Back in January, Tyler Cowen did a post entitled, “Congratulations to Christopher Rufo and Richard Hanania.” This was in reference to their role in fighting DEI policies:
As most of you already know, the Trump administration through Executive Orders has taken major steps against affirmative action and also DEI. We will see how the details play out, but each of these developments seems highly significant and not just “expressive.”
Those two individuals played a decisive role in what happened, in both cases taking considerable flak along the way.
I had exactly the same view as Tyler. But in at least one respect, the “details” did not play out in the way that many of us would have preferred. Here’s Richard Hanania:
I’m in The Economist today on the problems with Trump’s war on Harvard. The entire point of the anti-wokeness movement, at least from my perspective, was to fight for merit, freedom, and the rule of law. If you honestly hold these principles, then you have to acknowledge that Trump is trying to replace DEI with something that is even more opposed to them. . . .
I don’t see any real defenses out there of what Trump is doing. Here’s Rufo arguing against center-right critics of the administration, yet the policy he defends has no resemblance to the one actually being pursued. Not once does he mention the Trump requirement for ideological diversity, nor the demand that Harvard create an ideological litmus test for foreign students. If Chris thought that these policies had a sound logical and legal basis, I think he would make the case for them. He might believe wokeness is so bad that any policy that strikes against it needs to be supported, but I think that kind of attitude is how you end up defending the indefensible.
On issues like free speech there are two types of people. Those whose views depend on whether or not they agree with the ideology of the speaker, and those who have a principled support for freedom. In the former case, a so-called proponent of free speech may immediately flip to opposition as soon as they gain power. Some on the right have opposed diversity programs that placed racial and gender considerations above merit, but now wish to place ideological diversity considerations above merit. People who complained about cancel culture now wish to deport students that protested against Israel’s action in Gaza.
In a related note, a recent Matt Lutz post on civil rights caught my attention:
So ok, let’s talk about the Civil Rights Act.
I know, I know! I feel you reaching for your pearls again, ready to clutch. So let me begin by saying that I am not against the Civil Rights Act. I think it has been, on the whole, good. But as with much else in politics, there are good arguments to be made on either side. And I think that there are good arguments to be made against the Civil Rights Act. It is, on net, good. But that doesn’t mean there’s no bad to it. And the bad is, basically, the argument that libertarians have long had against the Civil Rights Act. . . .
The world is complicated, and we should never commit ourselves fully to any particular perspective. The Trump administration’s treatment of Harvard is bad. But Jim Crow was worse. If the worst that can be said about the Civil Rights Act is that it gave Donald [expletive] Trump the power to run roughshod over liberal institutions, and the best that can be said is that it ended Jim Crow, then the Civil Rights Act comes out way ahead. Jim Crow was that bad.
But the libertarians had a point. I think it’s easier to see that now.
My views on civil rights are pretty similar to those expressed in Lutz’s post. But I’d like to frame the debate in a slightly different fashion.
The 1964 Civil Rights Act covers many different areas. The vast majority are fairly uncontroversial. I don’t see people arguing that blacks should not be allowed to vote, sit at the lunch counter, or sit in the front of a bus. I don’t see people arguing that public benefit programs should favor whites. I don’t see people arguing that labor unions should be allowed to refuse admission to blacks, or that employment agencies should be allowed to screen out black job applicants. Or that certain public schools should be for whites only. It seems to me that almost all of the controversy over civil rights is actually related to a set of DEI-related issues in employment and college admissions, which constitute only a small portion of the bill. The most controversial civil rights issues relate to concepts such as “disparate impact”, “affirmative action,” and “diversity.”
But many of these controversial DEI policies seem to violate the plain meaning of the Civil Rights Act. Indeed, at least one part of the law (in Title VII) explicitly suggests that companies should not be required to aim for racial or gender diversity.
(j) Nothing contained in this title shall be interpreted to require any employer, employment agency, labor organization, or joint labor-management committee subject to this title to grant preferential treatment to any individual or to any group because of the race, color, religion, sex, or national origin of such individual or group on account of an imbalance which may exist with respect to the total number or percentage of persons of any race, color, religion, sex, or national origin employed by any employer, referred or classified for employment by any employment agency or labor organization, admitted to membership or classified by any labor organization, or admitted to, or employed in, any apprenticeship or other training program, in comparison with the total number or percentage of persons of such race, color, religion, sex, or national origin in any community, State, section, or other area, or in the available work force in any community, State, section, or other area.
There are a couple of ways that a person might think about this situation:
- The 1964 Civil Rights Act was a good law, but was not implemented as written.
- The 1964 Civil Rights Act was a bad law, because it gave powers to the government that would inevitably be abused.
A few people on the right might even argue the 1964 Civil Rights Act was a bad law because racial discrimination is good. But the more mainstream conservative objection has been that the Civil Rights Act was (wrongly) interpreted as encouraging companies and universities to discriminate against whites and Asians. Once civil rights advocates gained political power, we learned that their actual objective was not a colorblind society.
Here are a few analogies.
- Prior to Roe v. Wade being overturned, the pro-life movement wished to allow individual states to determine abortion policy. Today, they favor a nationwide ban on abortion.
- During the Joe McCarthy era, the left favored allowing more freedom of speech in places like UC Berkeley. Once the left gained control of UC-Berkeley, they shifted to opposing freedom of speech.
Unfortunately, very few people have consistent principles. Most people favor freedom only when other people make the sort of choices of which they approve. As soon as they gain power, they seek to impose their values on the rest of the population. The developing world is full of “liberation movements”. As soon as they gain power, they usually switch from being a liberation movement to being an oppression movement. The almost saint-like reputation of Nelson Mandela comes from the fact that he was an exception; he did not attempt to crush his enemies after taking power.
The Trump administration faces a momentous decision. Should it try to prevent universities from discriminating to achieve diversity, or should it replace one type of discrimination with another?
PS. Here’s another example. Environmentalists have made it very difficult to build new projects by erecting a complex bureaucratic process in order for a project to be approved. In the past, conservatives objected to the fact that those hurdles were aimed at preventing the construction of coal-fired power plants. Today, conservatives are using these restrictions to stop clean energy:
The halt on federal permits for wind energy was first laid out in a Jan. 20 executive order, one of a barrage that President Trump signed immediately upon taking office. It directed agencies to stop all permits for wind farms pending federal review. . . . The wind industry provides about 10 percent of the nation’s electricity, and has many new projects under development, particularly in the Great Plains and the Atlantic Ocean.
Last month, the Trump administration halted a major wind farm under construction off the coast of Long Island, the Empire Wind project. It was designed to provide enough electricity to power a half-million homes. It had already received the permits it needed, but Interior Secretary Doug Burgum suggested the Biden administration’s analysis during the approval process was rushed and insufficient.
READER COMMENTS
Pierre Lemieux
May 14 2025 at 4:56pm
Scott: You are making important points with very relevant observations. Thanks to Trump, we–certainly I–have learned much, or seen some things much more clearly, over the past 11 years. The main, if not the only, difference between “the Right” and “the Left” as we know them now is not that the former favors individual and private choices while the latter favors collective and political choices. They both stand for the supremacy of collective choices, the only difference being that the choices each side favors will harm a different part of the population and create a different sort of tyranny.
Scott Sumner
May 14 2025 at 7:44pm
I’ve also learned a lot over the past 11 years. In the past, I took our system for granted. Other countries might be banana republics, but not the US. Now I see that we are not immune to these sorts of problems.
Mactoul
May 15 2025 at 3:15am
I am mystified at the surprise that the politicians, of whatever color, value collective choices. To be engaged in making collective choices for the non-political majority–it is their job and the source of their self-worth and remunerations. Surely it must be elementary behavioral or public choice that they are unlikely to go against their self-interests.
Scott Sumner
May 15 2025 at 12:09pm
I agree, but there are a lot of very intelligent intellectuals that are blind to the reality of politics.
Jose Pablo
May 16 2025 at 3:17pm
There are also a lot of very intelligent intellectuals who are convinced that the fundamental problem with collective decisions is that they are not the ones making them.
Blind to the fact that the real issues with collective decisions—chiefly their lack of legitimacy in being imposed on individuals, and their inadequacy due to poor information—are intrinsic and unavoidable.
Jose Pablo
May 15 2025 at 10:08pm
I am mystified at the surprise that the politicians, of whatever color, don’t have principles (for instance, don’t have a “principled position” regarding freedom of speech).
Politicians are the dregs of society. Hayek warned us long ago that ‘the worst get on top’, and he was right. The current administration is “just” further proof of that, if any more were needed.
We can debate endlessly about varying degrees of “bad” among politicians, but that entirely misses the point: they (all of them) represent a class we’d be far better off without.
TMC
May 14 2025 at 7:57pm
So you list a number of items:
Allowed to vote, sit at the lunch counter, or sit in the front of a bus, public benefit programs, labor unions refusing admission to anyone, employment agencies screening out black job applicants, and public schools. Add in Trump’s ideological diversity.
Now separate them. The vote, sitting in the front of a bus, public benefit programs, and public schools are all protected because they are provided by the public.
Sitting at the lunch counter, labor unions refusing admission to anyone, employment agencies screening out black job applicants, and ideological diversity are technically not protected as that would violate freedom of association (civil rights laws notwithstanding). As for Trump’s ideological diversity demands, not illegal as they are tied to funding, not to Harvard’s ability to run as a business. We have many demands in exchange for funding, like Title IX. Ideological diversity is closest to this.
I’d prefer to let Harvard have its freedom of association, and the taxpayers not subsidize it.
Scott Sumner
May 15 2025 at 12:11pm
My point is that when the shoe was on the other foot, the right criticize this sort of use of government power. They suggested a “meritocracy” was best.
TMC
May 15 2025 at 1:56pm
Trumps position is that they are not using meritocracy. There is pretty significant discrimination against conservative professors. Meritocracy is the goal. While we can’t force them act as such, we do not need to fund it.
Scott Sumner
May 16 2025 at 1:15pm
No, that’s not at all what’s going on here.
Matthias
May 14 2025 at 8:05pm
The opposition to wind power seems particularly petty. Can’t someone convince Trump that the wind turbines are manufactured in the US or something like that?
Nicolas
May 15 2025 at 1:56am
Persuasively argued. Collectivist populism with a racial cast versus collectivist leftism. We’re in trouble.
Mactoul
May 15 2025 at 3:17am
They might well be justified. The so-called Clean Energy is largely a scam.
Scott Sumner
May 15 2025 at 12:12pm
I thought the GOP believed in letting the market decide. Solar and wind power have become quite cheap.
nobody.really
May 16 2025 at 2:26pm
To refine this, solar and wind energy have become quite cheap. Indeed, Texas has become the Saudi Arabia of wind–not out of some love for woke ideology, but out of a love for cheap energy.
But solar and wind power–the ability to dispatch specified amounts of energy at specified times to do work at a specified rate–still poses challenges.
steve
May 15 2025 at 10:44am
I guess you can take the Civil Rights Act in isolation. I suspect you would prefer to do that, but many of us dont see it that way. Someone used the poker analogy where whites and blacks had been playing poker for 300 years but white people were cheating. All of a sudden we decided there would be no cheating but the white people had all of the chips. Besides having all of the actual money and capital the black population had much less human capital. Some of what happened as a result of the CRA was an attempt to address that. Was it fair to do that? Was it fair to not do something to try to address it? Depends upon your POV, but its hard to deny that if you make no attempt to address it that massive inequality would remain the norm and that would not be based upon merit but rather due to the lack of resources missing from the prior 300 years of cheating.
I would note that the CR ACT specifically says actions to rectify past discrimination may not be required but it doesnt prohibit them. I would also note that I haven’t really seen libertarians address this issue very well IMO. The attitude is generally that the past is the past. Oops. What libertarians actually practice, it looks like to me, is support of the collectivist idea that a large majority can significantly harm a minority and then never suffer any consequences for that harm. To be clear, I am also not sure how to address the issue but ignoring it doesnt seem correct.
Steve
Scott Sumner
May 15 2025 at 12:24pm
DEI policies are not the sort of policies you’d promote if you accepted your arguments. For instance, the vast majority of blacks at top colleges are recent immigrants, not descendants of slaves.
In addition, here’s AI Overview:
“In 2023, the median household income for Black families in the US was $56,490, according to the Census Bureau. This is significantly lower than the median household income of White families, which was $89,050. ”
Obviously that’s a big disparity, but in absolute terms $56,490 is actually pretty good, comparable to many developed countries. Not saying there’s no problem, but there’s been vast progress as well.
Furthermore, income disparities alone are not prima facie evidence of injustice. Jewish white Americans earn far more on average than Christian white Americans, but only a far right nut would claims that is due to some sort of unfairness in the system.
steve
May 15 2025 at 2:06pm
I think you should oppose DEI policies because they dont work and a lot of them are scams. There is no evidence that they really increased hiring of blacks. There is evidence that they provided some jobs to DEI advocates.
I am not sure how you would prove that 300 years of loss of capital, maybe especially human capital is at least a partial explanation of current inequality but I would think it fair to say that the large majority of papers in the econ literature suggest that the effects of the loss of both capital and human capital are persistent. I would add that it is easy to criticize attempts at providing a remedy for so many years of poor treatment I find that the people who do criticize those attempts dont really offer any suggestions other than ignore what happened in the past and that things will eventually get better.
Steve
Scott Sumner
May 16 2025 at 1:18pm
I find that the people who do criticize those attempts dont really offer any suggestions other than ignore what happened in the past and that things will eventually get better.
Two points:
Things have gotten much better.
I’ve offered many suggestions as to how to make things much better.
nobody.really
May 15 2025 at 3:11pm
Vast progress, yes; let’s not discount that.
Nevertheless, if someone robbed you of everything of value except for a bank account holding $56,490, should the police simply say, “Hey, that’s actually pretty good, comparable to the median household income of many developed countries–so no harm, no foul”?
Then feel free to regard me as a far right nut.
Why don’t income disparities alone constitute prima facie evidence of injustice/unfairness? Sure, the fact that one specific black household has less wealth than one specific white household at one specific moment in time does not constitute evidence of injustice/unfairness. But if this remains the dominant pattern for tens of millions of black households and tens of millions of white households for centuries, what other conclusion can we draw?
Classical theoriests often state the second law of thermodynamics as something like heat always flows spontaneously from hotter to colder regions. But students of statistical mechanics are more guarded, saying only that the second law will hold on average, with a statistical variation on the order of 1/√N where N is the number of particles in the system. So they might say that it’s not impossible that all the heat in the room will sponteneously leap to re-heat your cup of coffee–although they’re not betting on that outcome. Likewise, I’d concede that the evidence of the persistent pattern of wealth disparities existing for gajillions of pairs of households analyzed over centuries may not prove that anything unjust has occured; it might just be chance. But like most people, I find the simpler statement of the second law to be the clearest.
As far as I can tell, lots of things correlate with the circumstances of a person’s birth–and people have NO AGENCY regarding the circumstances of their own birthes. I find no justice in any of it.
Kevin Corcoran
May 15 2025 at 5:49pm
That depends. It would constitute evidence if we take as a premise that in the absence of injustice/unfairness, the mean, median, mode, and variance for all aggregate outcomes would be identical for all population groups, everywhere, simultaneously. But I’ve never heard a compelling argument for why that would be true, and there are many reasons to think it is not. See, for example, Thomas Sowell’s trilogy Race and Culture, Conquests and Culture, and Migrations and Culture, or his more recent book Discrimination and Disparities. Among other things, Sowell points out that history is replete with examples of minority groups that suffered massive injustice and oppression at the hands of majority groups, to include huge fits of violence and destruction/theft of property, as well as significant legal discrimination against them codified into law, but nonetheless achieved consistently better results across virtually all dimensions than the majority group in that society. This happens a lot more often than you might think.
I find no justice in it, but nor do I find any injustice in it either. I tend to agree with Nozick, who (as I’m sure you recall) argued in Anarchy, State, and Utopia that such things are better classified as misfortunes than injustices. As put it rather cheekily,
It might be unfortunate for the less handsome, charming, and intelligent suitor but it certainly doesn’t seem like he has some legitimate complaint against anyone or anything about an injustice having been committed.
nobody.really
May 16 2025 at 3:48am
Thanks for the Sowell tip. That said, does Sowell say that one group does better that another FOR NO REASON? Or does he identify a reason?
If black households in the US have lower income (and especially lower wealth) across centuries than white households, I suspect people have identified some reasons. So I’d like to know those reasons, and why those reasons correlate with race. For example, perhaps US welfare laws had eligibility requirements that reduced payments if there were two adults in the household–effectively encouraging kids to be raised in a single-parent household. These laws may have had especially strong effects on less affluent people. And a history of discrimination may have caused blacks to be less affluent in general than whites. If you subscribe to this view, then you’d conclude that we had circumstances that has a disproportionately negatively consequence for black children, and those consequences arose for reasons that had NOTHING TO DO WITH THE MERITS OF THOSE INDIVIDUAL KIDS. Perhaps you could fault the parents–but unless you subscribing to collectivist thinking, the sins of the parents cannot be attributed to the child.
On the flip side, if the Hebrew tribe developed a religion that required males to read, this might cause people who could not afford to learn to read, or who lacked the inclination to learn, to leave for other tribes, and might discourage men who could not read from marrying into that tribe. Or if this tribe faced a lot of persecution and vulnerability to plunder, members might develop a bias for human capital over physical capital. Kids raised in this tribe would acquire these cultural norms. And that fact would have NOTHING TO DO WITH THE MERITS OF THOSE INDIVIDUAL KIDS. Perhaps you could credit the parents–but unless you subscribe to collectivist thinking, the merits of the parents cannot be attributed to the child.
We are all products of cultures we did not choose. Clearly, slaves grew up in an environment that was thrust upon them. Less clearly, EVERYONE grew up in an environment that was thrust upon them. To the extent that we observe patterns that correlate with race (or class, or shoe size), I expect to find a reason. One possible reason for these correlations is racism (or classism, or shoe-size-ism). I don’t know that that’s an accurate reason–but it helps to have a theory to beat a theory. I’m open to other theories. I’m less open to the statement, “We observe vast disparities spanning tens of millions of people over centuries, but golly, no one has any idea how it happened–except that we’re sure it isn’t racism!”
Yeah, that was Nozick’s distinction.
Why not? If we acknowledge that chance (including circumstances of birth and innate qualities, but also things such as unforeseeable natural disasters) is not a matter of justice or injustice, then I see no injustice in government intervening on this basis (say, by taxing or subsidizing).The standard concern about taxation is that it alters people’s choices. But taxation does not alter a person’s choice to be born into a given circumstance, ‘cuz people don’t choose to be born; ergo, there’s no detrimental reliance.
Hayek repeatedly acknoweldged his support for a social safety net. That leaves the question of identifying the range of risks to be compensated by that net (and to be financed by the population at large). Surely the vagaries of a person’s birth are no more predictable, and no less consequential, than the vagaries of a natural disaster. Why should a social safety net defray one risk, but not the other?
Kevin Corcoran
May 16 2025 at 9:09am
He identifies numerous reasons – after all, we don’t live in a univariate universe! Life would be much simpler if we did, and I’ve complained mightily about it, but to no avail – the universe continues to be multivariate. We’ll see which of us is still standing in the end though.
You cite a number of different potential reasons for why, say, various social situations and policy choices could explain why black households have worse outcomes across various dimensions compared to white. One of the things Sowell does is look at data across all racial and ethnic groups, internationally, across centuries. And there are numerous examples of groups that had all the various disadvantages you mentioned (plus more!), imposed for generations, but still managed to produce better outcomes. So part of Sowell’s point is that all those factors you cite are neither necessary nor sufficient to explain differential outcomes – it only seems that way when people heavily cherry pick.
Then you’ll be pleased to know that’s not what my view is, nor is it Sowell’s nor is it the view of anyone I can easily think of (although I’m sure if one scours the internet you can find some example of someone who thinks that, unfortunately, just as one can find people who really do believe the Earth is flat.)
Yes, Hayek did advocate for a social safety net. However, he emphatically did not advocate for a social safety net that would be designed to offset “vagaries of a person’s birth” and any unequal outcomes that might be derived from such. His view of a social safety net was dedicated to establishing a minimum floor, not about equalizing outcomes (or even reducing the inequality of outcomes). As for why he said that – well, in all the places where he did advocate for establishing a safety net, he also explained, in great detail, why redistribution of the sort you’re talking about is to be opposed. Given that you’ve read enough Hayek to know he supported establishing a floor, you should also be familiar with the rest of his argument as well.
Scott Sumner
May 16 2025 at 1:21pm
“Then feel free to regard me as a far right nut.”
Hitler argued that the economic success of Jewish people was evidence of unfairness. Sorry, I’m not buying that argument.
Incomes differ for all sorts of reasons. Some recent immigrant groups to America earn far more than other immigrant groups. Is that a problem?
nobody.really
May 16 2025 at 2:49pm
I’ll bet Hitler also argued that 2+2=4. That tells me nothing about the merits of the argument.
What a great insight: Incomes differ for REASONS. Do disperate earnings represent a problem? Well, if one group’s income is higher ‘cuz they’re stealing from another group, yeah, some people might regard that as a problem. Reasons matter.
nobody.really
May 15 2025 at 2:14pm
“Perhaps it is best to view some patterned principles of distributive justice as rough rules of thumb meant to approximate the general results of applying the principle of rectification of injustice. For example, lacking much historical information, and assuming (1) that victims of injustice generally do worse than they otherwise would and (2) that those from the least well-off group in the society have the highest probabilities of being the (descendants of) victims of the most serious injustice who are owed compensation by those who benefited from the injustices (assumed to be those better off, though sometimes the perpetrators will be others in the worst-off group), then a rough rule of thumb for rectifying injustices might seem to be the following: organize society so as to maximize the position of whatever group ends up least well-off in the society…. In the absence of … a treatment [of the principle of rectification] applied to a particular society, one cannot use the analysis and theory presented here to condemn any particular scheme of transfer payments, unless it is clear that no consideration of rectification of injustice would apply to justify it. Although to introduce socialism as the punishment for our sins would be to go too far, past injustices might be so great as to make necessary in the short run a more extensive state in order to rectify them.”
Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974) at 231.
steve
May 15 2025 at 11:42pm
He falls far short of making a real proposal. “organize society”? Maximize their position? Pretty vague to me. Does that mean affirmative action is OK or not OK? Can you pass laws to try to remedy the past injustice? The problem with these vague recommendations is that it means when attempts are made to remedy the past those attempts always get criticized. Tell me what is OK.
“. But if this remains the dominant pattern for tens of millions of black households and tens of millions of white households for centuries, what other conclusion can we draw? ”
We are talking about the US. In the US there was 200 years of slavery followed by 100 years of Jim Crow. Even after the CRA was passed it wasn’t enforced in many states for a decade or two. If your grandparents and their grandparents and their grandparents never knew what it is like to be able to hold a real job, to compete, to have a real education it doesnt seem likely that, on average, you are going to compete as well against someone who had all of those advantages, plus they start out with all the money, all the land and all of the business ownership. (Ok, not all, but almost all.) Again, as I noted above, econ studies seem to show over and over that recovery of human capital in particular takes a long time.
Steve
steve
May 15 2025 at 11:45pm
Oops, forgot. Are you seriously comparing chattel slavery with the complete loss of liberty with being more o less handsome or am I misunderstanding?
Steve
nobody.really
May 16 2025 at 4:02am
I suspect this remark was intended for Kevin Corcoran. But speaking for myself: Yes, I would compare the consequences of being born into chattel slavery with the consequences of being born less handsome. Both are circumstances that the baby does not choose and is powerless to avoid–and thus I find no moral hazard arising from providing a social safety net to ameliorate the resulting harms.
steve
May 15 2025 at 10:46am
I guess you can take the Civil Rights Act in isolation. I suspect you would prefer to do that, but many of us dont see it that way. Someone used the poker analogy where whites and blacks had been playing poker for 300 years but white people were cheating. All of a sudden we decided there would be no cheating but the white people had all of the chips. Besides having all of the actual money and capital the black population had much less human capital. Some of what happened as a result of the CRA was an attempt to address that. Was it fair to do that? Was it fair to not do something to try to address it? Depends upon your POV, but its hard to deny that if you make no attempt to address it that massive inequality would remain the norm and that would not be based upon merit but rather due to the lack of resources missing from the prior 300 years of cheating.
I would note that the CR ACT specifically says actions to rectify past discrimination may not be required but it doesnt prohibit them. I would also note that I haven’t really seen libertarians address this issue very well IMO. The attitude is generally that the past is the past. Oops. What libertarians actually practice, it looks like to me, is support of the collectivist idea that a large majority can significantly harm a minority and then never suffer any consequences for that harm. To be clear, I am also not sure how to address the issue but ignoring it doesnt seem correct.
Steve
nobody.really
May 19 2025 at 2:07am
Thanks to all for a stimulating discussion, as ever. Permit me to consolidate, revise, and extend some remarks.
Scott Sumner remarked that “income disparities alone are not prima facie evidence of injustice.” This remark triggers two independent lines of questions: 1) How should we define justice? And 2) does a recurring pattern of correlation imply SOME causation somewhere—even if we don’t know what it is at the moment?
1) How should we define justice? Nozick offers one concept of justice—but then states “In the absence of … a treatment [of the principle of rectification] applied to a particular society, one cannot use the analysis and theory presented here to condemn any particular scheme of transfer payments, unless it is clear that no consideration of rectification of injustice would apply to justify it.” Characteristic Nozick, this language is tough sledding. But I think he sez that the burden of proof is on those who would object to transfer payments to prove that no rectification of injustice is implicated.
In any event, I’m fonder of Rawls’s theory of justice: We should strive to design society to achieve the kind of social safety net that we guess people would have negotiated had they not known what role they would occupy in the world.
In either case, I realize that my primary focus has been on identifying the appropriate parameters of a social safety net, rather than abstract questions of justice. In that sense, I moved the goalposts on Sumner.
Kevin Corcoran remarks:
Good point—both that Hayek valued this kind of social safety net, and that this is the appropriate kind of net to value. But while Hayek spoke of minimum income, I don’t recall him discussing how to measure that income.
At least conceptually, I’d take into account all kinds of variables—including, for example, people’s relative degrees of attractiveness. And in practice, government DOES take into account many variables other than income as conventionally understood; government merely creates separate safety nets for different variable. Thus, we have some safety nets associated with wealth, some associated with health, some associated with natural disasters, some associated with membership in a suspect category , etc. Ideally, we’d combine them into a single safety net, and subsidize only those people who fell below the prescribed minimum “income.” After all, does it make sense for government to subsidize the retirements of the affluent, or to subsidize repairs to rich people’s houses following a natural disaster?
For purposes of designing a Hayekian social saftey net, you can agree or not with broadening the concept of income used as a measure of eligiblity. You can agree or not with combining all safety net programs for the purpose of restricting assistance solely to those living below the prescribed minimum “income.” But here’s the larger question: For purposes of designing a social safety net, should we care about the REASONS people fall below the floor, thereby triggering eligibility for public assistance? This brings us back to the second question:
2) Does a recurring pattern of correlation imply SOME causation somewhere—even if we don’t know what it is at the moment? I still believe it does, and I would enjoy hearing more thoughts on the question.
I agree that correlation between A and B does not mean that A caused B ‘cuz we can’t tell if A caused B, or B caused A, or if they were both caused by a third variable, or if the correlation was mere chance. I’m arguing that a correlation spanning tens of millions of people over centuries effectively excludes the idea that the correlation is a function of mere chance. To reject that conclusion would be to reject all science. After all, my cat repeatedly tests whether my pencil will fall to the floor when pushed off the desk—but this lengthy list of experimental results produces nothing more than a long correlation. How do we know that it’s not chance, and that the next time my cat pushes my pencil off the desk, it won’t fly up to the ceiling?
Scientists often adopt a standard that that causation has been demonstrated if an experimental outcome would be less than 5% likely to have occurred by chance. So what are the odds that the average wealth of black households would be less than half the average wealth of white households over centuries?
If we are willing to acknowledge that a long-enough correlation DOES imply causation, even if we don’t know what the causation is, then we can conclude that disparities between black and white household wealth/income have causes. On this point, Kevin Corcoran remarks—
I wonder if this misses my point. The rebuttal I’m waiting to hear is that the tens of millions of members of Group A endured the same or worse treatment than the tens of millions of members of Group B over centuries, but performed better than Group B FOR NO IDENTIFIABLE REASON; as far as anyone knows, it was all pure chance. Until I hear that, I remain inclined to believe that longstanding disparities between large groups arise from reasons, not from mere chance.
To clarify: The point of this inquiry is not to affix blame; to the contrary, I’m trying demonstrate determinism. Where large numbers of people have no control over the group to which the are assigned, and we observe radically disparate performance between the groups over centuries, that leads me to suspect that group membership heavily influenced the outcome for the individuals within the group.
That said–
As we discussed above, for purposes of designing a Hayekian social safety net, do causes matter? Maybe not.
The obvious concern is moral hazard: By giving money to the needy, you reduce their need to try to escape their circumstances. But should that matter? If we want to make public assistance depend upon the reasons that someone is needy, then we may need to unpack the centuries of causes related to the relative wealth of black households and white households (among many other things). But if we don’t make public assistance depend upon the reasons that someone is needy, then do we care what they do with the assistance?
Maybe that’s enough for tonight….
Anon
May 21 2025 at 8:55pm
What studies show the slow recovery of human capital- I assume you mean intergenerationally? Are you thinking of the experience of Asian Americans who in many ways were discriminated against worse than jim crow in the same time period and came here with nothing and now have the highest socioeconomic status? How do you explain that? Pro-Asian bias?
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