Scientist explains conservatism's success

Rod wrote: "Democrats, with their secular, rationalistic orientation, consistently fail to understand what motivates most voters, most of the time, and therefore fail to meet deeply felt emotional needs."

First, what do you mean by "secular?" Millions of Democrats are deeply religious, for instance, Al Sharpton is a minister.

Second, I'm not especially interested in the CAUSES of people voting Republican. However, in at least the overwhelming majority of elections held in the US today, if not all of the elections held in the US today, people OUGHT to vote for the Democratic candidate. Democratic candidates tend to have much better positions on the issues, for example, that we should have universal health care.

But the way the world SHOULD BE often is very different from the way the world IS. For example, millions of people supported Hitler.

correction - I checked and saw that last time around, I'd voted for the guy's predecessor, the current Wisconsin AG. But the new guy seems like an okay guy, so it's all good.

As Derbyshire pointed out on the link I posted awhile back, group-identification is a trait like height that varies across populations. I'm inclined to agree; in other words, some people are "hardwired" to be more "Durkheimian", while others are more "Millsian" by nature. Logically, the Durkheimians and Millsians will tend to form their own groups--what we here call "conservatives" and "liberals", or in political terms "Republicans" and "Democrats".

The problem is that the self-selection tends to amplify both good and negative traits. Conservatives hold to the group-identity, hierarchically structured family model, which is good in some ways (think Mayberry) and bad (think small-town busybodies) or even evil (think slavery or Nazism) in others. Conversely, liberals hold to the more individualistic, social-contract worldview, which is good in some ways (think of women's suffrage, civil rights, and universal rights of man), bad in some (think atomized individual hedonism), and even evil in others (think unrestricted abortion or Stalinism).

Not only does self-selection cause these problems, it causes another. I think a large part of the Crunchy Conservative project is to get people on both sides to see that they have things and interests and even values in common, values and interests that are threatened by forces from both the Left and the Right. However, to the extent that this self-selecting grouping off makes it hard for the two sides to even hear each other, let alone understand each other, it is a bad thing. It's also bad in elections, since the Democratic tendency not to "get it" and the mindless populism common among the Republicans keeps resulting in elections between two bad choices with more heat than light.

What to do? There's the rub--I wish I knew.

Steve, you write:

"Second, I'm not especially interested in the CAUSES of people voting Republican. However, in at least the overwhelming majority of elections held in the US today, if not all of the elections held in the US today, people OUGHT to vote for the Democratic candidate. Democratic candidates tend to have much better positions on the issues, for example, that we should have universal health care."

As a liberal, this embarrasses me. First of all, it makes no sense. You can't simultaneously profess indifference to why something is the way it is and state confidently that, in fact, it should be otherwise. Its a logic thing.

Secondly, your post positively drips with exactly the sort of condescension that many conservative rightly object to, and wrongly try to ascribe to ALL liberals. Asserting that people ought to vote for my candidate because he has better positions on the issues is an almost completely content-free statement. If we all agreed what was "better", your statement would mean something. Unfortunately we don't, so it doesn't. Instead so we have these ongoing disputes over what is actually "better", and for whom. Its called politics. Asserting that your position is self-evidently correct is a lousy argument when it comes from religious moralists on the Right, and it does work any better coming from the Left.

Sorry, I meant of course that it DOESN'T work any better coming from the Left.

However, I disagree with Haidt that liberalism lacks a rhetoric of overarching communal goals and purposes. See e.g. Mario Cuomo's speech at the 1984 Democratic convention on politics and family, see Carter's "malaise" speech on the nature of freedom. It's actually hard to tell which party is more individualist -- the Republican celebration of economic individualism is just as significant as the Democratic embrace of lifestyle individualism.

That last sentence is the concept on which the crunchy conservatism concept is based -- or at least how it's distinguished from mainstream left and right.

About Democratic rhetoric, it seems to me from giving Haidt's piece a once-over that he thinks it's possible for Democrats to speak effectively to the Durkheimian concerns of voters, but they never do. They think politics is a mostly rational enterprise (says Haidt), but fail to see that it's more like religion. I make fun of the whole "Obama Messiah" thing, but there really is something to that that explains Obama's appeal (Reagan had it too). The man is more than the sum of his positions; he's got charisma (in the sense Philip Rieff meant in his book of the same title) -- that is, he has a natural sense of authority about him.

Tangentially, I recall reading a piece many years ago excerpted in Harpers magazine, about how advertising theory was being used in political campaigns. I forget the details, but the gist of it was that the goal of political communication was not to persuade rationally, but to "strike a resonant chord" within individuals. That is, the successful politician does not win you over by the power of his arguments; he wins you over by convincing you that he understands you and your concerns, and is on your side. This is a plain fact of human psychology, said the author, that political communicators ignore at their peril.

That explains in large part why so many people, especially women, are raving over Sarah Palin, even though they know little more about her than her biography, and the fact that she gives a good speech. Something about her strikes a resonant chord. One would be wise not to laugh at that.

The article is good, but it misses the most crucial purpose of all normative structures: the amassing and preservation of power.

Look behind the norms and mores and legal codes of any society and you'll see an existing set of power relations which those invested with authority (the clergy, the military, the government, the tribal elders, etc.) strive to maintain at any cost. In tribal Pakistan, for example, male tribal elders have erected a harsh moral system that elevates themselves as the ultimate arbiters of earthly justice, to the exclusion of females and the un-Islamic, and maximizes their own power. Any deviation, no matter how small, is rightly seen as a threat to the existing power structure, and is severely "dealt with."

Compare Western liberalism, where the center of power is placed within the individual, and the prevailing normative structure is one of consent. No man or woman stands above another without his or her consent. Power is not concentrated, but diffused, and this allows individuals to mostly live their lives as they choose.

Modern conservatives dislike the current state affairs because they no longer have the power to dictate to everyone how they shall live. To the extent they wish to alter current power relations so that the individual is once again subjugated to a normative structure not based on consent, I oppose them.

I am very confused by this article.

Mainly because it appears to say that people vote Republican for irrational reasons, which is something I've been saying for quite some time, but a theory I never really expected Rod to suddenly sign onto.

I suspect, incidentally, that this explains a lot about this election. It explains why Obama won over Hillary, and it explains the current Republican insanity over a person that no one has any idea of her policy positions. And it also explains the 'Obamessiah' attacks on Obama, because for once the left has produced a figure that is attracting people for emotional reasons.

Me, I am not entirely happy that many people appear to be voting for Obama simply because of his speaking skills, but I console myself by the fact that just as many people, probably more, are going to irrationally vote the other way, and he, at least, isn't demonizing people in his speeches.

But, anyway, can I point out that we really ought to be picking politicians that actually represent policies we like, and not ones that we emotionally identify with?

And, while we're at it, not just ones that say they support policies we like, and then not do them once they're in power? *cough*outlawabortion*cough*reducespending*cough*

And, yes, on the other side, *cough*stopthewar*cough*fixhealthcare*cough*. We know, we know.

Interesting points. There is admittedly a tendency among many liberals and libertarians (both of them being children of the Enlightenment) to overemphasize rationality and not give enough respect to non-rational motivations for political and cultural views. That having been said, I don't think one can assume that liberals or more libertarian conservatives who say that people are voting against their interests or are being duped (depending on the issue and who is talking) can be easily dismissed. While emotion and myth have their role in society, one shouldn't assume that the values and policies supported by that worldview should automatically trump those coming from more of a rationalist perspective. Reason and emotion are both necessary parts of human nature, after all.

That having being said, there are some basic facts of life out there that aren't eadily denied, and it is possible to determine when someone is really not doing what's in their own best interest politically, at least in a few limited circumstances.

Rufus-

You write:

'Liberals really don't "get" conservatives, because conservatives possess moral intuitions that liberals simply do not, in the same way that color-blind people don't "get" because they *cant* get what certain colors look like.

Conversely, conservatives do "get" liberals, in the sense that they recognize all of the same moral intuitions that liberals perceive, but they are constantly taken aback by liberal's apparent inability to perceive over half of the moral content of life, which conservatives can't *not* recognize.'

That's a quite impressively condescending and self-serving explanation of the culture wars you've just put forth. Let's open it up and explore a bit more. Let's take, for example, the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s. Many white cultural conservatives at the time used variants of the formulation that you employ in your post ("spoiled and petulant children") to describe the black protesters who were, petulantly, demanding to be treated equally under the law. It was argued that they didn't know how good they really had it, lacked the maturity to make informed political decisions, needed the wisdom of their white superiors, etc. In your view, did these protesters simply lack the moral vision to realize that their selfish need for basic civil rights conflicted with the greater morality of the Jim Crow south in a way that required moderation? If so, what sort of moderation would you have recommended?

"Not only does self-selection cause these problems, it causes another. I think a large part of the Crunchy Conservative project is to get people on both sides to see that they have things and interests and even values in common, values and interests that are threatened by forces from both the Left and the Right."

Turmarion - one of the few bright lights, at least here in Wisconsin, is the issue of conservation. right wing, gun-rights people got together with left-wing environmentalists and said, 'now look, we hunters need a habitat for our prey. We want to preserve the species, while keeping populations in check, absent natural predators. We all can agree on that, and will block efforts to endanger natural habitat (see crandon mine). We'll also make a buck off of tourism to our wilderness (camping, hiking, fishing, boating, hunting, etc.)." It has a pretty good track record of working.

People can come together, once we get past partisan nonsense and think about something other than ourselves for a moment.

Liberals tend to view societal restraint and conventions as inherently repressive, whereas conservatives tend to view it as a necessary safeguard to keep people from indulging their base natures.

A Millsian society sounds like a wonderful place -- as long as all the citizens were honest, hardworking, self-disciplined types.

But in reality, those types of people are mixed in with their very opposites; as well as a large segment of the population that can go either way -- they can rise to the occasion provided there are certain restraints and inducements to encourage responsible behavior, but can also descend quickly into chaos in the absence of those restraints.

Anyone who has taught or observed a classroom of elementary school children has likely noticed that there are always a few hyper-responsible souls who, no matter what the situation, will do their homework, sit nicely in their seats and listen attentively. There are also always a few cut-ups who are forever acting up and are regulars at the principal's office. Then there are the rest, who span the continuum between the two extremes. A good teacher will exude a sense of authority and keep everyone on the right track; but on the days when an inexperienced substitute comes in, most of those normally well-behaved kids will follow the troublemakers' lead and the spitballs will be flying.

It is the same with society in general. If you have a population that scores high on agreeableness, honesty, and responsibility, you can have very liberal social policies in place without much ill effect. I am thinking of places like Sweden, which is often held up as a model socialist state. Whether it is something genetic, or a deep-rooted Lutheran work ethic that has not yet died out in spite of secularization, the vast majority of people are living productive lives, being responsible for raising their children even if they are not married, and not cheating the system.

Parts of New England are also like this, which is why New Englanders tend to be very liberal in outlook, while living very conservative lifestyles personally. Because they themselves would never dream of, say, living off welfare for years and years with no effort to find a job, or having five children by five different men, or manufacturing crystal meth in their garage, or abandoning their wives and children, or knifing someone in a bar fight, they have a hard time understanding why anyone would do such things. They come to the conclusion that it must be poverty causing such thing, and if we just expand the government programs and perhaps build a Whole Foods market, everyone will immediately see the error of their ways and start behaving themselves. If that doesn't work, well, it must be lack of education -- what they all need is college degrees! that will fix everything.

I'm being a bit facetious, but admit it, liberal friends, don't you kind of think like that? I know I did, back when I was a liberal. Then I moved to the deep South, and boy was it eye-opening. For the first time, I actually met people who were in their forties and had never had a job, and never intended to have a job; women who had children by various random men and often DIDN'T EVEN KNOW THEIR LAST NAMES, people who saw absolutely no benefit to even basic education -- they didn't even want to learn to read, let alone go to college -- people who blatantly were ripping off the system that was supposed to help them get back on their feet. I worked for the county, so I got a first-hand view of what was going on.

I think Andy Rooney was the one who said "Liberals sound like nicer people, but conservatives make more sense."

Consider the fact that in 1960, when the Moynihan Report was released, the rate of out-of-wedlock births was around 5% for whites, and 19% for blacks. This was rightly seen as a cause for alarm as those children born to single moms faced significant disadvantages. Now, after forty years of social policies designed to help alleviate the problems faced by single-parent families, we have out-of-wedlock birth rates of 25% for whites and over 70% for blacks -- in some inner cities it approaches 90%. Obviously, something went awry.

That being said, we do need to get past the partisan hatred. Conservatives are not out to institute some sort of Christian shar'ia, and liberals are not out to destroy Western civilization. Pretty much everyone wants the same thing -- safe neighborhoods, clean environment, jobs, economic stability, etc.. -- we just disagree on how best to achieve these ends.

I see some more common misconceptions being repeated by both sides here... It needs to be straightened out, because they are inherently fundamental to the differences between conservatives and liberals.

1. Conservative are FAR more concerned with the innate rights of the individual, while liberals are all up in arms over the "collective" or "group" rights of people. I submt the latter is a matter of self contradiction, but that's what they think.

2. Conservatives today are FAR more inclined with the "disperse power among the individuals" than are modern liberals, who find every solution for every problem to be "centralized planning, control, provision, and mandates".

3. Liberals today tend to believe themselves superior in intellect to all others. Conservatives tend to believe themselves superior in conscience to all others.

Thus, liberals propose centralized "universal" health care, and conservatives immediately respond with "no". It violates our basic premises... Individuals first, not government, and individual responsibiilty, not group rights. Lastly, there's the pragmatic and very real observation that it is simply beyond the capacity of our economy to bear such lavish spending.

This is a mathematical equation: We cannot collectively afford services we cannot individually afford.

So, while one may moan that insurance is costing you 600/mo and you still have to pay for some things, you're not going to be better off to filter your money through Congress and THEN buy $600 worth of insurance.

Oddly enough, liberals claim that failing to agree to soalized medicine is a religious and moral failing. And then complain that conservative wish to impose their morality on others.

Haidt may have some observations about human nature correct, but much of his premise seems to be incomplete, in that it fails to account for the pragmatic nature of conservative ideals - regardless of the realm of those ideas.

Salamander, interesting post. I hate to say it but you just described my New England town, only we have a Trader Joes instead of a Whole Foods.

I'm sure I'm not the only one around here grateful to see a return to discussing ideas instead of viewing with alarm. More of this and less of Sarah Palin: Threat, Menace or Avatar of Real Womanhood, please.

Liberals really don't "get" conservatives, because conservatives possess moral intuitions that liberals simply do not, in the same way that color-blind people don't "get" because they *cant* get what certain colors look like.

I don't think that conservatives possess moral intuitions that liberals do not. That's a crazy statement. Just as many conservatives get caught with their pants down as liberals. What was the name of the senator with the wide stance? And have we forgotten about Newt? Then there's Jack Abramoff- not exactly a moral fella. Then there was that minister of the mega-church who was slamming gays while seeking the services of a male prostitute. Then there's the rhetoric and fear mongering that led to the Iraq War. Sorry, but you don't get extra morality points for taking preemptive strikes that lead to killing/injuring hundreds of thousands of people. Then there's the problem with violence and guns in the inner city and the conservative unwillingness to change gun laws to help protect the American citizens who live there. I could go on, but it's late.

Conservative like to congratulate themselves on being these highly moral people who go to church and celebrate life, but from where I sit, their intuitions aren't too sharp.

Rufus-

I posted my reply (above) before reading your last, much less aloof-sounding, post. Thanks for moderating your tone, and apologies for my own reactive snarkiness.

Rufus, you really are very patronizing. That's especially annoying since your posts make little sense. There are plenty of issues where conservatives are more absolutist and less willing to recognize moral complexity than liberals. Like, say, abortion. Or supporting one's country in wartime -- during any war. Ever heard of "my country right or wrong"? Sound like something a conservative might say?

This is a mathematical equation: We cannot collectively afford services we cannot individually afford. So, while one may moan that insurance is costing you 600/mo and you still have to pay for some things, you're not going to be better off to filter your money through Congress and THEN buy $600 worth of insurance.

Economic theory, not to mention basic observation of the market, proves you wrong. Ever heard of buying in bulk? Generally cheaper per unit, not more expensive, right? At a more complex level, economists have been pointing out for almost a century that certain things will be systematically more expensive when supplied by a competitive market than when financed collectively. Public goods (like national defense) are one example. Natural monopolies are another. Goods that are subject to a lot of adverse selection (like health insurance) can also fall in this category.

The U.S. health care system is more expensive more than health care systems in every single one of the industrial countries which provide health care through public financing. You can claim that's just because it's better health care, but there's little proof of that.

Haidt's work also has me thinking about the liberal concentration in urban areas and in professions that tend to be highly dynamic. Our high-tech and creative centers are, with few exceptions (none that I'm aware of, but I dont't claim to have looked into it), concentrations of liberalism. Throughout history many of our most creative individuals have defied authority to produce great works. Many have also neglected or outright defied traditional expressions of group loyalty - being viewed as eccentric but getting away with it to the extent that they produced things of value to the group.

Looking at India as an example of a traditional society, their respect for authority and requirements for in-group expressions have produced an extremely poor use of its population's skills via the caste system. Additionaly, despite the high esteem placed on education, graduates of its schools produce very few original ideas. My wife is a graduate of some pretty good Indian schools, and they all stressed rote learning and ignored critical and creative thinking. Many of the most successful Indian entrepreneurs are graduates of American liberal (elitist!) universities.

Is there a connection between creative and critical thinking and liberalism (defined as extreme de-emphasis of moral categories 3-5)? Clearly there's some correlation in terms of the collection of the creative classes in liberal enclaves, but its also obviously not complete - there's no shortage of creative and critically thinking conservative thinkers right here!

Rufus' characterizations of liberals as being unable to even recognize the moral values of in-group/loyalty, authority and purity feel wrong to me. I self-categrorize as liberal, and I certainly recognize loyalty and authority. I just de-prioritize them relative to US conservatives. (I think I recognize purity too, but I feel like conservatives have that one turned up so high I can't make any sense of their expression of it). I think makes perfect sense for me to do so because we have a well-functioning justice system.

I wonder if Haidt got the "liberals don't even recognize moral values 3-5" conclusion in part because he didn't ask the right questions. Have to read the paper, I suppose. Also, I realize Rufus mentioned a continuum, so I guess if he accepts my self-characterization then he'll put me closer to the middle than the far left end. If so, I'd suggest that very, very few people are actually so far left that they can't at least see the value of all 5 of the moral virtues. They'll just weight 1-2 the by far the highest. Again, this makes sense as long as personal and social security are well handled by a well-functioning state. If we weren't in such a state, I suspect there'd be a very rapid re-prioritization by me and my fellow liberals.

Finally, I want to say briefly that I strongly believe its an essential strength of American society that both conservative moral weighting and liberal moral weighting exist together. Liberal impulses may more often result in creative thinking, an appropriate disrespect for authority when it is behaving badly (loaded word, "badly," I realize), and honest assessments of bad group behavior that can lead to real community improvement. Without these things we may end up with the non-creative, non-critical faults of the Indian education system (if we're lucky, given a growing disrespect for the educated), or even a version of the caste system. Conservative impulses can result in self-sacrifice, strength of purpose, and a resevior of tried-n-true ideas against dangerous experimentation by reckless liberals. Salamander gave an excellent description of some recent examples of reckless liberal behavior, and this blog is a collection of many others.

If we could learn to understand and respect each other and get out of each other's faces a bit we might actually solve some of the problems facing us collectively.

Watcher wrote:

“I see some more common misconceptions being repeated by both sides here... It needs to be straightened out, because they are inherently fundamental to the differences between conservatives and liberals.

“1. Conservative are FAR more concerned with the innate rights of the individual, while liberals are all up in arms over the "collective" or "group" rights of people. I submt the latter is a matter of self contradiction, but that's what they think.

“2. Conservatives today are FAR more inclined with the "disperse power among the individuals" than are modern liberals, who find every solution for every problem to be "centralized planning, control, provision, and mandates.”

Sentences one and two are problematic, because all of the following ideas can be reasonably categorized as "liberal," in terms of the way the world is used today in the US:

1. Women shouldn’t be fined or put in jail for having an abortion.

2. People shouldn’t be fined or put in jail for smoking marijuana in the privacy of their own homes.

3. People shouldn’t be fined or put in jail for burning a US flag.

4. People shouldn’t be fined or put in jail for prostitution.

5. The US shouldn’t have invaded Iraq.

6. We shouldn’t have enacted the Patriot Act and voted for the FISA Amendments Act of 2008.

7. We shouldn’t have sodomy laws.

8. People shouldn’t be fined or put in jail for using pornography.

9. The US should end the war on drugs.

10. People shouldn’t be fined or put in jail for doing on-line gambling.

In all cases, these ideas would result in less “government control.”

Watcher wrote: "3. Liberals today tend to believe themselves superior in intellect to all others. Conservatives tend to believe themselves superior in conscience to all others."

What do you mean by "liberals" and "conservatives?" Please be specific.

Watcher wrote: "Thus, liberals propose centralized 'universal' health care, and conservatives immediately respond with 'no.' It violates our basic premises... Individuals first, not government, and individual responsibiilty, not group rights. Lastly, there's the pragmatic and very real observation that it is simply beyond the capacity of our economy to bear such lavish spending.
This is a mathematical equation: We cannot collectively afford services we cannot individually afford.
So, while one may moan that insurance is costing you 600/mo and you still have to pay for some things, you're not going to be better off to filter your money through Congress and THEN buy $600 worth of insurance.
Oddly enough, liberals claim that failing to agree to soalized medicine is a religious and moral failing. And then complain that conservative wish to impose their morality on others.
Haidt may have some observations about human nature correct, but much of his premise seems to be incomplete, in that it fails to account for the pragmatic nature of conservative ideals - regardless of the realm of those ideas."

What do you mean by "liberals?" Please be specific. I consider myself a liberal. I think we should have a federal health care plan like Medicare available to all US citizens and green card holders who want it. But people should be able to have private health insurance if they want to.

Watcher wrote: “If I assault a pregnant woman and her baby dies, what should be the criminal charge? Murder?”

No. I don’t know if I want to get into it now, though. My point is that your two claims are problematic.

“But they should for tobacco?”

No, they shouldn’t be. And what do you mean by “liberal?” Please be specific.

“Oh, then people shouldn't be fined or jailed for hate crimes?”

What do you mean by that? My point is that that is a point I associate with “liberal.” I wasn’t trying to get into the merits of the position. I don’t know a lot about hate crimes.

As I have argued, those claims are problematic. And I have shown why. But I can't get into the merits of those positions right now. Maybe another time. Maybe we could even talk on the phone.

Actually you did nothing of the kind.

You made a bunch of assertions about what is the "right" kind of laws to have and not have, and then claimed it made my assertions "problematic" without ever addressing them in any concrete way.

And the practical consequence of some, though not all, of my positions is less restrictions on an individual’s ability to do what he or she wants. For instance, I don’t think a woman should be put in jail or fined for having an abortion, and I don’t think a person should be put in jail or fined for burning a US flag.

It took quite some time to get you to say what's really behind this... Notice I spoke of rights and liberties... You spoke of "less restrictions on an individual’s ability to do what he or she wants." These are not the same. Your stated standard would include "being able to take what you want from someone else", by simple logic, for instance.

Rights and liberties are not about being libertine. Even you, I assume, would prohibit exploitation of minors and theft of property and forced child labor - even though these are "restrictions a person's ability to do what they want".

The real fact is, you and I seem to disagree on a few details about what a society allows to be exploited and what it does not. Yet, you claimed that those peripheral notions are the very definition of what are RIGHTS and LIBERTIES. Your small notions are the definition of small thinking and small ideals.

Rights are the grand notions of self determination, freedom of expression, freedom of worship, the pursuit of one's own destiny, equality under just law. Beside these, what would be the value of prostitution and self destroying drug use?

When a "liberal" wants to take over half of everything a man earns, surrendered to the government, to be used "for him" but not of his own mind and not of his own choosing, but that of "collective" decisions and "collective" taking and "collective" choosing, is this not reducing a man's liberty? Is it not taking a man's choices, a man's own worth and a man's own destiny away from him? Is it not taking his freedom from him?

How does that compare to your petty, craven, wanting to pay for cheap sex from a prostitute?

I'm not just real impressed by Haidt's deal. His point seems to verge either on "People vote Republican because they're insane, but insane people can be quite likeable and we should understand them" or the opposite "Authority, In-groupishness, and Purity really are paramount so let's have a Left-wing version."

Granted it might explain why say Communists seem to be more likely to become staunch Christians than to become secular libertarians, but I think it's a bit off.

Possibly conservatives aren't all the irrational beings he's thinking. Maybe they think a society of perfect individuals working for the common good is unworkable because history and human psychology indicates so. Maybe some things are seen as "gross" because they actually are less healthy. (Biology is clearly not this guy's strong suit.) Dogs are on a higher trophic level than say cows and animals on a higher trophic level are usually less good as food. Hence eating a rabbit seems less odd than eating a weasel, for most of us I would guess, because rabbit is lower on the trophic level. This might be something we intuitively "know", even if we don't know trophic levels, but this doesn't mean it's purely irrational or based in nothing more than feelings. The valuing of family could have pretty obviously rational reasons based in the fact human children are weak and not capable of making equally rational decisions to adults.

I think traditionally even liberals in this society desire a balance between these things. Democrats certainly have never wanted a world without authority. They might not use the word "authority", but every government is an authority and a hierarchy. They also clearly want the authority to be based on authority. As in authority coming from intellect, education, or experience. You can say this is for purely rational reasons, but in the case of politics there's no clear evidence that the most intelligent or best educated Presidents always succeed better. The idea that the greater the intelligence or education the better able to succeed in general is not entirely confirmed by evidence. It's possible, but it's also possible that at some point over 150 IQ increases are negatively effective on average. (Although the evidence is mixed)

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Defense procurement is an example of how to do things cheaper. wow. Let me pick myself up off the floor and get back to you on that later. Right now, it's really hard to breath, I hope I can regain composure in an hour or two. This is so patently wrong I cannot imagine how you could EVER even state this as joke, much less actually USE it as an example of how federalized purchasing is "efficient" and "cost effective".

So it would be cheaper for every American to maintain their own army and air force, huh? That sounds like it would work well, and be real cheap too. I think your hysterics act is covering your own ignorance.

Huh? This sounds like some really obscure and unrealistic kind of invented terminology.

a reason why it can be annoying to try to engage with conservatives -- so many are anti-intellectual, or proud of their own ignorance.

Having a competitive private health insurance system means that companies spend a ton of money and time trying to avoid paying for sick people and trying to get healthy people to pay them. This is different than actually curing sick people. As I said, it is a fact that the U.S. health care system is much more expensive than the health care systems in every other industrialized country. And every other industrialized country has public health care financing. (Although many have private sector health care provision, which is what all U.S. public financing plans propose).

Thank you Watsy, Seth & others regarding your posts to Rufus.

Rufus, the comments made by you are EXACTLY why I left the Republican Party. To say that Democrats can never understand a Republican's position/thinking, etc. is just absolutely absurd.

So it would be cheaper for every American to maintain their own army and air force, huh?

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL!!!!! Let's see... wow. You know, you say below you get annoyed because Conservatives are "anti-intellectual" or "proud of their own ignorance". When you start saying this stuff, has reality EVER entered the thought process? My God, how unbelieveably stupid this is.

We have a collective (government) defense department PRECISELY because every American does NOT need one. However every American DOES need health care. Your claimed analogy is utterly preposterous.

Oh, and as far as the military goes, the military routinely pays DRAMATICALLY MORE for the same things that civilians buy, because of a complex, beaurocratic, hardly-at-all competitive procurement system. There is NO, and I mean NO substantial financial efficiency to the military procurement system. We have a collective national defense, precisely because we do not and cannot have an individual national defense.

I am not "anti-intellectual", I am just more like "annoyed" at the absurd nonsense you've already been spouting here. I would like to have a serious conversation, but so far, you've been saying stuff so completely off the wall and so irrelevant it is hard to take this as much besides a joke.

That sounds like it would work well, and be real cheap too.

I cannot imagine why you'd think this. The typical institutional buyer often pays more for common commodities than a careful individual buyer does. Why? Because he has no financial stake in the game. His purchasing and procurement is often driven by convenience, not financial efficiency.

Military procurement has massive controls over who can and who cannot sell to the military, it has a major set of headaches for any significant purchase which is put in place to "prevent fraud" and to protect the vendors from loss! Often it is "cost plus" and the vendors have no incentive to do anyting but inflate.

Why? Military vendors have to stick around. You buy planes, you need the company around to service them. So, you pick the plane, but the military spends massively to ensure they have a service company to keep them flying after production. Or, to produce more in the future. Or spare parts, etc.

The whole point of this, is that military procurement is NOT CHEAP, not monetarily efficient at all, and further, it is not in any way suited for providing services to millions of individuals. Your analogy is all but silly.

I think your hysterics act is covering your own ignorance.

Look, I'm sorry you came unarmed to a fight. I'll try to make the best of it, though and help you out.

Having a competitive private health insurance system means that companies spend a ton of money and time trying to avoid paying for sick people and trying to get healthy people to pay them.

Well, ok. I'm glad you just realized this. It helps immensely, when we finally reach the point of suggesting what to do about it. However, replacing "insurance as the provider of services" with "military style procurement" is a step backwards, a giant leap the wrong way.

I will be posting a separate post that's about how to REALLY address health care.

This is different than actually curing sick people.

Yes, I am gratified that you realize that INSURANCE does not do the work of doctors and nurses and labs and pharmacists and so on. Now, please remember this statement - there is a purpose for INSURANCE, and it has nothing (yes, this is correct) to do with providing services. Insurance is a service YOU buy, to benefit YOU, and its function is FINANCIAL, not health care. Ok? please understand this point. It is essential.

As I said, it is a fact that the U.S. health care system is much more expensive than the health care systems in every other industrialized country.

Actually, this is not established fact... AT ALL. Nobody that I have ever seen has managed to determine the actual COST of a doctor's visit in Canada (for instance, but Germany, England, any other country can be substituted) to the average patient. Why? Because the beaurocracy obscures the actual cost of anything and everything. Please note that PRICE is not "cost".

If I am your landlord and charge you 1200/mo for your rent, and charge you $20/mo for your electricity, is that the COST of the electricity? No, you have no idea what that cost is. The "price" is $30, but the cost is unknown. It has been hidden within the rent, and for some reason, I chose to inflate the rent with a line item of "electricity". There is no means, WHATSOEVER, within the USA, nor any other industrialized country, to actually determine the COST of any health care service. I'll explain this clearly, but just be aware of this. It has to do with accounting, billing, and cost shifting.

And every other industrialized country has public health care financing. (Although many have private sector health care provision, which is what all U.S. public financing plans propose).

This is no reason at all for us to do it. None. We're better than that, by far.

In my next post, I'll lay out how and why we can do so very much better than any nightmare of "universal" health care.

Insurance is a pooling of financial risk. Insurance companies do not provide services. The insurance company doesn't fix your car if you get into an accident. It shares the risk of a really large bill from the body shop that DOES fix your car, and shields you from it. In return you pay a monthly or other periodic fee. For insurance to work, it has to charge more than it pays out. But since a car accident can destroy a person financially, we pay for insurance to protect our own financial status, and we're required to have it to protect anyone else we may injure or cause loss to.

This is the same for insuring your house, term life insurance, etc.

When you insure your car, you choose the level of risk sharing. You choose how much you are responsible for, and how much the insurance co is responsible for. If you choose a large deductible, your cost goes down, and the risk for the ins company goes down accordingly. And none of these except for health care insurance are purchased by or through employers. Why is that? Because in WWII, wage controls prevented employers from attracting needed employees with more money. So they added on "benefits" ,which were not restricted, to attract needed employees.

This tradition has continued to this day, encouraged by the tax code, but otherwise, it has no valid reason to exist.

Now, why don't you buy food insurance? You pay a premium, and it gaurantees you all the quantity, style, and types of the food you want? Well, because it would always cost more than the food you want. It it preposterous to think you need risk pooling for your daily needs.

Forbes once tried an experiement that was enormously successful. The idea was simple: Instead of ordinary insurance, figure out how much per month was actually spent and distribute that equally among the employees in an account they controlled. Then, buy an inexpensive "catastrophic loss" health care policy that was an umbrella. It had a large deductible. Many thousands of dollars.

The cost of the benefit was the same, but the employee chose where and how to spend their own health care dollars instead of the insurance company. And, if the employee spent less than the annual contribution, teh balance went up. If it went all the way up to the level of the large deductible, you could keep the excess as "free" cash.

Over the course of a couple years, Forbes found that both the overall cost of health care went down - and went down dramatically - AND employees loved knowing that their "insurance" covered anything they wanted it to. No restrictions at all.

Why did it work? Because people had both the insured protection from catastrophe, and at the same time, had thier own incentive to use the money wisely.

This can be applied to the public at large. You can easily adapt it to dependent situations, and it need not be tied to your place of employment. Major medical - the "large deductible, cover everything" policies are extremely cost effective - and competitive with each other, becasue they do what insurance does best - share financial risk, ONLY. It will spend minimally to ensure compliance and prevent fraud, and the insurance company is relieved of the "choose what to pay and what not to pay" overhead, which is high.

Instead, the individual does that. He does it with his own money. he freely chooses who and what to spend money on.

We do this. We pay for our medical needs in cash. We know what doctor's offices charge for various services. We know WalMart's the cheapest pharmacy. We get a break from the office because they have to process no paperwork to get paid.

I don't actually have insurance, and haven't for at least a decade. And our spending on health care is FAR less than the average "limited benefit" policy.

You see, the secret to success, is not to put the choices of what services to get and who to see, and what is valid and what is not, in the hands of an insurance company, or a government agency, it is to put it in the hands of the people who need the services. And give them a financial stake using their own money wisely.

And they BEAT the efficiency of ALL OTHER FORMS of health care financing.

Not only has this been proven to work by literally hundreds of trials by sizeable companies, it makes sense, too.

No vast government agencies required. No tough to oversee insurance controls on what you do. Competition for the patient AT EVERY LEVEL. No paying an insurance company to decide what services you get paid for and what are not. No letting Congress or some low pay grade flunkie in an agency make that decision, either.

You make it.

Health Insurance can and should be decoupled from your employment - it makes no sense to tie health, but not auto, home, life, or any other kind of insurance to employment. If we're going to provide tax advantages for paying for health care, they should extend to ALL, including individuals who pay for their own, and small businesses, too, which currently get nailed big time.

Insurers should not be in charge of choosing what to allow and what not. YOU should. And you should have a financial stake in doing so, because you pay the bill and you benefit from your own choosing.

Consumer protection laws which apply to estimates, pricing, etc, should apply to health care. You should know what everything they want to do costs before they do it. Or at least have access to it. You have all these rights when it comes to fixing your car. Why not when fixing YOU?

Presently, doctors pay out at least 20% of their revenues to comply with insurance demands. At the same time the current mess of insurance company decision making costs the doctor, it costs you. Not only do you pay the company, you pay the inflated costs the doctor has to charge so it can deal with the insurance company and all the stuff they demand, since they're making the decision, not you.

If you knew and you made all the decisions, billing and collections would be minimal overhead. Mostly it would consist of you leaving a check at the doctor or hospital when you left, AFTER you decided what you did and did not want to pay for, or have done to or for you.

This is all about empowering individuals, and it works. You pointed out the faults with the current "insurance" system as a billpayer and decisionmaker. There is a solution and it is NOT to simply turn those costs and decisions to a government entity rather than one you choose voluntarily.

Watcher wrote: “Rights and liberties are not about being libertine. Even you, I assume, would prohibit exploitation of minors and theft of property and forced child labor - even though these are "restrictions a person's ability to do what they want".

“The real fact is, you and I seem to disagree on a few details about what a society allows to be exploited and what it does not. Yet, you claimed that those peripheral notions are the very definition of what are RIGHTS and LIBERTIES. Your small notions are the definition of small thinking and small ideals.”

What do you mean by “rights” and “liberties?”

Watcher
I don't actually have insurance, and haven't for at least a decade. And our spending on health care is FAR less than the average "limited benefit" policy.

While you are correct that it is flatly stupid to have 'insurance' for necessities in any free market society, you obviously have never had emergency surgery. Or possibly any surgery.

I don't have insurance either, and I know for a fact I pay more for surgery than people with insurance do, because insurance companies can negotiate the cost downwards, often to the point where hospitals don't even break even on some procedures. Combine that with the failure of many people to pay for their emergency care, and that hospitals have to make it up somewhere, it's those of us without insurance, that actually pay our bills, that get gouged.

I agree without insurance, medical costs would be cheaper...but it would require the insurance industry not existing at all. Look at free clinics, which manage to provide a level of medical care that would be very expensive if they actually had to deal with insurance companies. Same with random doctor's offices...you can indeed, find good deals. Or look at optometrists, who are rarely covered by insurance.

Where you won't find good deals are hospitals. Yes, if you're poor, you can sometimes find charity programs...but good luck with that if you're just lower-middle class and don't have insurance. You'll get a $25,000 bill that, if you had insurance, would cost you and the insurance company together $10,000, and if there was an actual free market would probably cost around $12,000. This is not an exaggeration.

While we still have insurance companies, and the majority of Americans listen to them and where they say to go to for medical care, they are the 800-pound gorilla that hospitals and doctors have to work with, and essentially, do whatever they say, which includes undercharging them and hence having to overcharge everyone else.

Insurance distorts the market to such a large extent it has destroyed hospitals who have found they were faced with three equally unworkable decisions: Stop accepting insurance, which means not enough patients and a slide into bankruptcy, or charge less for services than they actually cost and thus a slide into bankruptcy, or reduce the quality of services, which eventually results in a lawsuit and a slide into bankruptcy.

The joke is, the right has, for quite some time, recognized exactly the phenomenon...with unions. Insurance companies are unions that no one wants to belong to, but half the population does (It's the biggest union in history!), and they make absurd demands on the health care industry that have crippled it. It doesn't really matter that there are some non-union positions that people can work for...they don't pay squat.

NOT AT ALL. Insurance can not only exist, but it can flourish, in a scenario where we stop using insurance as the everyday bill payer.

You say tomato, I say tomato. (That expression doesn't appear to work in text.)

The insurance companies' power must be seriously reduced to fix health care. If you want to argue that this can happen with them continuing to exist but only providing catastrophic care, I will not argue with that.

As long as they are no longer able to threaten to withhold patients from hospitals for not playing ball. As long as every medical establishment doesn't require one full-time person just to deal with insurance companies. (Again, not exaggerating on that one.)

You recognize the whole distortion and problem with third party paying for your daily needs... So HOW can you possibly advocate worsening the issue with single payer/provider takeover and worsening all of these?

Because 'single payer insurance' is an insanely stupid way to do anything.

The government ought to pay hospitals and doctors for the work they do. The patients should be irrelevant to this. If a doctor does a surgery, he should get paid whatever the AMA, or whatever system we have in place to determine a fair price, says that surgery is worth, multiplied by a regional correction for differing costs of living.

See, a lot of people talking about government provided health care are under the delusion that we want the government to operate as a insurance company. No sane person wants that, because insurance companies are crap. No sane person wants the government to demand you get less health care, or make any medical decisions at all. (Just like they don't want a private company doing that.)

No, we want the health care industry to operate like any other private contractor: They provide services, the government pays them for whatever services they rendered.(1)

No 'authorization' or anything at all before something is done. (Yes, yes, if it's really that important, we can check for legal residency.) Maybe a few procedures might need to be validated (By other doctors) for medical necessity, like breast implants and plastic surgery, but 99% of everything the doctor just does, document that he did it, sends in the paperwork, and gets paid. Granted, we'll have to trust that the health care industry is not providing extra services to pad costs.

Which is where medical ethics and review boards come in, helped by the fact that most people actually don't like to visit doctors and are unlikely to just go along with unnecessary procedures. But doctors already have fairly strong rules about that.

We might have to make some sort of rules about various types of lab testing, I can see doctors, just be default, checking off every possible test on blood samples and whatnot if there's no disincentive to only do relevant tests (And it's not unethical to run pointless tests on blood, so no rules about that.), but mostly the problems should work themselves out fairly rapidly. Actually, most of them can be fixed in advance.

And excessive tests are not only better than too few, but probably cheaper in the long run.

And, also, of course, there's the risk of actual fraud, doctors just claiming they did things to non-existence patients, but that's not hard to stop with spot checks.

TR: I think you're going on a caricature of the Right. Many people I know on the Right also want to expand adoption service and help pregnant women. They may just see different things as better helping pregnant women.

I wasn't trying to imply they didn't, I was simply pointing out that the right's tactics WRT to abortion have been somewhat inane. Something like 75% of abortions are due to economic concerns, and if those concerns were totally removed, via 100% prenatal medical coverage and 100% painless adoption, I really have to wonder how many abortions would actually happen.

But, no, the right has to attempt to very slowly replace the Supreme Court, a plan that might never work, and certainly by the time it does, abortion will be so accepted that it won't actually be outlawed anywhere. This has, in fact, already happened in most parts of the country, so the plan has already failed...they are attempting to cross the finish line after the spectators, and more importantly the referee, have already gone home. There's a 'moral' victory there, but not an actual victory victory.

This is because the plan was invented by people who do not actually care about reducing the number of abortion, but about getting reelected 'until' the plan works.