Further thinking has tweaked or clarified my opinions about social diversity. It should not be viewed as a fundamental value; it is simply a fact of life in any non-tribal society, and an instrumental value to solve otherwise insuperable problems of social interaction and to promote prosperity and human flourishing. Economics helps see this by providing tools to analyze individual choices and their social consequences.
Consider the current issue of whether sport competitions involving women or girls should welcome biological males who identify as females. The Biden administration is proposing a regulation modifying Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1975. The Department of Education explains (note that “schools” include K-12, colleges, and universities):
Under the proposed regulation, schools would not be permitted to adopt or apply a one-size-fits-all policy that categorically bans transgender students from participating on teams consistent with their gender identity.
Instead, the Department’s approach would allow schools flexibility to develop team eligibility criteria that serve important educational objectives, such as ensuring fairness in competition.
The Wall Street Journal paraphrases the Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona as opining that “every student should be able to participate in athletics, free from discrimination” (“Biden Administration Proposes New Rule for Transgender Athletes,” April 6, 2023) This is mumbo-jumbo. It is not possible that any student be free from discrimination whether he is a transgendered biological male wanting to compete against females, or she is a female who does not want not to compete against biological males.
The “fairness” invoked by the government is really nothing else than what it itself decrees is “equal opportunity.” As emphasized by Anthony de Jasay’s theory of the state, the government “takes sides” among citizens (and individuals). In other words, the federal government decides against whom to discriminate and calls it non-discrimination. Note that imposing supposedly flexible rules is no less discriminatory; it merely opens the door to more arbitrary bullying from the top down.
The (classical) liberal or libertarian approach is very different. Don’t ban or mandate, but let individuals and the organizations responsive to them adopt the formulas they want. Different formulas are likely to develop to match different preferences. Within budget constraints—the unavoidable scarcity of resources given individuals’ diversity and near-infinite desires—some biological females would participate in women-only sport competitions and others would make the opposite choice. It is to prevent this diversity, between states or schools, that the new regulation is proposed.
We should not be misled by the government claiming that its regulation, as amended, opposes “one-size-fits-all policies”: it imposes such a uniform policy from the higher top down. It aims at replacing voluntary diversity by imposed diversity. That the state should treat all individuals equally cannot logically mean that that it must allow any of them to impose his preferences on others.
In another post, I argued that a government can be non-discriminatory only by letting individuals make their own choices; see “Only One Way to Be ‘President of All Syldavians’.”
With decentralized choices, delusions are less likely survive or thrive. It is a reality that men are physically stronger and generally perform better in sports. If the freedom of sport organizations and activities is recognized, it is likely that transgendered biological men would have to complete with men or in their own trans leagues, as most women would prefer competing among themselves. We must respect (peaceful) individual choices. Accepting physical reality or the social results of diverse individual choices is, of course, not bigotry.
Individual liberty implies that anybody may identify to whatever he thinks best describes him as long as it does not involve violence or threat of violence, even under color of law. It also implies that anybody else may agree or not to change his own choices and actions because of somebody’s self-identification. The woman who married the Eiffel Tower in 2007 does not harm anybody else as long as she does not obtain a regulation forbidding others to “marry” the same object. (There is apparently some scientific basis for the recognition of “objectum sexuality“!)
That the proposed federal regulation would only apply “to public K-12 schools, as well as colleges, universities, and other institutions that receive federal funding does” not defangs its discriminatory character, given the pervasive subsidization of education with taxpayers’ money. These decisions should be made as close as possible to the ultimate consumer of education. Individual choices should be preferred to collective choices, which are of course made by some government individuals or some majority and imposed to all. That the American left wants laws discriminating against non-transgendered women while the American right wants laws discriminating against transgendered men shows the common authoritarian streak of the two movements.
In general, diversity is good only to the extent that individuals want it and are separately able to achieve it in a non-discriminatory political system. Outside such voluntary diversity, there most likely exists a minimum of ethics without which a society of equally free individuals becomes impossible. For James Buchanan, this ethics is a market-like ethics of reciprocity; for Friedrich Hayek, it lies in the respect of the abstract and impersonal order of a liberal society (see my forthcoming Econlib review of the third part of Hayek’s The Political Order of a Free People).
READER COMMENTS
Craig
Apr 10 2023 at 1:37pm
German schools are publicly run but mostly don’t offer athletics, instead German youth participate in sports through local/region Sportsverein.
Naturally in the US there’s school choice….oh, right that never really happened notwithstanding numerous Republican victories and many ruby red states that really have no excuse not to have some kind of voucher system, but I digress….
Here’s the thing, as long as schools actually are publicly run the curriculum of the school is going to be a political question. Naturally that curriculum indirectly includes what are commonly called extracurricular activites like school clubs, athletics and the like. Couple that with cooperative federalism wending its way into the minutiae of everyday life and you’re going to pay the taxes and if you don’t like the conditions attached to receiving federal subsidies that’s just too bad.
When you read Federalist 45 you thought Publius wrote: “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. ” Clearly what was meant by that was: “While you might think the powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined, in actuality, those powers are numerous numerous and indefinite.”
Pierre Lemieux
Apr 10 2023 at 2:39pm
Craig: You make good points, but let me focus on the questionable one:
Perhaps, but then you must become an anarchist. (A way of exit: what you mean by “run.”) Classical libertarians believed that the constitution (whether written or not) would prevent many public activities from becoming political. I have often cited the main theories to this effect due to Hayek and Buchanan.
Craig
Apr 10 2023 at 6:36pm
This Bud’s For You!
Pierre Lemieux
Apr 10 2023 at 7:43pm
Craig: I want to share it with you. Aren’t you thirsty?
Andrew_FL
Apr 10 2023 at 4:43pm
Many red states are in fact expanding School Choice now. It is fair to ask why they did not in the past but it is incorrect to say that they are not doing it now.
David Seltzer
Apr 10 2023 at 2:19pm
It seems the deep thinkers in the administration view individualism…freedom to pursue one’s purposes with no third party harm…as anathema. Ironically, they fail to understand each of us is born with equal dignity. In their misguided effort to protect another’s dignity and freedom of choice, they dismiss the dignity of other individuals who might peacefully disagree without resorting to authoritarian tactics. Why de we let them do this???
Pierre Lemieux
Apr 10 2023 at 8:10pm
David: Restraining Leviathan is a complicated enterprise, especially since he makes sure to buy off a majority of subjects.
nobody.really
Apr 10 2023 at 4:29pm
Please clarify: Do you object to each school developing its own eligibility criteria in accordance with its own educational objectives? Do you object to fairness in competition being regarded as an appropriate objective?
If you find fault with what the Wall Street Journal says, stop reading it. If you find fault with what a government official says, please quote the official.
Pierre Lemieux
Apr 10 2023 at 7:52pm
Nobody: Two points. (1) The purpose of the new regulation is to make sure that people who organize school athletics (and state governments) don’t believe they can set the rules they want, but that they must respect “fairness” or “important objectives” as the feds define them. I wish this would have been clearer in my post–although I tried! (2) I don’t know what the politico said exactly since the WSJ did not quote him literally (on this). But the journalist’s paraphrase is certainly consistent with the Fact Sheet I link to.
Jose Pablo
Apr 10 2023 at 9:23pm
“Fairness in competition” is, in this case, “double speak” as it best.
And the whole purpose of the law is “virtue signaling”, pure and simple. This easily follows from a couple of facts:
0.4% of high school athletes are transgender (that’s 4 every 1,000)
12% of transgenders play sports (which means almost 90% of them don’t)
I very much doubt this is the most severe problem transgender people is facing
I very much doubt this is the most severe problem high school sports are facing.
But I can perfectly understand why the Biden administration choose to tackle this problem with all the fanfare they can get … and makes me (even more) sick of politicians.
One can only wonder what the increase in GDP would be if all this parasites will leave politics and engage in productive and honorable endeavors
nobody.really
Apr 10 2023 at 4:37pm
G.K. Chesterton
The issue of gender/sex segregation in athletics strikes me as an especially good illustration of G.K. Chesterton’s argument about removing a fence: Before I would say whether a policy is justified or not, I’d want to have some idea of the function(s) it serves. And this might require a discussion of the function that sports serves in general – for participants, for spectators, for organizers/administrators, for society. In short, this could require unpacking a lot of unstated assumptions. To me, that’s what the Biden policy calls for.
Note that sports it overflowing with segregation. Almost every sport involves segregation by skill: Major League Baseball teams don’t generally compete against AAA teams or college teams. Varsity teams don’t generally compete against Junior Varity teams. Division I teams don’t compete against Division II teams.
Moreover, the sports of boxing and wrestling involve segregation by size. Even at the highest levels, a featherweight fighter is not expected to fight against a heavyweight. But conversely, light jockeys are expected to compete against heavy jockeys—but they are expected to have weights so that the horses are bearing an equivalent load, regardless of the jockey’s weight.
In PGA TOUR, Inc. v. Martin, the US Supreme Court held that requiring golfers to walk the tour unduly discriminated against golfers with degenerative circulatory disorders, violating the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.
Athletes that naturally have a lot of [chemical X] may gain an advantage—but athletes that inject themselves with substances designed to increase their [chemical X] may be disallowed from competition.
As far as I can tell, sport is FILLED with arbitrary distinctions. We expect officials to apply the rules uniformly—but we compose the rules (and change the rules) on an almost entirely arbitrary basis.
Thus even if gender/sex segregation fulfills some social functions, maybe we could devise some other mechanisms (e.g., segregation by skill level or size) to achieve those functions. Or maybe we couldn’t. (For example, maybe schools want to segregate athletes to reduce the prospects of pregnancies arising from the interaction of fertile males and fertile females?) The point is, until we identify the purposes we’re trying to achieve, I can’t imagine how we’d judge. The Biden Administration asks schools to articulate their rationales. Seems like a good start to me.
Pierre Lemieux
Apr 10 2023 at 8:05pm
Nobody: There seems to some fundamental disagreement here, and I am grateful that you bring it to light (if this is indeed your intention). First, I would like to know what you mean by “social functions,” and who determines what they are. Indeed, in your last paragraph, I would like to know who is “we”.
Second, if I read correctly the rest of your argument, it is very far from the ideal of a free society as even moderate classical liberals have understood it. It is not the absence of barriers that needs to be justified, but their presence. Hayek explained it this way (see my review of the first volume of his Law, Legislation, and Liberty):
As I explain, Hayek argues that:
nobody.really
Apr 11 2023 at 1:40am
I confess, I find Hayek puzzling. You accurately quote him from 1973, yet (in your linked text) you (and James Buchanan) observe that Hayek argues that laws have emerged not via a rational process, but via a process of natural selection, and we tamper with them at our peril. You (and Buchanan) argue that laws should be subject to some kind of rational scrutiny–which seems in conflict with Hayek’s views.
For example, Hayek said –
Friedrich A. Hayek, Law, Legislation and Liberty, Vol. 3 (1979), “Epilogue: The Three Sources of Human Values,” at 528-29 (emphasis in original)
F.A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit (1988)
Pierre Lemieux
Apr 11 2023 at 11:37am
Nobody: Yes, Hayek is often puzzling, and puzzlement is the beginning of wisdom. Perhaps my review of Vol. 2 of Hayek’s Law, Legislation, and Liberty can help make sense of his theory in relation to Buchanan’s and, in a way, to reconcile them. Quoting Hayek (p. 210 of the Shearmur edition):
nobody.really
Apr 11 2023 at 1:13pm
Wow–I’d missed that!
At the risk of sounding ungrateful, do you also have a review of Vol. 3? I DEFINITELY don’t want to miss that.
Pierre Lemieux
Apr 11 2023 at 1:18pm
Nobody: Yes, it is forthcoming at Econlib. Perhaps early next month or the month after.
Kevin Corcoran
Apr 11 2023 at 11:56am
Hey nobody.really –
You say:
But the quote you offer doesn’t support your claim at all. Hayek is claiming in the section you quoted that we cannot “reject a particular demand of the prevailing moral code” due to simple “intuition or instinct”, but rather “only a responsible effort to judge it as part of the system of other requirements may make it morally legitimate to infringe a particular rule.” Hayek’s claim is a narrow and measured one – that we can’t judge evolved rules as illegitimate merely because they offend simplistic and vague notions of things like “fairness” that exist as holdovers from primitive, pre-civilized conditions. Those are the kind of “sentiments that were good for the small band” but are worse than useless for understanding or evaluating complex social orders.
Since you’re quoting from the third volume of Law, Legislation, and Liberty (widely considered the weakest of the collection, FWIW), I’ll help myself to the (possibly mistaken) assumption that you’ve therefore read all three volumes of the series. If so, you must also have read where, in chapter four of volume one, Hayek has a section about “Why grown law requires correction by legislation” where he argues, well, exactly what the section header suggests – that there are times and circumstances where laws that has evolved can justly be corrected through changes in legislation. So your description of Hayek’s position as simply being that “laws have emerged not via a rational process, but via a process of natural selection, and we tamper with them at our peril” is, at best, a wild oversimplification, and at worst just a muddled confusion. Hayek is a far more subtle and sophisticated thinker than that.
nobody.really
Apr 12 2023 at 1:00am
You may be right. Most of my exposure to Friedrich Hayek (and Friedrich Nietzsche, and most other people) comes from excerpts in forums such as this, so my understanding is always spotty. I will try to revise my understanding–or, more likely, just become more circumspect in professing an understanding of Hayek.
Curiously, both Friedrichs wrote on the evolution of morality–a topic that interests me, and that I think Hayek addresses at the end of Volume 3. I look forward to Lemieux’s summary, and Corcoran’s thoughts, too.
andy
Apr 15 2023 at 1:41pm
I’d say it’s not that hard to judge. We just create arbitrary categories that make sense to us.
The categories that were created include ‘male/female’. As you would e.g. create dogs/cats. That’s the situation right now.
If somebody would like to change that, that’s surely possible. But the conversation should be honest. E.g. we could change it from ‘male/female’ to ‘sex entered in the ID card’. Now I think that’s a stupid category to make in sport, but other people can have a different opinion.
Then we could have a discussion about changing the categories. We don’t have that discussion. Instead we discuss if trans-women fits the women category. That’s fraud.
steve
Apr 10 2023 at 9:50pm
Not how I understood this at all. My understanding is that it would eliminate blanket rules forbidding all trans people from participating. For example a trans man (born female) would have no observable or reported advantage in any sport I can think of, so banning all trans people would not achieve much other than being mean to this group of trans people. However, in most sports letting a trans woman (born male) participate against born female would give them an advantage and unfair to the other participants. In that case it is OK to ban them. Dressage would be an exception in this group so you wouldn’t address any issue of fairness in that car with a ban.
Steve
Pierre Lemieux
Apr 11 2023 at 8:03am
Steve: My understanding is different; correct me if you think I am wrong. The original (“progressive”) Title IX already meant that all discrimination by sex was verboten if a school wanted to put its hands in the federal treasury (federal intervention #1). To avoid some absurd implications, the feds then decided (in 1974) to allow some exceptions allowing for “discrimination” in sports (intervention #2). Over the years, the feds then decided that “sex” really meant “gender self-identification” (set of interventions #3). To correct some absurd implications, about 20 (“conservative”) state governments decided that the new “gender” exceptions would be verboten (intervention #4). The latest intervention to correct the effects of previous interventions is the new proposed regulation, which would prohibit the blanket transformation of exceptions into mandates, except when the exceptions correspond to what the feds think is “fairness” and “important educational objectives” (intervention #5). My question: Why not laissez faire?
steve
Apr 11 2023 at 5:56pm
Because some people think trans people are icky and want to ban all of them from all sports even when being trans gives them no advantage. Besides, which is more laissez-faire, using the power of government to ban people for an arbitrary trait that doesnt affect performance, or limiting the use of government power to ban only those who are benefitting from a change they made?
Steve
nobody.really
Apr 11 2023 at 2:18am
1: Surely diversity is a fact of life in a tribal society, too? I’d guess tribal societies recognize some people as male and some as female. I’d guess tribal societies recognize some people as better hunters than others. I’d guess tribal societies recognize some people as leaders and other as subordinate. Etc.
2: Diversity seems to be valued in statistical analysis/sampling/regression analysis. Imagine you wanted to find the relationship between education and income, and you sample two groups: Those who drop out of high school after their sophomore year, and those who drop out of high school after their junior year. I expect you’d find SOME correlation—but probably a much weaker correlation than if you had sampled people from a more DIVERSE range of educational backgrounds.
3: Do you truly think that voting behavior is unaffected by diversity? If only nobles are entitled to vote (a la Magna Carta)? Or if only land-owning white men are allowed to vote?
Yes. For example, government (in the form of police, courts, and prisons) tends to discriminate against thieves and in favor of property owners. Thank you, government.
The US Civil War; the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments; the Civil Rights Act of 1964; the Voting Rights Act of 1965; the Americans with Disabilities Act—these were all efforts by a central authority to ban and mandate. You oppose these policies?
(In fairness, I’ve suggested a revision to the ’64 Civil Rights Act.)
Hey, I generally like subsidiarity, too. But how far should it go? Should states be able to adopt policies governing counties or cities? Should school boards be able to impose policies on individual schools? Should principals be able to impose policies on individual professors? Should the chief of police be able to impose policies on individual police officers? Or is everything a free-for-all—regardless of which entity collects and disburses the funds?
Pierre Lemieux
Apr 11 2023 at 11:09am
Nobody: As often, it is difficult to answer your points without writing a book. Just a few points for now:
(1) What distinguishes a tribal society from a liberal society (Hayek’s “Great Society”) is that, in the former, individual preferences and values are rather uniform and all individuals pursue the same collective goals (which means that rules of conduct are less abstract).
(2) Voting behavior is certainly affected by diversity, for it is diversity that generates the Condorcet paradox (cycling). At the limit, everybody “votes” the same way in a tribal society. The limit on the other side is that nobody can agree on anything, including (to take your examples) on murder and theft; it is the “war of all against all.”
(3) The liberal approach is that only actions that make a free society impossible (Hayek) or that all unanimously agree to ban (Buchanan) should be forbidden by law. That’s how far to go in theory.
(4) On what a non-adversarial government (one that does not take sides) looks like, de Jasay’s “capitalist state” shows the ideal. The Manchester School and John Hicks show an actual example: see my post “Is the State Discriminatory by Definition?”
Jose Pablo
Apr 11 2023 at 5:37pm
Failing to see the difference between the meaning of “diversity Manhattan style” and “diversity” among the Amazonian Yanomani renders any discussion useless.
government (in the form of police, courts, and prisons) tends to discriminate against thieves and in favor of property owners
How is treating people that do different things discrimination? I am pretty sure that Russian troops treat their own soldiers very different from Ukrainian soldiers in the battlefield. But calling that “discrimination” is just wasting time in sophisms (too much free time?).
Discrimination would be, for instance, treating black thieves differently from white thieves (which could very well be a real case).
everything a free-for-all—regardless of which entity collects and disburses the funds
This is an interesting one. I disburse the funds: I am ripped off more than half the monetary value of my work, by force, no question asked (pretty sensitive to this this time of the year)
And yes, you are right, I am more than tired of the “free for all” that politicians (at all levels of “subsidiarity”) do with my money.
nobody.really
Apr 12 2023 at 12:22am
I don’t mean to be needlessly pedantic, but I do mean to provoke clarity in thought and expression. I can tell you that *I* don’t understand what other people mean by “diversity” unless they define the terms. I cannot read Lemieux’s mind, and I’m skeptical about anyone else’s claim to be able to read his mind.
Likewise with “discrimination.” As we had previously discussed, Western jurisprudence generally distinguishes between “due discrimination” and “undue discrimination.” But these are just conceptual categories; they don’t explain HOW a person distinguishes between due discrimination and undue discrimination.
The effort to articulate the difference between due discrimination and undue discrimination has a LONG pedigree. Currently courts speak of varying levels of suspect categories and varying levels of judicial review attaching to those categories. Discrimination based on race tends to get “strict scrutiny”; discrimination based on sex tends to get “intermediate scrutiny;” discrimination based on social class tends to get “rational basis scrutiny.” Courts rarely uphold tests subjected to “strict scrutiny,” but conceptually they could do so. (This is a regular classroom exercise in law school: Can you articulate a legitimate grounds for government to discriminate on the basis of race? For example, when seeking people to infiltrate the KKK, could the FBI legitimately specify that they want white candidates for the job?)
Bottom line: These are NOT simple questions. Moreover, when you say that courts that treat thieves differently than property owners does NOT constitution discrimination, but treating black people differently than white people DOES constitution discrimination, you gloss over the fact of CHOICE (that is, the exercise of power). I suspect you and I agree on the merits of disparaging many forms of discrimination based on race, but not discrimination based on (criminal) conduct. Nevertheless, this represents a CHOICE. People have not always regarded discrimination based on race the way we regard it today, and they may have different views about the matter in the future.
I don’t share Jefferson’s view that it is “self-evident” that “all men are created equal….” As far as I know, every society up until 1776 had been premised on the opposite conclusion–which pretty thoroughly debunks the “self-evident” claim. Likewise, I don’t subscribe to King’s the view that the arc of history naturally bends towards justice. Rather, I hold the view that it ARTIFICALLY bends towards justice–that is, is bends only as the result of enormous human effort. There is nothing obvious or natural about the conclusion that discrimination based on race is wrong–as evidenced by the long, long history of people feeling justified to engage in precisely that practice. We have come to regard racial discrimination as wrongful only as the result of a lot of effort–and we maintain this view only through a lot of effort.
In this thread, we now face a question about whether to accord different treatment to people who identified as female since birth and people who began identifying as female at some point after birth. Politicians and judges and other interested parties will exercise the powers at their disposal to influence the outcome of this dispute–even as they strive to conceal these efforts behind a cloak of saying that the decision is “self-evident” and “natural.”
Pull back the cloak. Let government agents exercise the powers granted to them in the light of day, subject to the scrutiny of all.
Mactoul
Apr 12 2023 at 4:39am
The very language–people who identified as female from birth–is deceptive and quite opposite of clarity. All animals are born male or female. They don’t identify as male or female and they are not assigned male or female at birth either.
You can’t make sense of this linguistic innovation and it is simply an exercise in raw power.
nobody.really
Apr 12 2023 at 10:02am
1: I don’t know what this means. I suspect that for any specific test you would articulate for dividing the world between maleness and femaleness, I could find examples that do not clearly land in one category or the other.
2: Moreover, SO WHAT? Or, in legal parlance: Assuming argumendo the truth of your assertion, can you articulate a sufficient nexus between the assertion and a policy discriminating on the basis of that assertion?
Remember the debates about gay marriage? Even if you conclude that “all animals are born male or female,” does it therefore follow that the state should recognize marriage only between one male and one female? When I looked at all the roles that marriage performs in society–especially providing environments for raising kids and providing mutual aid–I found the nexus between those roles and the discriminatory policy to be weak: Gay couples raise kids and benefit from mutual aid; moreover, SOCIETY benefits when kids are raised in stable homes, and when people have mutual aid and are not left to rely on public assistance. Given the weak nexus between the goals of marriage and the discriminatory policy, I concluded that the policy reflected UNDUE discrimination, and should be struck. The courts largely agreed (although, in fairness, the articulated rationale was muddy).
Likewise, imagine we articulated an absolute, unassailable, utterly unambiguous definition to distinguish between “black people” and “not black people,” justifying a conclusion that all humans are born into one category or the other. Would the mere existence of the distinction justify segregating sports teams on the basis of blackness? No. The existence of a distinction does not, by itself, justify discriminating on the basis of that distinction.
To justify discrimination, we need to articulate goals, and then fashion policies to achieve the goals. If the best way to achieve a goal is to discriminate on the basis of a given distinction, then we may conclude that the distinction is justified–that it reflects DUE discrimination. Otherwise, we’d conclude that it reflects UNDUE discrimination.
The Biden Administration asks schools to articulate their “eligibility criteria that serve important educational objectives”–that is, to articulate their goals. This will permit observers to see whether there is a nexus between the articulated goals and the policies–and therefore permit observers to judge whether the policies reflect DUE discrimination or UNDUE discrimination.
Pierre Lemieux
Apr 12 2023 at 11:39am
Nobody: I don’t necessarily disagree with the gist of what you are saying there, but I would like to know what you mean by “SOCIETY benefits when kids are raised in stable homes.” Who is “society”? All individuals? The children? Some children? If not, which group? And who is “we”? I don’t think you can address the issues we are discussing without answering these questions–even if only in a “puzzling” Hayekian way. I would also suggest that you are, perhaps unknowingly, influenced by the Hayekian model of the socialist judge.
nobody.really
Apr 12 2023 at 12:09pm
Fair enough. In this case, “society” refers to anyone who benefits when kids are raised in stable homes–or, rephrased, anyone who might be harmed by children who were NOT raised in stable homes. If you think that lack of stability might result in more crime, for example, then you would say that society includes potential victims of crime. If you think that lack of stability might result in a less productive employee, then you would say that society includes people who benefit from employee productivity. If you think that lack of stability might make someone a less helpful marriage partner, then society would include anyone who might care about the helpfulness of marriage partners. Etc. I use the term “society” to account for the various externalities–positive and negative–that policies generate.
This also puzzles me. Pretty much every judge of my acquaintance derived the bulk of her income from taxes assessed on the public at large rather than based on a negotiation between private parties. Thus, I would characterize all these judges as socialist judges.
Ok, perhaps we might argue that Clarence Thomas qualifies as a good ol’ fashioned, fee-for-service capitalist judge. But I’d like to think that this is the exception, not the rule.
I suspect Hayek was referring to judges who use their judicial powers to pursue objectives that Hayek regards as inappropriate to the role.
Pierre Lemieux
Apr 12 2023 at 2:03pm
Nobody: Let me quote again from my review of Rules and Order:
THIS is a crucial idea that can be discovered in that book (and in The Constitution of Liberty).
Mactoul
Apr 11 2023 at 10:08am
This issue almost perfectly represents my often stated position that the Great Society existence theorem is still lacking.
It doesn’t appear that a society dedicated to mere fairness and procedure can exist. Politics which is search for the collective Good cannot be avoided.
Pierre Lemieux
Apr 11 2023 at 11:12am
Mactoul: That’s the difference between the ideal of individual liberty and the 500,000-year-old acceptance of poverty, violence, and submission.
Mactoul
Apr 12 2023 at 12:42am
I wish if you would take on Russell Kirk critique of libertarianism.
He gives, in my opinion, the most concise exposition of conservativism and may be read as THE answer to Hayek–Why i am not a conservative.
Pierre Lemieux
Apr 12 2023 at 11:41am
Mactoul: Citation?
Craig
Apr 12 2023 at 8:32pm
https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2012/04/why-i-am-not-libertarian.html
I think here.
Mactoul
Apr 12 2023 at 10:05pm
Libertarians: the chirping sectaries.
Easily found on google.
Pierre Lemieux
Apr 14 2023 at 12:02am
Craig: Thanks for Schlueter‘s article. Its main defect is that it is essentially a natural-rights attack on natural-right libertarians, showing the slippery character of the concept.
Pierre Lemieux
Apr 14 2023 at 12:03am
Mactoul: Kirk’s article does not seem to be available online for free, but I just ordered from the library.
Mactoul
Apr 13 2023 at 1:56am
@nobody.really
You state that you don’t know what the statement “animals are either male or female” means.
I should have thought it pretty basic biology.
nobody.really
Apr 13 2023 at 5:04am
I’m always willing to learn. What test do you apply to distinguish between male and female?
Mactoul
Apr 13 2023 at 8:51pm
Same test the doctors apply when they assign sex at birth.
nobody.really
Apr 14 2023 at 10:26am
Well, for such a basic concept, you seem to have difficulty articulating it.
1: To begin, anyone who thinks that “all animals are born male or female” might benefit from googling the word “hermaphrodite.”
2: I don’t know what test doctors apply when they assign sex at birth. But to move the conversation along, I’ll surmise that they look at a baby’s genitals.
Do you have a theory about whether Lemieux is male or female? Or Mother Theresa? Or members of the US Supreme Court? And if so, when did you inspect their genitals?
(Ok, after reading Jon Stewart’s America, you may THINK that you’ve seen the genitals of the Supreme Court justices—but the book merely superimposed images of the heads of the justices on the naked bodies of other people. I know; I was disappointed, too.)
3: Henderson and I enjoy watching Call the Midwife. If you had watched that show, you might have seen the episode dealing with intersex people. Intersex people are individuals born with any of several sex characteristics including chromosome patterns, gonads, or genitals that, according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, “do not fit typical binary notions of male or female bodies.”
For example, some people are identified and raised as girls, yet grow penises when they hit puberty. In Salinas, more than 1% of “girls” have this quality.
4: I don’t know Mactoul, so perhaps this person really does inspect people’s genitals before making judgments about gender. But I surmise that many other people make judgments about gender based on learned social cues associated with learned social roles. Because societies differ, those roles and cues will differ by society. For example, people in Samoa and American Samoa recognize four genders. I don’t know a lot about this, but I suspect they do not expect people in each role to also play a role in reproduction.
Bottom line: The world has more complexity than the human mind can manage–so we necessarily develop simpler models of the world to permit us to navigate it. A view that all animals divide neatly into the categories “female” and “male” probably works for most circumstances. Still, we should not mistake our models for the reality that the model is designed to emulate. As Alfred Korzybski cautioned us, the map is not the territory.
Mactoul
Apr 14 2023 at 9:10pm
Humans are not hermaphrodite. And mammals and birds are not either.
The example of people born with defective organs doesn’t mean humans are not binary.
Pierre Lemieux
Apr 15 2023 at 12:28am
Nobody: Sex is binary, with some biological accidents and, of course, individuals who make eccentric choices. See https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-biologist-explains-why-sex-is-binary-gender-male-female-intersex-medical-supreme-court-ketanji-brown-jackson-lia-thomas-3d22237e?mod=hp_opin_pos_2#cxrecs_s. As you noted yourself, less than 1% are (generally subsidized) transgenders, but this does not change the biological picture.
nobody.really
Apr 15 2023 at 1:44pm
Once again the debates over same-sex marriage come to mind. “People are heterosexual, with some biological accidents and, of course, individuals who make eccentric choices.”
I fear I failed to make myself clear. I noted an environment in which more than 1% of the “female” population would eventually grow penises. I would categorize them as intersex, not transgender.
Did you read this article? The author frankly acknowledges that some people present borderline cases:
Yup—and for those OTHER people, those NOT in the majority….?
Likewise, as our society reduced the stigma and oppression for homosexuals, more people were willing to publicly acknowledge their homosexuality. Does this dynamic justify discriminating against homosexuals?
True, the author says this:
Here the author describes reproduction, not individuals. Sexual reproduction requires both sperm (small gametes) and ova (large ones). But this statement says nothing about whether a given individual has one, or the other, or both, or neither, or whether we are describing mutable or immutable qualities. And these statements remain a VERY long way from describing the relevance (nexus) of these status to whether a given individual can participate on the women’s riflery team.
True, the author defines “males” as “hav[ing] the function of producing sperm [and] females, ova….” What does that tell us about individuals? I have no evidence that Mother Theresa ever had ova, and I have serious doubts that she had any when she received her Nobel Prize at the age of 69. If you regard Nobel Laureate Mother Theresa as female, I doubt that ova have anything to do with it. In short, outside the context of sexual reproduction, I don’t understand what relevance these definitions have to anything. I can understand, however, why people might want to misappropriate these definitions for political purposes.
The author concludes as follows:
I agree that common sense helps a lot with understanding the biology of sexual reproduction—but, as the author acknowledges, even that understanding sometimes requires more than common sense. More significantly, we still must grapple with how to relate issues regarding sexual reproduction to the question of who may participate on the women’s rifle team.
But before concluding, the author makes his political preference clear:
Now, I don’t know why we should give any special weight to the political opinions of an evolutionary biologist—at least, any more than we’d give weight to the political opinions of Paul Krugman.
But the author does at least take a step that no one on this blog has yet taken: Identifying goals. He talks about the goal of promoting fairness and safety. GREAT! Now we could talk about what constitutes fairness (Boxers/wrestlers discriminate on the basis of size; maybe other sports should do so?) and safety (MANY people experienced bullying related to school sports; maybe we need more general policies to police this?). With goals, we could at last start the process of identifying policies to best promote the goals.
But as a first step, we need to actuate goals. The Biden Administration asks schools to do precisely that. Good for them.
Finally, let me say that I think of this place as a libertarian blog. I expect people here would embrace the idea that the majority should have to justify policies that impose burdens on minorities. I hope, with the benefit of reflection, more people will.
Pierre Lemieux
Apr 15 2023 at 12:27pm
Nobody and Mactoul: There is no basis in a free society for either enforcing or banning ascetism, of course. Yet, most people and most ordinary people and most poor people prefer to live comfortably, as 15th-century poet François Villon wrote:
But I just came across an interesting historical fact (if indeed it is a fact):
(Talk about a sexless ivory tower, if “ivory” is the right word! Now returning to my monastery.)
naruccc@yahoo.com
Apr 15 2023 at 3:08pm
Ha! That’s timely.
The Ballad of Mulan, dating from 386–535 CE, tells the story of a military hero who, after a long and distinguished career, declines the emperor’s invitation to accept a position in government, and instead returns home and adopts the social role of a woman. I know of no evidence indicating that these events really occurred.
In contrast, in the early 1700, fellow pirates Anne Bonny and Mary Read discovered that each person was passing as a man—and they maintained their respective identities throughout their careers (which ended in capture and death).
Given social dynamics, I expect many women have sought to pass for men over the years—and many men have sought to pass for women in times of expedience. Like many superhero comics, Barry Deutch’s Superbutch involves hidden identities. Set in 1940, the story presents the narrator as a young affluent black woman who passes as white at work (as a newspaper reporter, naturally), passes as male and poor when at the club, and passes as straight when with her parents—just as real human beings did in the 1940s. When George Joseph Herriman comes to persuade the paper to run his real-life Krazy Kat comic strip, Herriman and the narrator instantly recognize each other as passing for white—but, of course, neither of them discloses this fact about the other. And, yeah, the plot also involves a few people with super-human powers, and everyone speculating about their public identities. But that’s almost incidental.
We like to think that we have innate, “natural” identities—but we construct our identities. Most of us construct them sufficiently close to the scripts written for us by social context that we don’t notice how we have constructed our identities—or if we do, we live with shame and a feeling of imposter syndrome. Breaking Bad told the story of a nebbish schoolteacher forced by circumstance to become a fearsome drug lord. Which identity was the TRUE identity? Or does it make sense to speak of true identities? People disagree:
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