Fox News and other partisan networks have demonstrated that the quickest route to huge profitability is to serve up a steady diet of high-carb, low-protein populist pap. Reasoned disagreement of the kind that could serve democracy well fails the market test. Those of us who otherwise believe in the virtues of unfettered capitalism should bear that fact in mind.
His speech was on the topic of how to disagree reasonably. It is here where I think that Paul Krugman has met the market test and failed the public responsibility test. To be responsible, you have to set a good example of how to disagree. To set a good example, you have to take the most charitable possible view of those who disagree. This is difficult, as commenters frequently remind me when I do a poor job of it. And even if I do sometimes offer a charitable view of those who disagree, obviously I don’t generate clicks in the volume that Krugman does.
But I want to emphasize that we need to try to disagree reasonably. The alternative approach of fighting tribally is not working well and will only make things worse. Again, see The Three Languages of Politics.
Funny that the only “partisan network” Stephens mentions in this quote is Fox. And Stephens is not well positioned to make this argument – he does not believe it possible to disagree reasonably with his own position on certain issues, notably immigration.
It is amusings (to me, anyway) that Stephens announced that he would vote for Hillary in the last election – and then, after she lost, Hillary publicly agreed with some progressive who was lamenting that the Times gave a “rightwinger” like Stephens a column.
In the speech
That’s because it’s the the only game in town. This in one of Ann Coulter’s jokes. “Rupert Murdoch made his fortune by discovering the small, under-served niche market … of half the population.” The same study had the same percent of Clinton voters name their chief source of news as one of just four sources not exactly known for their non-partisan transcendent disinterestedness: CNN, MSNBC, NPR, and, naturally, The New York Times. “Thanks a bunch for that one, Mexico.”
I suppose ‘other partisan networks’ bydefinition must mean the progressive ones, since fox is the only conservative one. That’s about as much as one can expect from the Times.
I’m not sure if Bret Stephens is supposed to be the NYT’s pet ‘good Republican’ a la David Brooks or its resident piñata.
I seems odd for a libertarian-leaning person to say that the free market in information is giving people exactly what they want, but that it’s a bad thing we should all regret.
At any rate, I think it’s a misdiagnosis of what is really going on. Where is all this increased tribalism and polarization really coming from? Journalism racing to the bottom did not happen in a vacuum or merely because of new market incentives (which have existed for a long time). The current animosity and acrimony may be exacerbated by information outlets pursuing partisan agendas (what else is new?), but the source is in real, deep, and high-stakes conflicts. And the key to improving dialogue is to remove the possibility of winning via conflict, but I don’t think almost anyone really wants to do that, because it means having to give something up.
Thing about how clear the progressives are with these matters when playing with the national interest (instead of their own domestic political interests) in discourse about relations with some opponent foreign state. In those circumstances the progressives are very clear about what America should be willing to give up, even unilaterally in “a show of good faith and leading by example”, for the sake of peace and detente and “defusing tensions” with even the most stubbornly hostile regimes like Iran or Cuba. But when it comes to their domestic political opponents, one never sees anything remotely similar.
Again, this is why I think Stephens is being fundamentally intellectually dishonest here, whether he realizes it or not. The proof of integrity is in the trade off. What is one willing to give up in order to change the incentive structure? By “dishonest”, I mean that I don’t think Stephens is really willing to give up anything, or support any reforms, or really do anything more than talk and signal about it.
It’s all well and good to come out in favor of civility, passing intellectual Turing tests, objective journalism, and free speech, and again no platforming, microaggression theories, safe spaces, and identity-based epistemology. But the only way we can know whether or not that’s mere empty virtue signalling is if the claimant tells us what other value he is willing to give up in exchange. And that exchange also give us some idea of a “deal” and a path forward instead of some kind of wishful thinking that mere expressions of norms by some high status public intellectuals will be enough to overcome the powerful incentives that have led us to where we are today.
So, for example, consider:
Ok, but consider what happened in the US. If the “winning argument” was ever made, well, it lost. But maybe it was never made, because it wasn’t necessary to make it.
Most people on both sides of the matter accurately predicted that the courts would force the issue in the progressive direction, which is what prompted all those referenda and state constitutional amendments and the Defense of Marriage Act all the way back in 1996. And when Lawrence v Texas was decided in 2003, overturning the Bowers precedent from only 17 years prior, the writing was very much on the wall.
So why not go into full morons-Neaderthals-bigots mode, when the courts have your back? Why try to be nice, respectful, friendly, agreeable, pleasant, civil, persuasive, and complaisant with your opponents when you don’t need them to agree in order to get your way? And why should you opponents do anything but return middle fingers and clenched fists not only at the disrespect, but at the reality of being railroaded and having the policy shoved down their throats, no matter what they do, even when they pull out all the stops?
You see what I mean? The stakes are currently too high to allow for mutual civility. There is too much state power to dictate controversial actions which negates any need for bargaining and compromise, and it is that – the constant need for bargaining and compromise – is what encourages people to stay on good terms with each other. Think of the incentives in favor of comity in a marriage in the era before divorce became easy, or the incentives against provocation and in favor of dialogue when an outbreak of conflict guarantees mutually assured destruction.
So, in the US, one way to have changed the incentive structure to defuse and deescalate the situation would have been for to strip the courts of all jurisdiction regarding the matter. Proponents would then have had the right incentive structure to reach out in a more harmonious way to opponents in an effort to try and change their minds. If good relations and good behavior is to be a stable state of affairs, then it must also be the most profitable state of affairs, because no alternative will work.
But would Bret Stephens be willing to say, “Well, obviously I am in favor of gay marriage. But I am willing to overturn Obergefell – and while we’re at it how about Roe and Casey too – and strip the courts of jurisdiction and make this a matter for legislative majorities in each state purely for the sake of incentivizing healthier disagreements about these matters?
The answer of “no way in hell” is pretty obvious. What’s the point of extolling the freedom of speech if one is keeping an ace up his sleeve to ensure that certain kinds of speech won’t matter? You have to be willing to drop the ace, or your opponent can never trust you to play fair. Because you won’t play fair, not with that ace up your sleeve, not when you really need that extra ace: in the long run it’s an irresistible temptation.
One might ask a conservative, “You claim to want national unity and an end to identity politics, but are you willing to give up aggressive policing that alienates blacks, even if it means less security, safety, law, and order?”
You might ask a libertarian, “You claim to want more national cohesion and less polarized politics, but are you willing to close off immigration, to give assimilation time to work, and to make conservatives less paranoid that the progressives are bring in foreign ringers to skunk elections and turn the country into a California-style One Party State?”
In all of these cases, one can easily hear each tribe object, “No I won’t give that up, because I shouldn’t ever have to give those things up; they are core principles that involve people’s fundamental rights!”
And that’s the real problem. That’s why all these articles are fundamentally dishonest. They are mis-framing the problem as if the issue was a primitive belligerence vs. a more enlightened pacifism. Instead, the issue is one of the terms of a deal that is part of the truce that will preserve a stable ceasefire. But I don’t see any evidence whatsoever that Stephens or any of these other writers are genuinely interested in a truce.
Thank you for more clearly expressing than I ever could the thoughts that have also occurred to me and some of my friends. This is not a uniquely American reality, if anything the process of walling off significant issues from open discourse is more advanced in Europe. Taking victories whenever possible is terribly short-sighted if the result is to undermine social structures that enable adaptation and comity.
+1
24/7 news and social media exist in Asia, but I don’t see the Japanese acting the way we do. I think its silly to see these as anything more then amplifiers of real fundamental problems. Things are quieter over there because there are less deep gaping wounds to amplify.
I think the ‘civility’ writers are much like Napoleon in his final month – every time he lost a battle he’d sue for peace; then once he won a battle he’d immediately tear it up and demand more favorable terms, until losing another one.
Incidentally, my own (from what would probably be called a libertarian perspective) preference is for less, not more, national cohesion. I think federalism offers the most viable compromise, and an easing of polarization simply from the fact that one’s opponents’ views would matter less when they live in a different state. I think it’s clear that tensions between European nations of different values have been exacerbated by the growing power of the EU. “Live and let live” gets harder when others get a bigger say in how you can live.
“I seems odd for a libertarian-leaning person to say that the free market in information is giving people exactly what they want, but that it’s a bad thing we should all regret.”
Free market doesn’t mean ignoring problems. It does, however, mean avoiding government imposed solutions.
You think it’s odd for a libertarian to attempt to address problems in the free market, but I find it odd when federalists refuse to believe that federalism comes with its own set of problems.
The courts only ended up following public opinion which conservatives had already lost. There is a need for compromise, but that really means compromise and accepting losses but getting as much out of them as one can. It means offering a olive branch, but not surrendering when you have a supermajority which is the only way anything happens in this country. It means accepting defeat when you have lost and moving on.
If it were true that these are issues on which conservatives lost, why do they keep winning elections while the Democrats lose state legislature after state legislature?
Looking at how things are now, you seem to have a peculiar definition of losing.
Consider legislation.
You might ask a libertarian, “You claim to want more national cohesion and less polarized politics, but are you willing to close off immigration, to give assimilation time to work, and to make conservatives less paranoid that the progressives are bring in foreign ringers to skunk elections and turn the country into a California-style One Party State?”
Why would a libertarian want more national cohesion? It seems like the economic elite benefit from the white and minority working classes insulting each on twitter and not complaining about the Koch Brothers.
Please provide a better example then.
You can take a charitable view of your opponent’s position and demolish his argument on their terms, like Milton Friedman did. I don’t see a lot of folks able to do that.
Milton was good at showing the left how their reasoning fell apart on their own axis rather than on the right or libertarian axis.