My point is really simple actually which is why this extended exchange is so confusing. The question was basically: what are things liberals and libertarians can agree on. I just answered empirically. Look up the opinions of prominent American liberal writers, bloggers, think tanks and wonks on the mortgage interest tax deduction. Look up the opinions of their libertarian counterparts. Look at what economists say about it. There is a ton of agreement!
Basically you discussed law with people who aren’t trained to think politically about law but technically about it. Those people might be thoughtful about the technicality but that doesn’t mean that they are thoughtful about the politics behind the law.
Your model of DC lawyers is just broken. I don’t know what to tell you. They spend probably an order of magnitude more time thinking about the politics of law than they do just learning doctrine.
No, my model of political actors is partly based on people actual political power in Berlin, which is the city I inhabit.
Politicians seem like obviously the wrong place to look for unmotivated, reasoned discourse about policy. The mortgage interest tax deduction, for instance, is very popular because people like getting free money. In the States, people with houses vote at higher rates than renters, tend to make up the narrow slice of undecided voters that determine elections. Moreover, because of framing effects renters don’t see it as the tax on renting that it actually is. So American politicians aren’t especially motivated to get rid of it even though plenty of them have heard from economists and technocrats that it is bad policy.
I’m unfortunately, not very knowledgeable about German politics (and apologies for the cultural hegemony of American politics) but I suspect German politicians are similarly more concerned with getting elected than promoting good policy (when the two conflict).
Policy debates should not appear one sided. At the moment at which it seems to you that as issue is completely on sided it’s likely that you don’t understand the actual issues that are at stake.
One place where were are very likely to find low-hanging fruit of one-sided policy proposals is with the very policies it would be hardest to change. This goes for corporate subsidies, popular tax deductions, drug legalization, reform of the prison system etc.
Policy debates should not appear one-sided because if they actually were one sided they would probably have been implemented! It would be the heroic cause of a problem-solving politician. And so the mantra against one-sidedness makes sense for any policy debate in a legislature or an election and most of the policy debates the pit ends of the political spectrum against each other. But there are cases where a policy is not implemented or championed—not because it has much in the way of two sides, but because there is some other barrier preventing it from being popularized and implemented. I mentioned corporate subsidies in my initial post. They don’t poll well. Both sides claim to oppose them. And they’re bad policy. They persist because the coalition that benefits from them cares a lot more about them than the coalition that opposes them. So there are votes and financial support for maintaining or increasing them but opposing them won’t yield any comparative political benefit.
I suspect there are a number of other one-sided policies that still go unimplemented due, not just to the structure and arrangement of interests but to cognitive biases in the way voters and politicians think about policy. Risk aversion, scope insensitivity, attention span, cognitive sophistication and in particular framing effects are going to make some good policies broadly unpopular with the median voter and cause politicians to shy away. This is the obvious place to look for the low-hanging fruit of a rationalist politics.
Which isn’t to say that whole last paragraph isn’t a minefield of possible bias blind spots and paternalism.
The question was basically: what are things liberals and libertarians can agree on.
No, it wasn’t. The question is about issues where liberals and libertarians can together engage in effective political action.
I’m unfortunately, not very knowledgeable about German politics (and apologies for the cultural hegemony of American politics) but I suspect German politicians are similarly more concerned with getting elected than promoting good policy (when the two conflict).
In general in US politics it’s more important for politicians to impress corporate donors while in German politics it’s important for politicians to impress fellow members of the same political party. Party members that go to regular party meetings. It’s not like in the US where being a party member is about registering and then voting in primary elections.
Politicians seem like obviously the wrong place to look for unmotivated, reasoned discourse about policy.
Politics is inherently about the motivations of people. If you want to shield yourself from motivations then my charge of you and your DC Lawyer friends being educated about technical details of policy but not political ones is entirely accurate.
Of course you can start your blog and write a hundred blog posts about how the mortage tax deduction is crap but that won’t have any meaningful political impact if you don’t start taking people motivations into account and participate in motivated political discourse.
If you want to start to model political actors, it’s important to model people with motivations.
The idea that you can effectively model political actors without doing so, is strange to myself.
That said politicians do have some personal political views that deviate from their party line and which they don’t hold because holding them is politically advantageous. In informal setting you can talk about them and why those views aren’t party line.
Take the war on drugs. I know the background of the politics of how we in the city of Berlin doubled the amount of marijuana that one can carry around without being charged with a crime.
One place where were are very likely to find low-hanging fruit of one-sided policy proposals is with the very policies it would be hardest to change.
Being rational is about winning, so stop thinking of the policies that are hardest to change as low-hanging fruits.
No, it wasn’t. The question is about issues where liberals and libertarians can together engage in effective political action.
No! That was never the question.
From the post:
Instead, I believe there are projects which could appeal to rationalists across a wide range of the political spectrum. A couple I can think of are opposing the war on drugs and improving judicial systems. Any other suggestions?
I was giving more suggestions of places where a lot of LWer might find agreement. And since the major political split seems to be left vs libertarian (with a vocal minority of rightists) the natural way to start was to look at what issues liberals and libertarians end up agreeing on when they study policy issues! This explains why this entire exchange has been so odd: like you were making demands of me when all I was doing was answering a question.
Politics is inherently about the motivations of people. If you want to shield yourself from motivations
Good lord… yes, I know that. But we’re trying to find out what people in the Less Wrong community could cooperate on, not solve politics.
I’m not trying to model any political actor. I’m trying to model LW people as political actors. That’s the point of the exercise.
Being rational is about winning, so stop thinking of the policies that are hardest to change as low-hanging fruits.
Low-hanging fruit as possibilities for agreement in this community. Not low-hanging as possibilities for actually changing something. Nevertheless, “hardest to change” policies might be the policies one has most confidence in being correct and that can conceivably outweigh easier to change but more more ambiguous policies. Hard to change also often means that the issue presently has little political interest such that the marginal difference of a small number of people doing something is higher. Immigration policy (say) might be much easier to change but joining in that shouting match is not likely to make a significant difference.
The question was basically: what are things liberals and libertarians can agree on.
Not exactly, though I probably gave that impression because that’s the two sorts of people I get along best with. A conservative/libertarian coalition could be worthwhile, and I can dream that there might be projects that would pull in a really wide range of rationalists.
One thing that I should have brought up is that my point of view is very American. There may well be collaborations and projects which are more oriented towards other parts of the world.
My point is really simple actually which is why this extended exchange is so confusing. The question was basically: what are things liberals and libertarians can agree on. I just answered empirically. Look up the opinions of prominent American liberal writers, bloggers, think tanks and wonks on the mortgage interest tax deduction. Look up the opinions of their libertarian counterparts. Look at what economists say about it. There is a ton of agreement!
Your model of DC lawyers is just broken. I don’t know what to tell you. They spend probably an order of magnitude more time thinking about the politics of law than they do just learning doctrine.
Politicians seem like obviously the wrong place to look for unmotivated, reasoned discourse about policy. The mortgage interest tax deduction, for instance, is very popular because people like getting free money. In the States, people with houses vote at higher rates than renters, tend to make up the narrow slice of undecided voters that determine elections. Moreover, because of framing effects renters don’t see it as the tax on renting that it actually is. So American politicians aren’t especially motivated to get rid of it even though plenty of them have heard from economists and technocrats that it is bad policy.
I’m unfortunately, not very knowledgeable about German politics (and apologies for the cultural hegemony of American politics) but I suspect German politicians are similarly more concerned with getting elected than promoting good policy (when the two conflict).
One place where were are very likely to find low-hanging fruit of one-sided policy proposals is with the very policies it would be hardest to change. This goes for corporate subsidies, popular tax deductions, drug legalization, reform of the prison system etc.
Policy debates should not appear one-sided because if they actually were one sided they would probably have been implemented! It would be the heroic cause of a problem-solving politician. And so the mantra against one-sidedness makes sense for any policy debate in a legislature or an election and most of the policy debates the pit ends of the political spectrum against each other. But there are cases where a policy is not implemented or championed—not because it has much in the way of two sides, but because there is some other barrier preventing it from being popularized and implemented. I mentioned corporate subsidies in my initial post. They don’t poll well. Both sides claim to oppose them. And they’re bad policy. They persist because the coalition that benefits from them cares a lot more about them than the coalition that opposes them. So there are votes and financial support for maintaining or increasing them but opposing them won’t yield any comparative political benefit.
I suspect there are a number of other one-sided policies that still go unimplemented due, not just to the structure and arrangement of interests but to cognitive biases in the way voters and politicians think about policy. Risk aversion, scope insensitivity, attention span, cognitive sophistication and in particular framing effects are going to make some good policies broadly unpopular with the median voter and cause politicians to shy away. This is the obvious place to look for the low-hanging fruit of a rationalist politics.
Which isn’t to say that whole last paragraph isn’t a minefield of possible bias blind spots and paternalism.
No, it wasn’t. The question is about issues where liberals and libertarians can together engage in effective political action.
In general in US politics it’s more important for politicians to impress corporate donors while in German politics it’s important for politicians to impress fellow members of the same political party. Party members that go to regular party meetings. It’s not like in the US where being a party member is about registering and then voting in primary elections.
Politics is inherently about the motivations of people. If you want to shield yourself from motivations then my charge of you and your DC Lawyer friends being educated about technical details of policy but not political ones is entirely accurate.
Of course you can start your blog and write a hundred blog posts about how the mortage tax deduction is crap but that won’t have any meaningful political impact if you don’t start taking people motivations into account and participate in motivated political discourse.
If you want to start to model political actors, it’s important to model people with motivations. The idea that you can effectively model political actors without doing so, is strange to myself.
That said politicians do have some personal political views that deviate from their party line and which they don’t hold because holding them is politically advantageous. In informal setting you can talk about them and why those views aren’t party line.
Take the war on drugs. I know the background of the politics of how we in the city of Berlin doubled the amount of marijuana that one can carry around without being charged with a crime.
Being rational is about winning, so stop thinking of the policies that are hardest to change as low-hanging fruits.
No! That was never the question.
From the post:
I was giving more suggestions of places where a lot of LWer might find agreement. And since the major political split seems to be left vs libertarian (with a vocal minority of rightists) the natural way to start was to look at what issues liberals and libertarians end up agreeing on when they study policy issues! This explains why this entire exchange has been so odd: like you were making demands of me when all I was doing was answering a question.
Good lord… yes, I know that. But we’re trying to find out what people in the Less Wrong community could cooperate on, not solve politics.
I’m not trying to model any political actor. I’m trying to model LW people as political actors. That’s the point of the exercise.
Low-hanging fruit as possibilities for agreement in this community. Not low-hanging as possibilities for actually changing something. Nevertheless, “hardest to change” policies might be the policies one has most confidence in being correct and that can conceivably outweigh easier to change but more more ambiguous policies. Hard to change also often means that the issue presently has little political interest such that the marginal difference of a small number of people doing something is higher. Immigration policy (say) might be much easier to change but joining in that shouting match is not likely to make a significant difference.
Not exactly, though I probably gave that impression because that’s the two sorts of people I get along best with. A conservative/libertarian coalition could be worthwhile, and I can dream that there might be projects that would pull in a really wide range of rationalists.
One thing that I should have brought up is that my point of view is very American. There may well be collaborations and projects which are more oriented towards other parts of the world.
Right, I understood that. The liberal-libertarian thing was more the version of the question I answered.