A crazy idea for a crazy time.
First, you must not take this too seriously – but you should also take it to heart. And that’s the mantra, and the model, of Patch Adams.
Dr. Patch Adams, MD is a legend. (They made a movie about him in the 1990s starring Robin Williams.) After a “traditional” medical school education, Adams rebelled against the authoritarian, pill-pushing, robo-doctor model of medicine and pioneered a more humane approach based on laughter, love and caring as primary forms of medical treatment. And guess what? It works. Adams’ Gesundheit Institute has become world famous as a place where fun and healing go hand in hand. Clowning around (in moderation) seems to make for better doctors and happier, healthier patients. Call it laughter therapy.
Maybe laughter, love and caring would also work in our politics. Just imagine if the presidential candidates showed up for their next TV debate with rubber noses and were tested for their skills as stand-up comics. (Did you say it’s already a comedy?) Or what if President Obama and House Speaker Boehner wore clown costumes for their next meeting at the White House. I know, that’s no laughing matter, but maybe it would help. Or what if politicians who fail the Washington Post’s “Pinocchio test” for mendacity had to wear a Pinocchio nose of the appropriate length. Fat chance, you say?
The larger point which Patch Adams has amply demonstrated is that laughter can be a potent influence for the better in our lives – and maybe in our politics as well. Remember the line from the old popular song, “Be a clown, be a clown, all the world loves a clown…” Better yet, if we could all get in touch with our inner clowns and act out our latent Charlie Chaplin – or Patch Adams – from time to time, the world would probably be a better, more caring place. It’s certainly worth a try.
Monday, February 20, 2012
Monday, February 13, 2012
Adam Smith’s Psychology
His “invisible hand” was only part of the story; so was morality!
The founding father of modern free market economics, Adam Smith, is best known for his famous simile in The Wealth of Nations (1776) about the “invisible hand,” which seemed to endorse a dark view of human nature. He wrote: “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.”
However, that’s perfectly OK. “Man…is led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was not part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it.”
Indeed, later on in his masterwork Smith even seemed to provide a rationalization for unvarnished greed and a no-holds-barred predatory economy when he commented: “In spite of their natural selfishness and rapacity…[men] are led by an invisible hand to…advance the interest of the society...”
Modern economists often become lyrical about “the superiority of self-interest” over altruism in economic life and the virtues of competition and the “profit motive,” while overlooking the fact that Smith’s rendering of the invisible hand was quite contingent. As he said, the invisible hand is not “always the worse” and “frequently promotes” the general welfare. But this is not a sure thing.
More important, many of Smith’s modern acolytes seem unaware of his cautionary warnings, especially in his earlier work, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, where (as a Stoic and a Christian) he stressed the fact that everything in a free market depends on a moral foundation of trust, honest dealing and, as he himself put it, “justice”. (He defined justice as not doing “injury” to others.) “There can be no proper motive for hurting our neighbor.” Smith was even a proponent of the Golden Rule and invoked the “invisible hand” simile in his earlier work to characterize our sense of charity toward those in need.
Accordingly, Smith argued that a moral framework and cooperation are essential prerequisites for a successful society. As he pointed out, “In civilized society [man] stands at all times in need of the cooperation of and assistance great multitudes....man has almost constant occasion for the help of his brethren.... without the assistance and cooperation of many thousands, the very meanest person in a civilized country could not be [provisioned].”
Smith also warned in The Wealth of Nations about the potential abuses associated with wealth and power. He spoke of the collusive nature of the business interests in his country. “Masters are always and every where in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform combination, not to raise the wages of labour above their [prevailing] rate.” Indeed, “masters, too, sometimes enter into particular combinations to sink the wages of labour even below this rate.” Furthermore, business interests frequently engage in a "conspiracy against the public or in some other contrivance to raise prices." Smith also thought a true laissez-faire economy would become captive to businesses and industry scheming to influence politics and legislation. The interests of manufacturers and merchants "...in any particular branch of trade or manufactures, is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public.”
So, the next time some politician starts lecturing you about the virtues of unrestrained (deregulated) free market capitalism and invokes the “invisible hand,” you might respond by quoting from Adam Smith. It should make for an interesting dialogue.
The founding father of modern free market economics, Adam Smith, is best known for his famous simile in The Wealth of Nations (1776) about the “invisible hand,” which seemed to endorse a dark view of human nature. He wrote: “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.”
However, that’s perfectly OK. “Man…is led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was not part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it.”
Indeed, later on in his masterwork Smith even seemed to provide a rationalization for unvarnished greed and a no-holds-barred predatory economy when he commented: “In spite of their natural selfishness and rapacity…[men] are led by an invisible hand to…advance the interest of the society...”
Modern economists often become lyrical about “the superiority of self-interest” over altruism in economic life and the virtues of competition and the “profit motive,” while overlooking the fact that Smith’s rendering of the invisible hand was quite contingent. As he said, the invisible hand is not “always the worse” and “frequently promotes” the general welfare. But this is not a sure thing.
More important, many of Smith’s modern acolytes seem unaware of his cautionary warnings, especially in his earlier work, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, where (as a Stoic and a Christian) he stressed the fact that everything in a free market depends on a moral foundation of trust, honest dealing and, as he himself put it, “justice”. (He defined justice as not doing “injury” to others.) “There can be no proper motive for hurting our neighbor.” Smith was even a proponent of the Golden Rule and invoked the “invisible hand” simile in his earlier work to characterize our sense of charity toward those in need.
Accordingly, Smith argued that a moral framework and cooperation are essential prerequisites for a successful society. As he pointed out, “In civilized society [man] stands at all times in need of the cooperation of and assistance great multitudes....man has almost constant occasion for the help of his brethren.... without the assistance and cooperation of many thousands, the very meanest person in a civilized country could not be [provisioned].”
Smith also warned in The Wealth of Nations about the potential abuses associated with wealth and power. He spoke of the collusive nature of the business interests in his country. “Masters are always and every where in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform combination, not to raise the wages of labour above their [prevailing] rate.” Indeed, “masters, too, sometimes enter into particular combinations to sink the wages of labour even below this rate.” Furthermore, business interests frequently engage in a "conspiracy against the public or in some other contrivance to raise prices." Smith also thought a true laissez-faire economy would become captive to businesses and industry scheming to influence politics and legislation. The interests of manufacturers and merchants "...in any particular branch of trade or manufactures, is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public.”
So, the next time some politician starts lecturing you about the virtues of unrestrained (deregulated) free market capitalism and invokes the “invisible hand,” you might respond by quoting from Adam Smith. It should make for an interesting dialogue.
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
A Matter of Life and Death
Basic needs are not optional; they should be a “social right.”
The urgency of our “basic needs” should be beyond dispute, and ensuring that these needs are fulfilled for all of our citizens should be treated as our one of our highest priorities as a nation. If we honor as “self-evident” the “right to life” (as proclaimed in our Declaration of Independence and the political rhetoric of conservatives), then we should also honor the means that are necessary to sustain life. Instead, our basic needs seem to occupy a political “no-man’s-land” in the ongoing partisan “warfare,” where the opposing armies often miss or even ignore the real target.
Contrary to the assertions of many social theorists, our basic needs are not a vague, open-ended abstraction, nor a matter of personal preference. They constitute a concrete but ultimately limited agenda, with measurable indicators for assessing outcomes – including demonstrable harm or even death when they are denied. In the recent international bestseller, The Spirit Level, the respected researchers Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett document in compelling detail the damage that extreme income inequalities do to a society. Among the many indicators of basic needs deprivation in our society, for example, is the difference of 4.5 years in average life expectancy between the bottom and top 10 percent of our population in relation to income. Likewise, the USDA reported that some 50 million Americans went hungry at various times during 2010, including 17 million children.
At our research institute, we have documented no less than fourteen broad domains of basic needs – imperatives that are literally a matter of life and death. (Abraham Maslow’s famous pyramid, alas, was not well grounded biologically.) These fourteen basic needs domains include a number of obvious items, like adequate nutrition, fresh water, physical safety, physical and mental health, and waste elimination, as well as some items that we may take for granted like thermoregulation (which can entail various technologies, from clothing to heating oil and air conditioning), along with adequate sleep (about one-third of our lives), mobility, and even healthy respiration, which cannot always be assured. Perhaps least obvious but most important are the requisites for the reproduction and nurturance of the next generation. In other words, our basic needs cut a very broad swath through our economy and our society.
The idea that there is a “social right” to the necessities of life is not new. It is implicit in the Golden Rule, the great moral precept that is recognized by every major religion and culture. There is also a substantial scholarly literature on the need to establish constitutional and legal protections for social/economic rights that are comparable to political rights. Three important formal covenants have also endorsed social rights, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations (1948), the European Social Charter (1961) and the United Nations’ International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966), although these documents have been widely treated as aspirational rather than legally enforceable. Nor is this an alien idea even in our own country. For instance, it was embodied in President Franklin Roosevelt’s historic “Economic Bill of Rights” speech in 1944, and in the post-war proposals for a guaranteed personal income.
Equally significant is the evidence of broad public support for the underlying principle of social rights. Numerous public opinion surveys over the years have consistently shown that people are far more willing to provide aid for the genuinely needy than neo-classical (rational self-interest) economic theory would lead one to believe. (Some of these surveys are cited in my book, The Fair Society.)
Even more compelling evidence of public support for social rights, I believe, can be found in the results of an extensive series of social experiments regarding distributive justice by political scientists Norman Frohlich and Joe Oppenheimer and their colleagues, as detailed in their 1992 book Choosing Justice. What Frohlich and Oppenheimer set out to test was whether or not ad hoc groups of “impartial” decision-makers behind a Rawlsian “veil of ignorance” about their own personal stakes would be able to reach a consensus on how to distribute the income of a hypothetical society. Frohlich and Oppenheimer found that the experimental groups consistently opted for striking a balance between maximizing income and ensuring that there is an economic minimum for everyone (what they called a “floor constraint”). The overall results were stunning: 77.8 percent of the groups chose to assure a minimum income for basic needs.
However, the idea of a “basic needs guarantee” for all of our citizens must not be construed as a call for a one-way redistribution of wealth or the creation of a class of economic “free-riders.” As I make abundantly clear in the book, the scale must be balanced by a requirement for “reciprocity” – contributing a fair share in return for the benefits you receive from society. This precept, along with assuring that our society also provides adequate rewards for “merit” – our talents, hard work, and accomplishments – constitute the three core principles of a “fair society.”
The urgency of our “basic needs” should be beyond dispute, and ensuring that these needs are fulfilled for all of our citizens should be treated as our one of our highest priorities as a nation. If we honor as “self-evident” the “right to life” (as proclaimed in our Declaration of Independence and the political rhetoric of conservatives), then we should also honor the means that are necessary to sustain life. Instead, our basic needs seem to occupy a political “no-man’s-land” in the ongoing partisan “warfare,” where the opposing armies often miss or even ignore the real target.
Contrary to the assertions of many social theorists, our basic needs are not a vague, open-ended abstraction, nor a matter of personal preference. They constitute a concrete but ultimately limited agenda, with measurable indicators for assessing outcomes – including demonstrable harm or even death when they are denied. In the recent international bestseller, The Spirit Level, the respected researchers Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett document in compelling detail the damage that extreme income inequalities do to a society. Among the many indicators of basic needs deprivation in our society, for example, is the difference of 4.5 years in average life expectancy between the bottom and top 10 percent of our population in relation to income. Likewise, the USDA reported that some 50 million Americans went hungry at various times during 2010, including 17 million children.
At our research institute, we have documented no less than fourteen broad domains of basic needs – imperatives that are literally a matter of life and death. (Abraham Maslow’s famous pyramid, alas, was not well grounded biologically.) These fourteen basic needs domains include a number of obvious items, like adequate nutrition, fresh water, physical safety, physical and mental health, and waste elimination, as well as some items that we may take for granted like thermoregulation (which can entail various technologies, from clothing to heating oil and air conditioning), along with adequate sleep (about one-third of our lives), mobility, and even healthy respiration, which cannot always be assured. Perhaps least obvious but most important are the requisites for the reproduction and nurturance of the next generation. In other words, our basic needs cut a very broad swath through our economy and our society.
The idea that there is a “social right” to the necessities of life is not new. It is implicit in the Golden Rule, the great moral precept that is recognized by every major religion and culture. There is also a substantial scholarly literature on the need to establish constitutional and legal protections for social/economic rights that are comparable to political rights. Three important formal covenants have also endorsed social rights, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations (1948), the European Social Charter (1961) and the United Nations’ International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966), although these documents have been widely treated as aspirational rather than legally enforceable. Nor is this an alien idea even in our own country. For instance, it was embodied in President Franklin Roosevelt’s historic “Economic Bill of Rights” speech in 1944, and in the post-war proposals for a guaranteed personal income.
Equally significant is the evidence of broad public support for the underlying principle of social rights. Numerous public opinion surveys over the years have consistently shown that people are far more willing to provide aid for the genuinely needy than neo-classical (rational self-interest) economic theory would lead one to believe. (Some of these surveys are cited in my book, The Fair Society.)
Even more compelling evidence of public support for social rights, I believe, can be found in the results of an extensive series of social experiments regarding distributive justice by political scientists Norman Frohlich and Joe Oppenheimer and their colleagues, as detailed in their 1992 book Choosing Justice. What Frohlich and Oppenheimer set out to test was whether or not ad hoc groups of “impartial” decision-makers behind a Rawlsian “veil of ignorance” about their own personal stakes would be able to reach a consensus on how to distribute the income of a hypothetical society. Frohlich and Oppenheimer found that the experimental groups consistently opted for striking a balance between maximizing income and ensuring that there is an economic minimum for everyone (what they called a “floor constraint”). The overall results were stunning: 77.8 percent of the groups chose to assure a minimum income for basic needs.
However, the idea of a “basic needs guarantee” for all of our citizens must not be construed as a call for a one-way redistribution of wealth or the creation of a class of economic “free-riders.” As I make abundantly clear in the book, the scale must be balanced by a requirement for “reciprocity” – contributing a fair share in return for the benefits you receive from society. This precept, along with assuring that our society also provides adequate rewards for “merit” – our talents, hard work, and accomplishments – constitute the three core principles of a “fair society.”
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