Emote with me!!!

I've been meaning to say this for a while - since attending the Social Liberal Forum meeting at the last Lib Dem conference. But it ties in nicely with Charlotte's revelation about the nature of the "progressive" and conservative debate, and how each side thinks they are doing what is right.

Speaker after speaker at the social liberal forum said how deeply they cared about the plight of underprivileged people, so much that the mood of the event could be described as a collective subvocal chant of emote with us! Having been a churchgoer (charismatic) in the past, and therefore having done that sort of thing in another context, I am deeply suspicious of it. It doesn't work for me. Yet these are important emotions to have. Empathy for the poor is better than contempt. It is still only a pale caricature of what the left - the Labour movement - was meant to be about, which was working people asserting themselves, not, as it is now, working people being patronised by the middle classes. I would attribute much of the BNP success to the way that where Labour seem to say "We care about you", the BNP say "We care about us."

But back to the Forum. A speaker goes "We care. We care. We care. 50p tax rate!" to a cheer. I can see how that policy absolutely feels right to people, but I am still left wanting the analysis that it would do any good. "It's a symbol" we are told, as if that were a good thing.

But of course it is not just the left that emotes like this. Only when Conservatives do it, it is something way nastier. Europe: boo. Foreigners: boo. Single parents: boo. I remember the Conservative election broadcasts in the 80s pushing the fear button over nuclear disarmament. Fear leads to hate and hate leads to the dark side. Conservative emoting is all dark side of the force stuff.

Charlotte points out that Conservatives believe they are doing the right thing, and I would agree for the most part. But lets not slip into relativism here - just because people disagree over what the right thing is, it doesn't mean there is nothing to be said about it. Charlotte is right that politics would be better if it were more rational, but rationality alone doesn't give us values. Libertarians of the Ayn Rand school like to portray themselves as driven purely by reason, but this is based on sophistry, and Rand had no answer to David Hume's is-ought gap.

I've written before about the 2 or 5 foundations of morality in evolutionary psychology. These 5 instinctive traits do exist in us, and we can apply reason to ask the question: what are the consequences if we reinforce this instinct or suppress that one in the language that we use - the metaphors we choose - the buttons that we push - to explore and advance our political ideas.

So liberalism as I see it involves a recognition that promoting the wrong foundations - the deference to authority for example, or the ingroup (class/race/etc) - has bad consequences, and promoting the right foundations - reciprocity, no harm, etc, has good consequences. This relies on an assessment of the consequences of freedom or tyranny, class war or class peace, etc. Is this or that a consequence that I want? How do I feel about it? It is an emotional question.

Reinventing the State Chapter 3: Liberal Environmentalism

Ed Randall writes a sound survey of some different strands of environmental thought, although it is a little difficult at times to see which he is advocating and which he is opposing. I think if I were writing a chapter like this I would be a little more polemical and I wouldn't necessarily credit many greens with the coherence that Randall does. I think for many greens, abstract questions of political philosophy should not stand in the way of whatever might work - that the debates between socialism, conservatism, liberalism, anarchism and so on have paled into insignificance in face of impending ecological catastrophe. But of course this seemingly eminently practical approach tends to encourage dirigiste thinking - which is a big mistake, IMHO, you do not make further progress by throwing away centuries of progress.

This said, there are some valuable questions and insights here and I will look at two of them.

Randall begins with JS Mill's prediction that economic advancement would end, but that this would not mean the end of improvement of the human condition. This obviously resembles the demand by many greens that economic growth should stop. I am more attracted to the point made by some greens and many economists that economic growth is just a statistic, and not nearly as informative a one as it might seem. With the relative decline of manufacturing, growth seems to suggest an increase in how much we value the things we do for each other. What could be more benign?

It is worth remembering that the the anti-growth position predates knowledge of global warming and was in fact driven by a concern that resources would run out. Now, if anything, we should hope that fossil fuels run out soon enough. The resource issue is, rightly, almost forgotten although a flavour of its rhetoric can be found in advocacy for recycling. But while economic growth might be a reasonable proxy for levels of resource use - if manufacturing were not in relative decline - it is obviously a terrible proxy for levels of carbon emissions. GDP is a statstic, aggregating many diverse activities. If some of those activities are a problem then aggregate them separately - don't try to manage them with the bluntest instrument imaginable.


Another theme Randall picks up is the possibility of expanding business goals to include a wider range of social, and in this case environmental goals, rather than simply focussing on the bottom line. On one level, this is pure apple pie, and nobody could possibly object. We read phrases such as "the war of money against life". "A Britain that is able to maintain a fiscal environment that is attractive to private equity firms should also be capable of developing tax policies that favour co-operators who work in businesses that make sustainability an integral part of their corporate culture and mission."

While I am clear that businesses doing this should be praised not mocked, I would like to refer to an earlier blog post of mine inspired by Adair Turner's book Just Capital which is highly skeptical of the power of this kind of stakeholderism to make much difference.

If we see the sustainable co-operators as the good guys, what could be more natural than changing the rules to favour those good guys? One thing: changing the rules to favour more sustainable behaviour by everybody. The good guys are those who will go the extra mile whatever the rules say. But you can't make people good like this with rules; a rule cannot say "do more than the rules demand". Furthermore, all these diverse goals aside from the bottom line are good intentions, not good actions. You can try to legislate for intentions, but you will fail. Read the other post for more on this point.


The corresponding chapter of the Orange Book sought to show that the environment can be protected in an economically liberal way and this chapter does the same job for social liberalism. There is of course no contradiction between these positions, and they might serve to reassure different people. This chapter is probably more significant because it attempts to engage with the bulk of the environmental movement which is to be found on the left.

Poverty stinks

After a heads up from Quaequam I've posted the following comment to Duncan Brack's essay on meeting the challenge.

Was it ever a secret that poverty is related to poor health outcomes? Of course it is related. And a large part of that relationship will be causation of poor health by poverty, although there will also be elements of causation the other way, and third factors causing both poor health and poverty.

The question Duncan misses is to what extent it is absolute rather than relative poverty that is a cause of poor health outcomes. The biggest factors impairing health, are poor diet, lack of exercise, smoking and drinking - are these consequences of poverty? - yes, to an extent.

But Duncan’s argument is not that povery stinks and we should get rid of it. It is that inequality stinks. Being on the bottom rung of the ladder is a cause of stress. The thing is that every ladder has a bottom rung, unless it is lying flat on the ground.

Now I would agree that both absolute and relative poverty do matter and should be tackled. They are not, of course, the only things that matter, so the question is how much. Duncan argues for more equality. How much more? Japan and Sweden are held up as examples. Are they equal enough, or do all the same arguments still apply to them?

It may be right to demand more of something that is good, such as equality, but if you ignore the downsides, and you don’t say how much more equality you want, then what you have is a very weak argument. Not to mention a politically terrifying unlimited aspiration for redistribution.

I absolutely agree that people in absolute poverty have very little freedom, and so supporters of freedom like the Lib Dems should fight against that poverty. What is not so clear is how much relative poverty restricts freedom.

Duncan defends the 50p top rate policy - the proceeds of which were almost entirely recycled to the middle classes, doing nothing about poverty or inequality.

It is dangerous to try to wish away the fact that prosperity brings better outcomes and better opportunities. Prosperity is not the problem, it is the solution. The largely symbolic 50p policy suggests that it is the problem.