Obsidian Wings

Mark Kleiman Is Annoyed, And I Am Perplexed

by hilzoy

I have a lot of respect for Mark Kleiman, and one of the reasons is that he generally stops, thinks, and considers the evidence before forming an opinion. Not in this post, though. He posts an article by a woman who is looking for a kidney donor over the internet. The article itself is thoughtful and moving. Above it, Kleiman writes:

"I missed the essay below when it first appeared in the New York Times, even though the author, Sally Satel, is an old friend. It's a story about the power of the Internet to facilitate good deeds.

Naturally, the "bioethicists" are against it. This reinforces my basic belief that "bioethics" should be punishable by prison time.

Note that the current organ donation system, of which the bioethics crowd is inordinately proud because it's so impersonally "fair," eliminates any incentive for families or communities to mobilize themselves to get their members registered as organ donors, because there's no relationship between who donates organs and who receives them. It would be wonderful, of course, if everyone in the world regarded everyone else in the world as infinitely valuable. But since that's not the case, I don't see either the moral or the practical case against trying to mobilize particularist emotions in the service of altruistic actions. To focus on the relatively trivial question of who gets the inadequate number of cadaveric organs donated, rather than the vital question of how many people sign up as donors, strikes me as reflecting an astonishing degree of moral blindness.

But of course I shouldn't be astonished. This is the sort of reasoning that dominates the pseudo-field of bioethics, and has, by infiltrating the Institutional Review Board process, put a serious crimp in both medical and social-scientific research."

Some problems with this:

The Blame Game

by hilzoy

Via Atrios:

"Encouraging responsibility is not a search for scapegoats, it is a call to conscience. And though it requires sacrifice, it brings a deeper fulfillment. We find the fullness of life not only in options, but in commitments. And we find that children and community are the commitments that set us free.

Our public interest depends on private character, on civic duty and family bonds and basic fairness, on uncounted, unhonored acts of decency which give direction to our freedom.

Sometimes in life we are called to do great things. But as a saint of our times has said, every day we are called to do small things with great love. The most important tasks of a democracy are done by everyone.

I will live and lead by these principles: to advance my convictions with civility, to pursue the public interest with courage, to speak for greater justice and compassion, to call for responsibility and try to live it as well."
-- George W. Bush

***

Matt Yglesias has a very good post:

"The Blame Game: A brief comment on the subject of this game, which, apparently, it's a bad idea to play. First off -- it's not a game. Assigning blame is a deadly serious matter. It's also integral to any sort of viable social practice. The criminal justice system relies on assigning blame to various people and punishing them. So does the civil tort system, and so does the non-criminal regulatory system. So, for that matter, does any kind of coherent business or non-profit enterprise -- when mistakes are made, you need to decide who's to blame for them, and ensure that the culpable are sanctioned. If you don't identify and punish the blameworthy, then people will have no reason to try to do their jobs correctly.

Politics is the same way. There's a very serious principle-agent problem associated with public policy -- the interests of government officials tend to diverge quite sharply from those of the citizens they're supposed to be serving. This is why dictatorships tend, in practice, to ill-serve their citizens and be beset by corruption, malgovernment, and all kinds of other problems. In democracies we try, through elections and the ability of elected officials to fire their subordinates, to align those incentives. The way that works is that when bad things happen, people are supposed to blame someone, and then elect someone else to replace him. For that to do any good, you need to "play the blame game," which is to say find out who's actually responsible."

Matt is absolutely right. And since thinking about blame, responsibility and guilt is part of my day job (a fact which, oddly enough, has never gotten me eliminated from a jury pool during voir dire), I thought I'd add a few things. And to try to eliminate any confusion arising from the mixed motives people might have in blaming others, I want to start with what we are doing when we blame ourselves.