Last Friday we had our semester-opening N2PE event “The Market Giveth, the Market Taketh Away: Blessed Be the Name of the Market?”—the Glory Liu "Adam Smith’s America", Jake Soll "Free Market, Brad...
I think all societies are triadic, it's just who they choose to be the third participant in various contexts. Liberals tend to prefer government be a third party because (ideally) it has the legitimacy of majority support. Religious fundamentalists have their written word as a guide to how society should function because that's what God told them to do. The market fundamentalists have taken the position that for purely economic transactions between two individuals, the third party can simply be "the market". This is why they make claims about efficiency and equity that are not supported by the evidence. However they usually allow for the government or religion to be the third party in other contexts or in extreme cases. Market realists tend to understand that "the market" is excellent at setting prices and thereby allocating assets, but also that it is completely blind to non-economic aspects of human interaction and dangerous imbalances can result from ignoring these non-economic aspects of society (slavery, child labor, company towns, all kinds of graft and fraud, etc.)
This is because the driving force between fundamentalism is to rebel against the complexity of human society and to search for simple, easily understood rules of behavior to govern society - an algorithmic third part of the triad. Whether those rules actually work or not long term is besides the point. And of course it is humans that cause the complexity in human societies, so expecting a simple set of rules to govern human behavior is dangerously naive. It's how you get the institutional rot of an excessively legalistic society, since the basic rules don't do a very good job and human are very good at developing unusual edge cases that need to be resolved. I expect that there will be efforts to use AI mediated analysis to be the third party in the societal triad, and it will work about as well as previous attempts.
I agree wholeheartedly! That third leg of the triad should be integrated into the dyadic decision making of the participants party to the transaction, that there should be boundaries in what is beneficial for all involved. If Smith preached social responsibility (rather than laissez-faire), I believe he would be pleased. I also believe than unless we acknowledge that we are all accountable for the economy that we create, then Slouching, we will continue throughout the 21st century.
The basic problem is externalities, there are too many non-computable yet influential human beliefs and values, some of which are in conflict with others. People have even tried invented a "conscience" to act as a benevolent third part of the triad -- but that only works if the two participants have the same beliefs about what's right and what's wrong. There's no substitute for understanding complexity .
Much information has been given about the human condition even in the modern era. Even small islandic areas recognize their interconnectedness, in that destabilization of their communities is an easy feat. That any sort of system (economic or political) can compensate for human frailties is absurd given mankind’s ability to adapt to undesirable circumstances. Time has come for people to accept personal responsibility for their future, IMO.
Except that I, as part of an 8 billion division of labor, cannot see me by myself being able to materially shift and make the future. So how can I take responsibility for it, other than by trying to persuade others?
For certain, small communities can enforce boundaries and mutual respect for unfair transactions. Neighbors just quit doing business with the offender. But for 8 billion to transact, a dyadic system is impossible; therefore, a judicial system will have to arbitrate. In our recent past we have unregulated, until we are forced to regulate, until we over-regulate. But in nearly all instances, society cannot seem to hold those responsible for the violations accountable. Hence there needs to be an analysis, not at the judicial level, but at the psycho-social level. For example, what is so seductive or feared) about the potential rewards (or feared about the punishment), that one would be willing violate social and ethical boundaries? Considering most of these recent issues have been financial in nature and if there is desire to re-engineer the system, a key question is, how did the Dollar become so seductive? How does one mitigate it?
This discussion of the dichotomy between the trilateral and dyadic social structure made me wonder how one might go about bringing God into it.
The most superior Superior is of course ineffable and unseen, but His prophets and ministers are, thankfully, able to interpret and convey His wishes and intentions to those of us here below. Oddly enough, what He always seems to want, among other things, is a deeply patriarchal society in which women are limited to Kinder, Küche, Kirche and otherwise completely at the mercy of their men
You could argue that, factoring in religion, the trilateral society becomes quadrilateral, with a crucial question being who, exactly, gets to speak for the ever-silent fourth player. Differences of opinion on that point drive much of pre-Enlightenment human history on the level of high politics: Henry IV standing in the snow outside the castle doors at Canossa, Henry II vs. Becket, Henry VIII vs. Clement VII, and on and on (one wonders, why do so many Henrys get into trouble?).
In the Lockean dyadic structure, each player can determine the will of God for himself–sola scriptura!–with the curious result that, in matters of business, God almost always wants for each of them what he wants for himself. Shorn of his divine right, the King, or King in Parliament, as the case may be, becomes just another piece on the board, to be co-opted, evaded, or ignored.
Perhaps religion is only a makeweight for whichever player can, where relevant, compel the others to accept his understanding of Deus vult, in which case it isn’t really structurally important at all, but just another form of the eternal question of Who-Whom.
Davis: “Transitory” was a perfectly fine word and the Fed should have done more and been seen to be doing more sooner (which would have allowed it to do less later) to make it transitory.
No, PPP was not good fiscal policy. Good fiscal policy would be that a pre-existing unemployment insurance scheme would kick in to replace a hefty percentage of the incomes of unemployed workers. And better monetary policy would not have required any special legislation for the Fed to have cut the recession/undershooting of the inflation target shorter.
Heather Cox Richardson: Isn't it amazing that the one positive though that Rick Perry had in his _life_ was abandoned at the first sign of right wing sentiment. Was this the birth of the right-wing wing of the anti-vax movement?
The Keynes statement seems so totally irrelevant for today. The reason that we do not have a tax on net emissions of CO2, or congestion charges for road and street use, or tax corporate income rather than the imputed corporate income or wages tax instead of a VAT for financing SS/Medicare is not because anyone is overly attached to laissez faire.
And the idiotic right-wing reaction to Obama does not make it relevant.
Re "Hobbist & Lockeian Underlying Assumptions:" Enfield and Sidnell's "Consequences of Language" on intersubjectivity is more ponderous and jargon-y than I'd like, but it has some important things to say about the construction of cooperation and accountability that transcends the dyadic-triadic scheme.
I would have paid large money to see the Liu, Soll, and Delong seminar. This sort of conversation was what I envisioned when I entered my PhD program. That is to b say, a conversation that was enlightened, informed, and collegial. I've had those conversations on the fringes of academia, never in my actual departmet where discussions are either technical or bureaucratic. I guess that I am a failed big picture thinker, since I could not was three issues as well as you three did.
re: your N2PE event,
I think all societies are triadic, it's just who they choose to be the third participant in various contexts. Liberals tend to prefer government be a third party because (ideally) it has the legitimacy of majority support. Religious fundamentalists have their written word as a guide to how society should function because that's what God told them to do. The market fundamentalists have taken the position that for purely economic transactions between two individuals, the third party can simply be "the market". This is why they make claims about efficiency and equity that are not supported by the evidence. However they usually allow for the government or religion to be the third party in other contexts or in extreme cases. Market realists tend to understand that "the market" is excellent at setting prices and thereby allocating assets, but also that it is completely blind to non-economic aspects of human interaction and dangerous imbalances can result from ignoring these non-economic aspects of society (slavery, child labor, company towns, all kinds of graft and fraud, etc.)
This is because the driving force between fundamentalism is to rebel against the complexity of human society and to search for simple, easily understood rules of behavior to govern society - an algorithmic third part of the triad. Whether those rules actually work or not long term is besides the point. And of course it is humans that cause the complexity in human societies, so expecting a simple set of rules to govern human behavior is dangerously naive. It's how you get the institutional rot of an excessively legalistic society, since the basic rules don't do a very good job and human are very good at developing unusual edge cases that need to be resolved. I expect that there will be efforts to use AI mediated analysis to be the third party in the societal triad, and it will work about as well as previous attempts.
I agree wholeheartedly! That third leg of the triad should be integrated into the dyadic decision making of the participants party to the transaction, that there should be boundaries in what is beneficial for all involved. If Smith preached social responsibility (rather than laissez-faire), I believe he would be pleased. I also believe than unless we acknowledge that we are all accountable for the economy that we create, then Slouching, we will continue throughout the 21st century.
The basic problem is externalities, there are too many non-computable yet influential human beliefs and values, some of which are in conflict with others. People have even tried invented a "conscience" to act as a benevolent third part of the triad -- but that only works if the two participants have the same beliefs about what's right and what's wrong. There's no substitute for understanding complexity .
Much information has been given about the human condition even in the modern era. Even small islandic areas recognize their interconnectedness, in that destabilization of their communities is an easy feat. That any sort of system (economic or political) can compensate for human frailties is absurd given mankind’s ability to adapt to undesirable circumstances. Time has come for people to accept personal responsibility for their future, IMO.
Except that I, as part of an 8 billion division of labor, cannot see me by myself being able to materially shift and make the future. So how can I take responsibility for it, other than by trying to persuade others?
Brad
For certain, small communities can enforce boundaries and mutual respect for unfair transactions. Neighbors just quit doing business with the offender. But for 8 billion to transact, a dyadic system is impossible; therefore, a judicial system will have to arbitrate. In our recent past we have unregulated, until we are forced to regulate, until we over-regulate. But in nearly all instances, society cannot seem to hold those responsible for the violations accountable. Hence there needs to be an analysis, not at the judicial level, but at the psycho-social level. For example, what is so seductive or feared) about the potential rewards (or feared about the punishment), that one would be willing violate social and ethical boundaries? Considering most of these recent issues have been financial in nature and if there is desire to re-engineer the system, a key question is, how did the Dollar become so seductive? How does one mitigate it?
Network externalities! Network externalities are very important in all of this! "Nobody goes there anymore: it's too crowded"...
This discussion of the dichotomy between the trilateral and dyadic social structure made me wonder how one might go about bringing God into it.
The most superior Superior is of course ineffable and unseen, but His prophets and ministers are, thankfully, able to interpret and convey His wishes and intentions to those of us here below. Oddly enough, what He always seems to want, among other things, is a deeply patriarchal society in which women are limited to Kinder, Küche, Kirche and otherwise completely at the mercy of their men
You could argue that, factoring in religion, the trilateral society becomes quadrilateral, with a crucial question being who, exactly, gets to speak for the ever-silent fourth player. Differences of opinion on that point drive much of pre-Enlightenment human history on the level of high politics: Henry IV standing in the snow outside the castle doors at Canossa, Henry II vs. Becket, Henry VIII vs. Clement VII, and on and on (one wonders, why do so many Henrys get into trouble?).
In the Lockean dyadic structure, each player can determine the will of God for himself–sola scriptura!–with the curious result that, in matters of business, God almost always wants for each of them what he wants for himself. Shorn of his divine right, the King, or King in Parliament, as the case may be, becomes just another piece on the board, to be co-opted, evaded, or ignored.
Perhaps religion is only a makeweight for whichever player can, where relevant, compel the others to accept his understanding of Deus vult, in which case it isn’t really structurally important at all, but just another form of the eternal question of Who-Whom.
Thanks for linking to that Summer Praetorius piece. It's really good and without you I would have missed it.
Davis: “Transitory” was a perfectly fine word and the Fed should have done more and been seen to be doing more sooner (which would have allowed it to do less later) to make it transitory.
No, PPP was not good fiscal policy. Good fiscal policy would be that a pre-existing unemployment insurance scheme would kick in to replace a hefty percentage of the incomes of unemployed workers. And better monetary policy would not have required any special legislation for the Fed to have cut the recession/undershooting of the inflation target shorter.
Heather Cox Richardson: Isn't it amazing that the one positive though that Rick Perry had in his _life_ was abandoned at the first sign of right wing sentiment. Was this the birth of the right-wing wing of the anti-vax movement?
The Keynes statement seems so totally irrelevant for today. The reason that we do not have a tax on net emissions of CO2, or congestion charges for road and street use, or tax corporate income rather than the imputed corporate income or wages tax instead of a VAT for financing SS/Medicare is not because anyone is overly attached to laissez faire.
And the idiotic right-wing reaction to Obama does not make it relevant.
Re "Hobbist & Lockeian Underlying Assumptions:" Enfield and Sidnell's "Consequences of Language" on intersubjectivity is more ponderous and jargon-y than I'd like, but it has some important things to say about the construction of cooperation and accountability that transcends the dyadic-triadic scheme.
Is there a transcript for the whole program: "The Market Giveth, the Market Taketh Away ...."
I would have paid large money to see the Liu, Soll, and Delong seminar. This sort of conversation was what I envisioned when I entered my PhD program. That is to b say, a conversation that was enlightened, informed, and collegial. I've had those conversations on the fringes of academia, never in my actual departmet where discussions are either technical or bureaucratic. I guess that I am a failed big picture thinker, since I could not was three issues as well as you three did.
Is the video up at the N2PE site yet?