8 Behavioral Symmetry, Again
Note:8@@@@@@@@@@@@@@Democrazia..ignoranza e stupiditá
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Loyalty to any one sports team is pretty hard to justify.
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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!
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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
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showing that people are characteristically more public-interested in politics than elsewhere.
Note:Tesi impossibile da dimostrare...in politica nn valgono principi diversi
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Rational Choice Theory
Note:Tttttttttt
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inadequacy of rational choice theory.
Note:Mina la simmetria
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they’ll sacrifice money to play fair.
Note:Esperimenti
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I have two replies. First, this sort of objection misunderstands rational choice theory.
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rationality involves preferring more value over less value.3 There’s nothing irrational about pursuing altruistic values.
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Second, behavioral symmetry doesn’t assert a particular behavioral model; it asserts only that you should apply your model consistently across institutions.
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To disconfirm behavioral symmetry, it’s not enough to show that people are often altruistic.
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you’d need to show that people are characteristically more altruistic in their role as political actors
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Competition in Markets and Politics
Note:Tttttttt
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markets encourage a competitive, “greed is good” mentality whereas democracies ask us to listen to each other,
Note:Asimmetria
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democratic politics is itself a kind of market competition. Accordingly, Cohen’s concerns about markets apply with at least as much force to democracies.
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But maybe political competition is gentler
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Adam Smith would have us focus on all of the unseen cooperation
Note:Nn solo aviditá
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The tax draws us into a conflict because her gain is my loss.
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citizens can be quite hostile to their political opponents.
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we’re subject to a strong cross-partisan prejudice;
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experimenters had subjects play the trust game and the dictator game.
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results suggest that people are both less generous and less trusting when interacting with those from the other side of the political aisle.
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So there’s reason to doubt that real-world democratic competition induces citizens to think of themselves as engaged in a “common cooperative project”
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Public-Interested Voting
Note:Tttttttt
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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
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people tend not to vote selfishly.
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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
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the distinction between promoting a value and expressing your allegiance to that value is crucial.
Note:Espressionosmo
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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
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Rawlsian ideal theory needs voters to promote the common good, not just express support
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“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
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if voters are motivated to promote values rather than express them, they will (i) acquire information
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(ii) revise their beliefs
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But the empirical evidence suggests that they do neither.
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Finally, there’s the question of how citizens make use of the information
Note:Tttttt
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analogize political partisans to sports fans.
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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.
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Needless to say, you shouldn’t trust this friend’s judgment about which football players are good
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When the stereotypically conservative policy was labeled with Democratic support, liberals supported it.
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“motivated political reasoning”
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Dan Kahan
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“team affiliation” influences how we interpret political information,
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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
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Indeed, having accurate beliefs about Eagles players is probably downright harmful
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So the empirical evidence fails to support the claim that voters promote the public good of good democratic governance.
Note:Conclusione
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“Good intentions are ubiquitous to politics; what is scarce is accurate beliefs.”
Note:Motto
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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
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we’d expect to see more expressive behavior when the cost is lower.
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It’s worth repeating, though, that an asymmetry in expressive behavior won’t vindicate Rawlsian ideal theory.
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Conclusion
Note:@@@@@@@@@@
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we ought to reject an a priori ideal institutional analysis of the state.
Note:Upshot
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we have no need for the state.
Note:Nel mondo ideale
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we can generate a need for the state by switching to the nonideal assumption
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However, in doing so we lose the right to make the a priori stipulation that the state itself is fully just.
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we may not assume, as Rawls does, that the state acts “in accordance with
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Take Rawls’s difference principle as an example:
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make the poorest as rich as possible.
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open, empirical question
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laissez-faire capitalism, or liberal socialism,
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I want to address the worry that my argument against ideal theory doesn’t change anything of substance.
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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.”
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we should be skeptical that the empirical institutional analysis is easily and obviously settled.
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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
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Jonathan Haidt report that economists’ “moral judgment profiles” predict their responses to empirical questions.
Note:Pregiudizi
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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.
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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
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Similarly, there’s nothing inconsistent in thinking that we should improve workers’ well-being and thinking the minimum wage is not an effective
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But it turns out that this moral belief and this economic belief tend not to go together.
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substantive conclusions about the workings of the economy are suspiciously correlated with their moral values.”
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In short, we academics may be as susceptible to motivated political reasoning as anyone else.
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We’re all tempted to think that we are the exception to the general rule;
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Rawls and others haven’t produced successful arguments for ruling out free market regimes a priori
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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,
