Two Faces of Privilege

It seems to me that the concept of privilege as it is commonly understood, is used to include two very different things. That is, when someone talks about someone having privilege, they can be speaking of one of two types of things, which are themselves very different.

The first face of privilege includes things that I would argue all people should have by virtue of being a human being. (Sometimes this is not clear, so let me be clear. All people means all people. It is not limited to citizens or residents of the United States, etc.) This would include food, housing, clean water and air, the ability to move about the world freely, and health care. It would also include things we would want to be free of—freedom from being raped, freedom from being assaulted or harassed by cops and so on.

Hypocrisy Arguments are Bad

Hypocrisy arguments are bad and you should stop making them. I want to distinguish here between an hypocrisy argument–one where hypocrisy is pointed out to delegitimate a  person or position without more–and a hypocrisy claim. By a hypocrisy claim, I mean an accusation of hypocrisy embedded within a larger argument. My argument here applies to the former, not the latter.

Hypocrisy arguments are overrated. In life, in general, and in politics in particular, consistency is the exception not the rule. I am in favor of striving for consistency, but skeptical of anyone who claims their own group is uniformly consistent while their opponents are not. If hypocrisy were rare, it might pack more of a punch. But it is not and it doesn’t. I’m unconvinced they have ever convinced anyone of anything. 

Rebuild, Clean, Serve, Connect: What we talk about when we talk about jobs

 

I get very frustrated by our discourse around jobs. Part of that is because both parties insist that they are very concerned with job creation while pushing policies that produce unemployment. That’s really frustrating. Part of it is because each side accuses of the other of not caring about jobs while not doing much about jobs. That’s also really frustrating.

But that’s not what I want to talk about.

The State of the Union is Ambivalent (2013)

Last year Elias Isquith asked me to contribute a piece to a forum he did on the State of the Union speech. There was some dispute between the contributors over how they read the speech which was my jumping off point. I’m posting it again before this year’s speech because most of what I had to say is still applicable, even if some of the details have changed.

Pete Souza [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

The fact that people have such different readings of this speech isn’t that surprising. It reads to me like it was designed to do just that – let each of us hear what we want to hear.  Our normal way of understanding the SOTU is outward.  We tend to think of the president seeking to persuade the opposition or independents.  But there are two ways we might think of ‘us’ as the target.  First, speeches can be used to mobilize one’s own supporters to action. Second, they can be used to demobilize one’s own team. But ultimately, the impact depends on how we react.  We can use the good things that were mentioned as a resource, in making demands.  Or we can assume that the White House has the issue in hand and therefore we can stand down – at least until we get marching orders.  The latter is a losing proposition, regardless of your thoughts about the president’s own motives. I cringe at the barrage of emails about supporting the president’s agenda. We should have our own agenda, and pressure him to support us.

Of course, we all know that the president faces a hostile Republican majority in the House, and an obstructionist Republican minority in the Senate which, as a result of Harry Reid’s unwillingness to undo the filibuster, has a great deal of power.  Because of the sequester, there will likely be fiscal legislation, and because of Republicans’ fear over losing the Latino vote in perpetuity, immigration legislation will at least get a hearing.

So I thought I’d focus more on some other things, including those the White House has more control over.

Blaming Voters or Consumers is a Cop Out

I’ve argued here before that blaming voters for bad policy or consumers for things like labor conditions is a cop out.  (Here and here for voters, here and here for consumers). The general idea is that social outcomes are not a product of unalloyed aggregated individual choice.  Institutions matter, power matters.  Elites shape the ideas (or people) that can get a serious hearing, and the structure of the choices people get. They work to suppress information and to coopt efforts to challenge them. They make symbolic moves to demobilize those challenges. They act to influence the preferences people hold.  Those who hold positions of power and authority are supposed to do things like follow the law, act morally, represent us, etc.  When they fail to, it’s their fault – ‘why did you let me?’ is a ridiculous response to a charge of dereliction of duty.

There are often two response to this claim that raise an important point, and addressing them helps me clarify my argument.  First is the idea that I’m saying that people have no responsibility to act at all–that I’m essentially leaving them out of the conversation entirely. Second is the idea that saying they aren’t to blame is saying they have no role.

A Rolling Conversation on the State of the Union at Jubilee

Elias Isquith has put together an interesting group of people to comment on the State of the Union, and surprisingly I’m one of them. I’ll be adding the links on this post at they come up. Check it out and maybe even comment. We are…not of the same mind on this thing.

Here’s my opening: “The fact that people have such different readings of this speech isn’t that surprising. It reads to me like it was designed to do just that – let each of us hear what we want to hear.”

Announcement: A Rolling Conversation on the State of the Union

The State of Austerity (Elias Isquith)

Ethan Gach — State of the Union Address Shows Obama’s Priorities: Everything

Robert Greer — Is Obama the Liberal Great Communicator?

David Kaib — The State of the Union Is…Ambivalent

[Update: 2-15-13 a.m.]

Shawn Gude — The Problem with Piecemeal Reform

[Update: 2-20-13 a.m.]

The State of the Union’s Quiet Radicalism  (Elias Isquith)

Shereen Shafi — “Transparency,” Drone Strikes, and the Conditions of Public Support

[Update 2-26-13 p.m.]

The State of the Union’s Crises (Alan Kantz)

Put Out the Fires or Stop Fueling the Flames

== Summary == * Fuoco. Foto di Giovanni Dall’Orto, luglio 2003. * Fire. Picture by Giovanni Dall’Orto, july 2003. == Licensing == {{cc-by-sa-2.5}} it:Fuoco

This morning’s Up With Chris had an amazing discussion of Libya and Mali, and the role of the United States and the French in North Africa.  [Update: this segment can be viewed here.] One point that came through strongly was how the decision to enter the Libyan civil war (what is commonly, and I think misleadingly, called ‘intervention’) was never litigated. That is, the US didn’t have a discussion about it in public before the decision happened.

Today’s episode included a great discussion of all this, including voices that rarely get heard on my television, and I learned a great deal as a result.  I wasn’t the only one watching this discussion who praised Up for this.

But this reminded me of another frustration I’ve had for a long time that I haven’t seen many others articulate.  

What Would a Real ‘Right to Work’ Look Like?

I just asked this question on Twitter, and realized I wasn’t going to be able to explain it  in 140 characters.  So I thought I’d elaborate here. First, the question:

What do people think about reframing "right to work" as just cause employment laws? #rtw #1u

— David Kaib (@DavidKaib) December 11, 2012

There has been a lot of talk about how we need to reframe the horribly inaptly named “right to work” laws, which essentially require unions to represent workers who refuse to join or otherwise support the union in any way.  Since no one is ever required to join a union, this whole framing in nonsense, a cover for a policy designed to weaken unions that can’t be defended on the merits.

‘Right to work for less’ is a common one, but it is fairly clunky.  I like the idea of ‘loafer laws’ or even better, ‘freeloader laws’ (that one is from Matt Bruenig) which emphasize the free rider problem here.  I also like ‘no rights at work’ law.  Regardless, the question I’m asking is a different one.

What would a real right to work look like?  Instead of reframing the right-wing policy with a different name, we could attach a different policy to the name (in fact we could and probably should do both).  Rhetorically, we’d respond to the call for a ‘right to work’ by saying, ‘absolutely we need a real right to work, which would mean X’  There are, as I see it, two options.

The first is the one I mentioned in my tweet – just cause employment laws.  These laws, which presently exist only in Montana, require employers to have a legitimate reason before firing an employee.  This is opposed to at will employment, where employers can fire for any reason or even no reason, as long as they don’t run afoul of various anti-discrimination laws. (It’s worth pointing out that because outside of these laws employers can fire at will, enforcing such anti-discrimination laws is more difficult). In essence, such laws ensure a basic level of due process, and reduce the arbitrary authority of employers while leaving intact legitimate authority.

Another way to reframe right to work would be a federal guarantee of a job, along the lines that Sandy Darity has proposed.  “His National Investment Employment Corps does that, he says, by creating real jobs that pay a minimum of $20,000 a year and $10,000 in benefits, including medical coverage and retirement savings,” along the lines of the Works Progress Administration and the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Great Depression. This is a quite literal ‘right to work.’

Does that make sense? And if so, what do you think?

[Update] Richard Yeselson was tweeting about the first question, and offered “right to shirk.” I like that.

The Uses, and Abuses, of the Term ‘Markets’

When you come down to it, the word market is a negation.  It is a word to be applied to the context of any transaction so long as that transaction is not directly dictated by the state.  The word has no content of its own because it is defined simple, and for reasons of politics, by what it is not.  The market is nonstate, and thus it can do everything the state can do with none of the procedures or rules or limitations.  It is a cosmic and ethereal space, a disembodied decision maker–a Maxwell’s Demon–that, somehow and without effort, balances and reflects the preferences of everyone participating in economic decisions.  It is a magic dance hall where Supply meets Demand, flirts and courts; a magic bedroom where the fraternal twins Quantity and Price are conceived.  It can be these things precisely because it is nothing.

Because the word lacks any observable, regular, consistent meaning, marvelous powers can be assigned to it.

James K. Galbraith, The Predator State

Reading is Fundamental: The State of the Discipline of Political Science

From the outgoing editors of the American Political Science Review.  I largely agree, and have since the first time I looked at the journal in the mid-1990s.

On the negative side, we have two main observations. First, although the discipline as a whole is less fragmented than we had feared (noted earlier), some subfields—and you know who you are—continue to be riven by ideological or methodological conflict. Too often, a paper in one of those fields draws recommendations of “reject,” “minor revision,” and “accept” from three equally esteemed referees. When reviewers diverge so greatly, the editorial team’s judgmental burden increases significantly, compelling editors to discount some expert advice (if possible, without antagonizing reviewers) in order to provide coherent advice to authors. We have no answer to this puzzle, but simply note a pattern accurately described by one co-editor: increasing engagement across sub-disciplines, sustained fratricide within some.

Second, we have become painfully aware of how badly (or how little) some of our colleagues read. Articles are too often cited, by authors and by referees, as making the exact opposite of the argument they actually advanced. Long books are noted, with a wave of the rhetorical hand but without the mundane encumbrance of specific page or even chapter references; and highly relevant literatures, even in leading political science journals, are frequently ignored. We may have fallen victim to an occupational disease of editors, but we have often found ourselves moaning, “Doesn’t anybody read anymore?” It is cold comfort that this sloppiness extends well beyond political science. A recent study has shown that, even in “gold standard” medical research, articles that clearly refute earlier findings are frequently ignored, or even cited subsequently as supporting the conclusion they demolished.

So we advise our successors to maintain, and even expand, vigilance against jargon and murkiness; and we advise authors, referees, and readers generally to further and broaden the conversation, not least by reading seriously what has been, and is being, written.

(This reminds me that I was thinking of writing a post that discussed books that seem as though most people only knew their title, and how they were misrepresented as a result.)

I have two additional thoughts  One is that the solution to the problem noted in the first quoted paragraph isn’t very hard.  It is that when someone is clear about what they are doing, the important question is how well they do it.  This is generally expected of those who come from a more heterodox perspective (like me), but the expectation should be that everyone should.  That you prefer a different theoretical or methodological approach is, at times, irrelevant.  Part of the problem is that so much of American political science takes so much for granted that it can’t usefully discuss these issues.  Only foregrounding them, and discussing them, can allow us to move forward.

The other thing is about the lack of reading.  It’s a matter of faith among many orthodox social scientists that the cluster of work that involves case studies, qualitative research, non-positivist methods, etc., does not lead to advances in knowledge because they don’t build on each other.  (There are other objections too, but that’s for another day).  But the whole conceit of hypothesis testing actually fails to make clear the central role of reading what others have already said.  According to Karl Popper, where hypotheses come from is irrelevant.  The rhetoric of hypothesis testing suggests that a single test can lead to the rejection of a theory, when in reality it’s difficult to find any theory (in political science at least) that has been rejected because it failed one or even a series of hypothesis tests.  Of course a case study is partial, but so is any study.  The important question is not whether one study can settle anything on its own (it can’t) but rather what it, along with what is already known, can tell us.  The scientific method does not include reading and writing, even though all research begins and ends with these things, and usually involves it along the way.  Graduate training organized around statistical techniques obscures this.  An approach that more self consciously and explicitly situates our research within the work of others is necessary to solve this problem.

Of course, it’s unlikely the editors would agree with all that.

Unfortunately, I doubt this will have much impact.  For years the APSA presidential addresses have included trenchant criticisms of the discipline.  But individual beliefs and values do not drives social outcomes, despite what orthodox political science would have you believe.

I learned that from reading.

Via Chris Blattman.