Economic Ideology: 30 Questions

Welcome to Installment #1 of a questionnaire sequence I have been working on that aspires to refine or cancel some of our rudimentary beliefs. Hopefully there will be more refining than abandoning.

Motive: If you know what it's like to see an influential celeb sound off on a monstrously complex matter, one they seem to think isn't all that complex, you'll mutter to yourself they're in way over their head with this. I sincerely believe that engaging the following questions would go a long way in making such celebs less green. Opinionated show-biz types are good question-fodder when you just can't stop inundating yourself with their less than stellar commentaries on the state of everything. But disclaimer: The same holds for neophytes from all walks of life who present as something other than neophytes.

Note also that this is only a Rough Draft. The final version will incorporate an actual polling metric for answers. Right now, I'm just seeking answers in the comment section, as well as any suggestions on how to improve the Q&A itself. This installment has 30 questions, and because it's a rough draft, there's no rule dictating how many questions participants must answer. If you only want to answer one and ignore the rest, leave a comment doing just that.

Additionally, my plan involves uploading a video where I read aloud the relevant sections of this installment and have whatever results I receive tallied and transferred into a compass-like mapping of belief. The format will be similar to that of the other tests alleging to reveal people's political persuasions, except mine is laboriously detailed and accounts for the "why" and the "how", not only the "what".

Once the feedback is in, the final step will be to combine the results from all the installments and soak in the most comprehensive belief-based test ever devised. Or at least that's what my unhumble objective sets out to do, judging by the other belief-based quizzes I've taken over the years (all of which underwhelmed, to put it affably).

Q1: Should economic theories be judged by their ability to predict macro-level events, or by the realism of their assumptions?

A: Predictive measures.

B: Realism measures.

C: Both and/or more.

Q2: Does Nudge Theory offer ideal or sufficiently adequate remedies to the Value/Action Gap?

[nudge theory = influencing behavior with positive reinforcement through non-coercive, non-educational, and non-legislative filters.]

[value/action gap = your behavior is not always in alignment with your intentions and ideals]

A: Yes, nudge theory strikes the right balance between paternalistic laws mandating improvements to choice architecture, and omitting the need for such improvements altogether.

B: No, nudges designed to help some agents overcome irrational habits will unavoidably impose costs on others who are capable of being decisionally rational. Nudging people suggests a lack of respect for and a lack of confidence in human agency and individual responsibility.

C: Not really, nudges are suboptimal at best. If indirect techniques are to be encouraged, why not direct/legal ones? Imagine if all parents and disciplinarians had only ever nudged their children and pupils into taking benevolent advice/orders? The analogy is imperfect, but it's approximate enough to lend support for going beyond indirect suggestions and for using direct measures to cultivate better judgment heuristics, at least in some circumstances.

Q3: Did Behavioral Economics make real contributions to economic knowledge?

A: Yes. The behavioral school was a total game changer. Humans are predictably irrational in ways that defy economic orthodoxy. Take non-linear probability weighting, which shows economic agents greatly overestimating costs/benefits of small probabilities and greatly underestimating costs/benefits of large probabilities. These things were entirely overlooked prior to the emergence of the behavioral school.

B: No. Neoclassical Economics > Behavioral Economics. Generally speaking, economic agents are rational decision-makers. The findings of the behavioral school are limited by experimentally observed human behavior, which has little to no bearing on market interactions. Educational opportunities and competition ensure at least a close approximation of rational behavior.

C: Yes and no. Some decent insights, but ultimately overblown by fans of the behavioral school. The neoclassical models still have some use.

Q4 - Proposition: Behavioral and experimental economists have shown that in the context of financial decision-making, ordinary people's decisions are routinely made under stress. Neoclassical schools ignore this at their peril.

A: Agree.

B: Disagree.

C: Not the whole story / other.

Q5 - Proposition: America is a meritocracy.

A: Agree. Equality under the law = Equality of opportunity = American Meritocracy.

B: Disagree. Equality under the law is one variable for establishing equality of opportunity. Other variables exist and are apolitical. Examples of apolitical and interpersonal distortions of meritocracy include (1) nepotism and cronyism, (2) hiring and promoting based on charm, looks and brownnosing criteria, (3) developmental advantages children of wealthy parents enjoy over the children of lower/middle income earners. [For (3), see behavioral geneticist Eric Turkheimer's work showing that the degree of heritability of numerous features varies depending on socioeconomic status. A developmental luck of the draw is not what people think of when picturing a genuine meritocracy. For a theoretical example of a principle fostering Equality Of Opportunity, see Luck Egalitarianism [in Distributive Justice].

C: Disagree. There is no equality under the law in a welfare state like America that uses a marginal tax code to extract resources from The Makers and to hand them off to The Takers. For a theoretical example of a truly meritocratic system, read Nozik's "Anarchy, State and Utopia". No other setup takes the principle of self-ownership seriously.

Q6: Is class abolitionism necessary for establishing a true meritocracy?

A: Yes. The existence of class guarantees class warfare. If history is any indication, this war is best fought with moneyed propaganda, which puts the working/non-owning classes at an immediate disadvantage.

B: No. As long as economic upward mobility is possible, meritocracy is secured. Besides, class has always been a fuzzy concept. Chat up class abolitionists and you'll quickly discover that even they have a hard time non-arbitrarily distinguishing between owners and workers in many cases. The best curveball to throw at them are owners of small businesses. How small is small enough? How big is too big? They can't tell you, because they themselves haven't figured it out.

C: No, orthodox class analysis misses the mark. This however doesn't make B's answer entirely accurate. Given the exhaustive number of unlikely outcomes that are merely possible, stressing the technical possibility of economic upward mobility is unhelpful. Going beyond the claptraps entails shunning the idea of class and possibility as signifiers of anything. Rather, we can say that meritocracy and justice are closely related, and that all disparities that arise from responsible choices are legitimate on grounds of justice. On the other hand, it follows from the same commitment to justice that all disparities that arise from unchosen factors (i.e. brute bad luck) are illegitimate and meritocratically objectionable. Combining this affirmative view of individual responsibility with a critical approach to the arbitrariness of crude luck is bound to foster competitiveness and fairness like no generically principled outlook can.

Q7 - Proposition: Debates surrounding Distributive Justice have implications for, but are ultimately distinct from, descriptive analysis of functional/dysfunctional economic systems [modes of production].

A: Agree. There is no contradiction in simultaneously supporting Rawlsianism (distributive theory) and some form of capitalism (economic theory). Nor is socialism necessarily wedded to any distributive/redistributive principle.

B: Disagree. Economics and Distributive Justice are interlocked. An unjust distributive theory is economically dysfunctional on arrival. If you side with Rawls over Nozick, your support for capitalism is cognitive dissonance.

Q8 - Proposition: A system that generates more injustice for most with a higher standard of living for all is inferior to a system that generates more justice for most with a lower standard of living for all. Note: Injustice in this context can be institutional atop governmental. The living standards at play can be cashed out by all the relevant metrics welfare-economists rely on to measure Quality Of Life. 

A: Yes, it would be inferior. So long as the tradeoff isn't entirely one-sided, our concern for justice proper ought to override rigidly qualitative concerns.

B: No, it wouldn't be inferior. Ask the global poor if they would prefer to obtain a much higher standard of living and not see their children starve, but have to put up with more structural maleficence as a result. It's no mystery what they'll choose. Or simply ask Westerners who've been stigmatized to one degree or another — by their discriminatory governments, institutions or fellow citizens — if they would like to swap places with the global poor so as to escape the oppressive grips facing them on the domestic front. Their answers will speak louder than your abstractions.

C: Neither inferior nor superior. The proposition wrongly assumes that increases/decreases of incomparable evaluative criteria can be weighed against one another.

Q9 - Proposition: Some countries are very poor and some countries are very rich because of global capitalism.

A: Yes, the adage "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer" has never rang truer.

B: No, this is lunacy. The pie has gotten considerably bigger. If it hadn't, we would never have gotten past the Stone Age. The countries lagging behind are in the spot(s) they're in due to any of the following internal problems they face: Governmental corruption, dearth of natural resources, bad trade deals, leaders engaging in uncooperative power-plays with potential allies, unmotivated workforce, poorly skilled workforce, intellectually disengaged and incurious populace, etc.

C: Yes and no. The truth is somewhere in the middle, given the history of colonialism and imperialism stifling the Third World's chances.

Q10 - Proposition: People who self-identify as "anti-capitalist" should prefer a future of revolutionary Maximalists over a future of moderate people, like Peter Singer, who care deeply about the poor but who tolerate and will continue to tolerate the existence of private capital.

A: Yes, naturally. Peter Singer is not an anti-capitalist and sometimes engages in apologia of capitalism. Given his enthusiasm for effective giving, Singer is on The Other Side and Maximalists are on the side that grasps the source of the problem (capitalism). Seasoned revolutionaries will have no issues with this, because to be a revolutionary is to co-sign on short-term pain for long-term gain.

B: No, civil anti-capitalists should take Singer instead. Opposition to capitalism should not be a signature issue for identifying ideological foes and allies. There's much more to consider, and history is chalk-full of emancipatory cures which, when implemented, ended up being worse than the disease.

Q11 - Proposition: The existence of global capitalism explains why most workers are left with no options for employment in egalitarian, non-hierarchal, democratically run cooperatives.

A: Yes. Capitalism by its nature eliminates the possibility of widespread worker-controlled or worker-owned businesses. The capitalist class being the only class with major political clout, it's also the only class that stands to gain nothing by tolerating the existence of such businesses. Tells you all you need to know.

B: No. Workers who believe in cooperatives, and who are not employed by a cooperative, are in the position they are in because socialists notoriously suffer from Coordination Problems. Moreover, in many regions, there are simply too few workers who believe in cooperatives. A worker who remains apathetic or ambivalent or deeply cynical about the supposed benefits of working in a co-op where no one is in charge, is not "on your side" simply because he's a fellow worker. Just as an owner or a landlord who does believe in the value of cooperatives but who "has to do what he has to do for the time being" is not on The Other Side of socialists on this issue. Status does not, and should not, predict for belief.

Q12: For anti-capitalists only: Would you rather live in a capitalist system and society containing people who are generally altruistic, responsible, knowledgeable, decent, wise and who believe in capitalism, or under a socialist system and society containing people who are generally inept, careless, oafish, self-serving and who lack a passionate belief in socialism?

A: I'd choose the socialist one. As militant radicals, we understand that the systemic issues enshrined in capitalism are enough to outdo any concerns you could raise about the general quality of the populace within said system. Such concerns will always be secondary, for they fail to grapple with the structural roots of what likely gave rise to them.

B: I'd choose the capitalist one. Clearly, a flawed system with impressive constituents makes for a better society than the converse. If the day ever comes where my opposition to capitalism turns so fervid that it blinds me to this simple fact, I hope that someone is around to give me a good smack on the head and to explain to me how my anti-capitalism has become another axe-to-grind type fetishism.

Q12 transposed: For anti-socialists only: Would you rather live in a socialist system and society containing people who are generally altruistic, responsible, knowledgeable, decent, wise and who believe in socialism, or under a capitalist system and society containing people who are generally inept, careless, oafish, self-serving and who lack a passionate belief in capitalism?

A: I'd choose the capitalist one. Econ 101 shows that the planning-related issues embedded in socialism or communism are enough to outdo any concerns one could raise about the general quality of the populace within said system(s). Such concerns are at most secondary, for they fail to analyze the economic roots of the problem.

B: I'd choose the socialist one. A flawed economic system with impressive constituents makes for a better society than the inverse. If the day ever comes where my hostility to socialism blinds me to this truism, I will have turned my devotion to capitalism into another fetishism.

Q13: Assume the LTV is correct: Would you rather be an exploited worker (non-owner) with a steady income in a Western country circa 2018, or an unexploited worker with a steady income in a non-capitalist country that's agrarian, densely populated, and in no way tech-savvy, making your daily grind more difficult? In both cases, you would be working a standard 40 hour week.

A: No, I would rather have my labor be unexploited, period. A woke worker is a worker who strives to remove any parasites extracting a significant chunk of his physical or mental labor.

B: Yes, I would rather have my labor be exploited on paper but have an objectively easier workload day to day, along with an objectively easier and safer life once I clock out.

Q14 - Proposition: Descriptively speaking, even if most workers understood and agreed with the LTV, or with any other Socialism > Capitalism frame, it is not a stretch to forecast that they'd still prefer to exist in and work under capitalistic modes of production with the benefits of modernity compared to what's on offer in non-feudal and non-aristocratic societies which are pre-industrial and pre-capitalistic.

A: Yes, this is how most people view their work life. It's more about the totality of labor-based difficulty than it is about analytical abstractions like exploitation. The ordinary people anti-capitalists claim to represent are not invested in a triumphalistic, quasi-romantic ideology where labor must vanquish capital when all is said and done. That's the fetishists.

B: No, workers care deeply about being exploited. Questions about the totality of labor-based difficulty are secondary. The workers who prioritize things in some other way suffer from False Consciousness, even if they can recite anti-capitalist literature better than the actual anti-capitalists can.

Q15 - Proposition: Optimally informed workers would benefit, whether they admit it or not, from having democratic and egalitarian workplaces to work in. Once an individual worker is freed of capitalist propaganda, the individual would consider the co-op an improvement even if the majority of his coworkers go on to vote for things he ends up disapproving of, or distribute tasks in ways that leave him feeling like more of a push-over as compared to how the employer or manager had done previously.

A: False. Whatever discontent may exist, hierarchies are not the source of it. We should care about good vs. bad decisions at the workplace, not necessarily about how many individual workers contribute to the making of said decisions. Some workers really are numbskulls who have no business anywhere near a managerial/decisional task. Others would be okay at it, but don't really care for it. Recall how in American Beauty Lester quit his corporate gig to flip burgers because "I want whatever gives me the least possible amount of responsibility". That type exists, and if you've ever been in a board room, you'll know there's no sense in trying to talk them out of it.

B: True. The inegalitarian setup is more of a problem than how a worker personally relates to his colleagues, or whether one feels like subordinating oneself to the co-op's consensus. Whether consciously or subconsciously, most workers dislike having to Work For A Boss in undemocratic workplaces.

Q16: In order to be ideologically consistent, must we choose between slogans like "Greed Is Good" and "Money is the root of all (or most) evil”? 

A: Yes we do, and I choose Greed Is Good, because this is in keeping with what type of organism human beings are. If your ideology goes against human nature, you will fail. If greed per se is bad, you shouldn't be reading this. You should be penniless most of the time; fixatedly enslaving yourself to the unmet basic needs of every last person who's badly off. Good luck with that.

B: No, both sayings are mistaken and retarded. Greed is to be overcome, whereas those who attribute negative motives to the pull money has on people typically know nothing about MMT and don't care to read up on it. Thinking that something as purely instrumental as money is the root of all or most evil is like thinking that barter is the root of all or most evil. Money just increases the efficiency of bartering; modern day bartering.

C: Yes we do, and I choose the repudiation of money. MMT is economic sophistry, just as every other currency scheme has been. Only The Venus Project can save the world.

Q17 - Proposition: A ceiling on rents lowers the quality and quantity of available housing to the point where the overall drawbacks of rent control outweigh its overall benefits.

A: Agree. It's been tried many times and the results are nothing to write home about.

B: Disagree. It hasn't been tried in quite the right ways as of yet, or if it has, the stats we're seeing are cherry-picked and slanted.

Q18 - Proposition: Generally speaking, affluent countries should not prohibit or disincentivize (i.e. nudge) big businesses and other employers from outsourcing work to foreign/developing countries.

A: Agree. Listen to the expertise of the elites.

B: Disagree. Listen to the fury of the populists.

C: Agree in principle, but the experts are wrong too. The impact of outsourcing on the workforces in affluent nations should have been softly incremental from day one, if for no other reason than political expediency.

Q19: Suppose the free movement of capital had not been so maddeningly fast-paced: Would that alone have been enough to prevent the resurgence of hardline nationalism across America and much of Europe? (Or is something else going on here?)

A. No. The same backlash would've kicked in, because Global Free Trade is as economically misguided as the free movement of peoples is. With slower-pacing, the resurgence would have taken longer, but Gen Z would still be seeing it in their lifetime.

B. Yes, with cleverer pacing, things would have remained stable and the elites would've still been entrusted across the affluent continents.

C. No, people still don't get it. This is not about economic anxiety. It never was. See the rundown of recorded economic crises and how rarely they are followed by drastic shifts in economic belief, or any other topic that intersects with economic belief. The revival of nationalism is mostly about demographic change. Deal with it.

Q20 - Proposition: By far the primary driver of inflation is too much growth in the money supply.

A: Agree. 83% of economists seem to agree as well.

B: Disagree. The absolute quantity of currency does matter, but not any more than consumer confidence matters, which drives the transactional velocity of money.

Q21 - Proposition: Professional Sports franchises, fireworks and other entertainment "spectacles" should never receive subsidies from any public treasury.

A: Agree. If you enjoy it, fund it yourself.

B: Disagree. If an absolute majority of voters poll well on it, or are willing to vote for it, let it happen.

Q22 - Proposition: No economic system is capable of playing up to everyone's strengths and filtering out everyone's weaknesses. All variants of socialism are bound to reduce the option-set of certain types of people. i.e. solitary types who have an entrepreneurial instinct and who don't excel at teamwork. All variants of capitalism are bound to reduce the option-set of individuals who, despite being hard working and excelling at teamwork, lack an entrepreneurial spirit and dislike taking orders from bosses. Thus, it is a mistake to frame the capitalism vs. socialism debate along moral or axiological lines.

A: Agree. In a country of millions, widespread constraint is unavoidable. No system is inherently authoritarian or anti-authoritarian.

B: Disagree. One is inherently authoritarian and the other is inherently anti-authoritarian. There are workarounds to the constraint problem, like encouraging psychographic conformity across the entirety of the employable population.


Q23 - Proposition: True socialism calls for economic planning. To socialize is to centralize.

A: Agree. Socialists who try to wiggle around this gradually introduce more and more elements of capitalism into their models, to the point where they just end up with a Mixed Economy. This is why so many people who self-identify as "Democratic Socialist" don't even believe in overthrowing capitalism.

B: Disagree. See Market Socialism, which is not a "Mixed Economy" despite relying on market forces for its allocation of capital goods and products. There is no ideological tension or compromise with having a market economy within the framework of a social ownership of the means of production.


Q24 - Proposition: There is no True socialism. There is just what people mean when they use the word socialism. If North Americans use it as shorthand for Central Planning, that's what socialism means in North America. If the rest of the world uses it in its more doctrinaire sense, that's what socialism means across the rest of the world.

A: Disagree. You can't be a little bit pregnant, just as you can't have "A little bit of socialism". It's an all-or-nothing deal. Not so with the fluidity of public sectors, stimulus packages, redistribution and central planning.

B: Agree, but this has wide-reaching ramifications that no one likes to be reminded of. If colloquial misapplications of technical isms are green lit, such that an ism's history and origins can be ignored at the drop of a hat, it's time to stop complaining about North Korea billing itself as "The Democratic People's Republic Of Korea".


Q25 - Proposition: People who say that Marxist and other critiques of capitalism clamor for "Equality Of Outcome" demonstrate that they know nothing about Marx, let alone the more obscure critics of exploitation.

A: Agree. A mode of production mandating that income only be earned through intellectual and manual labor, where wealth cannot be acquired through capital gains or birthright, doesn't imply a path to equality. Marx did not believe that all workers would enjoy equal earning potential post-capitalism. And if post-capitalism did bring about the elimination of earning gaps between groups and individuals, the resultant parities would be pure happenstance.

B: Disagree. Latter-day supporters of Marx have built upon the original works, prompting iterations and branching off into sects. Fair play to those who go back and analyze the initial works, but when it comes to the refined doctrines of contemporaries who self-identify as "Marxian Economist", classical Marxists insisting that Marx's own work is the only relevant barometer for discourse, is slippery. This is especially true as it relates to those who agitate for intergroup equality-of-outcome. Don't tell me these people don't exist, and don't pretend that they're uninfluenced by the Marxist tradition.

Q26 - Proposition: There is nothing economically freeing about imposing capitalism on a socialistic nation whose citizenry overwhelmingly rejects capitalism in favor of socialism. Correspondingly, there is nothing economically freeing about imposing socialism on a capitalistic nation whose citizenry overwhelmingly rejects socialism in favor of capitalism.

A: Agree. Economic freedom is effective rather than formal. It cannot be decoupled from economic belief.

B: Disagree. Economic freedom, like all freedom, has nothing to do with whatever kooky thing you personally believe makes you free. You are objectively free when you exist in an economic system governed by the tenets of Ideology X. All other systems make you objectively unfree.

Q27 - Proposition: It is a myth that capitalism requires perpetual growth in order to sustain itself.

A: Agree. If capitalism exists the moment someone is legally permitted to enrich themselves through resource-ownership, all the hoopla about infinite growth isn't integral to the blueprint.

B: Disagree. You cannot encourage ever-increasing profitability across all or most industry without fostering a system of endless growth.

Q28 - Proposition: Cultural and attitudinal factors play the biggest role in determining whether or not cash payments increase the wellbeing of entitlement recipients to a higher degree than transfers-in-kind of equal monetary value stand to do. As such, economists should stop recommending a one-size-fits-all policy in favor of one or the other, and adjust for regional variance.

A: Agree.

B: Disagree.

Q29 - Proposition: You only see non-economists saying things like "learn basic economics" in the middle of an argument, because actual economists know better.

A: Agree. Such an arguer takes the particular school of economics he's familiar with and impressed with, and bamboozles himself into an undue conviction where its assumptions are the only credible ones. So it's no surprise that he assumes ignorance of the part of anyone who doesn't parrot the basics of what that one school teaches.

B: Disagree. It's perfectly legitimate in the context of Econ 101 just as it makes perfect sense to say "learn basic physics" to people who are clueless on physics. Economic pluralism is economic ignorance.

Q30: What's the difference between private property and personal property/possessions?

A: Nothing. It's just more sophistry that grabby socialists and communists came up with to justify abolishing private property.

B: Simple: One is limited to personal use. That is; when a possession is acquired in a socially just way, the possessor can exclude anyone from using it. Private property on the other hand is not relational in this subject/object sense, but rather in an interpersonally implicative sense; blurring the line between self-ownership and resource-ownership. Thus the open season on natural commons in the way of artifacts, factories, mines, dams, infrastructure, natural vegetation, mountains, deserts, seas, etc.

***

That about does it for Installment #1. If you've made to the end, I know there's ample room for improvement and deeper poking/prodding of the themes at hand. I'm all ears.