8 Behavioral Symmetry, Again + 9 CONCLUSION

8 Behavioral Symmetry, Again
Note:8@@@@@@@@@@@@@@Democrazia..ignoranza e stupiditá

Yellow highlight | Location: 4,069

Loyalty to any one sports team is pretty hard to justify.

Yellow highlight | Location: 4,072

Fans will be so in love with a player but if he goes to another team, they boo him. This is the same human being in a different shirt—they hate him now. Boo! Different shirt! Boo!

Yellow highlight | Location: 4,075

if the principle of behavioral symmetry is correct, then Rawlsian ideal theory is self-undermining.
Note:Tesi....tieni presente che public choice considera governanti e governati allo syesso modo...simmetria

Yellow highlight | Location: 4,077

showing that people are characteristically more public-interested in politics than elsewhere.
Note:Tesi impossibile da dimostrare...in politica nn valgono principi diversi

Yellow highlight | Location: 4,079

Rational Choice Theory
Note:Tttttttttt

Yellow highlight | Location: 4,080

inadequacy of rational choice theory.
Note:Mina la simmetria

Yellow highlight | Location: 4,083

they’ll sacrifice money to play fair.
Note:Esperimenti

Yellow highlight | Location: 4,084

I have two replies. First, this sort of objection misunderstands rational choice theory.

Yellow highlight | Location: 4,086

rationality involves preferring more value over less value.3 There’s nothing irrational about pursuing altruistic values.

Yellow highlight | Location: 4,091

Second, behavioral symmetry doesn’t assert a particular behavioral model; it asserts only that you should apply your model consistently across institutions.

Yellow highlight | Location: 4,095

To disconfirm behavioral symmetry, it’s not enough to show that people are often altruistic.

Yellow highlight | Location: 4,096

you’d need to show that people are characteristically more altruistic in their role as political actors

Yellow highlight | Location: 4,098

Competition in Markets and Politics
Note:Tttttttt

Yellow highlight | Location: 4,101

markets encourage a competitive, “greed is good” mentality whereas democracies ask us to listen to each other,
Note:Asimmetria

Yellow highlight | Location: 4,113

democratic politics is itself a kind of market competition. Accordingly, Cohen’s concerns about markets apply with at least as much force to democracies.

Yellow highlight | Location: 4,117

But maybe political competition is gentler

Yellow highlight | Location: 4,120

Adam Smith would have us focus on all of the unseen cooperation
Note:Nn solo aviditá

Yellow highlight | Location: 4,131

The tax draws us into a conflict because her gain is my loss.

Yellow highlight | Location: 4,132

citizens can be quite hostile to their political opponents.

Yellow highlight | Location: 4,133

we’re subject to a strong cross-partisan prejudice;

Yellow highlight | Location: 4,134

experimenters had subjects play the trust game and the dictator game.

Yellow highlight | Location: 4,150

results suggest that people are both less generous and less trusting when interacting with those from the other side of the political aisle.

Yellow highlight | Location: 4,152

So there’s reason to doubt that real-world democratic competition induces citizens to think of themselves as engaged in a “common cooperative project”

Yellow highlight | Location: 4,156

Public-Interested Voting
Note:Tttttttt

Yellow highlight | Location: 4,157

When you shop for soup, your focus is narrow. You’re probably considering only your own good or maybe your family’s. But when you’re shopping for a senator, you’re considering the good of all.
Note:L argpmento piú forte

Yellow highlight | Location: 4,159

people tend not to vote selfishly.

Yellow highlight | Location: 4,161

This argument ultimately falls short. Voters need more than public-interested intentions if they are to promote the public good of good government; they need accurate beliefs
Note:Ma

Yellow highlight | Location: 4,167

the distinction between promoting a value and expressing your allegiance to that value is crucial.
Note:Espressionosmo

Yellow highlight | Location: 4,169

I cheer for the Philadelphia Eagles even when I’m on a couch 295 miles away from Philadelphia. I’m under no illusion that I’m helping them win. I’m expressing my support
Note:Analogia con il tifo

Yellow highlight | Location: 4,173

Rawlsian ideal theory needs voters to promote the common good, not just express support

Yellow highlight | Location: 4,179

“Liking” a Facebook post advocating for a wildlife preservation organization expresses your endorsement of wildlife preservation even if you haven’t done any research into whether the organization actually helps preserve wildlife.
Note:analogia

Yellow highlight | Location: 4,182

if voters are motivated to promote values rather than express them, they will (i) acquire information

Yellow highlight | Location: 4,183

(ii) revise their beliefs

Yellow highlight | Location: 4,184

But the empirical evidence suggests that they do neither.

Yellow highlight | Location: 4,196

Finally, there’s the question of how citizens make use of the information
Note:Tttttt

Yellow highlight | Location: 4,199

analogize political partisans to sports fans.

Yellow highlight | Location: 4,201

Your friend spends a little time watching games, studying players’ statistics, and reading the scouting reports, but what matters most to him is the player’s team affiliation.

Yellow highlight | Location: 4,204

Needless to say, you shouldn’t trust this friend’s judgment about which football players are good

Yellow highlight | Location: 4,214

When the stereotypically conservative policy was labeled with Democratic support, liberals supported it.

Yellow highlight | Location: 4,226

“motivated political reasoning”

Yellow highlight | Location: 4,244

Dan Kahan

Yellow highlight | Location: 4,249

“team affiliation” influences how we interpret political information,

Yellow highlight | Location: 4,252

Note that this sort of epistemic irrationality is practically rational or, as Bryan Caplan puts it, “rationally irrational.”40 Having accurate beliefs about the quality of Eagles players doesn’t do Eagles fans any good

Yellow highlight | Location: 4,255

Indeed, having accurate beliefs about Eagles players is probably downright harmful

Yellow highlight | Location: 4,259

So the empirical evidence fails to support the claim that voters promote the public good of good democratic governance.
Note:Conclusione

Yellow highlight | Location: 4,262

“Good intentions are ubiquitous to politics; what is scarce is accurate beliefs.”
Note:Motto

Yellow highlight | Location: 4,265

people are more likely to engage in expressive behavior in the voting booth than the grocery store. But this asymmetry doesn’t undermine behavioral symmetry

Yellow highlight | Location: 4,268

we’d expect to see more expressive behavior when the cost is lower.

Yellow highlight | Location: 4,273

It’s worth repeating, though, that an asymmetry in expressive behavior won’t vindicate Rawlsian ideal theory.

Yellow highlight | Location: 4,426

Conclusion
Note:@@@@@@@@@@

Yellow highlight | Location: 4,426

we ought to reject an a priori ideal institutional analysis of the state.
Note:Upshot

Yellow highlight | Location: 4,428

we have no need for the state.
Note:Nel mondo ideale

Yellow highlight | Location: 4,429

we can generate a need for the state by switching to the nonideal assumption

Yellow highlight | Location: 4,430

However, in doing so we lose the right to make the a priori stipulation that the state itself is fully just.

Yellow highlight | Location: 4,431

we may not assume, as Rawls does, that the state acts “in accordance with

Yellow highlight | Location: 4,434

Take Rawls’s difference principle as an example:

Yellow highlight | Location: 4,435

make the poorest as rich as possible.

Yellow highlight | Location: 4,435

open, empirical question

Yellow highlight | Location: 4,436

laissez-faire capitalism, or liberal socialism,

Yellow highlight | Location: 4,437

I want to address the worry that my argument against ideal theory doesn’t change anything of substance.

Yellow highlight | Location: 4,439

his conclusions nevertheless stand because there’s so much empirical evidence that policies like dramatic income redistribution and campaign finance regulation are needed to advance the aims of liberal egalitarianism. Consider Denmark/Sweden/Thomas Piketty.”

Yellow highlight | Location: 4,441

we should be skeptical that the empirical institutional analysis is easily and obviously settled.

Yellow highlight | Location: 4,448

There’s reason to think that we start with the moral judgment that laissez-faire capitalism (or liberal socialism, etc.) is just and then cherry-pick empirical evidence to rationalize
Note:L a priori

Yellow highlight | Location: 4,451

Jonathan Haidt report that economists’ “moral judgment profiles” predict their responses to empirical questions.
Note:Pregiudizi

Yellow highlight | Location: 4,458

people who score highly on care are more likely to hold the economic belief that the minimum wage is an effective means to helping workers.

Yellow highlight | Location: 4,460

By analogy, wouldn’t it be strange if, say, a strong concern for keeping rooms warm predicted a person’s belief about the effectiveness of wood stoves relative to gas stoves as a mechanism for keeping rooms warm?
Note:Distorsioni

Yellow highlight | Location: 4,463

Similarly, there’s nothing inconsistent in thinking that we should improve workers’ well-being and thinking the minimum wage is not an effective

Yellow highlight | Location: 4,465

But it turns out that this moral belief and this economic belief tend not to go together.

Yellow highlight | Location: 4,466

substantive conclusions about the workings of the economy are suspiciously correlated with their moral values.”

Yellow highlight | Location: 4,473

In short, we academics may be as susceptible to motivated political reasoning as anyone else.

Yellow highlight | Location: 4,478

We’re all tempted to think that we are the exception to the general rule;

Yellow highlight | Location: 4,485

Rawls and others haven’t produced successful arguments for ruling out free market regimes a priori

Yellow highlight | Location: 4,487

if we may not assume away government failure, then we may not dismiss the classical liberal worry that the state tends to hurt, rather than help,