What I Fail to Realize
I’m a fallible human being, so when people say, “Bryan, what you fail to realize is…” I listen closely. Precisely what do I fail to realize? I’d really like to know.
Most of the time, though, I’m sadly disappointed. The things I allegedly “fail to realize” tend to be smack dab in the middle of my class notes and publications. Latest example: Many critics of my cosmopolitan and open borders stance have faulted me for “failing to realize” that normal human beings value their group identities.
The reality is that I’ve been vocally affirming the political importance of group identity for over a decade. Check out my undergraduate and graduate course notes on voter motivation, this article, my posts on the Respect Motive, or my effusive praise for the expressive voting model. My punchline of American partisanship, for example, is that the data shows:
1. Strong evidence for group-interested voting, with race being the main group of interest.
2. Self-interest plays a marginal role at most.
I even give my graduate Public Choice students this essay assignment:
Consider another country and/or historical era with which you are familiar. Write a case study of its politics that weighs the explanatory power of the SIVH [Self-Interested Voter Hypothesis], group-interest, and ideology.
How can I grasp the massive political effects of group identity, but remain a cosmopolitan and open borders advocate? Simple.
First, I think the effects of group identity are not only massive, but massively unjust. There’s nothing wrong with eating traditional food or wearing a celebratory hat. But humans’ love of our own group is a fundamental cause of unjust treatment of outgroups. Love of family has the same risk, but since the evils of nepotism are widely acknowledged, the downside is minor. Love of broader group, in contrast, runs amok. As I explained a while back:
Despite its mighty evolutionary basis, almost everyone recognizes moral strictures against familial favoritism. Almost everyone knows that “It would help my son” is not a good reason to commit murder, break someone’s arm, or steal. Indeed, almost everyone knows that “It would help my son” is not a good reason for even petty offenses – like judging a Tae Kwon Do tournament unfairly because your son’s a contestant.
Nationalism, in contrast, is widely seen as an acceptable excuse for horrific crimes against outgroups. Do you plan to murder hundreds of thousands of innocent foreign civilians? Just say, “It will save American [German/Japanese/Russian/whatever] lives” – and other members of your tribe will nod their heads. Do you want to deprive millions of foreigners of the basic human rights to sell their labor to willing buyers, rent apartments from willing landlords, and buy groceries from willing merchants? Just say, “It’s necessary to protect American jobs” in a self-righteous tone, then bask in the admiration of your fellow citizens.
Second, justice aside, group identity has bad effects on those who seriously embrace it. A life well-lived revolves around the appreciation and pursuit of merit. Intense group identity undermines both. People who cherish their group identities have trouble assessing merit objectively; they naturally overrate their own group, and underrate outsiders. And the more obsessed you are with your group’s merit, the less you focus on the merit that really counts: your own.
Third, despite its massive political effects, commitment to group identity is shallow. While it governs people’s political behavior, only a small minority are willing to pay a high personal cost for identity. As I’ve explained before, identity is all about lip service:
How can I say that? By noting the stark contrast between how much people say they care about community, and how lackadaisically they try to fulfill their announced desire. I’ve long been shocked by the fraction of people who call themselves “religious” who can’t even bother to attend a weekly ceremony or speak a daily prayer. But religious devotion is fervent compared to secular communitarian devotion. How many self-styled communitarians have the energy to attend a weekly patriotic or ethnic meeting? To spend a few hours a week watching patriotic or ethnically-themed television and movies? To utter a daily toast to their nation or people? Indeed, only a tiny percentage of people who claim to love community find the time for communitarian slacktivism.
You could argue that coordination costs explain the curious shortage of intentional communities. But nothing stops secular communitarians from matching the time commitment of suburban Catholics. Well, nothing but their own apathy.
The lesson: While individualists do tend to neglect mankind’s craving for community, they err on the side of truth. Actions really do speak louder than words. And actions reveal that people are far less communitarian than they claim.
Contrary to my critics, then, I’m well-aware that group identity is a mighty force in the world. What my critics fail to realize, though, is that group identity is only a mighty force because politics distills lamentable but largely inert human emotions into political poison.
The post appeared first on Econlib.
Well Bryan, what you fail to realize is...:)
But seriously, as someone who agrees with classical liberal or libertarian positions about 9 times out of ten (which may be a higher proportion than most people who actually identify as classical liberals or libertarians!), the relative blind spot in them is often "the political problem."
By that I don't mean so much the realities of political psychology, including the tendency to identify with groups that, you rightly note, you have long recognized and lamented.
I mean rather the problem of "political structure," of political organization.
The nation state, with its bias towards insiders and tendency to discriminate against outsiders, is not really a product of "group identity." On the other contrary, the (actually quite thin as you note) group identity that tends to grow up within them is largely a product of the nation state.
Now the nation state is not the only form or unit of political organization, not the only way humans have adopted to pursue and protect the common good, but it is now the dominant one (thus "the united nations") and arguably the most successful.
Other political forms like the city and the empire have not, for example, protected the individual and above all property rights that are essential to economic and technical progress as well or as long. And all political forms have a better record than anarchy.
So "the political problem" is that in order for humans to flourish as individuals, they need to be organized politically, life must unfold "within" a political order, and in order for the common good to be well served, they need to be relatively free as individuals.
This is a difficult sweet spot to achieved and it generally has not been achieved. But the modern nation state and in particular states like the US achieve it relatively well.
Now--the rub--how much discrimination or even injustice towards outsiders does the nation state require in order to be a successful form of political organization? Surely not as much as we have seen historically but just as surely, I'd say, "some."
The world state or empire (as it would really be) is of course an alternative, as is the city or even the tribe, but the latter are much more rather than less narrow than the nation, while the former would likely have to be quite tyrannical. As a rule, the larger the political unit and the further the rulers are from the ruled, the more "imperial problems" result (both the EU and the US have some of these today for example, while both being pretty good).
Granted the nation state is the best political form then, or the best available now, at least some things have to be conceded to preserve it and ensure it works well.
Non-open borders is, I think, one of those things.
Non-open need not mean closed, of course, and generally doesn't. Nor have nation states always had much border control; until well into the 20th C most of them didn't.
But in the 21st C, with the realities of mass, global immigration and welfare states (yes, if states like the US were more thoroughly libertarian this might look at least a bit different) can you really have a well-functioning nation state "and" open borders?
The US, if only because of its sheer size, would have as good a shot as any. But some have buckled with much less immigration than would result from open borders, and even the US would struggle in the longer term I think.
This may be lamentable in the sense that we, as well as the people who migrate through them, miss out on the benefits of open borders. But there are plenty of trade-offs in politics as in economics...
The in-group vs out-group axis is a good discussion point.
If “natives” are the in-group and future would-be immigrants are the out-group, then your contention seems to be that there are net “economic” benefits to BOTH groups, by allowing more immigration. I would tend to agree.
But what you seem to ignore is the non-economic effects of the formerly “out-group”, upon arrival. The social costs of immigration do not accrue from immigrants who integrate into the in-group, but rather from immigrants who reap those economic benefits while otherwise remaining an out-group. This is the situation that manifests as minority women still expected to wear burkhas. Or the immigrants who conduct rape and grooming gangs. Or the immigrants who try to enact Sharia Law.
I agree that immigration can be an economic net positive. But societal function is more than just GDP. And you can reap economic benefits of immigration while having some selective process that mitigates the risk of undue social costs.