Libertarian Realist vs. Bryan Caplan. Part II

Brief comments:

It is not obvious to me what Libertarians should think on this matter since Libertarianism represents a very broad network of political philosophies centered around the nebulous ideas of “freedom” and “liberty”, a broad network in which there is much disagreement as to which “freedoms” and “liberties” are good (e.g., Propertarianists versus Libertarian socialists on private property). When trying to “think like a libertarian”, I always encounter innumerable issues for which there are no obvious “Libertarian” answers e.g., Libertarianism on selling oneself into slavery. Before discussing libertarianism one has to take a stance on more central issues, such as ownership, the right to possess — issues which relate to very basic conceptions of justices e.g., justice as iiius suum cuique tribuere. I have no idea what either Libertarian Realist’s or Bryan Caplan’s positions are concerning the nature of justice, so it is difficult for me to well evaluate their positions.

As for myself, I tend to agree with the basic understanding of Justice as giving one what is one’s own. This reduces the question of Justice to that of: What is one’s own? Many, these days, are fond of the liberal socialist philosopher John Rawls’ answer that one’s own is what a rationally self interested person would want it to be, were they blind to their prior situation i.e., one’s own is an equal share of the pie. Worse, they are fond of his argument — when it was nothing more than a not too clever rhetorical sleight of hand. Such is what others think. Generally, as to my own answer to this question I tend to say something like: outcomes consistent with the rules of the game that tend to be accepted and played by. The result is a theory of Justice — of due — which is compatible with inequity and which recognizes that ethical rules are negotiable and, in instances, not consented to. What rules should be accepted? There are none; there are only the rules that get accepted; and different groups at different times will accept different rules. And some individuals will not accept those generally accepted. There is then a sense in which Justice in this sense is unjust. There will always be instances of individuals who do not accept the rules of the game in their society. They are the deviants, the mad — who were perhaps born to the wrong time, to the wrong place. Because of this, in some ways, this theory of justice is unsatisfying. But not acknowledging that Justice is not free of injustice, that it is not more than a social arrangement that might be disagreed with, seems even less so — to me.

Now, one commonly accepted rule in our game is that we grant property ownership (i.e., people can own things not just e.g., an equal portion of the stuff which exists); granting this grants the possibility — and in our world inevitability of — inequality of property. So, for example, Bryan Caplan can own three cars and Libertarian Realist and I can own, jointly, zero. This point about property has bearing on the issue. To quote from the exchange:

Caplan: If you’re a libertarian, where does this “jurisdictions” stuff come from? I’d think that the purpose of a libertarian government would be to respect *people’s* freedom. And even if you think freedom in a jurisdiction is a priority, that hardly means it’s an absolute priority. In the worst case scenario, full Haitian immigration make Americans mildly less free. In the status quo, American immigration restrictions make Haitians vastly less free….What you call “catastrophe” is, by world and historic standards, a paradise. Would saving Detroit have justified depriving blacks of the freedom to live and work where they like – and whites the right to trade with them? No.

Libertarian Realist: You are helping to accelerate the demographic demise of libertarianism by supporting a globalist egalitarian immigration policy based on altruism. You’ve admitted that you’re willing to see negative consequences for freedom here due to Haitians…would have been willing to prevent Detroit from deporting violent populations in order to save itself from ruin…all for the sake of what you call freedom to migrate.

Of course, all property rights restrict people’s movements. What you’re demanding is a positive right to transcend property boundaries, which is alien to libertarian conceptions of rights. It’s no more restrictive of my freedom if the Singaporean government denies me entry into the country than if an owner of some private island denies me entry into his island. I have no positive right to move anywhere I want to in the world. If the whole country of Singapore was a privately owned community and it announced that it was no longer taking in new residents, would the rest of the world suddenly become less free?

Libertarian Realist is clearly a Propertarian — individuals and groups — e.g., corporations and cooperatives — can own property; owership, naturally, restricts the freedom of non-owners; dissolving property rights to increase freedoms — e..g, so that Libertarian Realist and I can use Caplan’s extra cars — is anti-Propertarian. Libertarian Realist then argues that, collectively, nationals own nations — which seems consistent with common understanding i.e., we talk of “invading their country”, “taking their land”. What Caplan is is not clear. I would guess that he is not anti-Propertarian, per se. But that he thinks that there is something different about collective owership in regards to nations versus corporations. Or that he feels that the magnitude of the inequality between nations is so pressing of a problem as to negates native property rights. If the latter, we can only wonder what his position would be were national differences equalized. In this regard, one thinks of John Rawls’ famous disinterest in “the right to migrant”:

There are numerous causes of immigration. I mention several and suggest that they would disappear in the Society of liberal and decent Peoples. One is the persecution of religious and ethnic minorities, the denial of their human rights. Another is political oppression… Often people are simply fleeing from starvation… Yet famines are often themselves in large part caused by political failures and the absence of decent government. The last cause I mention is population pressure in the home territory, and among its complex of causes is the inequality and subjection of women. Once that inequality and subjection are overcome, and women are granted equal political participation with men and assured education, these problems can be resolved… The problem of immigration is not, then, simply left aside, but is eliminated as a serious problem in a realistic utopia. The Law of Peoples.

Were nations to be equalized in terms of institutions and outcomes, would advocates of “the right to migrant” still consider it to be a pressing issue? Specifically, would Caplan? I have no idea.

on intellectual rabbit holes and little back-alleys

Gwern writes:

My Mistakes: Mu:

It’s worth noting that the IQ wars are a rabbit hole you can easily dive down. The literature is vast, spans all sorts of groups, all sorts of designs, from test validities to sampling to statistical regression vs causal inference to forms of bias; every point is hotly debated, the ways in which studies can be validly critiqued are an education in how to read papers and look for how they are weak or make jumps or some of the data just looks wrong, and you’ll learn every technical requirement and premise and methodological limitation because the opponents of that particular result will be sure to bring them up if it’ll at all help their case.

In this respect, it’s a lot like the feuds in biblical criticism over issues like whether Jesus existed, or the long philosophical debate over the existence of God. There too is an incredible amount of material to cover, by some really smart people (what did geeks do before science and modernity? well, for the most part, they seem to have done theology; consider how much time and effort Isaac Newton reportedly spent on alchemy and his own Biblical studies, or the sheer brainpower that must’ve been spent over the centuries in rabbinical studies). You could learn a lot about the ancient world or the incredibly complex chain of transmission of the Bible’s constituents in their endless varieties and how they are put together into a single canonical modern text, or the other countless issues of textual criticism. An awful lot, indeed. One could, and people as smart or smarter than you have, lose one’s life in exploring little back-alleys and details..

Indeed, one could. And to do so would seem foolish if one saw one’s investigation merely as an isolated, individual project. However, what is is interrelated — so it seems. And so knowledge must be interrelated. Therefore, no grasping at the truth, no seeking to know what is, is without worth. From such attempts, made by oneself or by others, there is always something to be learned — if only that this type of investigation is not illuminating, perhaps because it is predicated on a poor model of the world, perhaps because the tools needed for the investigation, conceptual or otherwise, have yet to be developed.

Ron Unz on Richwine’s Argument — Taking the Bull by the Horn

Richwine’s Argument was:

1. If we want a more intelligent — i.e., higher g-score — future population and if we want smaller “achievement” — i.e., smaller g score — gaps between ethnic/racial populations

2. If traits are intergenerationally transmitted on the family and on the subpopulation levels

3. Then we should tailor immigration policy to assure that immigrants are more intelligent on average and that ethnic/racial differences in intelligence are minimized.

There have been innumerable objections to it but none to my mind have been even slightly dis-persuading. Most involve, as they say, throwing sand in the bull’s eyes.

As for the overall argument, Richwine’s conclusion follows reasonably well from both premises assuming that you grant the permissibility of being selective with regards to migrants. Arguments to the effect that there is something immoral about being so selective in order to reduce achievement gaps seem odd in light of the accepted policy of intranational racial discrimination implemented for the same end. How is it, one might ask, acceptable to via defacto quotas discriminate against Asians and Whites and for Hispanics and Blacks when it comes to individuals residing in the US but not acceptable to via the adverse impact of cognitive tests discriminate for Asians and Whites and against Hispanics and Blacks when it comes to accepting would-be immigrants? Given this situation, lest one wishes to take on the well established much supported practice of institutional ethnic and racial discrimination, to tame this Bull, one needs to get on top of it; to do that, one needs to grab a horn; and only the second is dull enough to handle.

As for the first premise, it has been sharpened to a point by the constant calls to dually “raise achievement” and to “narrow the achievement gap”. There can no denying that “raising achievement” and “narrowing gaps” is a national priority. So, in making a case against this argument, one has but one option — attack the point about inter generational transmission. Which is what Unz does. I will quote the relevant passages:

Richwine (2009): No one knows whether Hispanics will ever reach IQ parity with whites, but the prediction that new Hispanic immigrants will have low-IQ children and grandchildren is difficult to argue against….The totality of the evidence suggests a genetic component to group differences in IQ, but the extent of its impact is hard to determine … The degree to which IQ differences are due to environment versus genes does not imply anything about how long the differences will continue …The primary concern from immigration policy is that differences persist — for whatever reason.

Unz (2013): With regard to Richwine’s IQ arguments, last year I published a major 7,500 word article on exactly the same topic of Race/IQ, arguing that there was overwhelming evidence that the IQs of various ethnic groups were far more malleable and environmentally influenced than is widely believed by many of those interested in the topic….By the time the debate wound down, I think the accumulated evidence in favor of my position was absolutely decisive….
….
However, it is well known that nearly all previous immigrant groups—southern and eastern Europeans—who came here in poverty similarly scored very low on IQ tests in the decades after their arrival, with results that were sometimes far below those of today’s Mexican immigrants. Yet after a generation or two their tested intelligence had almost invariably converged close to the American mean.
…
On another matter, Richwine must be aware that Arthur Jensen and Hans Eysenck rank as two of the greatest figures in twentieth century psychometrics. Yet decades ago both these scholars reviewed the structural evidence of Mexican-American IQs, and reached conclusions almost identical to my own, namely that the acknowledged gaps to white intelligence scores were largely perhaps almost entirely due to environmental factors and would steadily disappear as the population became more affluent and acculturated.

Here we have Ron’s same old song and dance — unfortunately, it’s the best show in town. Ron again cites Jensen and Eysenck despite my having pointed out Jensen’s error. The psychometric characteristics of the Hispanic-White gap are consistent with a genetic hypothesis insofar as the differential shows a strong Jensen Effect, which it does. The most recent meta-analytic estimate is a correlation of 0.8 between g-loading — a perfect index of genetic loading — and the magnitude of the difference.

Ron also argues that the H/W gap is like the previous immigrant/native gaps. Yet, Richwine showed that in an important respect it isn’t. In doing so, he provided compelling evidence that the IQ gaps will persist for at least another couple of generations. The reasoning is simple: (a) prior to the closing of previous immigrant gaps, the gaps exhibited a narrowing across cohorts and generations; (b) this is consistent with theory, by which gaps, when intergenerationally environmentally transmitted, disappear by the third/fourth generation; (c) such a narrowing is not seen in the case of the Hispanic-White gap; (d) it is, therefore, unlikely that the Hispanic-White gap will vanish anytime soon.

Ron’s reply? None. He simply elides over this point. Now, we have seen these analogical arguments before. Flynn and Sowell, for example, compared the B/W gap, the origins of which is in question, respectively, to the Flynn Effect and to the Protestant Effect, the origins of which seem to be environmental. They argued that the Black-White gap is like the other gaps, and, therefore, the causes are alike. But analogical arguments work to the extent that the compared are similar in the first dimension being compared. In these cases: A is like B in psychometric nature, therefore A is like B in terms of etiology. Flynn and Sowell’s arguments failed because the compared gaps are highly psychometrically dissimilar. In fact, the contrary arguments work better: The B/W gap is very unlike, in psychometric character related to genetic/environmental influence, the seemingly environmental FE and PE, therefore this suggests a non-environmental etiology to the B/W gap. Ron’s analogy fails because the comparison gaps behave dissimilarly when it comes to inter-generational transmission. And here too the contrary argument works better. But what about psychometric characteristics – how do the Hispanic immigrant/Native Whites and White immigrant/Native White gaps compare psychometrically? Unfortunately, no one has thoroughly explored this issue.*

Generally, Ron’s counter argument, if it can be called that, is pretty weak. And yet, it appears to be the best there is.

*A possible analysis: Using Richwine’s NLSY 79 data, we can to a limited extent, examine this issue. Richwine (2009) presented standardized Native White – immigrant differences and g-loadings. He also computed the correlation between subtest g-loadings and standardized differences. Based on the data presented in his tables 2.4 and 2.5 we can compute the point biserial correlations between group membership and group differences; these correlations can be said to represent the factorial loadings on group difference factors (Gordon, 1985). We can then compare the factorial similarity between the averaged group g-factors and the group difference factors using Tucker’s congruence coefficient. A congruence coefficient above 0.95 is indicative of factorial identity. When the congruence coefficient between the averaged group g-factors and the between group difference factors is greater than 0.95, one could interpret the group difference as being a difference in g (Jensen, 1987; Gordon, 1985). This analysis is done below using Native Whites, all immigrants, European immigrants, and Mexican immigrants:

The NLSY 79 Native White-Mexican immigrant difference can be interpreted as a difference in g, while the Native White -European immigrant difference can not, given standard interpretative rules. I note this merely as an example of an analysis that could be done to help clarify the issue.

Libertarian Realist on Bryan Caplan

I imagine that Caplan’s immigration views are quite rational for him. That is, that they work to efficiently realize his good. What is always strange — or not — about these debates is that only one side seems to recognize the rationality of the other side’s position.

Caplan

For people who think that my views on “immigration” are “crazy” would the same “views” remain crazy if I were Haitian?

Libertarian Realist

No, Bryan, if you were a Haitian, it would be quite sane for you to advocate that the U.S. adopt an open borders regime. If you were a Palestinian, you’d quite sensibly want Israel to cease enforcement of its borders. And if you were unemployed, you’d quite rationally want to be hired by the employer of your choice.

But if you were an employer, it would be crazy for you to hire someone solely on the basis of their wanting to be hired. If you were an Israeli Jew, it would be crazy for you to champion a demographically overwhelming migration of Arab Muslims, who are hostile to your values, into your country. If you were a freedom-loving American, it would be crazy for you to advocate unlimited inflows of unskilled, crime-prone, Affirmative Action-eligible, future Democrat bloc-voting Haitians with average IQs of 80 into your country — unless you had some strategic reason that you’re not telling us about for wanting to bring about an acceleration of the demographic and political degradation of the United States.

In What Sense of Irrational is Racial Discrimination Irrational?

Take the following statement:

In defense of Jason Richwine and Charles Murray

Michael Barone

Ordinary people understand that it is irrational to discriminate according to race or religion or ethnic group, and that it is rational to judge individuals on their own merits.

And then attempt to answer the question.

One sense of “rationality’ is that employed in discussions of economic theory. Let us call this: “economic rationality”. By this sense, “rational” means maximizing one’s good, where “maximizing” means “most efficiently pursuing”.

Racial discrimination would be rational in this sense insofar as it maximizes one’s end. If one’s end was, say, a racially homogenous or heterogeneous i.e., “diverse” institution, then discriminating on the basis of race would be rational. Conversely, given the same end, it would be irrational to discriminate on the basis of weak proxies.

Given this, what Barone must mean is that “race or religion or ethnicity” is not a part of the good of “ordinary people” — or he must be using “rational” in some queer non economic sense.

Now, let us conjecture that by the understanding of so called “ordinary people” racial or religious or ethnic homogeneity/heterogeneity is, indeed, not an end. What would this establish? Nothing. Any direct extension beyond this would represent an argumentum ad populum.

I suspect that Barone recognizes this. Thus I suspect that he is using “rational” in some queer sense — that he means that the valuing of racial or religious or ethnic homogeneity/heterogeneity is not something that sane people do.

Now, I find that to be a curious prejudice — especially in light of the previous discussion.

Frost on “racism”

Frost. May 18. 2013. More thoughts. The evolution of a word

The word “racist” is so common today that you may have trouble imagining a time when neither the word nor the concept existed. Yet such a time did exist, and not so long ago.

The first appearances of this word seem to date to the 1920s in French and to the 1930s in English. At that time, “racist” was a translation of the German völkisch and, as such, referred to the “blood and soil” nationalism so prevalent in Germany and in other countries that looked to Germany as a model (Taguieff, 2013, p. 1528). It remained a rather esoteric term during the interwar years, being narrow not only in its range of meaning but also in the political spectrum of those who used it—essentially the left, if not the far left.(1)

All of this changed with the Second World War. At first, the word “racist” was used mainly in postwar Europe—as part of the effort to root out ex-Nazis and their collaborators. Bit by bit, however, it became more widely used elsewhere, particularly in the contexts of race relations in the United States and colonialism in Africa and Asia. It also began to appear in the emerging context of Afro-Asian immigration to Western Europe. “Racists” were no longer Nazis. They could in fact be people who had valiantly fought against Nazi Germany.

I have never understood the logical foundation to the opposition to racism qua racial/ethnic preferentialism. Racism, so defined, can be viewed as a Good. And the protection of the right of individuals to define what is Good is a liberal good. Therefore, it should be a liberal good to defend the right of individuals to be racist.

Obviously, there are powerful forces which seek to prevent this obvious conclusion from being drawn. One pseudo argument frequently made is that “racism is irrational”, where “rational” contra “irrational” is used in the queer Enlightenment sense of “what a person would want if they were not deluded or crazy“.

Around this argument is then build a byzantine theory of racism as madness which is firmly grounded in Frankfurt school thinking concerning oppressive ideologies. The type of madness that racism is said to be is equated with “unnatural” and “externally imposed upon” – with “social construction” loosely and pejoratively defined.

This meta-perspective is then linked to an eschatological ideology which sees its project as the vanquishing of this supposed madness.

But the myth of racism as socially imposed madness is undermined by the behavioral genetic literature, which clearly indicates a substantial “natural” component to racism.

[My thinking here is that maybe 50% of the variance in racial/ethnic preferentialism is genetically conditioned and that maybe 50% of the genetically conditioned variance is domain specific (and not just conditioned via domain general mechanisms a la Cosmides & Tooby). As such, maybe 25% of the variance is genetic domain specific. I based the latter on Bates and Lewis (2010). quote:

This study is the first, to our knowledge, to provide genetic evidence that in-group favoritism, at least at the level of religion, ethnicity, and race, is underpinned by both a CAM and essentialist favoritism systems, each with significant genetic and environmental components. These results are compatible with recent behavioral research and game-theoretic modeling (Baumeister & Leary, 1995; Hammond & Axelrod, 2006) and suggest that human in-group favoritism is best understood in terms of a multicomponent architecture supporting both essentialist domains (Gil-White, 2001; Hirschfeld, 1996) and a flexible CAM supporting dynamic group affiliation (Cosmides, Tooby, & Kurzban, 2003). With regard to the relative influences of the CAM system and the essentialist systems on each of the favoritism traits, squaring the factor loadings demonstrates that the CAM accounts for 35%, 69%, and 21% of variation in religious, ethnic, and racial favoritism, respectively. These data indicate that the CAM only partially mediates religious, ethnic, and racial favoritism, and that substantial influences on favoritism also occur at the essentialist-system level.

To the extent that this is recognized, the argument transforms to that that racism is a genetically conditioned “madness” akin to criminality.

This repositioning though requires a new theory of racism as madness. By the modified theory, madness is conceptualized as what is detrimental to society and racism is madness because it is detrimental in the context of multiracial societies. (In a parallel manner, insufficient genetic pacification is madness in context to modern societies.) Paul Rubin, for example, basically makes this argument against Frank Salter. But this modified theory, obviously, begs the question: Why are multiracial societies valuable? – i.e., Why is diversity good?

One reply seems to be to deny the sanity = legitimacy of questioning this value qua social Good. But this question is well grounded in the principle of national self determination.

The more frequent reply seems to be to try to eliminate national consciousness — and so the tendency for people to ask the question.

BBC: EU should ‘undermine national homogeneity’ says UN migration chief

The EU should “do its best to undermine” the “homogeneity” of its member states, the UN’s special representative for migration has said.

Peter Sutherland told peers the future prosperity of many EU states depended on them becoming multicultural.

Guardian: Neo-nationalism threatens Europe

The European project was inspired by the injunction “never again”. Never again would European nations allow virulent and competitive nationalism to tear them apart as they had done in two disastrous wars. Never again would the fate of minorities be left to national parliaments, and racist and populist sentiments. According to Europe’s founding myth, a new commonality, beginning with a European common market, respect for democratic institutions, human rights, and the rule of law, would define the European project.

This is like the existentialist resolution to the question of the meaning of life: Live life such that you don’t ask the question. It works so long as you can convince yourself not to ask the question.

I appreciate this. But this doesn’t challenge my view that there is no logical foundation to the opposition to racism qua racial/ethnic preferentialism.

“Richwine’s Syllogism”

Fashioned after “Herrnstein’s syllogism” (I know, it’s not a proper syllogism):

If we want a more intelligent — i.e., higher g-score — future population and if we want smaller “achievement” — i.e., smaller g score — gaps between ethnic/racial populations

If traits are intergenerationally transmitted on the family and on the subpopulation levels

Then we should tailor immigration policy to assure that immigrants are more intelligent on average and that ethnic/racial differences in intelligence are minimized.

The first volley of replies was directed against the empirical fact of ethnic/racial g score differences. But facts are facts. The second volley of replies has been directed against a genetic model. But as Richwine (2009) noted, the nature/nurture debate is not central to his argument; what matters is that differences are stubbornly intergenerationally transmitted. Which they seem to be:

The third volley of replies is being directed against the proposition that we want a more intelligent future population. Ok. But then why all the hub bub about raising achievement? And, more importantly, about narrowing intelligence gaps?

Conor Friedersdorf’s argument, for example, that it wouldn’t matter if IQ averages and differences were congenital and that we should just look at individuals and not consider group differences when it comes to policy seems mighty queer in light of the obsessive focus on group differences and in light of the hostile attack on individuals who have made a similar focus-on-the-individual, given genetic differences, arguments (e.g., Jensen & Rushton and Murray and Herrnstein).

THIRTY YEARS OF RESEARCH ON RACE DIFFERENCES IN COGNITIVE ABILITY: Section 15: Implications for Public Policy

It is a widely accepted fact of behavioral science that there is great variability within each racial group and there is an ethical consensus that we treat people as individuals. Although no specific policies necessarily follow from knowing about the causes of group differences, they may serve as guides to action on some issues. The conclusion reached in Sections 13 and 14 —that about 50% of the variance in mean Black–White group differences in IQ is due to heredity—is compatible with a wide range of recommendations, from programs for the disadvantaged and laissez-faire approaches to selection and opportunity grouping in certain educational and vocational situations. In The Bell Curve, Herrnstein and Murray (1994) offered some specific policy recommendations based on their conclusions about genetic variation and IQ, which are generally concordant with political conservatism, such as scaling back affirmative action, reducing the intrusiveness of government, and returning to individualism. Most political conservatives, however, support these recommendations, no matter how the nature–nurture question is “resolved,” an argument with which Murray agreed (Miele, 1995). Arthur Jensen, also writing from the hereditarian perspective, recently opined that giving primacy to individual rights maximizes fairness, which he pragmatically defined as the ability of each individual to reach his or her full potential (Miele, 2002). He therefore argued for a restructuring of the educational system by tailoring methods to fit the individual and letting the group outcomes become what they may, rather than allowing claims of differential performance to justify group rights over individual rights.

In a sane world, one wouldn’t be able to have it all ways.