Schumer and Warren yearn for a dictator

Senators Chuck Schumer (link) and Elizabeth Warren (link) yearn for a dictator. They want Joe Biden to cancel up to $50,000 in student loan debt per person, and they want him to do so by Executive Order -- bypass Congress and just do it. Apparently they did not learn, have forgotten, or don't care that the Executive Branch is for executing the law, not making it. It is Congress's role to make law. That follows the principle of separation of powers. A primary definition of "execute" in most dictionaries is to carry out or put in effect, not to create or make.

Even the left-leaning Brookings Institution said Biden shouldn’t listen to Schumer and Warren on student loans. The objection was not based on separation of powers. "Many student loan borrowers are advantaged, well-educated high earners. About 56 percent of student debt is owed by those with masters or professional degrees, and almost 35 percent of loan balances are owed by individuals in the top 20 percent of the income distribution. Many student-borrowers need relief, but well-off borrowers who are thriving — thanks, no doubt, to their college degrees — do not."

Even the Washington Compost is against it. I doubt it is based on separation of powers. I don't subscribe to the Compost, so I couldn't read the article.   

Joe Biden has proposed only cancelling up to $10,000 (link). He might also accept an income cap, such as $125,000, or limiting it to undergraduate debt. More significant -- and unlike Schumer and Warren -- he wants Congress to make the law.

Wokeness - Andrew Sullvan

I posted about the New Discourses website and "wokeness" on August 9.

Andrew Sullivan's blog The Weekly Dish dated October 18 is also about wokeness. He asks why is wokeness or Critical Race Theory (CRT) winning?

His main answers are:

- It is emotional. 

- It’s super-easy. 

- There’s the deep relationship between CRT and one of the most powerful human drives: tribalism.

- Social aspiration.

-There’s little doubt that there is a religious component to wokeness.

- But what also make CRT so successful is ruthlessness. Those who hold a view of the world in which only power, and the struggle for power, matters, have few qualms in exercising it.

The Logic of Bell Curve Leftism #3

My last post on this topic will not include quotes from Andrew Sullivan’s article. Of course, income and IQ are partly correlated, but not near as much as argued by Sullivan and DeBoers.

This article shows a graph of lifetime income based on AFQT (Armed Forces Qualifying Test) score. Note the degree of dispersion above and below the gray line. The article includes the following.

But a lot of other things also predict income. So, what’s the unique contribution of AFQT scores? More precisely, how much of the variability in income can they explain? Statisticians often answer this question by reporting a statistic called r-squared that varies from zero to one. In this analysis, zero means AFQT has no predictive power, while one would mean that someone’s income can be perfectly predicted by knowing their AFQT score. An r-squared of 0.5 would mean that half of the variation in income could be explained by knowing someone’s AFQT scores (or, less scientifically, half the time you can predict someone’s income by knowing how they did on the AFQT).

The data show that AFQT scores explain 21% of the variation in income between survey respondents. That translates to a correlation coefficient of 0.46.

Is that a large correlation? It depends upon your perspective. If your cup is half full, you can correctly point out that 0.46 rivals the largest observed correlations in social psychology, sociology, and other relevant fields. But if your cup is half empty, you’ll say that many things determine how much money people make, and smarts is only one of them.

In fact, the true contribution of AFQT to income is probably smaller. That’s because AFQT is serving as a proxy for other attributes correlated with earnings. People with high AFQT scores probably stayed in school longer, and most likely had more successful parents. These and other correlates of intelligence factor into the aforementioned 21 percent.

A reader might wonder how the 0.46 and 0.21 are related. Two statistical metrics are the correlation coefficient, r, and the coefficient of determination, r^2 (link).  The range of r is [-1, +1] while the range of r^2 is [0, 1]. 0.46^2 = 0 .2116.

Two other oft-used statistical metrics of dispersion, standard deviation σ and variance σ^2, are similarly related.

Related: 10 Jobs Where Employees Tend to Have the Highest IQs

The Logic of Bell Curve Leftism #2

Again I will put excerpts from Andrew Sullivan’s article in all italics followed by my comments.

Freddie [DeBoer, author of The Cult of Smart] notes that “if the average white student sits at 50 percent of all students at a given academic task, the average black student lies somewhere between 15 and 30 percent,” which is not a minor difference. DeBoer doesn’t explain it as a factor of class — he notes the IQ racial gap persists even when removing socio-economic status from the equation. Nor does he ascribe it to differences in family structure — because parenting is not that important. He cites rather exposure to lead, greater disciplinary punishment for black kids, the higher likelihood of being arrested, the stress of living in a crime-dominated environment, the deep and deadening psychological toll of pervasive racism, and so on: “white supremacy touches on so many aspects of American life that it’s irresponsible to believe we have adequately controlled for it in our investigations of the racial achievement gap.”

DeBoer’s collectivist, victimhood, and oppressor/oppressed mindset is patently clear. He makes culture and individual character, attitude, and effort irrelevant, too.

Sullivan: I suspect that many smart people have mistaken their own unearned gift for some kind of moral virtue, which is why they are so reluctant to note that others may not be so smart, and if they do so, think less of them. Remove the elites’ vanity, and self-love, and you can see their irrationality for what it is.

Heh. What about the elites at the vanguard of leftism, critical race theory, and people like Sullivan? Are none of them irrational or smart?

My big brain, I realized, was as much an impediment to living well as it was an advantage. It was a bane and a blessing. It simply never occurred to me that higher intelligence was in any way connected to moral worth or happiness.

In fact, I saw the opposite. I still do. I don’t believe that a communist revolution will bring forward the day when someone like my grandmother could be valued in society and rewarded as deeply as she should have been.

A high IQ doesn’t guarantee its being used well or wisdom, either. Sullivan seems like a good example. Value to whom for what? There must be plenty of other uneducated grandmothers as good or better than his. Does he value any of them as much as his own? He seems to want a communist revolution, but is too cynical to believe that people in general are good enough for it.  

The Logic of Bell Curve Leftism #1

Andrew Sullivan is a popular political commentator. He recently resigned from New York magazine – not to be confused with The New Yorker magazine or The New York Times magazine – and started his own publication The Weekly Dish. 

His 9/11/2020 edition included The Logic of Bell Curve Leftism, much of it based on a recent book The Cult of Smart by Fredrik deBoer. I haven’t read the book, but Sullivan’s article and reading a few reviews on Amazon is enough to get the book’s gist. When writing for The New Republic magazine in 1994 Sullivan wrote about the controversial book The Bell Curve, about race and IQ, which resulted in a lot of controversy for him. 

My comments that follow will be mostly based on Sullivan’s article. I will put excerpts from his article in all italics followed by my comments.

DeBoer proclaims. “It is the notion that academic value is the only value, and intelligence the only true measure of human worth. It is pernicious, it is cruel, and it must change.”

Sullivan doesn't disagree. However, academic value is not the only value, nor intelligence the only true measure of human worth. The high incomes of pro athletes, movie and tv stars, popular singers or musicians, many business executives, and some politicians have a strong basis in other values – rarer kinds of ability, creativity, and hard work. Politicians obviously value political power and use it.

Also, neither academic value nor intelligence imply a high income or wealth. How many Nobel Prize Winners are in the Forbes 400 richest people? Physicists, mathematicians, electrical engineers, college professors, and some other professions rank high in IQ, but that doesn’t entail a high income.

“Critical theory leftists insist that everything on earth is entirely socially constructed, that all inequality is a function of “oppressive systems”, and that human nature itself is what John Locke called a “white paper, void of all characters” — the famous blank slate. Freddie begs to differ: “Human behavioral traits, such as IQ, are profoundly shaped by genetic parentage, and this genetic influence plays a larger role in determining human outcomes than the family and home environment.”

This shows a big misunderstanding of John Locke’s “white paper, void of all characters” or “blank slate.” Locke was an Empiricist, which means he held that all knowledge is based on experience. He was arguing against innate ideas, which were claimed to exist by Rationalists. This puts the emphasis on “void of all characters” and “blank.” It does not mean everyone’s paper or slate is identical. There are nature-given capacity differences – e.g. intelligence, athleticism, and musical.

What Freddie is arguing is that, far from treating genetic inequality as a taboo, the left should actually lean into it to argue for a more radical re-ordering of society. They shouldn’t ignore genetics, or treat it as unmentionable, or go into paroxysms of fear and alarm over “eugenics” whenever the subject comes up. They should accept that inequality is natural, and construct a politics radical enough to counter it.

For DeBoer, that means ending meritocracy — for “what could be crueler than an actual meritocracy, a meritocracy fulfilled?” It means a revolutionary transformation in which there are no social or cultural rewards for higher intelligence, no higher after-tax income for the brainy, and in which education, with looser standards, is provided for everyone on demand — for the sake of nothing but itself.

This implies that becoming a doctor – with all the time, effort and often a lot of debt – should not be rewarded with a high income. If an equal income could be made in work that requires less effort, fewer hours, less stress, or gives more personal enjoyment, why become a doctor? In other words, lower pay to doctors would also reduce the supply of doctors and patients’ access to them. DeBoer wants to have the cake and eat it, too. He wants doctors' income confiscated -- "no higher after-tax income for the brainy" -- but still wants the services they provide. 

What DeBoer endorses to end meritocracy is far more political power, the power to coerce others one envies or doesn’t like.

Website about Wokeness

Three days ago I became aware of the website New Discourses. I have read only two articles from it but found them interesting. 

1. The Complex Relationship between Marxism and Wokeness.

2. No, the Woke Won’t Debate You. Here’s Why.

The first title is self-explanatory. The second isn't. Much of the article is about the philosophical mindset of a typical "Woke" person. It includes the Woke view of racism, oppression, and truth.

The author of both articles is James Lindsay, co-author of the soon-to-be-released book Cynical Theories. 

A case for socialism

I am against socialism, but this article and podcast give an informative, modern perspective on the views of people who approve of and even advocate socialism. I have wondered why so many young people favor socialism, what they believe it is, and why they hate capitalism so much. The audio interview is sort of long, near 100 minutes. I listened to over half, but skipped some parts.

The person interviewed is Nathan Robinson, editor of Current Affairs, author, and a strong supporter of Bernie Sanders. He identifies as a libertarian socialist.

He says that for many of its supporters socialism isn't about government ownership of the means of production (which Karl Marx advocated), or even any business being wholly owned by its employees. It's about power, democracy, and solidarity with the many less fortunate when a few others have so much wealth, income, and power. There is a segment starting around 46:00 about Bernie Sanders. He says Bernie Sanders has a "deep moral compass." Huh?? Echoing Ayn Rand, by what standard? There is no mention of his fascist* morality of government bullying and coercion. The sort of democracy they want is in effect a dictatorship by voters, a mobocracy. Of course, a small minority of the population -- politicians -- would do the legislating.

*Fascist economics supported a state-controlled economy that accepted a mix of private and public ownership of the means of production. Industries must uphold the national interest as superior to private profit (link). State control is paramount for fascism and Sanders, and Sanders revels in berating profit.

Robinson doesn't say so, but it seems to me that how much income governments take, how much they spend, and how much power they amass to bully and coerce other people doesn't bother them.

I have not read his book, but peaked at it using Amazon's 'Look Inside' feature. It's fairly short, so I requested it via inter-library loan. Based on what I saw inside, I will not buy it. He will not profit at my expense. He is critical of profit several times in the book. I suspect he hasn't yet realized that workers' wages are profits, like I showed here. Anyway, reading about how capitalism works in his view -- an army of psychopathic androids -- and why I am wrong to oppose socialism -- he says every opponent is wrong -- should be worth a few chuckles. I expect another pied piper of socialism. That's alongside Bernie Sanders, Michael Moore, Larry Sanders, and many actors and actresses.

Robinson is hypercritical of corporations at the start of Chapter 3. Does he believe what he says applies to his Current Affairs LLC? 😉 To nonprofit corporations?

P.S. Shortly after writing the above, I saw this article from the Ayn Rand Institute. It's longer with more criticism of socialism. The spokesman for socialism is Bhaskar Sunkara.  It includes the following about socialism's appeal to many people:  "In the debates, Sunkara argues that socialism is the system that protects people’s “basic rights” to goods and services like health care, education, and nutrition. He also argues that workers should be given democratic control of the firms they staff by being given the right to elect their managers and receive a share of the profits.  This, he says, is necessary to protect freedom from the “tyranny” in the workplace: from the “coercion” of having to take a job under terms set by others."

Addenda 1/18/2020  A Wall Street Journal article (paywalled) includes the following:
"Mr. Glaeser cites polling that suggests most young people’s vision of socialism might be better described as “hyperredistribution.” They don’t seek state control of the means of production, but punishing taxes on the rich to fund programs like free college for all. “They say, ‘Well, there are a whole bunch of projects—a whole bunch of government spending that helps old people. I want mine. If we’re going to spend a huge amount on Medicare, why aren’t we spending a whole lot on education for me?’
       The obvious answer is that redistribution takes money out of the productive economy, which diminishes collective wealth over time. Young socialists dismiss that point, and equate capitalism with greed." [end]

Another answer not in the article is that the elderly on Medicare and Social Security paid taxes to fund them for decades. A young college student doesn't have such a history.

Adam Smith quote

Adam Smith wrote The Theory of Moral Sentiments more than 250 years ago. Therein he identified the totalitarian mindset -- "the man of system" in his words -- with a great analogy.

"The man of system, on the contrary, is apt to be very wise in his own conceit; and is often so enamored with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it. He goes on to establish it completely and in all its parts, without any regard either to the great interests, or to the strong prejudices which may oppose it. He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess-board. He does not consider that the pieces upon the chess-board have no other principle of motion besides that which the hand impresses upon them; but that, in the great chess-board of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from that which the legislature might chose to impress upon it." VI.II.42

The Cost of Rights

In my August 27 post I said Passions and Constraint was unclear about where the author stood on controversial rights and how far government can go to reach its goals. I said maybe his answer is in another book, The Cost of Rights: Why Liberty Depends on Taxes, co-authored with Cass Sunstein. It wasn't there.

The Introduction holds that there are two kinds of rights – moral rights and legal rights. It has little to say about moral rights and says they are "toothless by definition." There is nothing about natural rights along the lines of John Locke. In contrast legal rights have "teeth." They are defined and enforced by governments. The authors claim that legally enforcing rights costs money, but this is "ignored by almost everyone." Really? Is almost everyone ignorant of total government spending is now about 36% of GDP, was 41% in 2009, and 40% in 2010-11? Is almost everyone ignorant about taxes?

The authors continually confound rights with enforcement of rights.

Chapter 1 claims that all rights are positive, and that the common distinction between negative rights and positive rights is inadequate because “all legally enforced rights are necessarily positive rights.” Usually negative rights are meant to prohibit what others can do to you. Positive rights are meant to require actions by others on your behalf. They portray the views of others correctly: “Negative rights ban and exclude government; positive ones invite and demand government.” “Negative rights protect liberty; positive rights typically promote equality.” However, these and others are only  “storybook distinctions” in the authors’ opinion (p. 41). They belittle the difference between rights as limiting the actions of government and limiting the actions between private persons. Co-author Holmes in Passions and Constraint wrote about factions and the Founding Fathers’ great concern about the encroachment of government on the rights of citizen. The book says nothing about Founding Fathers, Madison, or Jefferson.

As I expected, the authors laud welfare rights as they construe them. The Cost of Rights reads like a puff piece for Progressivism. I was not surprised to find more 1-star reviews than 5-star reviews on Amazon.

Passions and Constraint (book) #2

In short, the author of Passions and Constraint champions the need of government to recognize rights, and keep the peace (constrain violence). However, he is unclear on where he stands on controversial rights and how far government can go to reach its goals. Maybe his answer is in another book, The Cost of Rights: Why Liberty Depends on Taxes, co-authored with Cass Sunstein.

He cites Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman as too much on the anti-tyranny side. He says Hayek's negative constitutionalism is nothing but a device for limiting the power of government (p. 135). He says Friedman treated welfare measures as profoundly illiberal -- they seek through government to force people to act against their own immediate interests in order to promote a supposedly general interest.

However, neither Hayek nor Friedman were against assisting the poor or helpless as much as Holmes says. With regard to a safety net, Hayek advocated "some provision for those threatened by the extremes of indigence or starvation, be if only in the interest of those who require protection against acts of desperation on the part of the needy." He also wrote "there is no reason why ... the state should not help to organize a comprehensive system of social insurance" (link). Friedman at one time proposed a negative income tax (link).

Holmes portrays welfare to the indigent as payment for refraining from crimes against others. He asks a challenging question: "If criminals who are apprehended are given food and shelter, then how, for safety's sake, can the noncriminal poor be guaranteed any less?" (p. 253). In other word, it's a provision for safety.

Passions and Constraint (book) #1

Passions and Constraint: On the Theory of Liberal Democracy is a book on political theory by Stephen Holmes. I had not heard of the author and there are no reviews on Amazon, so I decided to try it. The publisher's description and the book's sections are here.

It says that classical liberals such as Locke, Montesquieu, Hume, Adam Smith, and J. S. Mill did not regard humans as wholly rational egoists, and that human motives are commonly passion, custom and impulse. These liberal theorists recognized such motives in their political theories. They feared tyranny because of the latitude it gives to unconstrained passions. They did not identify freedom with unconstrained capacity. Passions often result in factionalism. Factionalism was a great worry of James Madison, as The Federalist Papers shows.

"As our list of representative liberal theorists suggests, liberalism should not be considered principally an antistatist philosophy of limited government. The fact is, liberals were as wary of anarchy as of tyranny. They advocated not merely freedom from government, but also order through government. Security is impossible without a state monopoly of the legitimate use of violence. ... [S]overeign power, organized on liberal lines, is an indispensable instrument of freedom" (p. 241).

Markets do not provide everything people need. The vital public goods of law and order and "stable political frontiers" (it wasn't clear what that term means) are not found there. The absence of these leads to factionalism and even anarchy, rule by mobs and widespread rights violations. The liberal-democratic solution is constitutionalism. It is meant to solve the problems of tyranny and anarchy within a single and coherent system of rules determined by deliberation. It is implemented by elections and by separation of power with checks and balances within government.

The USA's Founding Fathers aimed not only to prevent tyranny, but also to create an energetic government with the capacity to govern, rule effectively and "promote the general welfare." They devised the US Constitution after a period of frustration with a weak central government under the Articles of Confederation.

One chapter is about "gag rules," a term not commonly used. It means rules that "exclude certain emotionally charged and rationally irresolvable issues from the public agenda."

My book review: Patterns of Moral Complexity

I wrote an Amazon book review of Patterns of Moral Complexity by Charles Larmore.

If you find the review helpful, please check the Yes button at the end.