VVV Lots of posting today. This one also comes out of the reading for my environmental hazards class. Joni Seager is making the common feminist observation of the masculinity of corporate culture. The implication of most discussion of this point is that masculine corporate culture is the outcome of general male culture and male power. That is, the fact that most people in positions of power are men means that masculinity will exert a disproportionate impact on the formation of the institutional culture of powerful groups. The general male culture comes from somewhere else -- some would argue male biology and psychology, others would say social structure. But I wonder if the causality might not run the opposite way. Corporate culture has certain features (derived from the demands of how the institution works). These features are transferred disproportionately to men because men have the possibility of advancing to positions of power, so it behooves them to adopt this culture, and others exert socializing influences on them because of expectations about where a man's career path can or should lead him. posted by Stentor Danielson at 22:42 -- link --
VVV It's sometimes interesting how thoughts get from my head to my blog. Many of the ideas in that last post were coalesced into bloggable form by conversations with Amanda about the unresponsiveness of ResLife to student concerns and needs. But for whatever reason -- lack of time, lack of clarity, uncertainty of how to introduce the issue -- I didn't blog then. But today, as I was reading about risk management policy for class, these ideas came back in the context of the reading and I felt like I could frame them in terms of political philosophy. More often, a good idea sits in my head until I find a newspaper article to quote as my starting point. posted by Stentor Danielson at 18:15 -- link --
VVV One of the major divisions on the left these days seems to be over the issue of how trust in institutions is developed. This creates a divide between hierarchists and communitarians. Perhaps one of the most enduring legacies of classical liberal thought is the idea that the legitimacy of a social system (particularly governments) derives from the consent of the members. These days both sides of any debate can be expected to appeal to some form of freedom and accuse their opponents of coercion.
Trust is the attitude that breeds consent. People will consent to a system that they believe will act in accordance with what they value -- either their interests, their moral principles, or some combination thereof. Trust goes beyond consent, however. People may grudgingly consent to an undesirable situation out of lack of alternatives or lack of energy to go on fighting. But these people do not therefore trust the system.
There are two major bases for trust advocated by the modern left (I'm focusing on the left because I know it better, and because I want to emphasize that the two schools of thought cannot be labled one liberal, the other conservative): ability and participation. Ability is the criterion for New Deal-style leftism. Its guiding principle is the division of labor, allocating tasks to people who have greater skills or expertise in certain areas. For example, consumers can't be expected to research the possible risks, side effects, and degree of effectiveness of every drug. So they rely on a combination of FDA standards and recommendations from trained doctors (whose expertise is itself certified by state licensing). People allow their decisions to be in part made for them by others because they have confidence in the ability of others with more skills and qualifications. In many ways this is a necessary side-effect of the complexity of modern society.
Critiques of an ability basis for trust have grown up in response to the shortcomings of that framework (and perhaps also due to the obvious failure of strongly statist [and at least nominally communist] countries such as the Soviet Union, which threw ability-hierarchical schemes into question and made it politically unwelcome, particularly in conversations with the center and right, to espouse them). Among academics, communitarian participation-based regimes of trust are in fashion, coming out of studies of social movements (epitomized today by the antiglobalization movement) and radical democracy. Proponents of participation see the relinquishment of power to another, essential to ability-based trust, to open the door to abuses. For many, ability-hierarchical schemes are no more than a false consciousness designed to dupe people and allow an elite to sieze control. Where hierarchy was once seen as "being taken care of," it was now derided as (at best) paternalism. As an alternative, these critics argue that trust can only be generated by the ability of the governed to participate, and exercise power, in the making of decisions. A system in which people can do little more than pick which set of bureaucrats to trust undermines any sort of trust by alienating people. One of the central themes of this perspective is that process is as important as outcome -- a policy chosen by a scientist at the EPA is not as good as the same policy developed by a cooperative community consultation.
While communitarianism and participation-based trust are currently in vogue among the cutting edge, eventually things will swing back toward ability (barring the development of a new alternative or a new basis for institutional legitimacy other than trust/consent) as the dominant paradigm. I have hinted already at some critiques of radical participatory schemes. Most people cannot invest the energy necessary to participate effectively in every decision, so participation can begin to seem like a burden. This leads people to be more easily manipulated by those who are selling simple answers that advance their own interests. In this sense social movements are a poor model for social organization, as they are a self-selected sample of the people most inclined and able to make a strongly participatory model work, and they are motivated by a specific goal rather than a general desire for a well-run society. As is my wont, I think the proper course lies somewhere in the middle. Ability-based delegation of some sort is necessary for most day-to-day social functioning, while open channels of participation should be available and pursued when necessary and for certain crucial decisions (such as major policy changes). posted by Stentor Danielson at 18:11 -- link --
Minsk's decision to deregulate the price of bread has met with a mixed reaction from the Belarusian public and economic analysts.
Bread is a staple food of the impoverished population and its price has always been kept artificially low by Minsk, but burgeoning losses in the baking industry have prompted the government to drop it from the list of "socially significant" goods.
While some critics fear that prices will more than double, causing further hardship for the former Soviet republic's very poorest citizens, the move has been hailed by economists who argued that the previous policy had brought Belarus' baking industry to its knees.
Other analysts have argued that freeing the prices will put further pressure on the domestic industry. As bread bought just over the border in Russia is up to a third cheaper, this may lead to unfair competition that bakers are ill-equipped to deal with.
Based on my admittedly limited knowledge of economics, I would tend to side with those who are against price controls. If bakers are forced to sell at a loss, they'll eventually go out of business, barring further government intervention or extreme charity on the part of bakers with other sources of income. And expensive bread is better than no bread at all. I understand the concerns of the poor who would immediately face food-buying harships (rather than down the road as bakeries go under). It seems that some form of purchase subsidization (a la food stamps) would be more effective than price controls. It would be able to target the truly needy (rather than reducing everyone's prices) while allowing bakers to generate income. The problem with this is that Belarus doesn't seem to have the efficient, financially solvent, and uncorrupted bureaucracy needed to make such a scheme work well.
What baffles me is the concern with being undercut by Russian bakers. Nobody is stopping Belarussian bakers from continuing to sell their product at low prices. It seems likely that those facing the strongest competition from Russians (presumably those in the east near the border and in major cities with good transportation links) would not raise their prices as much as those that are more geographically sheltered from competition. posted by Stentor Danielson at 16:35 -- link --
26.2.03
VVV Today MoveOn.org is organizing a "virtual march on Washington," in which people flood the phone lines of Congress and the White House to express their opposition to the war. Which leads me to speculate about how effective this campaign will be. On the one hand, the act of organizing an event like this can help to solidify antiwar sentiment among participants. I think more people are willing to call their representatives when it's part of an organized group effort than on their own. And once you've crossed that threshold of taking action on a controversy, it becomes harder to go back.
On the other hand, it seems that a call today is less effective than a call some other day. Based on talking to a friend who worked as a Congressional staffer (and her story sounds completely plausible), officials tend to discount calls, letters, faxes, etc. that are part of an organized campaign. A letter-writing drive by some interest group gets consigned to the circular file, whereas an individual letter might actually get read. So antiwar calls today would get dismissed as "just another one of those MoveOn people."
Back on the first hand, there's the media coverage. The media is much better at covering events than trends (and wouldn't really have access to information on how many phone calls officials get anyway). As I understand it, the virtual march is getting much more media coverage than the organizers had expected. The media coverage may be even more significant than the direct impact of the calls themselves. The recent real marches have contributed to a "broad public opposition to the war" storyline which we may see beginning to influence the terms of the debate. posted by Stentor Danielson at 14:17 -- link --
VVVMatt Yglesias points to an Oxblog post about the people who have volunteered to go to Iraq to serve as human shields. David Adesnik says:
While, on ethical grounds, I believe that the US should not attack sites "protected" by human shields unless absolutely necessary, I don't understand how doing so could be a crime. If deploying human shields is a crime, then doesn't the government responsible for their deployment bear all legal (if not moral) responsibility for the shields' welfare? Perhaps some of you lawyers out there can help me out on this one.
Reading this made me realize how deeply a consequentialist morality has settled in my head. My initial reaction was horror at the idea of saying "it's OK if people die, since I can't be blamed for it." posted by Stentor Danielson at 13:49 -- link --
24.2.03
VVV It looks like France and the UN are coming around to supporting the war. The Sydney Morning Herald reports that they're staking their hopes on Iraq dismantling its Al-Samoud missiles (which somewhat exceed the range of attack permitted by UN resolutions). The French say dismantling the missiles will prove that inspections are working. Kofi Annan said "I am confident they will destroy the weapons."
However, there is little chance that Iraq will disarm. Saddam may make a strategic concession on the Al-Samouds, since they've become so high-profile as to possibly unite the rest of the world against him, but deeper disarmament will run into walls. It's that very ability to unite the world that the French and UN are counting on. By stating a clear demand, peacenik governments will be able to transition to warmongers by saying that they gave inspections a chance. This is the kind of out that they need, so that they aren't completely marginalized in the geopolitical order that emerges from the war.
John Quiggin says that if Iraq fails to disarm, that will prove that Saddam is irrational. But as I've argued before, it's entirely rational for him to hang on to all of the weapons he can, if he believes that war is inevitable. If the US will attack no matter what, it makes sense to be as well-armed as possible, so as to go down fighting. Disarmament's benefits are only in splitting the opposition (which are limited given that the US's hands aren't tied by the UN and the US would be contributing the vast bulk of the forces for the war anyway).
All this points to a different interpretation of Saddam's statements that he is encouraged by peace marches abroad. The usual argument is that by making the world look divided, they lead Saddam to see the threat of war as unserious. Thus he feels like he can get away with more defiance, confident that the conflict-ridden West won't punish him. But if Saddam is starting from a conviction that war is inevitable, the protests could have the opposite effect. By showing that anti-war sentiment runs deep, they could encourage him to think that there is a possibility of ending the current crisis without war. The more Saddam thinks there's a possibility of appeasing the US, the more likely he is to calculate that disarmament will secure that outcome. posted by Stentor Danielson at 20:22 -- link --
When he publicly undercut President Bush's proposals to stimulate the economy, Alan Greenspan opened the door to widespread speculation that his career as chairman of the Federal Reserve may be drawing to a close.
I think Bush will be reluctant to let Greenspan get out of the fold. While confidence in his abilities has been (perhaps unfairly, since the Fed doesn't have total control of the economy) eroded by the recession, he is still widely held to be one of the wisest gurus of American economics. If Bush lets on that he wants Greenspan gone, he will only confirm the strengthening conventional wisdom about the administration's fiscal irresponsibility. This danger is increased by Greenspan's recent repudiation of Bush's tax cut plan. Standing up to the president won the Fed chief a place in the hearts of Democrats -- the very people who will be making the "Bush can't manage the economy" claim.
Greenspan seems to be in the same position, in terms of job security, as Colin Powell. Both men have too large a constituency for Bush to mess with them too blatantly. The only way either man will go is if a lot of backroom pressure gets them to resign in a way that exonerates Bush -- a tricky task to pull off, since the rumors that Bush forced them out are inevitable. posted by Stentor Danielson at 14:15 -- link --
