Competition in political systems

Great piece by Natalie Solent about the benefits of competing political systems and how universalising institutions such as the EU, UN and WTO inexorably lead to atrophy.

Communism versus liberal democracy was the biggest variable in the laboratory when I was growing up, but it's far from the only one that has been and is being tested. The laboratory procedure is shot to hell and the results are unclear, but they keep coming in. They say that an aerial photograph of two neighbouring states in the US will sometimes show the land changing colour at the state border as clearly as on a map; the difference being no manifestation of nature but the result of differing agricultural policies.

What I fear is that a time will come when there will be no significant examples of difference left in the world. That possibility is still far off but for the first time in history the technology is in place for it to happen. Think about that. We are always being told that this or that situation is without precedent when what the tellers mean is that they dislike the precedents, but this time there really is no precedent. We do not know how human beings do a single world society.

It strikes me that the key philosophical flaw behind transnational remedies is essentialism: the notion that there exists some perfect, optimum system towards which, all imperfect real-world remedies must strive. I have a pretty good idea of an optimum system: minimum government, low taxes, but these are just general principles and ideally work best by competing with alternative systems - even within the same country: this is the best argument for devolution and local government - I don't propose a one-size-fits-all system because I am not an essentialist and I don't such a "size" exists.

Incidentally: it also occurs to me that some of the posters and commenters at Gene Expression betray a similar essentialist flaw, not only in describing one's genetic endowment in essentialist terms but in assuming such a thing exists as a universal "optimum environment" under which every person's genetic potential (good and bad) is rendered more starkly.

Comments

[Brian]

"how universalising institutions such as the EU, UN and WTO inexorably lead to atrophy."

I understand your point but I'm not sure I agree. Those three organizations are not the only models for transnational governmental organizations. For example, the EU is one model for a continental organization. But the former OAU was another (admittedly pathetic) example. The new African Union is another (slightly more promising). The AU can look to see how the EU does things and that which doesn't work, they can avoid and try their own way. If their own way works, the EU might take a hint and try that. Or they might see things that the EU does that would work in the African context or vice versa.

I don't think there's any question the UN is scelortic to a degree, and I'm one of the more pro-UN Americans you will find. But I think various members states have an interest in maintaining the status quo. Smaller countries like the bureaucratic jobs for patronage. Medium sized countries (Canada, Norway) and larger developing countries (India, Brazil) like the forum because it gives them a voice. Diplomatically powerful countries (France, UK) like it because they can throw their weight around. The US likes it because the UN can give its imprimature on military excursions (but is powerful enough to ignore the UN if it doesn't, so there's no real downside except in credibility). Also, the US and the diplomatically powerful countries like it because they can do UN-authorized military excursions on their own initiative but spread the financial burden around.

It's not so great for the people, even though many benefit from UN-affiliated organizations like UNICEF and UNHCR. But the UN is a club for governments, not people.

[Frank McGahon]

I suppose the specific argument is not one against the UN per se, although there are plenty of good arguments against that institution, rather that the type of centrally determined remedies imposed across the board leave no room for new ideas to emerge and compete with each other. The EU is a case in point with increasing regulatory and, if the Germans get their way, tax harmonisation. It is much harder to determine which is the optimum remedy or policy if everyone is applying the same one.

[Brian]

"It is much harder to determine which is the optimum remedy or policy if everyone is applying the same one."

Well EU membership is voluntary so if Germany doesn't like it, they can quit.

But there are also non-EU European countries. So there is a basis for comparison even within the Euro context.

Certainly if EU tax policy makes it uncompetitive with the US or Japan or Canada, then member states will demand changes.

[Frank McGahon]

The thing is: it doesn't really work like that. The problem is not with the precise details of an EU tax policy, it is the very notion of an EU tax policy in the first place. Once something expands past a trading bloc into a common tax, regulatory and legislative regime, you have removed that internal "market of ideas" which is beneficial in sorting out the crap ideas from the good ones and bad ideas tend to get petrified in place.

Many people say they don't want a United States of Europe but in many areas the "intra-national" USA offers greater separation between federal and state powers than the supposed "inter-national" EU. There is probably more regulatory diversity within the US than there is in the EU!

[Frank McGahon]

To give an example of one problem: "tax harmonisation". Germany is pushing this hard. Now, I think tax harmonisation is a bad idea anyway. Each different country ought to set its own tax rates according to its own priorities. But although the Germans want a common tax policy and their inegrationist bent would lead them to conclude that such a policy would be optimum anyway, this is not the real reason they are pushing it.

What they are really after is maintaining a cartel of high corporation tax rates. Part of the German "model" is relatively high taxes for businesses. They have a delicate balance: their economy is stagflating and relies on the huge taxes from industry, but those high corporation tax levels are part of their problem: Germany simply isn't attractive to foreign investment and German companies are taking a beating from others who don't have to pay such high taxes.

Ireland has a low corporation tax rate and it is probably the strongest driver of our economic success. Others have taken note, particularly the latest entrant countries bordering on Germany. Now, what Germany really should do is just cut their corporation tax rates to the "market level" (multinationals shopping around obviously take tax levels into account) but they don't want to do that as it means abandoning a key prop of their whole corporatist, social democratic model. Even though low corporation taxes should eventually mean higher revenues, they are reluctant to do this and I guess that the reason is they are hoping for "one more heave" and when their economy booms again they can reap the reward of all the extra tax revenue at the higher rate. This is, however, a mirage: Sooner or later reality will bite, high corporation tax rates are unsustainable in the long run but in the meantime, they want to limit competition from other EU countries on corporation tax in a kind of cartel action by maintaining it at an artificially high rate.

[gc_emeritus]

not only in describing one's genetic endowment in essentialist terms but in assuming such a thing exists as a universal "optimum environment" under which every person's genetic potential (good and bad) is rendered more starkly

When have we ever assumed an "optimum environment"? You misconstrue our position.

Basically, our position is just like that of Solent's excerpt re: communism. One can proffer all kinds of excuses for why communist countries fail, but in the end they reliably fail and capitalist countries succeed.

The same is true vis a vis sub-Saharan Africans and East Asians. All kinds of excuses can be offerred for their differing academic and economic profiles. Some may even be partially valid. But in the end, the resilient difference will be found to be due - in part - to genetics.

The reason this is not manifestly obvious is that today is analogous to the 60's or 70's re: communism. At that time period, the arguments for communism were at their apogee, no matter how counterintuitive they were to the facts on the ground. But 30 years later they are mere ashes.

Continue to argue that all groups are equal in IQ, despite the manifest evidence to the contrary, and 30 years from this claim too will be on the ashheap of history.

[Abiola Lapite]

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"Continue to argue that all groups are equal in IQ, despite the manifest evidence to the contrary"

Which is to be found where exactly? If it's so "manifest", how come we haven't been able to locate a *single* gene that's been unequivocably linked to IQ variation within "races", let alone between them?

Methinks you're the one who's going to find his ideas thrown on the trash-heap of history where they belong.
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[Frank McGahon]

When have we ever assumed an "optimum environment"? You misconstrue our position

Not at all: it is regular asserted that, given a benign environment genetic differences would be rendered more starkly. This implicitly assumes that such a thing "conceptually" exists, however unattainable in the real world, as an optimum environment. In reality some "environments" can prove optimum for some and detrimental to others.

Your insistent framing of your argument as in opposition to "environmentalist blank-slaters" assumes that the only proper counter-argument to yours is similarly essentialist: the notion of socially-engineering an optimum environment. In fact there are any number of counter-arguments to yours which don't rely on positing a blank slate or essentialist assumptions about a "one size fits all" environment.

[Abiola Lapite]

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I can't help taking a closer look at the following statements:

"The same is true vis a vis sub-Saharan Africans and East Asians. All kinds of excuses can be offerred for their differing academic and economic profiles."

"Excuses" - how cute. You already *know* what the right answer has to be, so any explanations that don't gibe with your preferences must necessarily be "excuses"; even if it means rejecting solid empirical data backed up by well laid-out reasoning for the sake of fraudulent statistics cooked up by a known quack.

"Some may even be partially valid."

Oh, how generous of you. You're a real mensch.

"But in the end, the resilient difference will be found to be due - in part - to genetics."

Really? This is simply prophecy on your part, not science as commonly understood; for one thing, you don't even know that the difference really will be "resilient."

The only thing one really learns from your little argument is that you routinely fail to appreciate the importance of multi-collinearity: just because East Asian countries have done well economically over the last 40 years and most (*not* all) African countries haven't doesn't mean that there's anything "genetic" at work. If we were to follow your correlation equals causation argument through to its logical conclusion, the conclusion we'd be forced to draw is that genes for skin color are IQ genes as well, a notion I'm sure even you would find farfetched - for one thing, it would lump you and many of your fellow Brahmin supermen in with the rest of us untermenschen ...

A far likelier and more straightforward explanation for the relationship you're parading as "proof" of your position is that, more important than any genes that might differentiate between the two groups of countries, the East Asian nations share in common a great deal in terms of *culture* and historical experiences, not to mention that they are all extremely homogenous from an ethnic viewpoint. Similarly, most African countries share much in common in terms of the problems of extreme ethnic heterogeneity, borders arbitarily drawn by colonial rulers, and a start from far back on the racing line, having been historically isolated from broader technological developments elsewhere in the world by the desertification of the Sahara.

In closing, not only is there not a shard of actual genetic evidence to support the racist axe you love to grind, but your "reasoning" to support your beliefs is so shoddy that one has to wonder upon what basis you seek to descant on the "innate" intellectual shortcomings of others. You've clearly learnt nothing despite having these same old logical gaps pointed out to you several times in the past.
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[gc_emeritus]

the East Asian nations share in common a great deal in terms of *culture* and historical experiences, not to mention that they are all extremely homogenous from an ethnic viewpoint

yes, yes, yes, you've made this argument before. Asians supposedly take their culture with them wherever they go, even when they become Asian Americans. Cuz everyone knows that Japanese Americans are more *culturally* similar to Japanese and Japanese-ancestry Brazilians than to other Americans (/sarcasm).

Substitute "genetically" for culturally in the preceding sentence and you have the germ of an argument.

anyway, we'll have to wait for empirical proof. the issue of "no gene being found yet" is a straw man, because we won't have seriously looked till they start doing the comparative sequencing of individuals from different areas. Duh :)

but abiola, i'm more than willing to take you up on a bet if you *really* believe that all populations of the world have equal distributions of intelligence/IQ.

[gc_emeritus]

solid empirical data backed up by well laid-out reasoning for the sake of fraudulent statistics cooked up by a known quack.

Exactly what solid data explains the international and universal white/black/Asian economic & academic trends? Is it racism, again? Culture? Diversity, a la Easterly and Levine?

Btw, the TIMSS data correlates well with the Lynn IQ data - something that would not happen if the data were entirely bogus. But I told you that already...

Anyway where's the outlier in which blacks are manning tech industries? In the US, after all the racial preferences and 40 years of bending over backwards, where is the *performance*? Where's the outlier nation in which Asians have higher crime rates than blacks?

eh. nevermind. I know what i'll hear. Racism! Slavery! The nations are too diverse! The legacy of apartheid! Etc.

[Frank McGahon]

Exactly what solid data explains the international and universal white/black/Asian economic & academic trends?

Exactly what solid data illustrates these international and universal white/black/Asian economic & academic "trends"?

[Abiola Lapite]

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"Asians supposedly take their culture with them wherever they go, even when they become Asian Americans. Cuz everyone knows that Japanese Americans are more *culturally* similar to Japanese and Japanese-ancestry Brazilians than to other Americans (/sarcasm)."

This is as stupid as it is ignorant. Do you seriously mean to argue that even second generation Asian immigrants have no cultural connection to the mores and practices of their homeland? This has to be one of the daftest possible attempts at sarcasm I've ever seen. If immigrant groups never retain any of the cultural traits they bring with them, please account for the customs of, say, Minnesotans, with their penchant for that staple of the all-American diet called lutefisk? Are Korean cram schools in Brooklyn a genetic trait as well?

"Substitute "genetically" for culturally in the preceding sentence and you have the germ of an argument."

Why? Because it fits your preconceptions better?

"anyway, we'll have to wait for empirical proof. the issue of "no gene being found yet" is a straw man, because we won't have seriously looked till they start doing the comparative sequencing of individuals from different areas. Duh"

And there are WMDs in Iraq - it's just that we haven't seriously begun looking until there's peace in the land ... There's nothing "straw mannish" about my statement, as it is just the plain unadorned truth; we currently have no evidence of IQ-related genes that have held up to close scrutiny, and whether or not such genes will be found at some point in the future has no bearing on the reality that the claims you are making today are entirely lacking in empirical backing. If you insist on waiting until the evidence materializes, the rest of us can also insist that you stop trying to pass off your idea fixe as established fact.

"Exactly what solid data explains the international and universal white/black/Asian economic & academic trends? Is it racism, again? Culture? Diversity, a la Easterly and Levine?"

Yes, godlesscapitalist is here again to tell us that racism is entirely a figment of our imaginations; after all, he should know best, being black and all ... As for the "international and universal" bit, where's your evidence for it? Where's your evidence that black immigrants in, say, the UK are failing? I seem to recall that at least some groups were getting better O'Level exam results in that country than working-class native whites - or perhaps your memory has conveniently failed you again ...

As for the supposed lack of substance to the ethnic heterogeneity thesis, leaving aside the fact that it's well attested to by historical evidence - and is actually playing itself out as we speak in places like Darfur in the Sudan - pray tell us what exactly is so insubstantial about Easterly and Levine's work, if you can. I notice you never "ran the regressions" you were always blustering about - where are they? I also hope you realize that there's even more and *better* data than the one used in that 1997 paper, and that it argues even more strongly against the claptrap you're pushing as "truth."

"Btw, the TIMSS data correlates well with the Lynn IQ data - something that would not happen if the data were entirely bogus. But I told you that already..."

The question isn't whether Lynn's "data" is entirely bogus - the question is whether the data that has to do with Africa is worth a tinker's damn, and there's plenty of evidence to show that it isn't. I actually went to the TIMSS website, and funnily enough, though you failed to mention which study correlated so well with Lynn's "work", neither of the 1995 or 1999 studies had any sub-Saharan African participants other than South Africa, and even the 2003 survey only has 3 - Lynn's data for Africa could be (and very likely is) entirely bogus, and his work would still correlate well with a TIMSS study, just so long as the non-African work was less plagued by fraudulence.

"Anyway where's the outlier in which blacks are manning tech industries? In the US, after all the racial preferences and 40 years of bending over backwards, where is the *performance*? Where's the outlier nation in which Asians have higher crime rates than blacks?"

And how does this prove anything, even if it were true that blacks were nowhere to be found manning tech industries (and I suppose that individuals like myself, Michael Bowen, Prometheus 6 or Microsoft's Dare Obasanjo are simply suffering from the delusion that we're in such an industry)? The very same failure to recognize multi-collinearity raises its head again; here's hard evidence that at least some individuals are inherently incapable of learning much ...

"eh. nevermind. I know what i'll hear. Racism! Slavery! The nations are too diverse! The legacy of apartheid! Etc. "

Translation: "Don't you dare tell me that the world is a more complex place than can be accomodated by my simplistic racist philosophy." You display an absurdly low tolerance for cognitive complexity for an alleged member of the intellectual elite.
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[Matt W.]

And there are WMDs in Iraq - it's just that we haven't seriously begun looking until there's peace in the land ... There's nothing "straw mannish" about my statement, as it is just the plain unadorned truth; we currently have no evidence of IQ-related genes that have held up to close scrutiny, and whether or not such genes will be found at some point in the future has no bearing on the reality that the claims you are making today are entirely lacking in empirical backing. If you insist on waiting until the evidence materializes, the rest of us can also insist that you stop trying to pass off your idea fixe as established fact.

This has got to be one of the silliest arguments I have ever read or heard. Would the fact that we don't know which genes make us smarter than chimps mean that we must assume that humans and chimps have the same intelligence as humans? Obviously the evidence for average differences in intelligence between populations is not nearly as rock-solid as the evidence we have for an enormous human-chimp difference (and it will certainly be harder to find at the genetic level if it exists), but the principle that we should rely on indirect evidence rather than waiting until we fully understand the genetic mechanisms behind our intelligence still applies.

Yes, godlesscapitalist is here again to tell us that racism is entirely a figment of our imaginations; after all, he should know best, being black and all

Geez, this sounds like the kind of argument I'd hear out of Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson, not a self-described "libertarian." When you don't like an argument of Godless', you sure aren't afraid to play the cards of the extreme Sharpton/Jackson/Atrios/Tim Wise left.

Translation: "Don't you dare tell me that the world is a more complex place than can be accomodated by my simplistic racist philosophy." You display an absurdly low tolerance for cognitive complexity for an alleged member of the intellectual elite.

Interesting, it seems that your philosophy that we must assume all differences are due to racism (as the hard left would emphasize) and culture (as mindless dittoheads on the right would emphasize)* is the simplistic one.

*This is not to say that these aren't factors (though I am extemely skeptical that racism and colonialism are big factors in disparties in the U.S.), but forcing ourselves to rely on these as the *ONLY* factors seems awfully simplistic.

[Frank McGahon]

Would the fact that we don't know which genes make us smarter than chimps mean that we must assume that humans and chimps have the same intelligence as humans?

Not at all, it is a trivial matter to determine what separates us from chimps and it is tendentious to frame that difference as a simple matter of level of intelligence.

[Matt W.]

Not at all, it is a trivial matter to determine what separates us from chimps and it is tendentious to frame that difference as a simple matter of level of intelligence.

It is actually relatively trivial to distinguish human populations from each other--what is far less trivial is actually finding which genes lead to functional differences and how they lead to these differences, especially in a complex trait such as 'intelligence'. Re: distinguishing human populations--from Scientific American--

Noah A. Rosenberg and Jonathan K. Pritchard, geneticists formerly in the laboratory of Marcus W. Feldman of Stanford University, assayed approximately 375 polymorphisms called short tandem repeats in more than 1,000 people from 52 ethnic groups in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas. By looking at the varying frequencies of these polymorphisms, they were able to distinguish five different groups of people whose ancestors were typically isolated by oceans, deserts or mountains: sub-Saharan Africans; Europeans and Asians west of the Himalayas; East Asians; inhabitants of New Guinea and Melanesia; and Native Americans. They were also able to identify subgroups within each region that usually corresponded with each member's self-reported ethnicity.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&articleID=00055DC8-3BAA-1FA8-BBAA83414B7F0000&pageNumber=2&catID=2

[Frank McGahon]

[sigh]

Look: we were talking about intelligence. Comparing human intellligence with chimps' "intelligence" is not comparing like for like and is not a matter of ascertaining the degree by which a human's intelligence is superior to that of a chimp. That is my precise point, not the slippery nature of "racial" identity.

[Matt W.]

Look: we were talking about intelligence. Comparing human intellligence with chimps' "intelligence" is not comparing like for like and is not a matter of ascertaining the degree by which a human's intelligence is superior to that of a chimp. That is my precise point, not the slippery nature of "racial" identity.

Abiola's point was that we have not found genes in humans related to variation of intelligence, and my point in reply was that our inability to find the genes that make humans' intelligence different from that of chimps would not be grounds to deny a difference in intelligence between humans and chimps. I was not trying to argue whether this difference is a differnce in kind or in degree--either way there must be some genetic mechanism for it, and our inablity to understand the genetic mechanism for the difference should not be a reason to deny it.

[Frank McGahon]

But there's no reason to believe there is a gene related specifically to variation* in intelligence unless you want there to be one, there certainly isn't evidence for such a gene . There's every reason to believe that the set of human genes contain the recipe for making a human-type brain which the set of chimps lack. Thus, it is unremarkable to state that intelligence is genetic if by "intelligence" you mean that which differentiates us from chimps - a human-type-brain. Claiming that variation of the precise level of intelligence is genetic is a more controversial assertion.

[Matt W.]

Claiming that variation of the precise level of intelligence is genetic is a more controversial assertion.

I don't think there's much controversy over the idea that some variation in intelligence is genetic--I have heard of heritability estimates as low as .2 (20% of variation in intelligence in the modern U.S. is due to genetic variation) and as high as .8(80% of variation in intelligence in the modern U.S. is due to genetic variation), but I have never heard of a serious study in which heritability is claimed to be zero. What makes godless' and my position controversial is that we believe that overall heritability is probably closer to .8 than .2, and that we believe that some nontrivial portion of the variation between populations is due to genetic differences (note it is theoretically possible for within-group differences to be 100% due to genetic differences and between-group differences to be 0% to be due to genetic differences--this would have to be basically true, for example, if one could compare the modern IQs of those of (say) British descent to the IQs of those of British descent 500 years ago).

[Abiola Lapite]

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"Geez, this sounds like the kind of argument I'd hear out of Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson, not a self-described "libertarian." When you don't like an argument of Godless', you sure aren't afraid to play the cards of the extreme Sharpton/Jackson/Atrios/Tim Wise left."

You are an idiot. Who the f*ck is a little online turd like you to accuse me of "playing the race card?" You're a worthless little maggot.

I could teach you genetics with my eyes closed, so save your stupid arguments about chimp intelligence for those like you who share chimp-level intellects. Don't even think about commenting on my site ever again - you will be banned straight away, and all your comments deleted.
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[Kubilai]

///You are an idiot. Who the f*ck is a little online turd like you to accuse me of "playing the race card?" You're a worthless little maggot.///

Who the f*ck are you is the more appropriate question. You're behaviour is atrocious and your stance, Marxist not "libertarian". Right down to the vitriolic name calling when cornered.