A philosopher's objections to NSA surveillance

Philosopher, and Adam Smith scholar, James Otteson appeared on the Wall Street Journal's "OpinionLive" on the 13th of June to discuss his objections to the recently revealed activities of the NSA with regard to their surveillance of American Citizens.

Growth and wages

I have made the point in the past that economic growth leads to wage growth. Paul Krugman makes the point when he writes,

Economic history offers no example of a country that experienced long-term productivity growth without a roughly equal rise in real wages. In the 1950s, when European productivity was typically less than half of U.S. productivity, so were European wages; today average compensation measured in dollars is about the same. As Japan climbed the productivity ladder over the past 30 years, its wages also rose, from 10% to 110% of the U.S. level. South Korea's wages have also risen dramatically over time. ("Does Third World growth hurt First World Prosperity?" Harvard Business Review 72 n4, July-August 1994: 113-21.)

Now James Otteson shows that Adam Smith was ahead of us on this issue, as he was on so many things.

It is not the actual greatness of national wealth, but its continual increase, which occasions a rise in the wages of labour. It is not, accordingly, in the richest countries, but in the most thriving, or in those which are growing rich the fastest, that the wages of labour are highest. [...] But though North America is not yet so rich as England, it is much more thriving, and advancing with much greater rapidity to the further acquisition of riches. ("An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations" I.viii.22-23)

Otteson on Adam Smith

Noted Adam Smith scholar James R. Otteson has a new book out on Adam Smith. It is published by Continuum Press, and it is volume sixteen of a twenty-volume series entitled "Major Conservative and Libertarian Thinkers" edited by John Meadowcroft of King's College London. For more on the series see here.

The preface for the book reads:

This book is a part of a series entitled “Major Conservative and Libertarian Thinkers.” The series aims to introduce these thinkers to a wider audience, providing an overview of their lives and works, as well as expert commentary on their enduring significance. Thus Adam Smith begins with a short biography of Smith; it then gives an overview and discussion of his extant works, focusing on his two major publications, the 1759 Theory of Moral Sentiments and the 1776 Wealth of Nations; and it concludes by discussing what Smith got right, what he got wrong, and why he is still worth reading—which he most definitely is. Also included is a bibliography of primary and secondary sources.

A slim volume like this can address only a fraction of the richness of Smith’s work, so it can be only a primer. One principle that has helped guide my selection of topics has been the aim of the book’s series.[1] Thus I have given added weight, where appropriate, to aspects of Smith’s thought that justify, or at least explain, his inclusion in a series about major conservative and libertarian thinkers. Depending on how one defines those terms, there are aspects of Smith’s thought that are conservative and aspects that are libertarian; and there are aspects that are neither.

I also try to make sense of Smith’s writing not only in the small but in the large as well—that is, not only in the details of this or that argument in this or that work, but in the larger aims of Smith’s scholarly corpus. I believe there is a coherence to Smith’s work, and, though I realize a book like this places limits on an attempt to demonstrate a claim like that, I do my best to make it plausible if not ultimately convincing.

In writing the book I have been conscious that for some readers it might serve as their first introduction to Smith, and for others it might serve as their only introduction to him. For a thinker as important as Smith, that makes the stakes for a book like this one high indeed. I have striven to present Smith in a way I believe he himself would have approved: charitably but objectively. No author, however brilliant, got everything right, so the reader will also find in these pages periodic discussion of problems or objections, as well as indications of ongoing scholarly criticism or debate. But I believe that some important aspects of Smith’s contributions endure, and I hope that by the end of this book you are convinced of that as well.

The best way to understand Smith remains, and will always remain, reading his works for oneself. If this book gives you reason to think that you should read Smith, it will have served its primary purpose.

Otteson on Adam Smith

In this brief (around ten minutes) podcast, from the Cato Institute, noted Adam Smith scholar James R.Otteson talks about on Adam Smith as a moral philosopher.

Worth a listen.

Otteson on Adam Smith vs. Karl Marx

Recently Adam Smith scholar James Otteson gave a talk at the Freedom 2010 Homeschool Debate Tournament, which was held at the Foundation for Economic Education in Irvington, New York. The title of the talk was "The Classical Liberal Tradition: Adam Smith vs. Karl Marx." A video of the presentation is below:

The Classical Liberal Tradition: Marx v. Smith from FEE on Vimeo.

Well worth watching.

More on get rid of government experts

A previous posting, Get rid of government experts: they do not know what is best for the people, was based on an a article by philosopher James Otteson in Forbes. The Forbes article was in turn based on an academic piece by Otteson which has now appeared in the journal Social Philosophy and Policy. The full details are Adam Smith and the Great Mind Fallacy, James R. Otteson, Social Philosophy and Policy (2010), 27:276-304. The abstract reads,

Adam Smith raised a series of obstacles to effective large-scale social planning. In this paper, I draw these Smithian obstacles together to construct what I call the “Great Mind Fallacy,” or the belief that there exists some person or persons who can overcome the obstacles Smith raises. The putative scope of the Great Mind Fallacy is larger than one might initially suppose, which I demonstrate by reviewing several contemporary thinkers who would seem to commit it. I then address two ways the fallacy might be overcome, finding both wanting. I close the paper by suggesting that Smith's Great Mind Fallacy sheds interesting light on his “impartial spectator” standard of morality, including with respect to the specific issues of property and ownership.

The whole issue is worth reading as it collects together a number of papers from a distinguished group of scholars all addressing the general topic of "ownership and justice."

Get rid of government experts: they do not know what is best for the people

So says James R. Otteson, Joint Professor of Philosophy and Economics at Yeshiva University in New York, and the Charles G. Koch Senior Fellow at The Fund for American Studies in Washington, D.C., in a new piece in Forbes. Otteson asks,

Is rule by government experts the wave of the future? A recent spate of books argues yes--despite the multiple, spectacular failed attempts to do so in the 20th century.

Why should governments allow people the freedom to make choices we know are bad for them? In the past since we didn't know much about what made people happy and healthy we could afford to limit government action to preserving people's "liberty" or "rights." But surely not anymore. Now we know a lot about what makes people healthy and happy, and it is only humane to guide people's choices - even, where necessary, coerce them - toward good ends. Such notions underlie the paternalism-is-good-for-you movement. Otteson continues,

Another leader in the paternalism-is-good-for-you movement is law professor Cass Sunstein. Sunstein's innocuously titled book Nudge, co-authored with economist Richard Thaler, argues that expert knowledge about what is good for you justifies their structuring your choices for you so that you are more likely to choose what they know you should choose. Sunstein endorses government experts as "choice architects" who will arrange everything from retirement accounts to the food in the school cafeteria, carefully designing everyone's environments so that the choices the expert architects believe are best seem to people the only ones they really have.

You may think that these ideas are confined to the ivory tower, but no,

Sunstein has been named by President Obama as the Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs--or, as it's more popularly known, the Regulation Czar. Although it's difficult to figure out what exactly this position's powers are, it seems clear that Sunstein will enjoy considerable authority to begin writing his preferred "nudges" into regulatory mandate.

People like Sunstein are, I'm sure, good people with good intentions and they are very smart, so Can't we then entrust to them this extraordinary level of power and authority over our lives? What Sunstein, and other experts, however smart, cannot know are all the really important things. Otteson notes that while such experts are very smart they cannot know are all the most important things to you.

They don't know your goals, your ambitions or your priorities. They don't know what your values are; they don't know what opportunities are available to you (and what aren't); they don't know your likes and dislikes. Even if they know a lot about human behavior or human welfare in general, they don't know anything about you. They don't know anything about me either, or about anyone else besides themselves and their closest family and friends.

That means that the best they could do is make guesses. But even that overstates their competence. Think of all the information--explicit and implicit--you marshal all day long every day to make the routine decisions you do. What are you going to do for breakfast today? Will you call your friend this afternoon? Will you finally buy your daughter the cellphone she's been asking for? Or larger questions: Should you buy a new house? Look for a new job? Buy or lease a car--and which one?

The amount of information each of us processes to make these decisions is legion, far more than any of us probably realizes. Yet to get these decisions right, one must draw on all of it--and even then we still often get it wrong. What possible chance can a government bureaucrat have of making the right decisions for you, when he has none of this information about you, when you are only one statistically insignificant data point among hundreds of millions within his purview?

It was, in part, the fact that government bureaucrats can not have information like this, information dependent on time and place and people, that made economists like von Mises and Hayek argue socialism could not work, that markets are needed to process this type and quantity of information, that people must be free to make their own decisions, interacting with others via the market process.

Otteson goes on to remind us that,

In 1776, Adam Smith argued in his Wealth of Nations that the best person to make decisions like these is the person who possesses more of this information than anyone else. In your life, that would be you; in my life, that would be me. Unfortunately, no distant legislator can have a hope of getting these things right for us.

Smith went on to say that the legislator who fancied himself able to guide others' daily lives was not only bound to fail but was dangerous to boot--because the fantastic overestimation of his abilities probably means a megalomaniacal ego too. And we all know where megalomaniacs with expansive government power tend to end up.

Smith also identified a Great Mind Fallacy: the belief, or hope, that there is someone out there smart enough and benevolent enough to make these decisions for us, leaving us peacefully secure in the knowledge that somebody somewhere is protecting and taking care of us.

It's true that it would be nice if there was such a great mind out there, but there isn't. No imperfect, fallible human being - not even some "government expert" - will ever be so smart and so benevolent.

Adam Smith said it

Here is an not often seen quote from Adam Smith that I'm not really sure what to make of,

"A half-starved Highland woman frequently bears more than twenty children, while a pampered fine lady is often incapable of bearing any, and is generally exhausted by two or three. Barrenness, so frequent among women of fashion, is very rare among those of inferior station. Luxury in the fair sex, while it enflames perhaps the passion for enjoyment, seems always to weaken, and frequently to destroy altogether, the powers of generation." --Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776)

(HT: James R. Otteson)