My approach to the study of public policy divides the work to be done into three parts. The first could be called something like "policy skills" or "conflict structure" of "seeing the underlying premise." I don't know anyone else who offers this and I think it is a very valuable skill--at least it has been valuable to me.
The second emphasis is on the policy process. How do new ideas or new versions of old ideas get into the institutional mix? That is what "politicizing social issues" is all about and there is a need to dramatize the need for new approaches to international organizations, to pick one end of the scale and for new approaches to cyberbullying to pick the other end. The policy process begins with these new ideas, it processes them, passes them implements them, and evaluates their effectiveness. Every now and then, the just pull the plug on a program.
The third has to so with the public policies themselves. What are policies good for? What effects to they have. On Wildwood Trail, in Forest Park, they try to keeps unleashed dogs off the trail in two ways. They post a sign citing the relevant city code and promise both jailtime and a fine. The second is a much prettier sign asking people PLEASE to staff off the grass. If I took a dog to the trail to run, I'd find that confusing. what is the effect of putting "If you do that, you'll pay"on a post next to "We really wish you wouldn't. Please?"
So how can you offer policy incentives and disincentives that will help clean all that up. That's what we do in 414.
The first third of the course is involved with the mechanics. The second part with process. the third part with the study of the policy documents themselves. It's kind of a sloppy course. The pace varies depending oh just who in understanding what and how soon they can be made ready go on.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Is President Obama Sincere?
Probably he is. Sure. Why wouldn't he be?
I've been reading analyses of what the President intends to say for several weeks now. The New York Times today reported that a video "previewing themes" had been sent out. The video "made plain that his speech would be geared more broadly toward the political center, to independent voters and business owners and executives alienated by the expansion of government and the partisan legislative fights of the past two years."
So we don't know yet what he is going to say, but we know who he is going to effect and what state he thinks they are in (alienated). It's hard for me to see how anyone can give a speech and expect to be really heard when we know already the effect he hopes to achieve.
So I got to thinking how that would work on a date. I've had to do some dating recently and it's still fresh in my mind. Ordinarily, you might think I want to know how my date is feeling, what has been happening in her life, what she wants to eat or drink, what she has read recently that has interested her, and maybe whether she'd like to go to a movie with me. That sounds pretty ordinary, doesn't it?
Now imagine that she has an earpiece and a hidden microphone and a girlfriend sitting at another table. The girlfriend gives me the treatment the press is giving the President, i.e., she says what effect I am trying to achieve by saying what I am saying. So my questions, in order, might look like this. He is trying to represent himself as genuinely interested in your welfare. He's trying to establish that you haven't been dating much or working too much. He's looking for a chance to buy you something hoping that you will have to sit here until you are done with it no matter how badly things are going. He's trying to imply that he is a cultured person--a reader of books--and checking on your reading choices at the same time. He's trying to get a commitment to a later date before you have a chance to assess this one.
The girlfriend didn't give me credit for much; she is wary on her friend's behalf. But the real damage is done, not by her implications that I am up to something sinister, but by presuming that my words have no meaning in themselves. What I am saying ought not be judged by what I actually said, but by what I probably meant. Everything I say is an attempt to achieve some goal or leverage that can be used to achieve a goal. It is useless, apparently, to assume that I actually mean what I say.
That will be a very tough first date, but I think public officials--not just President Obama--get that all the time. What they say they mean is routinely set aside in favor of what the reported thinks the speaker is trying to achieve. I'm sure that makes the reported seem knowledgeable, but it makes the speaker look like a charlatan. If the speaker really does mean what he is saying, which I think we ought to admit is possible, it is a shame that so little attention will be paid to it.
I've been reading analyses of what the President intends to say for several weeks now. The New York Times today reported that a video "previewing themes" had been sent out. The video "made plain that his speech would be geared more broadly toward the political center, to independent voters and business owners and executives alienated by the expansion of government and the partisan legislative fights of the past two years."
So we don't know yet what he is going to say, but we know who he is going to effect and what state he thinks they are in (alienated). It's hard for me to see how anyone can give a speech and expect to be really heard when we know already the effect he hopes to achieve.
So I got to thinking how that would work on a date. I've had to do some dating recently and it's still fresh in my mind. Ordinarily, you might think I want to know how my date is feeling, what has been happening in her life, what she wants to eat or drink, what she has read recently that has interested her, and maybe whether she'd like to go to a movie with me. That sounds pretty ordinary, doesn't it?
Now imagine that she has an earpiece and a hidden microphone and a girlfriend sitting at another table. The girlfriend gives me the treatment the press is giving the President, i.e., she says what effect I am trying to achieve by saying what I am saying. So my questions, in order, might look like this. He is trying to represent himself as genuinely interested in your welfare. He's trying to establish that you haven't been dating much or working too much. He's looking for a chance to buy you something hoping that you will have to sit here until you are done with it no matter how badly things are going. He's trying to imply that he is a cultured person--a reader of books--and checking on your reading choices at the same time. He's trying to get a commitment to a later date before you have a chance to assess this one.
The girlfriend didn't give me credit for much; she is wary on her friend's behalf. But the real damage is done, not by her implications that I am up to something sinister, but by presuming that my words have no meaning in themselves. What I am saying ought not be judged by what I actually said, but by what I probably meant. Everything I say is an attempt to achieve some goal or leverage that can be used to achieve a goal. It is useless, apparently, to assume that I actually mean what I say.
That will be a very tough first date, but I think public officials--not just President Obama--get that all the time. What they say they mean is routinely set aside in favor of what the reported thinks the speaker is trying to achieve. I'm sure that makes the reported seem knowledgeable, but it makes the speaker look like a charlatan. If the speaker really does mean what he is saying, which I think we ought to admit is possible, it is a shame that so little attention will be paid to it.
Monday, January 17, 2011
Liberals and Conservatives: the other two metaphors
The Bad Classroom and the Challenge of Achievement
I am in the process of exploring what useful ideas about liberalism and conservatism can be derived from three metaphors. In the previous post, I explored public goods and private goods. Private goods aren't good for broad benefits. Whether that is a regrettable lapse or a catastrophe depends on the benefits we are talking about. Public goods aren't good for personal motivation and incremental learning. Again, how bad that is depends on what we are talking about.
The second metaphor imagines a classroom with twenty desks. The room as a whole holds eighty students, sixty of whom stand at the back. The other twenty stand in the hallways and hear whatever they can hear.
Presuming that all these students are paid up customers, liberals will want to ask what nutcase admitted a hundred students to a course being held in a classroom that has only twenty desks. The classroom is inadequate to meet the needs of the students and liberals will suspect that if you look at the standing students, you will find darker skins and poorer educational backgrounds. Conservatives are not at all inclined to talk about the needs of the students and the way the university has met them. If a conservative has one of the desks, he is interested in finding out how he can keep it for himself; if he does not, he will be interested in finding out what he has to do to get one.
Notice that everything in the perspective of the conservative student is oriented toward making things better for himself. It is a perspective that has a lot of respect for competition and it is likely to see the seated students as the winners of the competition than as somehow unfairly privileged. This perspective pays a lot of attention to personal responsibility for outcomes, so it is a very good motivational view. It is a "healthy" view as well, because it highlights the relationships among aspiration, achievement, and reward.
But it isn't very good for systemic questions. If you were outfitting an oceangoing vessel, you would want a liberal planning the supply of lifeboats because a conservative would be interested only in what he would have to do to be in one of the boats. The liberal would want to be sure there were enough boats for everyone. The liberal perspective matches aggregate need with aggregate supply. It is more interested in seeing that everyone's needs are met than assuring that his own needs are met. Liberals are deeply suspicious that when choices have to be made so that some are included and some excluded, it will be the same people--the systematically marginalized--who will be excluded.
In this scenario as in all the others, the better scenario is the one that highlights what you want to highlight. The conservative question is a really good question for some things. The liberal question is a really good question for other things. You really can't ask them both. When you do, you wind up with forty desks instead of twenty and no demand that the university provide the services for which it has already received the money.
Dramatis Personae
The third metaphor has to do with the relationship between the economy and the polity; between the market and politics. When you read a liberal account, you will nearly always see that the government "intervenes" in situation to protect "citizens." When you read a conservative account, you will find that the government "interferes" in the normal operations of the market and everyone loses as a result. Why "intervenes" and "interferes?"
It comes down to the dramatis personae. Who are the actors in this drama? The conservative perspective has two actors. The first is "everyone participating in the market." That means employers, investors, and producers at one end and employees and consumers at the other. "The market" is Adam Smith's notion of intelligent design. It allocates goods and costs precisely under most circumstances and it benefits all participants, though not equally. Most importantly, it is "self-correcting." When prices are too high, the market forces them down; when goods are scarce, the market supplies more of them.
Since the market is "self-correcting," it does not need to be "corrected" by governments. That is why government actions are called "interference." Liberals who don't like the way the market distributes incomes, for instance, have no foothold at all on this argument. If something is wrong, the market will correct it if it is left alone. Besides that, government doesn't intervene adroitly and the effects of its clumsiness are reduced production and higher costs for everyone.
Liberals, it goes without saying, see it differently. Did you notice that there are no citizens in the conservative list of characters? Liberals see citizens and taxpayers in the bottom part of the market where conservatives see consumers and employees. They take the corporate greed and overwhelming power of the largest businesses as weapons that can, at any moment, be unleashed against the people they, the liberals, have sworn an oath to protect.
An active government is, as a matter of fact, all that stands between the citizen and the most abject wage slavery. Without government protections, the U. S. economy would be one huge "company town," where the company controlled what wages you got and what your groceries cost and when you fell behind, you could never leave town. Oh and by the way, marginalized workers don't even need to apply for work.
It is this picture that gives meaning to "intervene." In this context, it sounds more like "protect and serve," which you might see on a police car. If the companies can band together, then the workers can band together. Fair is fair. If a product is unsafe or ineffective, the companies selling it won't care and if the government doesn't intervene, the citizens will be victimized over and over. The market has no conception at all of "the public good" so it really can't be trusted. There is no democratic control by consumers, so it can't be "corrected," if by that term we will mean that it will be brought back to meeting the needs of the people.
So conservatives see the market and a marvelous machine and the government as a hapless and dangerous tinkerer. Liberals see the market as a device for the systematic abuse of the citizenry and the corporations as conscienceless ghouls. And again, the best question is this: "What is each of these perspectives good for?" If liberalism is a screwdriver and conservatism a hammer, the one thing you need to know is whether the dilemma facing you is more like a screw or more like a nail. And it is not "your view" or "their view" that is finally of most importance. It is "our view." That's why we have governments and that's why we don't let them do whatever they want.
I am in the process of exploring what useful ideas about liberalism and conservatism can be derived from three metaphors. In the previous post, I explored public goods and private goods. Private goods aren't good for broad benefits. Whether that is a regrettable lapse or a catastrophe depends on the benefits we are talking about. Public goods aren't good for personal motivation and incremental learning. Again, how bad that is depends on what we are talking about.
The second metaphor imagines a classroom with twenty desks. The room as a whole holds eighty students, sixty of whom stand at the back. The other twenty stand in the hallways and hear whatever they can hear.
Presuming that all these students are paid up customers, liberals will want to ask what nutcase admitted a hundred students to a course being held in a classroom that has only twenty desks. The classroom is inadequate to meet the needs of the students and liberals will suspect that if you look at the standing students, you will find darker skins and poorer educational backgrounds. Conservatives are not at all inclined to talk about the needs of the students and the way the university has met them. If a conservative has one of the desks, he is interested in finding out how he can keep it for himself; if he does not, he will be interested in finding out what he has to do to get one.
Notice that everything in the perspective of the conservative student is oriented toward making things better for himself. It is a perspective that has a lot of respect for competition and it is likely to see the seated students as the winners of the competition than as somehow unfairly privileged. This perspective pays a lot of attention to personal responsibility for outcomes, so it is a very good motivational view. It is a "healthy" view as well, because it highlights the relationships among aspiration, achievement, and reward.
But it isn't very good for systemic questions. If you were outfitting an oceangoing vessel, you would want a liberal planning the supply of lifeboats because a conservative would be interested only in what he would have to do to be in one of the boats. The liberal would want to be sure there were enough boats for everyone. The liberal perspective matches aggregate need with aggregate supply. It is more interested in seeing that everyone's needs are met than assuring that his own needs are met. Liberals are deeply suspicious that when choices have to be made so that some are included and some excluded, it will be the same people--the systematically marginalized--who will be excluded.
In this scenario as in all the others, the better scenario is the one that highlights what you want to highlight. The conservative question is a really good question for some things. The liberal question is a really good question for other things. You really can't ask them both. When you do, you wind up with forty desks instead of twenty and no demand that the university provide the services for which it has already received the money.
Dramatis Personae
The third metaphor has to do with the relationship between the economy and the polity; between the market and politics. When you read a liberal account, you will nearly always see that the government "intervenes" in situation to protect "citizens." When you read a conservative account, you will find that the government "interferes" in the normal operations of the market and everyone loses as a result. Why "intervenes" and "interferes?"
It comes down to the dramatis personae. Who are the actors in this drama? The conservative perspective has two actors. The first is "everyone participating in the market." That means employers, investors, and producers at one end and employees and consumers at the other. "The market" is Adam Smith's notion of intelligent design. It allocates goods and costs precisely under most circumstances and it benefits all participants, though not equally. Most importantly, it is "self-correcting." When prices are too high, the market forces them down; when goods are scarce, the market supplies more of them.
Since the market is "self-correcting," it does not need to be "corrected" by governments. That is why government actions are called "interference." Liberals who don't like the way the market distributes incomes, for instance, have no foothold at all on this argument. If something is wrong, the market will correct it if it is left alone. Besides that, government doesn't intervene adroitly and the effects of its clumsiness are reduced production and higher costs for everyone.
Liberals, it goes without saying, see it differently. Did you notice that there are no citizens in the conservative list of characters? Liberals see citizens and taxpayers in the bottom part of the market where conservatives see consumers and employees. They take the corporate greed and overwhelming power of the largest businesses as weapons that can, at any moment, be unleashed against the people they, the liberals, have sworn an oath to protect.
An active government is, as a matter of fact, all that stands between the citizen and the most abject wage slavery. Without government protections, the U. S. economy would be one huge "company town," where the company controlled what wages you got and what your groceries cost and when you fell behind, you could never leave town. Oh and by the way, marginalized workers don't even need to apply for work.
It is this picture that gives meaning to "intervene." In this context, it sounds more like "protect and serve," which you might see on a police car. If the companies can band together, then the workers can band together. Fair is fair. If a product is unsafe or ineffective, the companies selling it won't care and if the government doesn't intervene, the citizens will be victimized over and over. The market has no conception at all of "the public good" so it really can't be trusted. There is no democratic control by consumers, so it can't be "corrected," if by that term we will mean that it will be brought back to meeting the needs of the people.
So conservatives see the market and a marvelous machine and the government as a hapless and dangerous tinkerer. Liberals see the market as a device for the systematic abuse of the citizenry and the corporations as conscienceless ghouls. And again, the best question is this: "What is each of these perspectives good for?" If liberalism is a screwdriver and conservatism a hammer, the one thing you need to know is whether the dilemma facing you is more like a screw or more like a nail. And it is not "your view" or "their view" that is finally of most importance. It is "our view." That's why we have governments and that's why we don't let them do whatever they want.
How Are Liberals Different From Conservatives?
This question does not presuppose that it is important to wonder whether they really are. It does not imagine that the differences are so slight that recognizing them at all will require video review. The question I have in mind is really how best to catalog the differences so they can be used on the fly.
Last year, in the 2010 version of P.S. 102, I relied mostly on policy differences. Liberals want to stabilize and extend Social Security, for instance, and conservatives would like to privatize at least part of it. Conservatives want to cover our increased spending by borrowing and liberals want to cover our increased spending by increased taxes. If you are looking for realistic proposals for decreasing spending at the federal level, you can keep on looking. Call me when you find anything interesting.
This year, I am pushing the policy differences back a little and putting some more fundamental considerations first. I have three pictures that I hope will do the job. The first contrasts a community getting its potable water from a reservoir from a community getting it from the kitchen faucet. In the first instance, the water has gone through a purification process so that it is all safe to drink. In the second, the water is not treated at the common site, but people buy and install filters on the kitchen faucets in order to make their water safe to drink.
The point of this comparison is that it costs the government a lot of money to make all the available water safe to drink and a lot of that water is going to be used to wash cars and water lawns. On the other hand, no one is going to get sick from drinking the water. Relying on faucets to do the purification job doesn't cost the government anything. In fact, it supports a brisk business in kitchen faucet filters, which are purchased by everyone who really cares about pure drinking water and who has the resources to purchase and maintain the filters. It is true that some people will get sick from drinking the water, but that will cause a good deal more careful management of the problem as people learn to avoid these bad outcomes by drinking only water they have treated themselves.
This contrasts the high tax, universal benefit, low personal responsibility model with the low tax, selective benefit, high personal responsibility model.
That was supposed to be the first of three examples and--eventually--it will be. But I'm out of time for now. The second will involve a 100 person classroom with only 20 chairs. The third will involve the fundamental characters in the politics v. economics debate.
Last year, in the 2010 version of P.S. 102, I relied mostly on policy differences. Liberals want to stabilize and extend Social Security, for instance, and conservatives would like to privatize at least part of it. Conservatives want to cover our increased spending by borrowing and liberals want to cover our increased spending by increased taxes. If you are looking for realistic proposals for decreasing spending at the federal level, you can keep on looking. Call me when you find anything interesting.
This year, I am pushing the policy differences back a little and putting some more fundamental considerations first. I have three pictures that I hope will do the job. The first contrasts a community getting its potable water from a reservoir from a community getting it from the kitchen faucet. In the first instance, the water has gone through a purification process so that it is all safe to drink. In the second, the water is not treated at the common site, but people buy and install filters on the kitchen faucets in order to make their water safe to drink.
The point of this comparison is that it costs the government a lot of money to make all the available water safe to drink and a lot of that water is going to be used to wash cars and water lawns. On the other hand, no one is going to get sick from drinking the water. Relying on faucets to do the purification job doesn't cost the government anything. In fact, it supports a brisk business in kitchen faucet filters, which are purchased by everyone who really cares about pure drinking water and who has the resources to purchase and maintain the filters. It is true that some people will get sick from drinking the water, but that will cause a good deal more careful management of the problem as people learn to avoid these bad outcomes by drinking only water they have treated themselves.
This contrasts the high tax, universal benefit, low personal responsibility model with the low tax, selective benefit, high personal responsibility model.
That was supposed to be the first of three examples and--eventually--it will be. But I'm out of time for now. The second will involve a 100 person classroom with only 20 chairs. The third will involve the fundamental characters in the politics v. economics debate.
Monday, January 10, 2011
Guns don't kill people, People kill people
I think I'll add this to the Pro-life/Pro-choice example I have used so often. If the purpose of distinguishing these two conceptual priorities from each other is to ban the "bad" part, then we are offered the choice between banning guns or banning people. Not a very attractive choice.
On the other hand, what everyone knows--everyone from the most enthusiastic gun enthusiast to the most ardent pacifist--is that guns make it easier to kill people. There is a gradient. At the "unlikely to commit a homicide" end of the scale are personal, physical, time-consuming ways of killing. Let's say, just to have something vivid, that at this end, the favored way of killing is to shove a knitting needle through the victim's eye and into the brain. It would still be possible to say, "People don't kill people; knitting needles kill people." On the other hand, there would be very very few homicides using that method.
At the other end of the scale is carrying a small loader rapid-fire handgun around. It isn't personal; it isn't physical; it isn't time-consuming. It makes it possible for an act to be performed during a brief moment of anger or despair. I believe I recall that a small child somewhere in the Pacific Northwest recently shot and killed his mother because he was angry that she made him carry in some firewood. It is impossible to imagine that if he had been limited to knitting needles, that he would have killed his mother that day. Or to strangling; or to slitting her throat, or to beating her to death with a baseball bat. Very likely, picking up a loaded gun in a moment of anger is the only way he would have managed to kill his mother over a household chore.
The policy debate--leaving aside the Supreme Court's current views on whether the Constitution guarantees the right to own muskets--would be about how close to the moment of anger killings we want to be. It is clear to me that making it less convenient to commit homicides would cut down on the number of homicides.
On the other hand, what everyone knows--everyone from the most enthusiastic gun enthusiast to the most ardent pacifist--is that guns make it easier to kill people. There is a gradient. At the "unlikely to commit a homicide" end of the scale are personal, physical, time-consuming ways of killing. Let's say, just to have something vivid, that at this end, the favored way of killing is to shove a knitting needle through the victim's eye and into the brain. It would still be possible to say, "People don't kill people; knitting needles kill people." On the other hand, there would be very very few homicides using that method.
At the other end of the scale is carrying a small loader rapid-fire handgun around. It isn't personal; it isn't physical; it isn't time-consuming. It makes it possible for an act to be performed during a brief moment of anger or despair. I believe I recall that a small child somewhere in the Pacific Northwest recently shot and killed his mother because he was angry that she made him carry in some firewood. It is impossible to imagine that if he had been limited to knitting needles, that he would have killed his mother that day. Or to strangling; or to slitting her throat, or to beating her to death with a baseball bat. Very likely, picking up a loaded gun in a moment of anger is the only way he would have managed to kill his mother over a household chore.
The policy debate--leaving aside the Supreme Court's current views on whether the Constitution guarantees the right to own muskets--would be about how close to the moment of anger killings we want to be. It is clear to me that making it less convenient to commit homicides would cut down on the number of homicides.
Israel as an American "cause" or a U. S. "interest"
The puzzle of the right relationship of the United States with the state of Israel has been a puzzle for a long time. As the costs of the relationship continue to escalate, it has become a more irritating puzzle. As the prospect seems more and more to be perpetual stalemate, the irritation is continually aggravated.
The cost is now so high and the likelihood of a satisfactory outcome so low, that it time to say that if sustaining Israel as an independent democratic nation in the Middle East is a “cause, “ then it is time to catch our breath and prepare ourselves to do whatever it takes. If it an “interest,” it is time to look more closely at the cost-benefit analysis. What do we get from continuing to do what we have been doing?
The U. S. government has not yet made either case. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has, of course, made both cases, but as the time drags on and the costs rise, this is a case we need to hear from the President. President Obama, so far, has done what all of his predecessors, reaching back in my memory to Truman, have done. He has invested a substantial part of our foreign aid budget in Israel’s ability to defend itself and he has invested a substantial part of his diplomatic attention in a “peace process.” The peace process is the most important part because it is the only thing that prevents some judgment from being made about what our interests are and what to do to further them. The "peace process" is a political snooze button.
Let’s look at the situation, then at the options.
Israel now has secure borders. “Borders,” of course, do not project the civilian population from rockets lobbed into Israel from Gaza; they do prevent any foreseeable land invasion. But Israel is not secure and will never be secure so long as there are neighbors—and I am not talking just about the governments of the neighboring states—capable of attacking Israel. The attackers will call them “reprisals,” of course, but the conflict has gone on so long that anything done by either side can now justly be called a “reprisal.” [Map of Israel and surrounding territories here]
But “Israel,”—I’ll come in a minute to why that word is in italics—wants two things it is not likely to get and at the moment, feels that the current level of conflict is preferable to giving them up. One is complete control of the entire city of Jerusalem, including the Muslim part. The second is a continually expanding eastern frontier, so more and more of Palestine comes under the control of the government of Israel. This second goal is probably not going to be acceptable either, but it has, in addition a “poison pill” provision. If Israel simply annexed the West Bank, a majority of her “residents” would not be Jews and the prospect would loom of a free and fair election putting in place a Muslim government. I call it a “prospect” only because that is where the population numbers lead and that is where the comparative birth rates lead as well.
Now are these two things "what Israel demands?" Yes and no. That is why I put “Israel” in quotes above. Israel currently has a conservative government. The coalition Benjamin Netanyahu leads is a majority because it has a number of far right parties included in it. They can pull the plug on his government any time they want to and they have not been shy about reminding him of that. A move to deal with Jerusalem by dividing it or sharing it or internationalizing it would bring about the end of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s government. Similarly, an Israeli commitment to forbid further settlement in the West Bank—these settlements are in a foreign country—much less to dismantle the settlements already built there, would also bring about an end of his government. So it doesn’t really matter whether these are things he wants to do. He couldn’t do them even if he did want to.
Similarly “Palestine,” (again, note the quotes) can neither recognize Israel diplomatically nor prevent attacks on Israel from its territory. Hamas is the legitimate government of Gaza, but it doesn’t control the ability of militants to attack Israel from Gaza. This is true, again, even if they wanted to and their desire to do so comes and goes. Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah party control the West Bank, but he is powerless to make “peace process commitments” as well. He cannot prevent Israel from continuing to take land in the West Bank and he cannot prevent militants from attacking Israel from the West Bank.
It is for this collection of reasons that I say the process has no foreseeable end. Any step toward peace will remove from authority the leader who takes that step. Should normal political processes prove inadequate, there is always assassination, which has proved effective in the past. So things are going to keep going the way they are going.
That means that the President needs to decide how long he is going to support this process. I will pass over the domestic political attractions to remaining “a friend of Israel.” If supporting Israel—at the moment, that means supporting Israeli practices that Jimmy Carter called “apartheid,”—is a moral commitment, then we need to prepare our citizens to continue paying the price. The price in American lives and American dollars continues to escalate. It is now so far out of hand that Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mike Mullen, are talking about it in public. Those remarks are really important if we are looking at our relationship with Israel in a cost-benefit framework. Otherwise, not so much.
Either way, President Obama needs to say what is going to happen and how we are going to participate in it and why and for how long. He has not said any of those things and I have been listening really hard.
The cost is now so high and the likelihood of a satisfactory outcome so low, that it time to say that if sustaining Israel as an independent democratic nation in the Middle East is a “cause, “ then it is time to catch our breath and prepare ourselves to do whatever it takes. If it an “interest,” it is time to look more closely at the cost-benefit analysis. What do we get from continuing to do what we have been doing?
The U. S. government has not yet made either case. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has, of course, made both cases, but as the time drags on and the costs rise, this is a case we need to hear from the President. President Obama, so far, has done what all of his predecessors, reaching back in my memory to Truman, have done. He has invested a substantial part of our foreign aid budget in Israel’s ability to defend itself and he has invested a substantial part of his diplomatic attention in a “peace process.” The peace process is the most important part because it is the only thing that prevents some judgment from being made about what our interests are and what to do to further them. The "peace process" is a political snooze button.
Let’s look at the situation, then at the options.
Israel now has secure borders. “Borders,” of course, do not project the civilian population from rockets lobbed into Israel from Gaza; they do prevent any foreseeable land invasion. But Israel is not secure and will never be secure so long as there are neighbors—and I am not talking just about the governments of the neighboring states—capable of attacking Israel. The attackers will call them “reprisals,” of course, but the conflict has gone on so long that anything done by either side can now justly be called a “reprisal.” [Map of Israel and surrounding territories here]
But “Israel,”—I’ll come in a minute to why that word is in italics—wants two things it is not likely to get and at the moment, feels that the current level of conflict is preferable to giving them up. One is complete control of the entire city of Jerusalem, including the Muslim part. The second is a continually expanding eastern frontier, so more and more of Palestine comes under the control of the government of Israel. This second goal is probably not going to be acceptable either, but it has, in addition a “poison pill” provision. If Israel simply annexed the West Bank, a majority of her “residents” would not be Jews and the prospect would loom of a free and fair election putting in place a Muslim government. I call it a “prospect” only because that is where the population numbers lead and that is where the comparative birth rates lead as well.
Now are these two things "what Israel demands?" Yes and no. That is why I put “Israel” in quotes above. Israel currently has a conservative government. The coalition Benjamin Netanyahu leads is a majority because it has a number of far right parties included in it. They can pull the plug on his government any time they want to and they have not been shy about reminding him of that. A move to deal with Jerusalem by dividing it or sharing it or internationalizing it would bring about the end of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s government. Similarly, an Israeli commitment to forbid further settlement in the West Bank—these settlements are in a foreign country—much less to dismantle the settlements already built there, would also bring about an end of his government. So it doesn’t really matter whether these are things he wants to do. He couldn’t do them even if he did want to.
Similarly “Palestine,” (again, note the quotes) can neither recognize Israel diplomatically nor prevent attacks on Israel from its territory. Hamas is the legitimate government of Gaza, but it doesn’t control the ability of militants to attack Israel from Gaza. This is true, again, even if they wanted to and their desire to do so comes and goes. Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah party control the West Bank, but he is powerless to make “peace process commitments” as well. He cannot prevent Israel from continuing to take land in the West Bank and he cannot prevent militants from attacking Israel from the West Bank.
It is for this collection of reasons that I say the process has no foreseeable end. Any step toward peace will remove from authority the leader who takes that step. Should normal political processes prove inadequate, there is always assassination, which has proved effective in the past. So things are going to keep going the way they are going.
That means that the President needs to decide how long he is going to support this process. I will pass over the domestic political attractions to remaining “a friend of Israel.” If supporting Israel—at the moment, that means supporting Israeli practices that Jimmy Carter called “apartheid,”—is a moral commitment, then we need to prepare our citizens to continue paying the price. The price in American lives and American dollars continues to escalate. It is now so far out of hand that Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mike Mullen, are talking about it in public. Those remarks are really important if we are looking at our relationship with Israel in a cost-benefit framework. Otherwise, not so much.
Either way, President Obama needs to say what is going to happen and how we are going to participate in it and why and for how long. He has not said any of those things and I have been listening really hard.
Friday, January 7, 2011
Hidden Assumptions
I don't mean to imply that a word like hidden implies that anyone has done the hiding. I mean only that these assumptions don't emerge in our calculations. They are what Michael Polayni calls "tacit" assumptions.
Yesterday, I was teaching my 414 class about hidden assumptions. We were using Robert Reich's truly wonderful new book, Aftershock, as our case study. Reich makes the case that aggregate demand has to be increased if the current semi-recession is to be ended, and that aggregate demand will not be increased unless the people most likely to spend their income, get more income.
The economy has grown, Reich points out, and if the share of those new resources controlled by the bottom 90% of the population--I'm hoping that any readers of this post fall in that category--had stayed the way it was in the 1970s and earlier, they would have a lot more income to spend. Further, these people have seen "the good life" and aspire to it. That's what the maxed out credit cards and the multiple home mortgages are about, but those are not sources of revenue adequate to sustain their spending. They need a larger share of the produce of the economy.
The point Reich rejects, although he doesn't reject it explicitly, is that people might be expected to trim their expectations and their spending over this forty year training period so that they reduce their spending to what they can afford. Reich does make the point that it wouldn't be good for the economy if they did that, but he doesn't really consider the oft-made point that people should "learn to live within their means." He doesn't consider it because he doesn't want us to consider it.
So, although I would not say that he "hides" it, I do want to say that it remains "hidden" in his treatment. I, the master teacher, want to bring this hiddenness to my students and to enable them to search out such hiddennesses for themselves.
However.
At our previous class meeting, a number of students got up and walked out of class when the clock on the wall said we had ten minutes yet to go. And they didn't walk out apologetically, as students do sometimes when they have another appointment to keep. They walked out as students do when the class time is over. I thought I just passed it off, but I now think it must have irritated me a little. Here's why I think that.
One of the students said the clock was slow, but my watch had the same time as the clock. So at the next class period--that was yesterday--I introduced a new contract between me and the students. It featured the idea that if we were going to go by the clock, then we should start class at 11:50 rather than at noon. Then we could leave at 1:40 rather than at 1:50. Alternatively, if we started when the clock said it was noon, we would continue the class session until the clock said it was 2:00 p.m. "Fair is fair," I said to myself.
One of the students said, "Why don't we just set the clock?" And, in the dumbfounded silence I offered, proceeded to do so.
In that way, as it turned out, I offered my students a much better example of hidden assumptions than Reich offered us. I offered ME, proposing a substantial tinkering with the schedule, presuming that the clock was utterly unchangeable. I skated right by the simple and obvious--it's never obvious to you when you are hiding it from yourself--solution and I didn't need to do that and I shouldn't have done that.
But I think the reason I did had to do with the students leaving "early" last time. I think it irked me a little--although I didn't think so at the time--because I went directly to the renegotiation of the class times and held that little "Fair is fair" sentiment at the center of my own teacherly heart. And, I now think, that's why the option of resetting the clock was "hidden" from me.
Oh well. It was a great example of hidden assumptions and that IS what I was trying to do. I wish I could have done it in a way that didn't make me feel so foolish.
Yesterday, I was teaching my 414 class about hidden assumptions. We were using Robert Reich's truly wonderful new book, Aftershock, as our case study. Reich makes the case that aggregate demand has to be increased if the current semi-recession is to be ended, and that aggregate demand will not be increased unless the people most likely to spend their income, get more income.
The economy has grown, Reich points out, and if the share of those new resources controlled by the bottom 90% of the population--I'm hoping that any readers of this post fall in that category--had stayed the way it was in the 1970s and earlier, they would have a lot more income to spend. Further, these people have seen "the good life" and aspire to it. That's what the maxed out credit cards and the multiple home mortgages are about, but those are not sources of revenue adequate to sustain their spending. They need a larger share of the produce of the economy.
The point Reich rejects, although he doesn't reject it explicitly, is that people might be expected to trim their expectations and their spending over this forty year training period so that they reduce their spending to what they can afford. Reich does make the point that it wouldn't be good for the economy if they did that, but he doesn't really consider the oft-made point that people should "learn to live within their means." He doesn't consider it because he doesn't want us to consider it.
So, although I would not say that he "hides" it, I do want to say that it remains "hidden" in his treatment. I, the master teacher, want to bring this hiddenness to my students and to enable them to search out such hiddennesses for themselves.
However.
At our previous class meeting, a number of students got up and walked out of class when the clock on the wall said we had ten minutes yet to go. And they didn't walk out apologetically, as students do sometimes when they have another appointment to keep. They walked out as students do when the class time is over. I thought I just passed it off, but I now think it must have irritated me a little. Here's why I think that.
One of the students said the clock was slow, but my watch had the same time as the clock. So at the next class period--that was yesterday--I introduced a new contract between me and the students. It featured the idea that if we were going to go by the clock, then we should start class at 11:50 rather than at noon. Then we could leave at 1:40 rather than at 1:50. Alternatively, if we started when the clock said it was noon, we would continue the class session until the clock said it was 2:00 p.m. "Fair is fair," I said to myself.
One of the students said, "Why don't we just set the clock?" And, in the dumbfounded silence I offered, proceeded to do so.
In that way, as it turned out, I offered my students a much better example of hidden assumptions than Reich offered us. I offered ME, proposing a substantial tinkering with the schedule, presuming that the clock was utterly unchangeable. I skated right by the simple and obvious--it's never obvious to you when you are hiding it from yourself--solution and I didn't need to do that and I shouldn't have done that.
But I think the reason I did had to do with the students leaving "early" last time. I think it irked me a little--although I didn't think so at the time--because I went directly to the renegotiation of the class times and held that little "Fair is fair" sentiment at the center of my own teacherly heart. And, I now think, that's why the option of resetting the clock was "hidden" from me.
Oh well. It was a great example of hidden assumptions and that IS what I was trying to do. I wish I could have done it in a way that didn't make me feel so foolish.
The CBO Is Entitled to Their "Opinion"
The title of this piece is a remark made on January 6 by Speaker of the House John Boehner, of Ohio. Here are the relevant clips from the New York Times account of the controversy.
View A The nonpartisan budget scorekeepers in Congress said on Thursday that the Republican plan to repeal President Obama’s health care law would add $230 billion to federal budget deficits over the next decade, intensifying the first legislative fight of the new session and highlighting the challenge Republicans face in pursuing their agenda.
View B “I do not believe that repealing the job-killing health care law will increase the deficit,” he said.
“C.B.O. is entitled to their opinion,” he said, but he said Democrats had manipulated the rules established for determining the cost of a program under the 1974 Budget Act.
Speaker Boehner holds "View B." He alleges "chicanery" by the Democrats, going as far back as the 1974 Budget Act. I am quite sure it goes further back than that and I am sure it is not limited to the assumptions underlying the calculation of program costs.
What interested me in this exchange is the assertion of belief--the Speaker offered no substantiation other than his personal belief--as a way of contradicting a study by a reputable agency. Agencies don't get much more reputable than the Congressional Budget Office. It is the counterpart of the executive branch's Office of Office of Management and Budget, formerly the Bureau of the Budget. That means that every new majority in Congress has the incentive to destroy the integrity of the CBO in exchange for short-term political gains. The CBO has successfully resisted all such attempts, which is why its budget estimates are still respected.
Serious discussion of the budget implications are impaired, to choose the mildest word I can conjure at the moment, by the assertion of personal belief as a counter to studies crafted under public criteria by well-respected agencies. So, let's say I believe that the Framers' estimate of the value of black Americans as roughly three-fifths of a white person were about right and that that view should be returned to the active premise of policy. What then? Or I believe that the Framers really had in mind only service in local militias when they crafted the Second Amendment and that no direct right to bear arms was ever intended. What then? Or that the Framers never intended that there be a direct and independent "right to privacy" in the Constitution. What then?
I really don't think government can be run at all on such a basis and I wish Speaker Boehner agreed with me.
View A The nonpartisan budget scorekeepers in Congress said on Thursday that the Republican plan to repeal President Obama’s health care law would add $230 billion to federal budget deficits over the next decade, intensifying the first legislative fight of the new session and highlighting the challenge Republicans face in pursuing their agenda.
View B “I do not believe that repealing the job-killing health care law will increase the deficit,” he said.
“C.B.O. is entitled to their opinion,” he said, but he said Democrats had manipulated the rules established for determining the cost of a program under the 1974 Budget Act.
Speaker Boehner holds "View B." He alleges "chicanery" by the Democrats, going as far back as the 1974 Budget Act. I am quite sure it goes further back than that and I am sure it is not limited to the assumptions underlying the calculation of program costs.
What interested me in this exchange is the assertion of belief--the Speaker offered no substantiation other than his personal belief--as a way of contradicting a study by a reputable agency. Agencies don't get much more reputable than the Congressional Budget Office. It is the counterpart of the executive branch's Office of Office of Management and Budget, formerly the Bureau of the Budget. That means that every new majority in Congress has the incentive to destroy the integrity of the CBO in exchange for short-term political gains. The CBO has successfully resisted all such attempts, which is why its budget estimates are still respected.
Serious discussion of the budget implications are impaired, to choose the mildest word I can conjure at the moment, by the assertion of personal belief as a counter to studies crafted under public criteria by well-respected agencies. So, let's say I believe that the Framers' estimate of the value of black Americans as roughly three-fifths of a white person were about right and that that view should be returned to the active premise of policy. What then? Or I believe that the Framers really had in mind only service in local militias when they crafted the Second Amendment and that no direct right to bear arms was ever intended. What then? Or that the Framers never intended that there be a direct and independent "right to privacy" in the Constitution. What then?
I really don't think government can be run at all on such a basis and I wish Speaker Boehner agreed with me.
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Purity of Dialogue Is To Argue About One Thing
Apologies to Søren Kierkegaard for mangling a perfectly good and justifiably famous title. If we treated our arguments the way we treat our sporting events, everything would be much clearer. Imagine that every quarter, the referees changed from football refs to hockey refs. Or worse, the people stay the same and use different rules (football v. hockey) to call the penalties. The fan base would be drastically reduced, as would revenue and at that point, the people responsible for the officiating would make the changes necessary to restore intelligibility.
That’s really what we need—rules that would establish intelligibility.
In the course on public policy, we study policies. We also study ways to discussing policies. In fact, that is how we begin and my first interest is in distinguishing an argument framed in one way from one framed in another way. “The problem is, “says one participant, “that the parents have been cut out of the most important education decisions.” “Not at all,” says another, “the problem is that kids today are living on the ragged edge of culturally induced ADHD. These two are in a good position to have what I call an “axial” argument. Each has a favored axis. Each argues that that axis is “the real one.”
On the next pass, we will pay attention to different positions on the same axis. This comes a little closer to the kinds of arguments that actually occur, but for that reason it blurs the distinctions that were clear just a moment ago. A says, “The cheapest and most available foods are unhealthy. If they were banned, everyone would eat healthier food.” B says, The cheapest and most available foods are unhealthy, but if they were banned, consumption of those foods would go up.” This looks like a disagreement worth spending time on when C shows up and says, “Actually, recent studies show that those foods eaten in moderation are perfectly safe.”
At that point, it becomes obvious that A and B are allies so far as the favored axis is concerned. They may be bitter opponents at the meeting where a ban on junk food is being debated, but their argument is founded on an agreement about what is worth debating. They hold a single axis and differ on their position on that axis. Further probing might show that they agree even on the position, but not on the effect of a given policy approach.
The trick is to see the fundamental agreement between A and B even before C shows up. It’s a challenge. It requires some vocabulary and some self-discipline, but the rewards can be really good. You have begun the process of picking apart the levels or strands of an argument in ways that are not likely to be available to the participants. It’s a good skill and it puts you in position to make a good contribution to the discussion.
That’s really what we need—rules that would establish intelligibility.
In the course on public policy, we study policies. We also study ways to discussing policies. In fact, that is how we begin and my first interest is in distinguishing an argument framed in one way from one framed in another way. “The problem is, “says one participant, “that the parents have been cut out of the most important education decisions.” “Not at all,” says another, “the problem is that kids today are living on the ragged edge of culturally induced ADHD. These two are in a good position to have what I call an “axial” argument. Each has a favored axis. Each argues that that axis is “the real one.”
On the next pass, we will pay attention to different positions on the same axis. This comes a little closer to the kinds of arguments that actually occur, but for that reason it blurs the distinctions that were clear just a moment ago. A says, “The cheapest and most available foods are unhealthy. If they were banned, everyone would eat healthier food.” B says, The cheapest and most available foods are unhealthy, but if they were banned, consumption of those foods would go up.” This looks like a disagreement worth spending time on when C shows up and says, “Actually, recent studies show that those foods eaten in moderation are perfectly safe.”
At that point, it becomes obvious that A and B are allies so far as the favored axis is concerned. They may be bitter opponents at the meeting where a ban on junk food is being debated, but their argument is founded on an agreement about what is worth debating. They hold a single axis and differ on their position on that axis. Further probing might show that they agree even on the position, but not on the effect of a given policy approach.
The trick is to see the fundamental agreement between A and B even before C shows up. It’s a challenge. It requires some vocabulary and some self-discipline, but the rewards can be really good. You have begun the process of picking apart the levels or strands of an argument in ways that are not likely to be available to the participants. It’s a good skill and it puts you in position to make a good contribution to the discussion.
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