The Future and Its Enemies

While in vacation mode, I'm still reading.  Today's entry is about my airplane book, The Future and Its Enemies:  The Growing Conflict Over Creativity, Enterprise and Progress by Virginia Postrel.  I know I'm about two years late to this book.  I've been meaning to read it for some time, and ran across it in a bargain bin near my sister's house in Colorado. 

Virginia has a key idea which clarifies some of the difficulties we have in analyzing  polticial cleavages along a left-right split.  She speaks of dynamists and stasists.  In her description, dynamists are willing to embrace the messy nature of unguided social and technological change, while stasists do not.  In her terminology stasists come in two major varieties--reactionaries and technocrats.  Reactionaries wish to control change by reversing it and returning to a previous (and quite possibly mythical) golden age.  Patrick Buchanan is used throughout the book to give examples of reactionary thinking.  I think the choice of 'stasist' is revealed to be a bit poor when Virginia goes on to describe technocrats.  Technocrats attempt to tightly control change, often with the idea that an elite number of top-down experts can efficiently control and direct the important changes in society. 

Our new awareness of how dynamic the world really is has united two types of stasists who would have once been bitter enemies:  reactionaries, whose central value is stability, and technocrats, whose central value is control.  Reactionaries seek to reverse change, restoring the literal or imagined past and holding it in place.  A few decades ago, they aimed their criticism at Galbraithean technocracy.  Today they attack dynamism, often in alliance with their formier adversaries.  Technocrats, for their part, promise to manage change, centrally directing "progress" according to a predictable plan.  (That plan may be informed by reactionary values, making the categories soewhat blurry;  although they are more technocrats than true reactionaries, (William) Bennett and Galston inhabit the border regions).

I think this concept is useful to think about, but I suspect it is more distracting to describe both concepts as adhering to stasis than it would be if she called it something else.  The choice is made somewhat more understandable because many technocrats are utopian--they desire a beautiful endpoint.  Both technocrats and reactionaries believe that they know or can find the one best way to do things.  They then attempt to use the government to enforce that way of doing things.  Thinking about this helps me to clarify some of the strange twists that modern American politics takes.  The bulk of conservatives are dynamist with respect to economic thinking.  They have a split with respect to social issues.  Some of them are dynamist, a few are technocratic, and many are reactionary.  Some of those who are reactionary are also reactionary with respect to economic issues (e.g. Buchanan).  Liberals tend to by dynamist with respect to social organization.  They have a split in the economic sphere.  Many are technocratic, many are reactionary, and a few are dynamist in orientation. 

This post is about to get rather long because I intend to use extensive quotes.  So I am hiding it below the extended body.

Virginia offers the case of silicone-gel breast implants to illustrate the technocrat/reactionary alliance:

The story of silicone-gel breast implants illustrates how technocracy can be captured to achieve reactionary ends.  Breast implants offend every reactionary impulse.  There is nothing traditional about enlarging one's breasts; the very act defies fate, asserts individual will.  Implants are highly arificial--overt attempts to overthrow nature, to use the mind to reshape the body, to alter genetic destiny without giving a good reason.  They serve no social purpose or "vital need."  They would not exist without the pursuit of profit, the ambition of technology, and the instinct for self-improvement.  And they portend an unknown future, filled with even strager biological manipulations.

But the scientific evidence that implants cause serious health problems is nonexistant.  For policymakers devoted to pure science, that would end the discussion.  Nonetheless, in 1992 the FDA imposed a moratorium on the sale of most silicone-gel breast implants, essentially limiting their use to postmastectomy reconstruction, and only then if patients agreed to participate in long-term clinical studies.  The moratorium was driven partly by the bereaucratic ambition to exercise greater control over medical devices.  But it also represented the culmination of a campaign by feminists and antitechnology activists, notably Sidney Wolfe of the Health Resarch Group, who did not approve of the devices and who promoted the notion that they posed serious dangers.  The moratorium's result was devastating.  By feeding litigation against their manufacturers, it guaranteed that the implants would thenceforth be too risky to sell in the United States.  [Such suits put Dow-Corning into bankruptcy even though it has never been even strongly suggested through any scientific process (much less proven)that silicone-gel implants cause any serious health problems--ed.]

Writing in the New England Journal of Medicine , FDA commissioner David Kessler justified his decision on technocratic grounds:  "The legal standard is not that devices must be proved unsafe before the FDA can protect patients against their use.  Rather, the law requires a positive demonstration of safety."  By not banning the implants outright, however, the agency had "preserved the option of access to silicone breast implants for patients whose need was greatest....The FDA has judged that, for those patients, the risk-benefit ratio permits the use of the implant under carefully controlled conditions." 

With its determination of "need" and its risk-benefit calculations, the agency's decision had a scientific aura.  Kessler scornfully dismissed critics, including the journal's executive editor, Marcia Angell, who criticized the FDA as paternalist, even sexist, for implicitly assuming no benefit to breast augmentation.  "If members of our society were empowered to make their own decisions about the entire range of products for which the FDA has responsibility...then the wole rationale for the agency would cease to exist," wrote Kessler.  "These restrictions on the use of silicone gel implants are not based on any judgment about values," he said.  But of course they were.  Otherwise, why differentiate between beneficial reconstructive surgery and frivolous augmentation?  As Angell later noted, "In waving aside the benefits of breast implants for most women who had them, Kessler appeared to be introducing an impossibly high standard for the devices:  since there were no benefits, there should be no risks."  Wearing the mantle of neutral, technocratic science, Kessler imposed reactionary values.

This passage is especially interesting in that more than ten years later, silicone-gel plaintiffs (those who have the biggest interest in showing problems) still cannot show medical risk. 

I think that Virginia correctly discerns one of the key differences between the dynamic and stasis views is located around the issue of tacit knowledge.  Technocrats believe that tacit knowledge can be ignored in their high-level plans.  Reactionaries try to limit the application of knowledge to that which can be mastered by individuals.  Dynamists believe that the systems of human interaction can embed useful knowledge which is beyond any individual understanding on a macro level. 

We all know many things we can't explain.  Some are basic and widely held:  how to breathe, sleep, and walk;  the meaning of words and tones of voice'  the structure of sentences.  Breaking down such routine human activities into their component parts, understanding how they work, and uncovering the knowledge hidden in ordinary life is the stuff of specialized sciences unfamiliar to most people.  For the rest of us, the knowledge we share remains unarticulated.

So, too, does much of the knowledge we do not share.  A swimmer cannot say how he stays afloat, nor an editor truly account for what makes an interesting, appropriate article.  Artists know their art in ways they could never define.  Laughter is universally human, but what we find amusing varies widely by time and place, culture and generation, personality and circumstance.  Explaining a joke is the fastest way to kill it. 

The personal ads all sound alike not because tastes are homogenous but because the important differences are so hard to express....

Also:

"The hallmark of modern consciousness is that it recognizes no element of mind in the so-called inert objects that surround us," writes Morris Berman in The Reenchantment of the World.  In the sense that he means it, Berman is quite correct; modernity is antianimistic.  But we do in fact live in an enchanted world, surrounded by objects brimming with intelligence--the objects of our own making, objects whose "element of mind" is so great no single person can pssess it all.  The wonder of the bread machine and the piano is that they contain so much knowledge, available even to the ignorant. 

This cuts to the core of dynamist economic thought.  There is vast wisdom in the interactions of human beings that cannot be easily captured at high level.  As Rubin says:  "The goal of policy in the coming century should be to encourage rather than suppress competition and innovation in finance,"  and as Virginia says about that: "...protecting the soundness of the system without guaranteeing any particular institution or outcome." 

Here we come to one of the key problems, which isn't adequately addressed in the book.  Virginia writes that a key to dynamism is:

Conserving only the underlying stable rules, while letting individual decision making drive change, is a concept that a century of technocracy has made foreign to most people.  It does not fit neatly into the comfortable old left-right dichotomy and does not line up with technocratic assumptions about the powers and uses of government.  It has a hard time making its case, because it promises only general patterns of imporvement--spontaneous order and discovery--not specific results.

I agree with her on this point, but then we come to a key problem.  Which are the underlying stable rules which need to be conserved?  Her example on the trouble of directed science is correct.  As put by Dyson:

Whenever things seem to be moving smoothly along a predictable path, some unexpected twist changes the rules of the game and makes the old predictions irrelevant....A nineteenth-century development program aimed at the mechanical reproduction of music might have produced a superbly engineered music box or Pianola, but it would never have imagined a transistor radio [or CD--ed.] or subsidized the work of Maxwell on the physics of the electromagnetic field which made the transistor radio possible.

If properly nurtured I fully believe that Postrel's view of dynamism can be very helpful.  But I'm not sure how to 'properly nurture' without falling into the technocratic trap. 

Comments

[sidereal]

Popper touches on similar ideas regarding the axioms (the scientific method, disprovability, liberty, etc) around which unorganized social and political evolution should orbit. One of his basic ideas was that you should never permit a social structure to be forced on a people with the argument that a little suffering now will lead to greater happiness later, since humans are not omniscient enough to correctly predict the eventual happiness, and because plans and goals change so frequently that you generally just move from one suffering to the next.

If you liked Postrel's book, you'll probably enjoy most of Popper.

[bob mcmanus]

"does not line up with technocratic assumptions about the powers and uses of government."

Well this stuff is fun to play with theoretically, but in practice only Postrel and libertarians would not grab ideas and prescriptions out selectively.

Example:Should the economic goal of gov't be positive GDP growth, full employment, or low inflation? Or Other? Whichever decision is made favors some group over another. I think the question itself is technocratic and stasist, and perhaps the gov't should not have macro-economic goals and policies. But I doubt I will find anyone in a position of power who would not choose at least one of the three, and declare that the existence of the state itself depends on proper management. Even a Milton Friedman.

[Bernard Yomtov]

Personally, I find this sort of categorization annoying and useless. Why the implicit assumption that any given person treats all situations of a certain type with a "dynamicist" or "technocratic" or "reactionary" or whatever approach?

And what is the basis for the implicit claim of superiority for Postrel's version of dynamicism? In scientific and economic terms the world has made a rather large amount of progress in the past century that she derides so glibly as stupidly technocratic. What is her evidence that things could have been so much better?

Of course, I will note that the market seems to have done an excellent job of valuing her book.

[notyou]

I kinda got sidetracked at the paragraph that begins "Virginia has a key idea which clarifies some of the difficulties we have in analyzing polticial cleavages along a left-right split" and couldn't really concentrate on what followed, wondering as I was if Mr Holsclaw has a personal relationship with Virginia Postrel, which relationship might justify his referring to her by her first name instead of her last, as is customary with published writers and thinkers of her rank (although the context in which she is referred to by her first name -- a book review for a public readership consisting mostly of people who do not know Virginia Postrel on a personal basis -- would seem to require a formal mode of address, despite any relationship, suggesting Mr Holsclaw may be unaware of the custom), or, I wondered, do the persistent references to "Virginia" instead of "Postrel" indicate that Mr Holsclaw has succumbed to a sexism he may not be aware of, one that allows us to soften women public figures by calling them by their informal first names rather than their formal surnames, because coziness and informality are nicer, more ladylike and we don't want our women to be hard, not even our women athletes, who soon become Venuses and Mias, Serenas and Chrissys and Lisas.

[bob mcmanus]

Good point, Mr You, I am often uncertain about how to address or reference people in blog comments. Should it be Mr von? Mr bifast? I have sometimes used Slart, slarti, Sebastian, Holsclaw, Mr Holsclaw, or simply "the ilk over there" I doubt sexism has much to do with it, although Ms Zoy might differ.

On another note, I live in the Dallas Area, and the one I will refer to as "the former editor of Reason magazine" also lives in the Dallas area. You may draw your own conclusions.

[liberal japonicus]

But this is a separate question of how one addresses people on the blog versus how one refers to people outside of the blog.

The slart versus slarti question is interesting. Because slarti is contained within Slartibartfast, I don't think it is disrespectful, but I find it distasteful to have Edward referred to as 'eddie', especially when it is not a direct address, but as a third person reference. However, other posters don't have names that lend themselves to diminuation (vonnie? hilzoyie? Sebbie?) I remember someone referring to Sebastian as seabass, but I think it was a one off thing.

[Factory]

There are two types of ppl in the world, Aers and Bers. Aers think of the world in terms of rules, Bers think of the world in terms of outcomes. Aers would think nothing of not telling someone they are going to have a piano falling on their head if there was a sign proclaiming 'Be quiet or leave'. Bers would of course call out, since they think of outcomes.
It's follows from this, that Aers are natural supporters of governments, after all governments make lots of rules.
So in summing up if you don't want ppl having pianos falling on their head, you must be philosophically against the government.

(If you hadn't noticed, I'm a bit annoyed at all the crappy dichotomies around the blogosphere)

[notyou]

There's a difference, of course, between blog comments, which are somewhat informal, and blog writeups, particularly book reviews, which should approach the formality of other published writing. How close? At least as far as sticking with formal names when referring to the author of the book under discussion.

"notyou" is fine. On the rare occasion that I might need to refer to Sebastian Holsclaw in the third person, I expect I'll use his entire blogname, "Sebastian Holsclaw." It's a lot to type, but if that's what he wants to be called, so be it.

I do not think that Sebastian Holsclaw is "sexist." I do think that we refer to women informally in formal contexts more often than we do men, perhaps reflecting underlying assumptions ("language artifacts"?)... about gender. Sebastian Holsclaw's use of "Virginia" stood out because it's a beautiful name and because it reminds me of parental condescension.

I'm not very good a drawing conclusions. Exactly how large is this "Dallas area" you mention? Would one properly refer to it as "a cozy (even tidy) Dallas area?"

[hilzoy]

How to refer to people: in blog comments, I think 'by the handle they've chosen, or an abbreviation' is right. (I call Slartibartfast a shorter version of his handle, generally, because it's so long. Likewise, at times, lj or Jes.) People I don't virtually know, and am not actually addressing: by their name (or handle, in the case of bloggers who use one.) Last name if I don't know them; first if I'm on a first name basis.

But I'm not Ms. Zoy. hilzoy is a handle I chose when I was making my first baby steps into commenting on blogs, and I chose it because all and only people who know me very well would know it was me. The story behind it: I once wrote a letter to Ted Kennedy (who was, at the time, my Senator), and got a letter back addressed to 'Mr. Hilzoy Bole', which is wrong on just about every imaginable count. I and my siblings thought this was very funny, and we made up a whole biography of Mr. Bole, and then my sibs began, unfortunately, to actually call me hilzoy. Luckily they stopped, more or less, but it was a standing joke for long enough, and hilzoy is a strange enough name, that I figured that, as I said, anyone who knew me well would know it was me. So, if you must, Ms./Mr. Bole.

[bob mcmanus]

"a cozy (even tidy) Dallas area?"

Expansive but negotiable.

Actual practice in the blogosphere, even in posts, is rather informal. Matthew Yglesias is referred to as Matthew, Matt, MY, or, by his friend and neighbour Will Wilkinson, Yglesias. Mr Paul Cella refers to me as Mr McManus, and I respond in kind. Professors DeLong and Reynolds are usually called Brad and Glenn. Common practice is where both names are given, both names can be used. I would consider "MS Postrel" to be a little hostile, and Virgina would only be avoided where it would be insufficiently descriptive.

Bloggers can correct me if I am wrong.

I myself have answered to Bob, McManus, Robert, Bob M, Bobby, Booby, and Boob but I have no pride when receiving attention.

[liberal japonicus]

Interesting. I would think that Booby or Boob is a bit much, and I hope that if I caught it, I would call a foul. As for me, I don't have any problem with LJ, but on another board, there was a poster who consistently referred to me as LibJap, which even though was simply a short version, I thought was coloring outside the lines.

[Sebastian Holsclaw]

I actually went for Virginia because that is how she is typically refered to in the posts I have read on her. We have no personal relationship. Personally I would rather be refered to as Sebastian if the name is too long to type as a whole, but I understand that Postrel might have been more appropriate. I'm not sure why I choose first names instead of last names. When talking about Kevin Drum, Matthew Yglesias, Brad DeLong, or Daniel Drezner, (all people I respect) I tend to use first names if the context is such that it could be recognized. When speaking of William F. Buckley, George Bush or Jeanne Kirkpatrick, I tend to use last names (perhaps because that is the more common media usage for those media personalities).

[Jesurgislac]

I tend to use surnames if it's a public figure with whom I have no personal connection - and I try to do it consistently, feeling that it's only fair. I don't call George W. Bush (who has to get referred to by full name more often than I'd like, if there's any confusion possible between him and his dad) "Dubya" or "Shrub": I don't call Saddam Hussein "Saddam" or "Saddass", which I have seen done.

On a blog, I tend to think the most important thing is to refer to someone in a way that they are clearly identifiable - and I do switch to "Seb" sometimes, meaning no disrespect, it's just that sometimes even "Sebastian" is too much to type!

I actually break down Jesurgislac into Je Surgis Lac, but it got shortened to "Jes" within weeks, and I don't have a problem with that. It's a label, not a name.

In real life I have two given names, and I habitually use the second, not the first. I don't mind "Ms Lac", and I don't mind "Surgis", from anyone, but people who call me "Je" out of the blue get a blank look and a "No, I don't use that".

[Jesurgislac]

And, since we seem to have kind of drifted off the point - good review, Sebastian. Made me feel I'd like to read the book.

[Bernard Yomtov]

There are those who agree with factory and those who don't.

[McDuff]

There are two types of people in this world: people who think the world can be split into two types of people, and everyone else.

More seriously, I have always tended to think that the biggest problems with categorisations of people into groups like "conservatives" and "progressives" or "stasists" and "dynamists" is not that they are strictly false, but that they represent types of behaviours, not types of people. Any given human being is a mish-mash of conflicting interests, not a purely refined crystalline example of one way of thinking. Some have more from column A than column B, but most of us have a little bit from everywhere, depending on the context.

In this vein, I think Postrel's (playing it safe here) summary (and if I have caught the wrong end of the stick from the review, feel free to correct me as to her actual views) that the 20th century was a "century of technocracy," i.e. of central control run wild over the advantages of "dynamism," is largely incorrect. We spent the last century being more "dynamic" than we ever have been in our history, in overthrowing not only dictators but also ways of thinking. Not, of course, that previous centuries were missing their dose of healthy turmoil and regicide, but the point is that we have changed the world more since 1900 than we had managed in any 100 year gap previously. We've gone from wired telephones for the rich to cell phones for the masses.

Of course there has been "technocracy" in the last century, but, just as all these types of behaviour can be found more-or-less consistently in individual humans, so too is it hard to classify any given culture as being inherently stasist or dynamist, overly central or individual. Always, as Sebastian alludes to at the end, there is a balance to be struck between the overthrow of the old way and the maintenance of enough structure to enable the new one to take root. A society that has a central structure too dense will strangle itself to death, but go too far the other way and you disassemble society.

A centralised body designed for the reproduction of pianolas certainly may not have envisioned the transistor radio or the webcast, but that misses the point. That's not what such a body was there to do, nor what centralised bodies are good at. By making us choose between a false dichotomy and pick either one or the other, Postrel puts us in a situation here of thinking that life is at once more simple and more complicated than it really is. We don't get to pick between one or the other, we simply have to balance both in amusing and sometimes illogical ways based on nothing more scientific than what seems broadly best at the time. On the other hand, we don't have to futz around trying to deal with the bits of the world that don't fit the theory du jour, we can just use whatever theory is appropriate for the season.

[Bernard Yomtov]

McDuff,

Good comment. The world is complicated. People are complicated. These kinds of categorization are, in my opinion, designed to do two things:

1. Eliminate the need for a lot of thinking: Jack is an Aer, to use Factory's excellent terminology, so he will always do thus and so. Jill is a Ber, so she will do otherwise. No need to consider the case, or to ascribe any intelligence to Jack or Jill.

2. Glorify one's own tendencies and beliefs. Postrel is a "dynamist." Wonderful. All good things are a result of dynamic behavior, not stuffy rules or incomprehensible technical analyses.

[Sebastian Holsclaw]

McDuff is correct that these kind of books identify tendencies, not crystalline avatars of perfection. But identifying tendencies can be very useful. In talking about technological progress, for instance, dynamist-stasist seems more useful than left-right.

[Bernard Yomtov]

In talking about technological progress, for instance, dynamist-stasist seems more useful than left-right.

Well, left-right certainly isn't very useful. But I assume you mean that the issue here is whether technological progress is best achieved through some sort of central guidance ("technocrats") or by animal-spirited entrepreneurs ("dynamists").

Why not both? Indeed, why is it not the case that some forms of technological progress are best achieved one way, some the other. To assume that the entrepreneurial approach is inherently superior is to assume that technology, or more broadly scientific knowledge, is only useful if it has commercial value, and then only when that commercial value is near enough and clear enough to attract private profit-seeking resources. But that is patently untrue, just as it is untrue that there exists a group of sages who ought to be given total authority to direct all our scientific efforts.

I guess I'm just not clear on what point Postrel is making, or you are endorsing. A great deal of our technological progress has been the result of government sponsored research - inherently technocratic. (This includes, of course, the very medium we are using to communicate). What's wrong with that?

[??????????????????]

whatever dude

[??????????????????]

cool book though

[thebizofknowledge]

I stumbled across your blog while I was doing some online research. I found this a truly fascinating discussion which raised some thought provoking questions, especially as we are clearly becoming more technology-dependent, not less.

[Gary Farber]

The above comment from "thebizofknowledge" is a subtle form of spam, in that the link in the ID goes to a blog full of advertising, and thus possibly increases Googlerank, etc. (I'm not sure it does, but since the spammer surely thinks it does, I'd delete it.)