The four major black holes of modernity are not the result of incorrectly tuned policy levers but the result of fundamental cultural blindspots. These four areas: education, medicine, housing, and prison, all relate to one central problem. An incoherent philosophy when it comes to the concept of 'responsibility.' When I say black holes I mean that they are capable of sucking up arbitrary amounts of capital as we fight over them fruitlessly. And to be absolutely clear: the claim here is not that personal responsiibity should be 'higher' or 'lower' (whatever those mean) than they are now, that's what I mean by fighting over them. I genuinely mean that the incoherence of the concept itself is the problem.
Consider the following questions:
how responsible is a criminal for their actions?
how responsible are young people for making good decisions about their education?
to what degree are NIMBYs responsible for the housing crisis?
how can externalities of housing be assigned responsibility to various parties?
does the medicalization of problems, and thus the denial of agency lead to more problems than it solves?
You've seen debates about these and they never go anywhere because there aren't final answers. There is no algorithm for 'blame' that is perfectly equitable. Neither holding people to high standards nor relaxing those standards is stable or workable. Reality is always multicausal and situations are different. The traditional answer to this is the discretion of judges to adjust to what is happening. But law still has to deal with the fundamental incoherence and it has been deprived of one of the historical ways it has dealt with it. The idea that different people might have differing capabilities to take responsibility for things, whatever the reason, is in untenable tension with the notion that all men are created equal. We have a few categories that recognize that not everyone can hold the same privileges such as child, felon, or legally mentally unable to grant consent. There are also the only semi legible ways that money and access grant privileges while that very same hidden nature frees the beneficiaries of any responsibility for the poor exercise of said privilege.
Now we're seeing other countries find their own ways forward in creating a tiered society like China's social credit system or the soft classism of inscrutable and gameable admission to elite colleges (whereas before lower class people got in on merit). These are terrible solutions and we had better find better ones before the march of history declares a shitty winner for us. We can find a way to more tightly couple privileges and responsibilities or we can continue reaping the externalities of allowing incentives to drive a stronger wedge between them.
Interesting ideas. If I understand what you are saying, it's that we don't have a great way of attributing cause/effect, and therefore it's difficult to assign merits or demerits in society?
1) "Reality is always multicausal" i.e. the "responsible causes" of an event are a myriad of factors and 2) the law / insurance system have to assume that there is just 1-2 causes, so that blame and deserts can be meted out?
I'm curious what you think about alternate "unified theories of modernity's problems", such as Georgism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism) or racial inequity / colonialism, and how might you attempt to convince a believer of these alternate views that your theory is more correct.
Georgism seems obviously helpful.
Another, simpler (and therefore potentially attracting the wrong kind of response) way of getting at the crux:
There's a reason much (maybe even most) anger on the left revolves around a perceived denial of the existence of privilege, and perhaps most of the anger on the right ultimately boiling down to a perceived denial of the existence of responsibility.
> There's a reason much (maybe even most) anger on the left revolves around a perceived denial of the existence of privilege, and perhaps most of the anger on the right ultimately boiling down to a perceived denial of the existence of responsibility.
Interesting. How do you use this "unified" framework then, to come up with your own political opinions? (as opposed to, say, post-modernism variants like critical race theory)
Thinking about how groups of people avoid liability by creating a diffusion of responsibility and leaving others with the cost of cleanup is one way. Including the long term effect that people are conditioned to think that is normal and the desirable thing is not to undermine the system but to reach the top of it so you get to be the one exploiting. Kind of like a slave empire such as the Romans where the highest ambition of a slave might be to become a slave owner themselves.
You've seen debates about these and they never go anywhere because there aren't final answers. There is no algorithm for 'blame' that is perfectly equitable. Neither holding people to high standards nor relaxing those standards is stable or workable. Reality is always multicausal and situations are different. The traditional answer to this is the discretion of judges to adjust to what is happening. But law still has to deal with the fundamental incoherence and it has been deprived of one of the historical ways it has dealt with it. The idea that different people might have differing capabilities to take responsibility for things, whatever the reason, is in untenable tension with the notion that all men are created equal. We have a few categories that recognize that not everyone can hold the same privileges such as child, felon, or legally mentally unable to grant consent. There are also the only semi legible ways that money and access grant privileges while that very same hidden nature frees the beneficiaries of any responsibility for the poor exercise of said privilege. Now we're seeing other countries find their own ways forward in creating a tiered society like China's social credit system or the soft classism of inscrutable and gameable admission to elite colleges (whereas before lower class people got in on merit). These are terrible solutions and we had better find better ones before the march of history declares a shitty winner for us. We can find a way to more tightly couple privileges and responsibilities or we can continue reaping the externalities of allowing incentives to drive a stronger wedge between them.