I think the spirit of the quote is that instead of counting on anyone to be a both benevolent and effective ruler, or counting on voters to recognize such things, design the political environment so that that will happen naturally, even when an office is occupied by a corrupt or ineffective person.
This idea is primarily why I’m skeptical of the effectiveness of institutions like the federal reserve (despite not being a subject matter expert). It seems pretty clear that in order to be effective the leadership has to be comprised of people that are not only exceptionally brilliant, but exceptionally benevolent as well.
What do you think that “design the political environment so that that will happen naturally” means concretely?
The policies that Milton advocated got a huge boost because companies put lobbyists who distribute campaign money in the “right places” to switch political incentives.
There are political enviroments in which the actors try to do what is right instead of just maximizing their personal interests. Milton says in the quoted video that the US congress isn’t such an enviroment and that’s no problem that anyone should be attempting to fix by electing different politicians.
An example is in Federalist No. 10. Madison is trying to design a political environment resilient to the corrupt effects of factions:
No man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause; because his interest would certainly bias his judgment, and, not improbably, corrupt his integrity. With equal, nay with greater reason, a body of men are unfit to be both judges and parties at the same time; yet what are many of the most important acts of legislation, but so many judicial determinations, not indeed concerning the rights of single persons, but concerning the rights of large bodies of citizens? and what are the different classes of Legislators, but advocates and parties to the causes which they determine? Is a law proposed concerning private debts? It is a question to which the creditors are parties on one side and the debtors on the other. Justice ought to hold the balance between them. Yet the parties are, and must be, themselves the judges; and the most numerous party, or, in other words, the most powerful faction, must be expected to prevail. Shall domestic manufactures be encouraged, and in what degree, by restrictions on foreign manufactures? are questions which would be differently decided by the landed and the manufacturing classes; and probably by neither, with a sole regard to justice and the public good. The apportionment of taxes on the various descriptions of property is an act which seems to require the most exact impartiality; yet there is, perhaps, no legislative act in which greater opportunity and temptation are given to a predominant party, to trample on the rules of justice. Every shilling, with which they overburden the inferior number, is a shilling saved to their own pockets.
It is in vain to say, that enlightened statesmen will be able to adjust these clashing interests, and render them all subservient to the public good. Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm: Nor, in many cases, can such an adjustment be made at all, without taking into view indirect and remote considerations, which will rarely prevail over the immediate interest which one party may find in disregarding the rights of another, or the good of the whole.
His concrete solutions are to choose representative democracy over direct democracy, and to have large republic rather than a small republic.
A more recent example would be last year’s ban on members of Congress trading stocks based on the inside information they have as lawmakers. I think Milton Friedman’s point is that one should direct efforts toward supporting policies like that, rather than trying to elect politicians who are too ethical to insider-trade.
His concrete solutions are to choose representative democracy over direct democracy, and to have large republic rather than a small republic.
Why? How does this fix things? Without quite knowing what problem this solution is meant to address, the first consequence of this policy (representative democracy + large republic) that comes to my mind by judging it independently is that it looks optimized for the smallest number of rulers and the greatest amount of people limited in their political power by comparison—in other words, it seems to concentrate power. (If there are other implications, they’re not as obvious to me as this one.) How or why does that help overall impartiality?
An example is in Federalist No. 10. Madison is trying to design a political environment resilient to the corrupt effects of factions:
Designing for resillence is not the same thing as designing a system to get politicans to do certain things. If you think as Miltion Friedman that “the right” thing is free market policies, designing the political system in a way that gives political advantages to those people who push free market policies, you are likely reduce resiliency.
A more recent example would be last year’s ban on members of Congress trading stocks based on the inside information they have as lawmakers. I think Milton Friedman’s point is that one should direct efforts toward supporting policies like that, rather than trying to elect politicians who are too ethical to insider-trade.
Given Friedman’s politics I doubt that he had actions such as restricting members ability to trade stocks in mind. That’s not the kind of political agenda that Friedman pushed.
Then I don’t think you understand what that policy does. Lawmakers get their information regardless of how they vote or what policies they persue. That kind of insider trading allows lawmakers to personally enrich themselves instead of making bargains with people who want to hand them money.
What the policy does do, is that it provides a new tool for the people who have information about the trades that a congressman makes, to blackmail the congressman.
You might get some positive effects through the policy, so I’m not clear that it’s a bad law.
rather than trying to elect politicians who are too ethical to insider-trade.
What’s the problem that you are trying to solve in the first place? Insider-trade? Let Eliot Spitzer run the SEC and double SEC funding.
Insider trading doesn’t exist because there a lack of laws against the practice.
I didn’t downvote you, but I’m not continuing the argument because it seems really political in a partisan way. I suspect that’s what’s motivating the downvotes.
The policies that Milton advocated got a huge boost because companies put lobbyists who distribute campaign money in the “right places” to switch political incentives.
You seem to be confusing support for a free market with rent seeking. Milton Friedman supported free markets, in this and your follow up comment you seem to equate this with rent seeking.
A large part of the Federalist Papers is about designing structures and incentives to make government robust against overwhelming ambition and corruption—to make ambition in one branch check ambition in another branch, similarly between state and federal and between state and state.
That said, I think Friedman (I was never on a first name basis with him) is overly dismissive of electing the right people. But again we need to set up structures and incentives differently, so elections are less of an entertaining spectacle and more like a hiring search or job interview. The structures or institutions that might improve the situation don’t have to come from legislation (though some of them could—I’m not against that on principal); e.g. parties weren’t legislated into being, and if we want something better, we should not look exclusively to legislation.
It seems at least conceivable to have some agreement across party lines that our electoral processes, as I said before, look less like a circus to which we passively attend, and more like a hiring search / job interview type process.
I’ve often thought of ironically proposing that we should legislate that job interviews have to be more like elections: i.e. stop limiting candidates’ ability to express themselves. If somebody wants to bring a brass band to an interview, it’s their free speech right to do so. If they want to spread nasty rumours about the other candidates why not?
Not so ironically, maybe our best hope is to persuade people that our current approach with its sound bites, catch phrases, push polls, gerrymandered “safe seats” and so on is a source of dangerous blindness that affects all of us, with all of our different interpretations of “the good” (of the country, etc.); to persuade people to find all of that current process repulsive, and to insist that all that airtime, column inches, etc., be devoted to information about the candidates, analysis of the current crises and challenges and possibilities, and to debates of all sorts: dozens of debates, discussions, and joint press conferences among the candidates.
One problem: “Information” (as in “information” about the candidate, etc.) is a word that gets bandied about too casually. What might possibly be done to increase the sanity with which people evaluate what is and isn’t truly “information”. I think that is the big problem that people concerned with rationality might be able to make some progress in solving.
I’ve often thought of ironically proposing that we should legislate that job interviews have to be more like elections: i.e. stop limiting candidates’ ability to express themselves. If somebody wants to bring a brass band to an interview, it’s their free speech right to do so. If they want to spread nasty rumours about the other candidates why not?
I think that the only rules we have against spreading nasty rumors about other candidates are our laws against defamation; spreading malicious falsehoods about people in order to deprive them of business opportunities in favor of yourself is exactly the sort of thing that those laws prohibit, because then the people who did those sort of things would be the most likely to get the jobs. Job candidates would have to become willing to undercut their rivals in order to stay competitive, and we’d be at risk of risk devolving to a state where having to filter through webs of malicious falsehood in any hiring situation where the candidates are known to each other was the norm rather than the exception.
As for bringing a brass band to a job interview, candidates are entitled to do such things, with the caveat that they wouldn’t get the jobs. It would be an awfully rare position where bringing a brass band to the interview would be positive evidence of the candidate’s ability to perform the job well. Giving candidates too much leeway for self expression runs the risk of turning interviews into contests of showmanship.
and we’d be at risk of risk devolving to a state where having to filter through webs of malicious falsehood in any hiring situation where the candidates are known to each other was the norm rather than the exception.
which sounds to me like the state we are in w.r.t. election to political offices.
My point is nobody hires people for ordinary jobs the way we collectively hire a president. We are extremely passive, and don’t manage the process. There is a field I am very interested in called Social Epistemology (it’s a divided field with one part being excessively postmodern and relativistic; the other side, which interests me, holds that there really are such things as truth and falsehood, and the biggest name in that area is Alvin Goldman). This field is very interested in institutions, such as the law court in its different forms, that have tried to come up with procedures and standards (like selectivity in the sort of evidence you will listen to) that try to improve the chances of coming to the right conclusion. There is quite a lot of emphasis on law courts, but it occurred to me that hiring committees do something similar; they require things like resumes, and have a systematic way of questioning candidates rather than say to candidates “Come and put on a show and we’ll see what we think of you”.
which sounds to me like the state we are in w.r.t. election to political offices.
I don’t understand why you’re arguing that job interviews should be more like elections in that case. If the process leads to bad outcomes for elections, and is likely to lead to bad outcomes for job interviews as well, why use it?
Concretely, Milton Friedman probably didn’t have a workable plan for bringing about such an environment, though he may have thought he did; I’m not familiar enough with his thinking. One next-best option would be to try to convince other people that that’s what part of a solution to bad government would look like, which under a charitable interpretation of his motives, is what he was doing with that statement he made.
I think the spirit of the quote is that instead of counting on anyone to be a both benevolent and effective ruler, or counting on voters to recognize such things, design the political environment so that that will happen naturally, even when an office is occupied by a corrupt or ineffective person.
This idea is primarily why I’m skeptical of the effectiveness of institutions like the federal reserve (despite not being a subject matter expert). It seems pretty clear that in order to be effective the leadership has to be comprised of people that are not only exceptionally brilliant, but exceptionally benevolent as well.
What do you think that “design the political environment so that that will happen naturally” means concretely?
The policies that Milton advocated got a huge boost because companies put lobbyists who distribute campaign money in the “right places” to switch political incentives.
There are political enviroments in which the actors try to do what is right instead of just maximizing their personal interests. Milton says in the quoted video that the US congress isn’t such an enviroment and that’s no problem that anyone should be attempting to fix by electing different politicians.
The only one I’ve heard of is “fiction.” Did you have an example in mind?
An example is in Federalist No. 10. Madison is trying to design a political environment resilient to the corrupt effects of factions:
His concrete solutions are to choose representative democracy over direct democracy, and to have large republic rather than a small republic.
A more recent example would be last year’s ban on members of Congress trading stocks based on the inside information they have as lawmakers. I think Milton Friedman’s point is that one should direct efforts toward supporting policies like that, rather than trying to elect politicians who are too ethical to insider-trade.
Why is this comment at −1 yet 100% positive?
It then goes to 0 and 0% positive when I up-vote it.
Why? How does this fix things? Without quite knowing what problem this solution is meant to address, the first consequence of this policy (representative democracy + large republic) that comes to my mind by judging it independently is that it looks optimized for the smallest number of rulers and the greatest amount of people limited in their political power by comparison—in other words, it seems to concentrate power. (If there are other implications, they’re not as obvious to me as this one.) How or why does that help overall impartiality?
Why is this comment at −1 yet 100% positive?
Designing for resillence is not the same thing as designing a system to get politicans to do certain things. If you think as Miltion Friedman that “the right” thing is free market policies, designing the political system in a way that gives political advantages to those people who push free market policies, you are likely reduce resiliency.
Given Friedman’s politics I doubt that he had actions such as restricting members ability to trade stocks in mind. That’s not the kind of political agenda that Friedman pushed.
Then I don’t think you understand what that policy does. Lawmakers get their information regardless of how they vote or what policies they persue. That kind of insider trading allows lawmakers to personally enrich themselves instead of making bargains with people who want to hand them money.
What the policy does do, is that it provides a new tool for the people who have information about the trades that a congressman makes, to blackmail the congressman.
You might get some positive effects through the policy, so I’m not clear that it’s a bad law.
What’s the problem that you are trying to solve in the first place? Insider-trade? Let Eliot Spitzer run the SEC and double SEC funding. Insider trading doesn’t exist because there a lack of laws against the practice.
I didn’t downvote you, but I’m not continuing the argument because it seems really political in a partisan way. I suspect that’s what’s motivating the downvotes.
You seem to be confusing support for a free market with rent seeking. Milton Friedman supported free markets, in this and your follow up comment you seem to equate this with rent seeking.
A large part of the Federalist Papers is about designing structures and incentives to make government robust against overwhelming ambition and corruption—to make ambition in one branch check ambition in another branch, similarly between state and federal and between state and state.
That said, I think Friedman (I was never on a first name basis with him) is overly dismissive of electing the right people. But again we need to set up structures and incentives differently, so elections are less of an entertaining spectacle and more like a hiring search or job interview. The structures or institutions that might improve the situation don’t have to come from legislation (though some of them could—I’m not against that on principal); e.g. parties weren’t legislated into being, and if we want something better, we should not look exclusively to legislation.
It seems at least conceivable to have some agreement across party lines that our electoral processes, as I said before, look less like a circus to which we passively attend, and more like a hiring search / job interview type process.
I’ve often thought of ironically proposing that we should legislate that job interviews have to be more like elections: i.e. stop limiting candidates’ ability to express themselves. If somebody wants to bring a brass band to an interview, it’s their free speech right to do so. If they want to spread nasty rumours about the other candidates why not?
Not so ironically, maybe our best hope is to persuade people that our current approach with its sound bites, catch phrases, push polls, gerrymandered “safe seats” and so on is a source of dangerous blindness that affects all of us, with all of our different interpretations of “the good” (of the country, etc.); to persuade people to find all of that current process repulsive, and to insist that all that airtime, column inches, etc., be devoted to information about the candidates, analysis of the current crises and challenges and possibilities, and to debates of all sorts: dozens of debates, discussions, and joint press conferences among the candidates.
One problem: “Information” (as in “information” about the candidate, etc.) is a word that gets bandied about too casually. What might possibly be done to increase the sanity with which people evaluate what is and isn’t truly “information”. I think that is the big problem that people concerned with rationality might be able to make some progress in solving.
I think that the only rules we have against spreading nasty rumors about other candidates are our laws against defamation; spreading malicious falsehoods about people in order to deprive them of business opportunities in favor of yourself is exactly the sort of thing that those laws prohibit, because then the people who did those sort of things would be the most likely to get the jobs. Job candidates would have to become willing to undercut their rivals in order to stay competitive, and we’d be at risk of risk devolving to a state where having to filter through webs of malicious falsehood in any hiring situation where the candidates are known to each other was the norm rather than the exception.
As for bringing a brass band to a job interview, candidates are entitled to do such things, with the caveat that they wouldn’t get the jobs. It would be an awfully rare position where bringing a brass band to the interview would be positive evidence of the candidate’s ability to perform the job well. Giving candidates too much leeway for self expression runs the risk of turning interviews into contests of showmanship.
which sounds to me like the state we are in w.r.t. election to political offices.
My point is nobody hires people for ordinary jobs the way we collectively hire a president. We are extremely passive, and don’t manage the process. There is a field I am very interested in called Social Epistemology (it’s a divided field with one part being excessively postmodern and relativistic; the other side, which interests me, holds that there really are such things as truth and falsehood, and the biggest name in that area is Alvin Goldman). This field is very interested in institutions, such as the law court in its different forms, that have tried to come up with procedures and standards (like selectivity in the sort of evidence you will listen to) that try to improve the chances of coming to the right conclusion. There is quite a lot of emphasis on law courts, but it occurred to me that hiring committees do something similar; they require things like resumes, and have a systematic way of questioning candidates rather than say to candidates “Come and put on a show and we’ll see what we think of you”.
I don’t understand why you’re arguing that job interviews should be more like elections in that case. If the process leads to bad outcomes for elections, and is likely to lead to bad outcomes for job interviews as well, why use it?
To quote myself:
It’s irony. I.e., it’s such a bad idea that I’d like to suggest it’s also a bad way to elect presidents.
Ah, see, I thought you meant that ironically, while it’s not a good way to elect presidents, it would be an improvement on how we conduct interviews.
Concretely, Milton Friedman probably didn’t have a workable plan for bringing about such an environment, though he may have thought he did; I’m not familiar enough with his thinking. One next-best option would be to try to convince other people that that’s what part of a solution to bad government would look like, which under a charitable interpretation of his motives, is what he was doing with that statement he made.