Scott Pruitt, A Good Protection Racket, Science, and Playing By the Rules

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt artistically (and aptly) rendered

One way of looking at government is to see it as a protection racket. Of course, this seems a bit cynical, and I say it with tongue-in-cheek. But, on the other hand, there's some truth in it.

The primary task of governments since we humans first developed governments (which, I suspect, coincides with civilization), has been to protect inhabitants from threats. In the beginning, the most immediate and easily recognized threats came from invaders. Also, governments began to deal with threats from within, such as criminal acts. As civilization progressed and became more complex, so did the threats. For instance, with cities also came epidemic diseases and the need to supply water and waste disposal for masses of people. In response to threats from disease, governments in the 19th century began to provide safe, potable water and sanitary sewers, which addressed a previously unrecognized threat from unseen germs (via Pasteur and Koch's work in the germ theory of disease). And so it goes. The role of government has expanded as people have comes to appreciate sources of threats to our well-being, and as we have developed ways of addressing these threats. (There are other reasons for the growth of government as well, of course.)

So why the "protection racket"? While some threats are open, obvious, and most efficiently addressed by individual action (e.g., look before you cross a busy street), other threats are either less open and obvious and (or) require collective action to mount an effective response.  You may know that Genghis Khan is coming your way, but acting alone--no matter how acute the perception of the risk to your person and how strong your sword arm--is ineffective. And, some threats, like germs, are invisible. And in the 20th and 21st centuries, we now know that contaminants in the air, water, soil, and food supply threaten us, often without our directly perceiving the threat as it presents itself to us. These threats are perhaps even more insidious than more overt threats, like that of violence, because they are less apparent--they are less visible and slower acting, but lethal nevertheless.

So yes, I'm in favor of this "protection racket." I want the government to protect me from covert threats or those that require collective action. I want protection for me, my family, my friends, my fellow human beings, and the world upon which we depend.

In the U.S. and other liberal democracies, we are protected from the threats of contaminations of our air, water, food, and other necessities by laws and regulations. Laws are enacted mostly by our elected representatives (excepting referendums in some jurisdictions). In theory, elected representatives should be acting in accord with the will of the "people," but for a myriad of reasons, some practical and some nefarious, the actions of any legislative body more often reflect the will of special interests rather than the will and best interests of the general public. Also, as a practical matter, a legislative body, such as Congress, can't act effectively to address all of the details needed to protect the public. Some actions require features that are beyond the reach of Congress (or any legislative body). Therefore, Congress and legislatures delegate authority to regulatory agencies.

Regulatory agencies (such as the EPA, discussed in the article below), are governed by the Administrative Procedure Act, adopted by Congress in 1946, to allow Congress to delegate rule-making authority to agencies based on Congressional mandates. Most states have similar laws. The APA creates a system for rule-making and rule-enforcement that his a hybrid of judicial and legislative procedures. Due process, open hearings, notice, and so on are the hallmarks of the APA and its state off-spring. Indeed, given the obvious and egregious pitfalls of the political system, the administrative rule-making and rule-enforcing systems come across as refreshingly rational.

Thus, for instance, when it comes to keeping us safe from impurities in our air, water, and soil (food safety is under the FDA), the EPA is given a mandate by law along with authority to work out the details. In doing so, the agency must follow strict procedures. In fact, once Congres has approved a law that says (in effect), "Keep our air, water, and soil safe for all Americans," it really should become a matter of exploring the limits. What do I mean by "exploring the limits"?

To explore the limits means to move beyond the obvious. For instance, no one (sane) wants to breathe dense smoke day all day (set aside addicted smokers for a moment). No one wants to experience a stream that's treated as an open sewer running along their backyard, and so on. The tougher questions, the limits questions, are where reasonable minds may differ based on value judgments and imperfect knowledge:

1. The nature and seriousness of some threats are not apparent. Deciding "how much" of any contaminant is "too much" is often difficult to determine (causation is not easily identified and isolated). And if we spend money reducing "x," we'll have less money to reduce "y." 

2. Even if we agree on a threat, the best way to minimize the threat may not be easily identified. Should we adopt strict prohibitions? Tax polluters? Require escrow funds? This issue dovetails with the issue of "who pays?" The polluter? The consumer? The taxpayer? The current generation or future generations?

Just these two broad criteria of disagreement allow us to realize how we may disagree. But on the other hand, if we act with rational and scientific prudence and without unwarranted preference in favor of any limited group, we should be able to confine our disagreements within an arena that would allow a fully informed, neutral decision-maker to arrive at a reasoned decision. To enable this, we need access to uninhibited scientific evidence, and we need to allow debate about the underlying scientific assumptions and processes. We would need to have information from all perspectives (stakeholders) rationally presented and without binding preconceptions by a decision-maker. All evidence and arguments should be subject to cross-examination and debate. We must follow the path of science. We must--in some reasonable measure--learn to doubt our doubt, lest we act like contemporaries who mocked Copernicus and Galileo, Newton, Darwin, Pasteur, Einstein--the list could go on almost endlessly. Of course, at some point, we must reach a conclusion sufficient to act (or to justify inaction.  (But note this: absolute certainty is a chimera and quite often a decoy to assure inaction). Openness, large-mindedness, and commitment to a process of testing and renewal are imperative.

I offer all of the above reflection in response the article below, where I find that Mr. Pruitt seems to be flaunting most of the propositions that I argue in favor of. I disapprove of this whole course of conduct. (I'm also sad to note that Mr.Pruitt is a lawyer, for whom the propositions and values stated above should be apparent.)

For a more in-depth consideration of what Mr. Pruitt is up to, read this profile from The New Yorker. 

The E.P.A. Says It Wants Research Transparency. Scientists See an Attack on Science.

A proposed policy would bar the E.P.A. from considering research that doesn't release its raw data for review, blocking some significant work.

NYTIMES.COM

Tim Snyder on Ivan Ilyin: Some Notes

This article (below) by Timothy Snyder captured and rewarded my interest in several ways.

1. It's by Timothy Snyder, a preeminent historian of 19th and 20th century Eastern Europe and Russia and an outspoken voice warning of the dangers facing contemporary America and seeking to defend American values (e.g., democracy, the rule of law, equality, free speech, etc.). Snyder has a new book forthcoming in April, THE ROAD TO UNFREEDOM: RUSSIA, EUROPE, & AMERICA, which I'm looking forward to.

2. This article examines an otherwise obscure (at least to me) early 20th-century Russian thinker whose thought has been resurrected by Putin in defense of Putin's regime. Putin's promotion of this otherwise forgotten figure raises an interesting question: why? Putin, whom, like the current American president, seems to have little interest in ideas or a deeply held sense of any guiding ideology other than grasping and maintaining power. So what motivated him to identify this obscure fascist writer and to bring back into the public eye? To what extent (if any) is Putin or any within his inner circle guided by this thinker (or any thinker)?

What makes humans so fascinating (and vexing) is that we are motivated by such a wide array of factors, from the bodily to the unconscious to the vaguely expressed ideas of groups (cultures, religions, classes, families) to carefully articulated public ideas. It seems that if even the most basely motivated of men [sic] (those focused on wealth and power) want a patina of legitimation upon their actions, even if only a rationalization (after-thought). Some, of course, are guided by beliefs, such as those found in religion (traditional and unorthodox, not to mention esoteric and occult) and political ideologies that are little different from religion in mythic structures (Marxism), or ideas that are modern (Enlightenment liberalism) and that seek to avoid religious or metaphysical foundations. We can take someone like Putin and run up and down Maslow's hierarchy of needs to identify motivating deficiencies and desires. Or we can talk about interests, emotions, and beliefs (how we model the world). Whatever rubric we use, our maps have a hard time capturing human complexity and identifying the primary motivating factors guiding any particular actor.

3. How did a person like Ilyin, grounded in Russian Orthodoxy, Kant, Hegel, and Husserl become a raging fascist bent on violence and a unique national (i.e., Russian) calling? The inputs (listed) don't predict the outputs. (The same problem applies famously to Martin Heidegger and his romance with Nazism.) But while I'm new to Ilyin, there were many others in 20th century Europe who preached the fascist path as well as that of totalitarian Marxism (Soviet ideology). How do we explain this development of this path of thought? (Julius Evola is another example of a thinker who went helter-skelter down the road of fascism.) The messianic and utopian train of Marxist thought with its attendant lack of a political theory is easier to grasp because collective action and a reduction of class conflict were widely identified as positive goods, unlike the less attractive visions of violence and domination promoted by fascists and National Socialists.

4. For those interested in the ideas that swirl around current authoritarian regimes (and wannabes), keep an eye our of Gary Lachman's "Dark Star Rising: Magick and Power in the Age of Trump," which is scheduled for release on 29 May, and which I anticipate will provide an account of the more subterranean influences (and justifications) that authoritarians and radicals draw upon in addition the more obvious sources, such as bare-knuckle capitalism, kleptocracy, white supremacy, anti-immigrant sentiments, etc.

A closing quote from Snyder:

"Ilyin meant to be the prophet of our age, the post-Soviet age, and perhaps he is. His disbelief in this world allows politics to take place in a fictional one. He made of lawlessness a virtue so pure as to be invisible, and so absolute as to demand the destruction of the West. He shows us how fragile masculinity generates enemies, how perverted Christianity rejects Jesus, how economic inequality imitates innocence, and how fascist ideas flow into the postmodern. This is no longer just Russian philosophy. It is now American life."

Ivan Ilyin, Putin’s Philosopher of Russian Fascism

Writing for White Russian émigrés in the 1920s and 1930s, Ivan Ilyin provided a metaphysical and moral justification for political totalitarianism, which he expressed in practical outlines for a fascist state. But his ideas have now been revived and…

NYBOOKS.COM

Economyths by David Orrell

When I first took a course in Economics in college as a sophomore, 6E:1 “Introduction to Microeconomics,” I was quite taken with the subject. Unlike my major subjects, history and political science, it was so neat, so tidy. You could plot supply and demand curves and arrive at a price. Of course, there were monopolies and externalities and the like, but those were flies in the ointment of economic rationality. Of course, macro got messier, and by the time I took my third course, Public Finance, I lost my infatuation with the subject. All of what at first seemed so neat and clean now appeared rather messy, not at all tidy. (And I didn’t get as good a grade). As it turns out, the neat and tidy represented a degree of unreality while the messy and frustrating was much closer to reality.

I’ve known and thought for some time that economics, once hailed as the king of the social sciences, was an emperor with no clothes. Okay, that’s unfair, but I will say that it is arrayed in tattered rags rather than regal robes. Over the years, my innate, naïve disenchantment with economics has been articulated by persons more qualified than me to articulate and identify the problems. The “Nobel” prize for economics has implicitly recognized flaws in the discipline by presenting its awards of late to a political scientist (Elinor Ostrom), a psychologist (Daniel Kahneman), and to two behavioral economists, Robert Schiller and Richard Thaler, among other less mainstream, math-oriented recipients.

Thus, with some background in the flaws of economics, and appreciating its importance, I read David Orrell’s Economyths: How the Science of Complex Systems is Transforming Economic Thought (2010). Like many of the most trenchant critics of the economics discipline, Orrell didn't train as an economist. He is a Ph.D. mathematician. Orrell argues that economics is (still) primarily built on an outdated conception based on 19th-century physics and its equilibrium-based mathematics.  Economics became the royalty of the social sciences because of its mathematical models, which often worked well—but not very well if you’re in a pinch. And in fact, we’re almost always in a pinch.

Reviewing the field from a variety of perspectives (equity, happiness, gender, stability, etc.), Orrell finds that the prevailing models of economics don’t mesh well with economic realities. Of course, writing in 2010, he needn’t direct his reader any further back than the crash of 2008 to find an enormous and consequential gap between the prevailing theories of economics and the reality that we all faced. Put simply; economic models depend upon rationality and equilibrium (and therefore) a stability that does not—cannot—exist. Human societies, human economies, especially those in the contemporary world, are dynamic and fluctuating and varied in ways that no simple math of equilibrium or postulates of (presumed) human rationality can capture. Of course, everything is fine on a sunny day, but the theories failed when the storms hit. We now have models for complex systems that can deal more realistically with all of the inherent turbulence of a vast economic system, although not at all perfectly when it comes to prediction. (We need to adjust our understanding and expectations.) We need to deploy these models.

Orrell writes quite well. And while quite sophisticated in his mathematical ability, even a math simpleton like me could follow him. He doesn’t overwhelm us with complexity and math. He writes in a manner that any interested layperson can follow. Orrell’s project follows a path laid down by Eric Beinhocker in The Origin of Wealth (2005) (which Orrell cites and that I’m now going to complete). And Orrell's perspective is also well-represented by writings found at the Evonomics: The Next Evolution of Economics Blog, directed by David Sloan Wilson, a biologist turned economics student. These fellows, among many others, from outside of the formal economics community, are pointing the way to a more sophisticated understanding of economics, one that recognizes the contexts of ecology, sociology, and politics in which the economy is embedded.

By the way, I came to know of Orrell through an essay that he published in Aeon entitled “Economics is Quantum,” which I found quite instructive. He has a book along the same lines coming out early this fall. The article is an excellent place to start if you just want to dip your toe into his project.