Lemieux: Let's Lose the "We"

We are not amused.

Good grief, what a persnickety objection in that link!

I understand being annoyed when “we” implies consensus that doesn’t exist, but when “we” just references our decision making processes for measuring our collective preferences, it seems “we” is pretty well defined. I don’t mind the usage in the Obama quote or the Gruber quote. “We” [the citizens of the US] elected Obama and his policies, either by voting for him or failing to get out the vote for alternatives. I don’t have to like Obama or prefer his healthcare or domestic surveillance policies to feel I share responsibility for the outcome.

And what, Finch, of those of us who voted against him? Is each of us as responsible as those who voted for him or failed to vote against him, for those policies? Did we also elect him? I believe in that case you stretch the definition of the verb “to elect” beyond the breaking point.

Ah, the implied consent doctrine.

I thought I was a tenant, or serf, of the criminal gang, but apparently now I’m a member. Purely because I live in their territory. They don’t just own me, the conscript me.

Or maybe I’m a member because when they shake me down a gun point for protection money, I don’t refuse?

So residents of a gang controlled neighborhood are obligated, morally, to flee the neighborhood or be morally complicit with their activities.

“he must leave the gang”

I know of relatively few people who ever even joined the gang. I know of even fewer people who had it within their power to make any difference in the gang’s activities whatsoever.

And yet they all get included in “we”. They all are declared responsible. They all have apparently chosen the status quo–even those most vocal and adamant and consistent in their opposition.

Misuse of “we” is for the intent of disregarding disagreement under the false cover of agreement. It is political subterfuge.

“And what, Finch, of those of us who voted against him? Is each of us as responsible as those who voted for him or failed to vote against him, for those policies? Did we also elect him?”

Yes. I voted against him, but I could have pushed harder and I could have been more convincing. Perhaps I could have supported a more moderate candidate rather than one closer to my own preferences, but with a lower chance of winning the general election. You can complain about democracy with some justification, but the voting system is a reasonably fair way to measure what “we” want. I share the blame, and if you are a US citizen, so do you. To answer your question directly, yes, absolutely, you elected him. You participated in a reasonably fair process designed to measure preferences. You can’t deny that now that you didn’t get precisely what you wanted.

If this was an obviously corrupt or severely biased process, you’d have a point. But it isn’t – legitimate complaints are peripheral and don’t give reasonable people any doubt in the outcome. After Bush, “we” wanted a leftist in power. The average person did. The median person did. It wasn’t very close.

Returning to the original post, if Obama had said “We all know the NSA’s domestic spying program is essential,” I’d be offended. We don’t all know that. When he says we have to make hard choices, that’s just a statement of fact.

I’d push back harder against you, Finch, but you at least you didn’t accuse me of membership in a criminal gang.

I will say though that the way you are putting it now I would be less responsible if I had refused to vote.

Or perhaps the only way to not be considered culpable, is also in your view to renounce citizenship and flee the country.

Otherwise, apparently, the rest of you have the right to assimilate me into your Borg collective.

“Or perhaps the only way to not be considered culpable, is also in your view to renounce citizenship and flee the country.”

I don’t know if that’s the only way, but yes, after some time I think that would make you not responsible.

As it is, we don’t live in a dictatorship in any meaningful sense, and therefore US citizens have themselves to credit or blame for their own government. Use of the term “we” is appropriate when describing the actions of the government as the actions of the people. That does not mean everyone endorses every action.

I would agree that it might be inappropriate to use the term “we” to describe actions of the government that are very well-kept secrets and don’t seem to have the consent of elected officials or the governed. The NSA spying probably doesn’t count, but one could imagine things that might.

… the voting system is a reasonably fair way to measure what “we” want.

Nope. It’s a lousy way. I only get one vote, despite the vast number of things that I want, and the complex nature of trade-offs between them. My vote is a lousy measure even of what I want, and Lemieux notes how it gets even worse as each individual’s votes get aggregated up.

I agree with Churchill that democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others humanity has tried. But that doesn’t make it reasonably fair as a way of measuring what we, or even I, want.

We go to war. We bungle legislation. We buy the iPhone 6.

I know I didn’t buy an iPhone 6.

I’ve worked for the NZ government. I felt personally responsible for avoiding bungling legislation in a way I don’t feel now. Indeed, it strikes me that if we were all collectively responsible for legislation, no legislation would ever get written in the first place.

And experienced soldiers who’ve been in the fighting would laugh at your idea that “we go to war.”

That the act is collectively decided or is necessarily collective is implied, often through voting or markets or other ways of aggregating preferences, or because it’s only possible for the aggregate to be in one state.

Buying an iPhone isn’t necessarily collective. The fact that I didn’t buy an iPhone hasn’t stopped millions of people from buying them. Indeed, a collective iPhone would be no good at all.

Nor is bungling legislation necessarily collective. For example, once a decimal point got missed off a NZ bill, producing a deficit of 10% of GDP, that was the fault of a few individuals.

Nor is electing people collective, it is very common for numerous people to have voted against whoever is elected.

There’s nothing necessarily collectively decided about being at war, it’s entirely possible for a dictator to declare their country at war. I understand that in Britain the Cabinet does not legally need to get the approval of parliament to go to war. And it’s entirely possible to send off a bunch of soldiers while most of the population goes about their domestic life.

I think your issue is that what you want is not well defined or may be impossible, not that voting doesn’t do a decent job of measuring and weighting it.

So, you think that “garbage in” results in “order out”?
Unusual claim. I look forward to your reasoning behind such a counter-intuitive result.

(Note I agree that what I want is not well-defined, as it includes things like “a government that responds well to unexpected events”, and I agree it may well be impossible.)

I agree you bear little responsibility for a typographical error, other than the part you played in constructing a system that is not robust to such things.

How am I responsible for that?

And I have no idea why you think that “we elect people having a pretty good idea of how they will make decisions on war regardless of the novel circumstances that arise during their tenure”. Personally I don’t know that. It always worries me when voting.

Lord Acton: I didn’t think it was a personal attack. I know my preferences are ill-defined, eg I want a government that can handle unexpected events (eg September 11, tsunamis) well, but I don’t know what well means.

And it’s quite possible that many of my wants are impossible to all achieve in practice. I’ve done enough engineering to know the difference between theory and practice.

However, as far as I know, this is true of everyone. So it’s not just that unusual preferences of mine can be ignored, it’s that every one has ill-defined preferences, and quite possibly every one of us has impossible wants. I don’t see how voting can solve that general a problem.

But it seems like an astoundingly fragile system,

Parliament passed an amendment. Costly and embarrassing, but it did the trick.

And, I don’t know how a system could get around that, except by vigilance on the part of the relevant officials. The numbers come from humans, at some point they must be inserted into something, and that’s when the error can happen.

Expect them to zealously defend American citizen’s interests, resorting to violence if there’s a lot at stake.

May I refer you to Henderson and Gochenour’s paper on US Presidents who didn’t?

Expect a good bit of reluctance to get into a big war,

Maybe “expect” in the statistical sense. But not in the case of every President. I recall from history classes that FDR wanted to get into WWII despite the general attitude of the American population.

Because that’s completely reasonable. But if you don’t know how they are going to react, you haven’t been paying attention.

Or you’re massively over-confident in your historical knowledge.

Finch:
I take it therefore that you now agree with us that voting doesn’t magically transform ill-defined preferences into something reasonable.

Was that meant to be a hypothesis or a dig?

Yes, and also a suggestion. You were over-confident in your assessment of your knowledge about US presidents, and that over-confidence led you into ignoring the possibility that I might actually know some things about US presidents that you didn’t.

Generally, on the internet, it’s wise to avoid saying things along the lines of “if you don’t agree with me, you haven’t been paying attention” before you’ve actually had some to-ing and fro-ing about the facts in question.