap.
Note: Obviously this shouldn't be the case with older women, as after a certain age they are unable to give birth. In fact we might expect to see the effect reversed, as men can still impregnate women up to a very old age! In reality I doubt we would however, as inequalities are likely to be entrenched by late-middle-age, and older people are probably less likely to have babies at all, making the numbers relatively insignificant.
X-Phi and Distributive Justice
On Public Reason they report an interesting experimental philosophy paper which tested people's intuitions on distributive justice in two cases.
In the first, they were told:
The question obviously has implications for Rawls' theory of distributive justice, which is fairly heavily reliant on
a) Reflective Equilibrium as a process for moral decision making
b) The unfairness of situations described above
The authors argue that:
This is interesting stuff, but I think more depth into the psychology is needed (in the field, not in this specific paper necessarily). If we understand more fully the psychological processes which generate our moral intuitions, then we are better placed to how we should accord them value. This is really the area I see experimental philosophy making big headway in the future, as philosophers have been reticent to rely on psychological evidence in argument, and vice versa. In many ways, experimental philosophy is the behavioural economics of philosophy, and papers like this show why it is so promising, but also why it has still quite far to go.
In the first, they were told:
Suppose that some people make more money than others solely because they have genetic advantages.The second group was told:
Suppose that Amy and Beth both want to be professional jazz singers. They both practice singing equally hard. Although jazz singing is the greatest natural talent of both Amy and Beth, Beth’s vocal range and articulation is naturally better than Amy’s because of differences in their genetics. Solely as a result of this genetic advantage, Beth’s singing is much more impressive. As a result, Beth attracts bigger audiences and hence gets more money than Amy.Interestingly, but perhaps not surprisingly, people told only the abstract were far more likely to consider the situation unfair.
The question obviously has implications for Rawls' theory of distributive justice, which is fairly heavily reliant on
a) Reflective Equilibrium as a process for moral decision making
b) The unfairness of situations described above
The authors argue that:
Rawls, by his own lights, has reason to favor the judgments rendered in the more familiar concrete condition that deny the brute luck constraint over the judgments rendered in the less familiar abstract condition that affirm the constraint. A tension therefore looms between Rawls’s acceptance of the brute luck constraint and his methodology.
This is interesting stuff, but I think more depth into the psychology is needed (in the field, not in this specific paper necessarily). If we understand more fully the psychological processes which generate our moral intuitions, then we are better placed to how we should accord them value. This is really the area I see experimental philosophy making big headway in the future, as philosophers have been reticent to rely on psychological evidence in argument, and vice versa. In many ways, experimental philosophy is the behavioural economics of philosophy, and papers like this show why it is so promising, but also why it has still quite far to go.
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