"morally confused"

The 10 points summarized in Boyes' post yesterday led me to reflect on Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments.

Smith outlines an ethical framework that rests upon 4 pillars - self command, beneficience, prudence and justice. As I have reflected on Smith's work, these 4 pillars seem to be a reasonable basis for morality. That said, I recognize that there are any number of other moral codes that have emerged and evolved over time. The enlightenment moral code is relative young (350+years) and other moral systems have a much longer, deeper and tested development. The Hayek in me argues that I don't get to decide which moral code is superior (and more importantly I don't have to decide) as the march of time will determine the moral code that most closely align the needs and beliefs of society.

That said, the mechanism outlined by Smith in TMS seems to hit upon the process by which moral codes (I do believe that in a diverse society multiple moral codes can emerge to support the underlying processes of change in different societies) emerge and are tested.


So, back to the 10 points that Boyes summarized yesterday. The 10th point argues for a moral confusion and, while the author of these points directs this comment to "liberal elite" I would include in this confusion "conservative elite" and most of those in our society.

This confusion is nowhere more relevant than in considering points 1 and 3, which I tend to disagree with. If one includes religion in voluntary self help groups, I wouild assert that the level of popular engagement is as high or higher than when deTocquville observed American society. This question/assertion seems to have an empirial component. I am unfamiliar with what I suspect to be a wide literature on this point.

There are many antectodal examples of current voluntary association - the Red Cross, the evangelical Christian movement, the Tea Party, NRA, AARP, Tempe Historial Society . . . but the point in my mind is clear, voluntary associations are emergent and continue to evolve, primarily outside the direct juristication of the state.


The author of the 10 points asserts:

"As the state grew, however, all these associations declined. In Western Europe, they have virtually all disappeared."

The latter observation is hyperpole and can be dismissed. The former assertion is testable and worthy of review. As I have said, I am not familiar with the literature that would address this question, but Boyes' summary has peaked my interest. Not enough to seek out the literature but to wonder.

Point 4 is an important one - The liberal welfare state makes people disdain work.

I would argue that the work/leisure tradeoff is subject to economic analysis. There is a reason one set of activities is labeled work and another set leisure. The calculus of cost benefit between the two is culturaly shaped, but that said, most humans prefer leisure to work. The connection in analyzing the welfare state is obviously the distortion to this calculation when the state increases the benefit of leisure and reduces the cost to the individual of leisure. So, while the welfare state impacts this fundamental tradeoff I see it as disingenuous to imply that the welfare state is the source of the tradeoff.

Boyes directs our attention to one view of the emergent welfare state (relatively young in terms of the march of time) and this provocative 10 point inditement provides an interesting framework to begin to think about the moral consequences of choice within a welfare state.

Returning to Smith, I would suspect that he and other enlightnement thinkers would identify secondary consequences to the expansive state that would indeed shape the evolution of moral codes.

The Theory of Moral Sentiments sees moral sentiments supported by four pillars with self command and justice the bookends.

The impact on self command of rights expansion and entitlement is complex and non ergodic (the latter term, from North's The Process of Economic Change). The movement away from individualism to collectivism which seems to be an inevitable result of the welfare state would seem to be a significant influence on self command. The process by which individuals set internal guidelines and rationalize individual decision making has been the subject of a great deal of research in economics. But we can look back to Smith who used the metaphor of the impartial spectator as a prism for understanding the evolution of self command (as well as the other 3 pillars of morality). This is a comparative process by which individuals compare their own actions (and beliefs?) to those of their fellows. It is no accident that Smith uses the phrase fellow-feeling to describe the goal of behavior. That is, our notions of self command, as well as beneficience, prudence and justice, are shaped by what we see around us.

So, as significant as is the state in this Smithian process, so are other institutions, particularly those that comprise popular culture. So, do individuals today look to Thomas Sowell or Amy Winehouse, David Hume or Lady GaGa for fellow feeling? As an aside, my wife was saddened by Winehouse's death as she is familiar with her work as an "artist". My wife had not heard of David Hume. When I attempted to outline a bit of Hume, she said, "Oh, is he like Sarah Palin?" This is a reflection not of my wife, but my considerable limitation in explication - of either Hume of Lady GaGa.

What I am asserting here is that the insitutional influence upon morality is multivaried and complex, more that merely the state influences the emergent and evolutionary process that shapes morality.

Last night Stossel touched on this process in an interview with Historian Thaddeus Russell on American military intervention and historical myths.
http://video.foxbusiness.com/v/1069985114001/freedom-pop-culture-vs-military-intervention/

Clearly the process above is a complex one, the point to be made is that there is not a single cause for changes or influences to the emergent process of morality and changes to beliefs that underlie morality.

The abstract review is, I think relevant to the consideration of the 10 provocative points summarized by Boyes. Peter J. Boettke writes of the book: An Anarchist’s Reflection on the Political Economy of Everyday Life.

"James Scott has written a detailed ethnography on the lives of the peoples of upland Southeast Asia who choose to escape oppressive government by living at the edge of their civilization. To the political economist the fascinating story told by Scott provides useful narratives in need of analytical exposition. There remains in this work a “plea for mechanism”; the mechanisms that enable social cooperation to emerge among individuals living outside the realm of state control. Social cooperation outside the formal rules of governance, nevertheless require “rules” of social intercourse, and techniques of “enforcement” to ensure the disciplining of opportunistic behavior. "

At the center of my reflection on the complex role played by the state on morality is my understanding of these rules - what Hayek called law, as opposed to legislation.