Is This Another Designed Utopian Society?

Unfortunately, “designed” social systems have a poor record of improving on what their authors consider to be failed social systems, which have arisen without design or intention. In new book, Yochai Benkler makes the case for “prosocial” systems design:

“The Penguin and the Leviathan: The Triumph of Cooperation Over Self-Interest (Crown Publishing Group, August 2011),” by Harvard Law Professor Yochai Benkler.
HERE

“This “old model” harks back to 1652, when philosopher Thomas Hobbes published “Leviathan,” arguing for rule by absolute sovereignty. Hobbes unleashed a monster, the “iconic image of a controlling state,” says Benkler, which ever since has cast its shadow over social contracts, spreading the dire message that “if left to our own devices, we’ll be at each other’s throats.” Overlaying this Hobbesian model of state control is the market-oriented Invisible Hand metaphor, introduced by economist Adam Smith in “The Wealth of Nations” (1776), which assumes that “by each pursuing self-interest, we make things better for all of us,” not because we care for one another but because it is mutually advantageous.”

The above article, “Escaping the Leviathan’s Shadow,” by Julia Collins, first appeared in the Summer 2011 Harvard Law Bulletin. Benkler’s book was also recently reviewed in The Atlantic, "Can the Internet Bring the Beginning of the End of Selfishness?,” by Walter Frick,

Can the Internet Bring the Beginning of the End of Selfishness?, where

Walter Frick reviews Yochai Benkler HERE

“After tracing macroeconomic history from pre-nineteenth century European monarchies through the industrial revolution, the New Deal, and the Washington Consensus, Benkler writes, "If neither the command-control systems dictated by the Leviathan nor the Invisible Hand of the free market can effectively govern society, where shall we turn? Can the Penguin deliver us more robust, working social and economic systems that break us out of this vicious cycle? I believe that he can."

Comment
Long, long before Thomas Hobbes introduced ideas about the “Leviathan” state in the 17th century, human social systems had experienced their own millennia-lasting “iconic images of a controlling states”. Professor Yochai Benkler should know about the Roman Republic and Empire (much law theory started way back), as well as the High Egyptian Nile Delta centuries, Babylon, and Imperial China. They did not need to await Hobbes’ endeavours to apply their own versions of tyranny.

Yochai Benkler’s “market-oriented Invisible Hand metaphor, introduced by economist Adam Smith in “The Wealth of Nations” (1776), which assumes that “by each pursuing self-interest, we make things better for all of us,” not because we care for one another but because it is mutually advantageous” is but a parody on Adam Smith, owing much to modern false attributions of his ideas, and, most importantly, an invented version of his use of the “invisible hand” metaphor.

There is no “invisible hand of the market” attributable to Adam Smith. It is a myth that owes more to the Cold War years when US academe confronted the Soviet challenge (an example of another “iconic image of a controlling state”) with its human ‘designed’ social system and with very inhuman consequences for those living within it.

Apart from these observations, I am always very interested in the evolution of co-operation as human behaviour, which Adam Smith credited to the acquisition of the faculties of ‘reason’ and ‘speech’ (Wealth Of Nations, chapter 2). This part of Yochai Benkler’s book might be interesting. If my book budget permits I might buy a copy and see what he says. But if it is merely a utopian blueprint for a designed society, I would prefer to give it a miss.

Another Unrealistic Recipe for Utopia

David Willets (MP, Conservative) reviews (24 April) Martin Nowak and Roger Highfield, SuperCooperators: Altruism, Evolution and Why We Need Each Other, Edinburgh: Cannongate (HERE):

“The invisible hand that binds us all”

Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations outlines the logic of modern capitalism; a world of competition in which benevolence is irrelevant. But in The Theory of Moral Sentiments he gave an account of morality resting on empathy and conscience as an impartial spectator observing our actions. …

…how to reconcile these two great books – is also the challenge of how to order a society in which competition and ethical sensibility are combined.

… So how do we find a way to explain these obligations in a society less susceptible to appeals to tradition or religion? The nexus of evolutionary biology, game theory and neuroscience provides the most exciting avenue, and this book is an excellent example of the genre. Martin Nowak, along with his co-author journalist Roger Highfield, sets out steps by which this type of new co-operation can be developed, beginning with direct reciprocity then indirect reciprocity and on through competition between groups that reward martial qualities of courage and trustworthiness. He starts off with the economic man of the market economists, but ends up with a way of thinking about human behaviour which is closer to that of the great religions. Mr Nowak is a Harvard professor, but he generates controversy for the fact that, unlike most thinkers in this area, he is also a Christian.

Comment
The authors are more than a few millennia too late if they advocate introducing a“new [form of] co-operation” based on reciprocity. This a very old form of co-operation found and practiced among animals, as well as humans. In fact it pre-dates humanity as it evolved from the common ancestor with the chimpanzees about 6 million years ago and can be observed today among primates.

From reciprocity (I do you favour – share food; later, you reciprocate by sharing your food with me, which completes the transaction). This is an early implicit form of bargaining, but because the reciprocation may come long after the original favour, it is a quasi-bargain.

Over time, the gap between the obligation to reciprocate narrows, until the transaction is immediate, and because it is immediate, it is more certain to be completed: ‘I will give you this which you want, if you will give me this what I want’ (to paraphrase Adam Smith: WN I.ii.2: 25-25). This the full Smithian bargain.

So, I am not clear what Martin Nowak and Roger Highfield add to what economists and anthropologists already know and what the world of Homo sapiens (NOT that cursed Homo economicus!) practices.

“His willingness to argue for group selection, a theory suggesting that evolution operates beyond the genetic level, reawakens old controversies – but he does so using innovative mathematical models, able to incorporate dynamism and uncertainty.”

Comment
Biological evolution operates at the individual level and social evolution operates at the society level. Nothing remarkable in that. Hence we have stone-age societies and capitalist societies on the plant, and ‘capitalist societies take many form, from mercantile states through so-called Anglo-saxon to Continental, and relatively free-market scoieites through to Chinese Communist State capitalism, and so on. Societies have evolved quite differently in the recent past and will continue to do so. Again, nothing remarkable in that, and nothing will stop them continuing to do so.

“Adam Smith would have been pleased to know, for example, that putting a picture of two eyes looking at you on a communal fridge trebles contributions to the honesty box, compared with a picture of flowers.”

Comment
Adam Smith was quite clear: the close observation of others and by others (for example in a small religious sect) ensure a close adherence to group norms of behaviour. It was scrutiny of the behaviour of others that was supported by the clear moral norms of that small society that brought compliance – a picture of eyes on a poor box (or fridge today) reinforces known norms.

The reviewer, David Willetts, MP, summarises the rest of the book’s mainly technical maths of rationality applied to human behaviour (a set of heroic assumptions, at best), but I do not think the authors have found the Holy Grail. Predicting what is rational and aligning that as behaviour is a seductive trap, indulged in by politicians and their critics.

Much better to concentrate on studying how we arrived a the present situation in order to understand it. Predicting the future course of events is the medicine of the proverbial shaman and witch doctor; best not taken at all.