I claim here that humans have a fundamental rule of social morality, which is: Reward cooperators; punish defectors. The use of this rule is what enables humans to work effectively with strangers, making possible sophisticated economies and civilizations. However, this rule can cause problems when people mis-classify the social actions of others.
Please read the whole thing and comment. These are ideas that I also plan to include in the Book of Arnold.
Marvelous essay, Arnold. It gave me a bit better set of terms to parse behaviors of individuals.
It occurs to me that it might be of value in this sense to add a time domain dimension though. I’m thinking that a particular economic actor’s behaviors and choices (in the ‘defector’/’cooperator’ context) is heavily influenced by that actor’s perception of, and ability to consider, long-term versus short-term gain/benefit.
I would postulate that a consistent ‘defector’ has far less of a sense of long-term implications of their behaviors/choices – on themselves only, rather than upon society-at-large – than does a consistent ‘cooperator’. Applying Smith’s ‘baker incentives’ example, the reason I am willing to incur the cost of paying for bread today isn’t so much a matter of social cooperation as it is the fact that I want the baker to continue baking bread, such that I can obtain it again next week. It’s merely a matter of my having an appreciation of my own long-term self interest.
I’m having a bit of trouble with the use of “fundamental.” If it’s so fundamental, I think you need to develop more fully why our intuition about it is so often wrong. In a sense, you’re replicating the first part of Lewis’ “Mere Christianity”: we have a kind of natural law that everybody seems to know about but nobody seems to follow particularly well. While I find it…unlikely that your reconciliation of the two will be the same as his, you do need some kind of reconciliation.
Additionally, I was thrown by the McCloskey example. You suggest that the compatibility of capitalism with the fundamental rule was enabled by shifts in social approbation. But wait: where is the social approbation coming from if not from the “fundamental rule of social morality”? Isn’t whatever causes that shift the fundamental rule? And what sort of thing is that? Perhaps you get away with this by calling your fundamental rule the sine qua non of social morality?
Also, if this is a fundamental rule of social morality, in what sense can it be perilous? Is the idea that social morality is not real morality? Or that it’s a real, but second-level morality overwhelmed by other moralities (and if so which? Why?). Is it the rule of perceived social morality? That seems like a pretty big difference.
In any case, I’m excited to see how you develop this idea and for the whole Book of Arnold!
Excellent, Arnold.
Noting that it is intended as part of something more to come (and “earlier Kling” may be assimilated into an understanding), there seems to be a “binary” (“either or”) approach in this disquisition, which, in a continuing text, could be opened up by Arnold’s earlier study of “Norms,” how they are formed, preserved, altered, and discarded.
All this requires more thought for useful comment and going back over the Kling archives; but, initially:
There may not be a monistic set of norms.
What more commonly occurs are degrees of deviations, rather than “defections.”
Individual motivations (understood as something more than “self-interest”) and the role (function) of their commonalities in the formation of cultural groupings (shared “norms”) require consideration.
How individuals (separately and in groups) find commonalities that give rise to “cooperation” (which has ranges) could be considered (in further text).
On that last point, we have McCloskey on the effects of how people come to look upon one another; translating motivations into “Virtues” (observed and practiced) for those considerations. Simil. Adam Smith.
Perhaps what might develop is a text observing a variety of deviations from a variety of concepts of norms; queries as to the “roots” of those deviations and concepts.
Arnold,
I really enjoyed the article. I’m not sure if this is a direction you want to go in, but an exploration of how people with different political ideologies make the defector/cooperator distinction might be insightful.
For example people with a liberal political leaning see the state as the “supranatural being” that’s needed to regulate the behavior of others and therefore see people who are against certain types of political intervention as being defectors.
Likewise conservatives are more likely to see either organized religion or the family as the ultimate regulator and thus see attempts to interfere with them politically as being defectors.
I agree, though I’m also glad that he wrote the main foundational article without referring to any hot button issues. The military/pacifist example is a great example to use, because (in my sense anyway) the general public is sympathetic to both sides of that issue.
Wow, that’s a great exposition of a principle that ought to be more widely understood.
Politicians understand it, and they manipulate these instincts to get votes out of people.
Disappointing. A case of being infatuated with cool terms. What I gather from Arnold’s article is that we tend to organise ourselves into “We” and “They”, and that this pattern plays a role in moral orientation.
Are people confused about what really is or isn’t cooperation and defection? Or are they confused about which strategy is preferable under certain circumstances?
I read your essay a number of times and am still trying to see what the insight is. It reads as though you are asserting that there are norms, and those who comply are rewarded while those don’t are punished. This seems axiomatic.
I bought and read the The Three Languages, and your theory might flow more cohesively with it if you presented is as a fundamental narrative rather than a rule, or if you framed complier/defector as a domain within each of the axes, each axis having its own version of the story. You might think of a narrative as a framing inclination or bias, rather than a rule that tests facts.
For examples, what are we to make of progressives who decry inequality yet stand ten deep behind occupational licensing and those who earn fantastic rents from it? The ones I talk to tend to see such people (e.g., eye surgeons and lawyers) as wannabe oppressors who submit to regulation, thus suppressing their base oppressor impulse.
Among American conservatives, turning a blind eye to lawless cops would be another example. These are somewhat cartoonish examples, but maybe the issue is that within each axis there are informal codes about what constitutes support for that narrative and what undermines.
I have little knowledge of game theory, so maybe there’s an aspect of that that I’m missing too.
Michael, you write in your interesting comment: I “am still trying to see what the insight is.”
I have the same problem. What propositions I find in the essay are simply general to the point of being trite. They are certainly not capable of discerning modern times from any other epoch in human history.
And they are not helpful in appreciating that modern capitalist societies are based on the suspension of that direct reward-punishment mechanism that Arnold describes. We let millions of our fellow citizens get away with it when they vote for our political opponents or run businesses that are apt to riiun ourselves.
Remarkably, we live in a society of unprecedented mass dissent and tolerated competition.
Free markets do not bring this about, they presuppose a society where people are allowed to be “defectors” vis-à-vis one another in countless ways relative to their diverging interest, values and goals.
That is the interesting issue – not the fact that we tend to think in terms of “we” and “they”.
It is a certain political culture that allows us e.g. to use free markets, which appear to be the generators of peaceful coexistence, when in fact they are the beneficiary of constructive political arrangements.
More here: http://redstateeclectic.typepad.com/redstate_commentary/2015/08/scarce-justice-when-what-is-just-is-not-known-22.html