The "hereditarian left", if they exist, are just luck egalitarians and that's still not OK

My initial reaction to Ezra Klein and Vox repeatedly slapping down Sam Harris for openly flirting with race realism was to grab the popcorn and stay far, far away. So too with the New York Times and other publications continuing to platform writers 'just asking questions' about the social policy implications of the science of behaviourial genetics. But I decided to draw a line when the well-respected evolution blog "The Panda's Thumb" published a piece on 29 March arguing that debating the discourse of genes and IQ was 'science denialism' akin to climate change denial or fear of vaccines. This is not merely academic. Global warming denialism and refusing to vaccinate children put lives at risk: what precisely is at stake when it comes to the genetic basis of intelligence? 

My primary target for today is not Charles Murray or the identarian alt-right. Instead, it's nominal liberals like Steve Pinker; atheist Sam Harris; self-avowed socialist Freddie DeBoer; rationalists like Scott Alexander; the writer of the "Stumbling and Mumbling" blog; and right-libertarian pseudo-intellectual rags such Quillette. These writers are largely white men, 'classical liberals' who attempt to rationalise social inequality that's at odds with their own sense of meritous privilege. I'm going to call such people the 'hereditarian left' (a term I'm aware was first coined by Murray and then endorsed by Pinker) who combine some personal good faith with a quixotic determination to naturalise social differences in terms of genetics and intelligence. 

Note that the hereditarian left, with its focus on genes and intelligence, is not the same thing as the "Darwinian Left" (Peter Singer). Darwinian selection has wide applications to the study of culture and organisations, as my colleagues in the Cultural Evolution Society will tell you. Nor am I taking aim at all sociobiologists, evolutionary psychologists and behaviourial economists, fields that often produce valuable insight into what it is to be human without attempting to naturalise social differences between us (although not all are so innocent).

Vox's expert witness Paige Harden has proposed the following elements of a polite hereditarian consensus. Quote:

1. The idea that some people are inferior to other people is abhorrent.
2. The mainstream scientific consensus is that genetic differences between people (within ancestrally homogeneous populations) do predict individual differences in traits and outcomes that are highly valued in our post-industrial, capitalist society.
3. Acknowledging the evidence for #2 is perfectly compatible with belief #1.

But Harden's exhortation against drawing moral conclusions (#1) on the basis of scientific findings (#2) is somewhat undermined by her own research team's explicit focus on philosophical matters and social policy. The distinction of scientific 'is' from philosophical 'ought' is important in theory but permeable in practice: as part of the current controversy, Panda's Thumb noted fascinating research that progressives are more likely to think negatively moralised social differences have a genetic origin and less likely to think positive ones do, whereas conservatives are more likely to think advantageous social traits have genetic basis. Harden makes the same point: the way people make judgements about behaviour affects how they talk and write about other genetically determined traits such as obesity or psychological disorders. The naturalist and agent biases are present in all of us: as a social species, we can't help but form judgments about social consequences based on scientific observations.

"The Argument"

I'm going to argue that even Harden's hereditarian formulation has no place in the egalitarian left. But first, we need to cover what the argument is, and is not, about. The premises of the genes and intelligence argument are routinely stated like this:

1. There are differences between individual people in their status, wealth, and power.
2. The achievement of high status, wealth, and power is a consequence of the possession of intrinsic [intellectual] ability.
3. Intellectual ability can be assessed by a set of tests loosely called “IQ tests,” which measure [general] intelligence on a one-dimensional scale.
4. IQ test performance (and therefore intrinsic intelligence) is largely inherited genetically.

Note that my source on this is a lecture by biologist Richard Lewontin in *1983* - predating Murray and "The Bell Curve" by a decade. Yet this formulation is commonly repeated by hereditarians, notably by Harris when interviewing Murray. Every one of these points is contestable to some degree or another: the biological reality of 'g' (general intelligence) is undetermined, we don't know how genes influence intelligence apart from the fact that there may be hundreds that make tiny contributions; intelligence testing only measures a particular subset of socially-valued tasks; and high IQ is no guarantee of success (just ask Malcolm Gladwell). But this is where Vox's merry band of wonks leads us astray: by focusing the debate on the scientific validity of the premises they miss the broader implications being drawn by readers. Moreover, the mainstream scientific view of these premises has evolved with the evidence and it’s not out of the realm of possibility that every one might be proven correct. 

The main problem is that these premises cannot be put together to construct any sort of meaningful, much less socially and politically just, conclusion. Heritability, in particular, just doesn't do what most people thinks it does: heritability only tells us what percentage of the variation in the expression of a trait comes from its genotype. It conveys no useful information about the variance between populations and says nothing about how a trait responds to environmental intervention. Even highly heritable traits (e.g. height, disease susceptibility) can be easily modified by varying environmental conditions (e.g. diet, medical treatment). Moreover, heritability of a trait tells us nothing about the direction of the genetic influence: it's naive Progressivism (with a capital "P") to assume that environments only exert a negative influence on trait development and that genes encode the ideal (Platonic) form of a person. 

And what sort of conclusions are drawn from these premises? Well largely primarily, racist, sexist and classist ones! As a socialist and a Rawlsian liberal, I prefer not to think in terms of race or ethnicity. I have written about the dispossession of native peoples (here, here, here, and here), but the construct of 'race' differs from society to society and as an Australian I'm not qualified to offer a view on the structural disadvantages faced by, for example, French Canadians, the descendants of slaves in the Americas, or Christians in Syria. All I can do, in solidarity, is to listen to and privilege the perspective of those that have such experience. It goes without saying, however, that Vox & crew are on the money in tearing apart genes as a causal factor in differential group outcomes: Klein in particular puts the issue in its historical and social context very well. 

The Default Hypothesis or the "Fundamental Principle" that racist hereditarians add to points 1-4 above is that whatever factors influence intelligence differences among individuals will also influence average differences among groups. But this hypothesis is invalid and false. The division of traits that are distributed on a spectrum into categories is almost alway arbitrary and socially contingent (i.e. ethnic groups are social constructs); trait differences within any human category are almost certainly many orders of magnitude greater than differences between them; and to ignore the role of social hierarchies (and the effects of history, culture and power) in generating and perpetuating group difference is gross scientific negligence of the highest order. No one who argues a connection between race and difference does so in good faith: by choosing to actively perpetuate racial hierarchies they earn their appellation as racists.

What is equality, anyway?

I don't think the "hereditarian left" (in the sense outlined at the top of this piece) are racist. They are however, deeply misguided liberals. In positing that genes and intelligence play a causal role in constructing social hierarchies, but ruling out making judgments about individual moral responsibility for social outcomes, the 'hereditarian left' are constructing an argument within the framework of 'luck egalitalitarianism'. This is well trodden philosophical ground. Rawlsian liberals have often struggled to justify economic redistribution in the face of the choice-centred, libertarian critique. Luck egalitarians accept a 'meritocratic' framing of inequality but are more nuanced about their conclusions, and argue that arbitrarily distributed, undeserved or 'natural' disadvantage should to be compensated at the expense of those who benefit from undeserved or 'natural' advantages. Luck egalitarianism puts the 'hereditarian left', if they exist, in good in good liberal company, but it's still not a defensible philosophical position for anyone who sees themselves as a democrat or a socialist.

"[Since] the capacities needed for responsible choice—foresight, perseverance, calculative ability, strength of will, self-confidence—are partly a function of genetic endowments  . . .  the imprudent are entitled to special paternalistic protection by society against their poor choices.  Equality of fortune says that such victims of bad luck are entitled to compensation for their defective internal assets and internal states. The chief appeal of equality of fortune to those of an egalitarian bent lies in this appearance of humanitarianism. Equality of fortune says that no one should have to suffer from undeserved misfortune and that priority in distribution should be given to those who are blamelessly worst off." 

I was curious to note at least one reactionary commentator citing Elizabeth Anderson's "What's the Point of Equality?" to peg Harden [accurately] as a luck egalitarian (Anderson's definition is the one used above). As a fan of Anderson, I don't recognise the version of her views presented in that blog. Anderson is strongly critical of luck egalitarianism and its paternalistic and disrespectful approach to the worst off in society. Anderson argues that to require the disadvantaged to display evidence of blamelessness and personal genetic inferiority in order to receive assistance reduces them to grovelling at the feet of their 'betters' and involves the state making judgements about the moral and genetic qualities of its citizen that are deeply disturbing, to say the least:

"Suppose their compensation checks arrived in the mail along with a letter signed by the State Equality Board explaining the reasons for their compensation: 

To the stupid and untalented: Unfortunately, other people don’t value what little you have to offer in the system of production. Your talents are too meager to command much market value. Because of the misfortune that you were born so poorly endowed with talents, we productive ones will make it up to you: we’ll let you share in the bounty of what we have produced with our vastly superior and highly valued abilities." [Hey look, it's a UBI!]

Anderson's objections, however, are not merely consequentialist (i.e. expressed in terms of reducing the happiness of the worse-off). Rather, Anderson identifies the defect with luck egalitarianism as its failure to uphold equal respect for the dignity of all citizens. Meritocratic liberalism bases its distributionary principles on the pity elites feel for the less fortunate and their fear of the envy of the latter of the success of the former - a pattern of noblesse oblige that has a familiar stench to any progressive. People lay claim to the redistribution of resources in virtue of their inferiority, not in virtue of their equal rights and dignity. She argues: 

"Egalitarianism ought to reflect a generous, humane, cosmopolitan vision of a society that recognizes individuals as equals in all their diversity. It should promote institutional arrangements that enable the diversity of people’s talents, aspirations, roles, and cultures to benefit everyone and to be recognized as mutually beneficial. Instead, the hybrid of capitalism and socialism envisioned by luck egalitarians reflects the mean-spirited, contemptuous, parochial vision of a society that represents human diversity hierarchically, moralistically contrasting the responsible and irresponsible, the innately superior and the innately inferior, the independent and the dependent.""

Anderson's view (one I share) is that the preferable position is 'democratic egalitarianism' in which everyone stands in a relationship of equality with everyone else. She writes that this means everyone is entitled to participate in decision-making, to be recognized an someone to be listened to respectfully, and that no one need bow and scrape before others or represent themselves as inferior as a condition of having their voice heard. Anderson's vision of equality is compatible with democratic socialism but not luck egalitarianism: it aims to equalise all those social goods necessary for one to be recognised as fully equal (this is where human rights are derived). Democratic equality is what Anderson calls a relational theory of justice: it is fundamentally concerned with the relationships within which goods are distributed, not only with the distribution of goods themselves. Justice, in this view, is a property of a society and its structures, not the moral desserts of individuals. 

"Equality of fortune would offer compensation to those with low talents, precisely because their innate inferiority makes their labor so relatively worthless to others, as judged by the market. Democratic equality calls into question the very idea that inferior native endowments have much to do with observed income inequalities in capitalist economies. The biggest fortunes are made not by those [with the most merit] but by those who own the means of production."

Anderson concludes that the distribution of natural endowments is not a matter of justice, what society does in response is. We cannot make genetic differences the basis for continuing to exclude the worst-off from recognition as full participants in the economic and political life of society. Drawing an analogy with physical impairment, Anderson points out that what the disabled find objectionable is not their different abilities, but that everyone else has rigged the system in ways that leave them with no place in it. People, not nature, are responsible for transforming the diversity of human beings into oppressive hierarchies. 

Conclusion

I am sympathetic to the attempts of these liberal men and women to understand the causes of inequality, and to work to ameliorate the discomfort I'm sure it makes them feel. The policy prescriptions of luck egalitarians may be misguided and counter productive, but at least their heart is in the right place. What I cannot abide, however, is statements such as that by Freddie DeBoer that genetic variance in intelligence creates the 'strongest possible argument' for socialism. Democratic equality cannot be constructed on the basis of luck egalitarianism - whether of genes, race, sex or any other grounds used categorise and divide us. Drawing social conclusions from the science of intelligence, in any form, is just not OK. 

More MMT: inflation, inequality and punching left?

Despite the optimistic subheading of my book, "Staying Positive Amidst Disorder", I'm a cynic by nature and so sometimes need to critically examine both the tone of my work and how its content is being interpreted by others. The last thing I want is for my writing to be seen as "punching left", inadvertently promoting crypto-conservative viewpoints like a Dave Rubin, Jon Haidt, Steve Pinker or their ilk. If you don't know I'm a deep progressive, my pieces on MMT (Modern Monetary Theory), UBI (Universal Basic Income) and identity politics could certainly be superficially interpreted that way. While I think the left's openness to novelty is a great strength, I don't believe ideas get a pass merely because they're new, exciting or challenge preconceived notions. Our passion for the new can just as easily lead us into error as to utopia - as it certainly has in the past. 

So in that vein, I want to continue talking about MMT by looking at the criticisms I received for my previous piece on Reddit and Twitter. I try to be fair in what I write about any subject; my goal is not to "punch left", but to see if exposing young policy programmes to critique by outside perspectives can highlight what, if anything, they offer that's new. This is made challenging by MMT proponents constant and tactical shifts between description and prescription, between the desire to challenge existing narratives and to craft a radical vision of their own.

In short, I received two sorts of criticism for my contribution. First, that I misunderstood and misrepresented the case of Venezuela. Secondly, that I (alongside most economists) overegg fears of inflation in economies that are demand-constrained. The following tweet from Adelaide-based economist Stephen Hail is representative of the comments I received:

You don't seem to know Venezuela's economic history, which has nothing to do with MMT, or the MMT literature. I don't recognise your 'MMT welfare state' as having anything to do with that literature. Where is your discussion of the role of the macro role of the job guarantee???

— Steven Hail (@StevenHailAus) March 24, 2018

Responding to my critics

The Venezuela barb in my first post was in all honesty a low blow. Of course Venezuela is not literally a case study of MMT - I was making an analogy. MMT theorists have an account of hyperinflation as a product of political and ecnomic crisis, which is both fair and explanatory in the Venezuela case. They point out that hyperinflation (of greater than 50 per cent) has never occurred in a democratic country with a sovereign currency. But critics of MMT like myself aren't only worried about the most extreme case. By arguing that adverse consequences are only a concern in factually rare circumstances, MMT economists fuel my suspicion that they're unconcerned with persistent high inflation that doesn't reach crisis proportions. After all, there have been at least two episodes where annual inflation rates in the West era have exceeded 10 per cent, both with harmful effects for both the real economy and domestic inequality. 

The Venezuelan economic crisis has unfolded in multiple distinct phases, and by focusing on only its final Act (characterised by the familiar combination of fixed exchanged rates, debt default, currency depreciation, corruption and hyperinflation), we gloss over the earlier phase of the unravelling which produced these conditions. Even before 2014, Venezuela had one of the highest inflation rates in the world (40-50 per cent);  'Dutch disease' caused by oil-fuelled spending was corroding the country's production base; and capital flight and hoarding constituted a full-scale "strike" by capital (which could not be employed productively domestically). This underlying dysfunction led to the later debt and balance of payments crisis, and it's this systemic dysfunction caused by loose monetary policy - not the hyperinflation at the tail end of the story - which I argue by analogy should be of concern to MMT proponents. 

My flippant use of Venezuela is ultimately just a distraction. The core issue is inflation. When even the US Federal Reserve doesn't fully understand how to control it, MMT proponents make an extraordinary claim when they state it shouldn't worry policy-makers at all. Either inflation is indeed an undesirable side effect of monetary financing, in which case new spending is constrained to a few per cent of GDP (which we do already), or inflation is desirable side effect. I suspect that at the end of the day MMT proponents are comfortable with government finance via debt monetization - in other words, an inflation tax. MMT proponents want to do away with finance via bond auctions. But government bonds, as a method of financing, at their core constitute a lease of a real asset held by the private sector by the government; like taxes, they ensure that spending redistributes inefficiently held wealth to more productive sectors of the economy - something monetary finance doesn't do and actively undermines by eroding the willingness of capital to lend to the state. 

Doing away with this real-world resource constraint, by permitting direct central bank purchase of bonds (i.e. printing money at the Treasury's behest), does not change the availability or distribution of real capital and labour assets of an economy. But increasing the money supply does serve as a kind of tax, reducing the value of savings and fixed-asset incomes, while increasing the spending power of debt-laden consumers and the competitiveness of exporters. There are well known pluses and minuses to an inflation tax - it's not a new idea - and if this is what the MMT solution to inequality looks like in practice then advocates need to be upfront about what they're proposing rather than selling a policy as if it had no downsides. 

This is why MMT proponents need to throw in the 'jobs guarantee' idea: it's the escape valve that exempts their policy recommendations from any negative consequences. If government spending is unlimited, there's no reason MMT couldn't be used to fund corporate subsidies and massive tax cuts (in fact, this is arguably a valid description of post-GFC monetary policy). Modern economies are in fact demand-constrained as a result of inequality, and demand-side spending should absolutely spur higher growth and equity. The best evidence MMT proponents have is that supply-side QE has been neither inflationary nor stimulatory; their ideal outcome is that demand-side 'peoples' QE is also not inflationary but does a better job at stimulating growth. But monetary financing is not future-proof or self-correcting: if applied in the wrong circumstances, monetary stimulus would replicate the stagflation of the 1970s or the liquidity trap of the 2010s. It's also a lever that only ever works in one direction: switching between demand- and supply-side monetary stimulus might undermine the adaptive, anti-fragile features of modern economies and erode trust in the value of goods and services. 

MMT is not synonymous with "far left" 

Just because an idea new and radical doesn't make it progressive. With MMT & UBI, this is abundantly clear. MMT proponents as a rule don't possess a  systemetic critique of the structure of capitalism - views of Marx in the MMT community seem to range from attempts at reconciliation, to bemusement or outright hostility. They want to tinker with the levers of finance without challenging the underlying strutures and private incentives that generate inequality in the first place. This is part and parcel of their effort to signal respectibility to mainstream economists, which manifests in a number of facets of their policy advice.  

Here's a controversial opinion: a jobs guarantee, while certainly an improvement on the laissez-faire status quo, is a conservative policy. Let's be clear: if finance is truly unlimited, why not spend heavily on public infrastructure, universal free education and healthcare, public housing, or a guaranteed minimum income? What about those who are unable (the elderly, carers, students and disabled) or unwilling to work - particular those unwilling to dig holes for the government for minimum wage, or to move or commute to where these job programs will take place? I am all in favour of expanding public sector employment, but jobs guarantee is intrinsically liberal in two key respects: firstly, it is a poverty-alleviation program rather than an inequality-alleviation program; and second, it is 'ambition-sensisitive' in the sense that it only rewards those of good character 'willing to work'. A guaranteed income would have the same result on poverty, at lower administrative cost and leave people free to find productive meaningful work that suits their skills and preferences on their own. Except it offends the sensibilities of ambition-sensitive liberals, and is therefore policy non grata. 

The failure of MMT proponents to deal meaningfully with inequality across the income spectrum is a consistent feature of centre, even centre-left, thinkers who see poverty and unemployment as the only fault with capitalist distribution. As a denial of (several) fundamental human rights, poverty is indeed *the* pressing concern of progressive economics. But inequality is additionally uniquely harmful to individual and social well-being at all income scales and I would argue that a poverty program anchored by a requirement to work would do little to improve the relative automony and self-confidence of the low- and middle-income scale, and may in fact reinforce harmful stereotypes and behaviours (cf: Elizabeth Anderson). MMT theorists seem uninterested in the overall progressivity of taxation, or in taxing capital more aggressively. At their most contrarian, MMT proponents also often take a highly critical view of taxes consistent with far right libertarian economics. 

This failure of MMT advocates to address the distirbution of costs and benefits in society is hidden by the (very cool) data-informed sectoral analysis they produce. MMT breaks economic activity into its private and public components, to demonstrate that increased government spending grows the private sector:

So government spending can grow the economy. But how is that growth going to be distributed? MMT has no answers that I've seen other than saying "Look! A jobs guarantee! Everyone like jobs! We're progressives too!". Inflating away debt may very well affect the distribution of wealth in a society, but income and property differentials would only reproduce it in short order. In terms of reducing inequality, funding a jobs guarantee through monetary policy is functionally no different than asking business to employ more people out of the sheer goodness of their heart: it's short-sighted, counterproductive and unsustainable. 

I'm sure many MMT economists are well intentioned and I'm happy to make use of their work in fighting back against the deficit hawks on the right. But transformation of the economic status quo needs to be smart, adaptive and selective about the sorts of policies we pursue, and by acting as if political and economic constraints don't matter, MMT does the wider left a strategic disservice. 

Book Review: "Neurotribes: The Legacy of Autism"

Steve Silberman's award-winning 2015 book "Neurotribes: The Legacy of Autism and How to Think Smarter About People Who Think Differently" is well worth your time, even if its 520 pages are nearly as dense and unwieldly as its mammoth title. Neurotribes is a comprehensive history of the emergence of the modern understanding of autism spectrum disorders. Silberman is an excellent storyteller, and this well written book is filled to the brim with compelling individual narratives with an enviable capacity to suck the reader in. 

Despite its marketing as a pop science book, the strength of Neurotribes lies not in its presentation of the science of autism (which is disappointingly superficial), but by placing the discovery of the autism spectrum in its historic and social context. Through the lens of autistic individuals and their families, we witness the trials and tribulations of the psychiatric profession over the twentieth century; watch with horror as the Nazis rise to power in Europe, and read about the disturbing links between fascist and liberal eugenic beliefs; we see the origins of science fiction as popular literature, the heady early days of the internet, as well as the origins of gay conversion therapy. Neurotribes, in this sense, joins the genre of 'hidden history' now common in the queer community, in which well-known history is re-interpreted and re-experienced through the lives of minorities we now recognise were there in the shadows all along. 

For those unfamiliar with autism, Silberman's main aim is to walk the reader away from popular misconceptions about the disorder rooted in the initial scientific description (a single syndrome, causing unique and devastating impairment in early childhood, that is relatively rare) to the modern consensus. The new understanding is embodied by the clinical description of autism as a spectrum of diverse conditions, which appears in the 5th edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5). Silberman attempts to resurrect figures unknown to the general public who were ahead of their time in advocating the spectrum concept, such as Soviet psychologist Grunya Sukharaeva, German pediatrician Han Asperger and British psychiatrist Lorna Wing. Given widespread panic over the modern prevalence of autism and its cause, Silberman's history is a necessary and laudatory corrective. 

The author, though, is not a disinterested chronicler and his biases slip into the writing throughout the book. Silberman is writing a story, and he's clear who his heroes and villains are. He valorises certain characters in questionable circumstances and demonises others unfairly; the venom in his prose sometimes detracts from the broader analytic point he's trying to make. The truth is, all real humans are flawed heroes whose individual prejudices reflect the broader historical patterns at play in their time and who cannot be judged sensibly by the standards of a different time - a trap Silberman repeatedly falls into. 

Why a spectrum?

Ultimately, the concept of variance as a spectrum is vastly more useful than the formerly dominant scientific (and neo-Platonist) tendency in which every category is represented by an single ideal type. What's the scientific value in defining separate historical species of human when we know they coexisted and interbred with one another? What's the utility of a binary categorisation of sex when we know that even biological sex characteristics are multifaceted and rarely perfectly correlate with one another? And now that we understand that autism is a cluster of interrelated developmental variations, with potentially hundreds of possible genetic loci and scores of possible environmental triggers, the spectrum model helps us see the similarities beyond the superficial differences: more of the signal and less of the noise. 

Autism is characterised by both positive and negative traits, but these traits should be seen as part of the psychological whole of an individual, whose life outcomes will depend on whether or not they receive the material support and social environment they need to flourish. From an evolutionary perspective, autism and autism-like cognition are precisely the sort of neurological variance we might expect to see persist in a population, and which highlights the inherent flaw in seeing our biological legacy as perfectly adapted. Autism-related polymorphisms might convey enough of an advantage to some individuals to offset the fitness loss caused by its more extreme manifestations. As might have been predicted by Dual Inheritance Theory, cultures which are 'pre-adapted' to recognising and employing the skills of the neuro-diverse may be better off in the long run than those (horrifically catalogued in Silberman's book) that treat the disabled or different as a burden to eliminated.

Manufacturing Normality

Autism, alongside other mental disorders once considered nearly fatal diseases, is increasingly being recognised as a diagnosis that is socially disabling only for a given social context. No one should downplay the immense challenges that serious mental disorders confer on those diagnosed and their families. And yet, Silberman's book argues persuasively that both the long-term prognosis of those affected and the severity of their symptoms is in large part a function of the understanding and support offered by their carers. There is some truth to the observation that institutions create madness, especially when used by society as an instrument to control those it can't - or won't - otherwise accommodate.

Silberman is particularly astute on the issue of toxic parenting, and its roots in the way society positions parents as the "middle managers" in a vast authoritarian enterprise aimed at producing 'standardised' or 'normal' children. The social pressure place on parents to do their duty in producing perfectly conformist consumers manifests itself as a laundry list of detrimental practices, not least is the vulnerability of parents to fraudsters who promise a quick fix to problems parents don't have the resources or understanding to cope with. Silberman rightly skewers Andrew Wakefield (the promotor of the myth that vaccines cause autism), the anti-vaxxer movement and those peddling 'cures' for autism ranging from homeopathic placebos to potentially tortuous regimens. But he makes the point that the real blame lies with a culture that places unrealistic and impossible duties on parents without providing them the necessary time or resources to perform them.

I hate to sound like a social constructivist unnecessarily, but the boundary between disease and merely odd or unusual observations is often socially constructed: what some parents or doctors will fret over, others will shrug off as normal variation. There is a definite risk that that spectrum model of autism could lead to the medicalising of otherwise benign variance, much as the increase in screening for breast cancer in healthy individuals has led to an increase in medically unnecessary and occasionally risky surgeries.

However, given the current model of funding for social services, Silberman gives voice to the many parents and practitioners that support maintaining the disorder as the only way to ensure continued funding for autism healthcare. In this way, autism appears in the same awkward positions as gender dysphoria: it probably can't be completed demedicalised in the same way homosexuality was in the 1960s. Like trans-identified individuals, people with autism need special assistance and adjustments to manage what might otherwise become crippling social disabilities. Analogies between autism and gender dysphoria litter Neurotribes and in fact support one of its key messages: societies tend to behave as if it's easier to (coercively) change the individual to fit society than expect the whole of society to adapt around them. 

The geek disease

Silberman gestures repeatedly towards the aphorism that autism is more than just the 'geek disease', but as a tech journalist he's a tad too indulgent towards Silicon Valley and more than a little in love with the supposed genius of his chosen subjects. The book is overly prone to performing remote diagnosis of historical figures in science and technology  - a dicey proposition at best - and he obscures the stories of those diagnosed with true autism by mixing them rather freely with the narratives of "(male) engineers with autistic traits." It is generally recognised today that autism does not discriminate: that it affects the gifted and ungifted in equal measure. But the connection between autism and genius is a sexy story, and Silberman is perhaps more of a good story-teller than he is a journalist of science. 

Neurotribes is at its best when the author simply lets people with autism tell their stories in their own words. Situating the autism rights movement and the argument for greater recognition of neurodiversity in the context of earlier reforms opening society up to greater racial, sexual and gender diversity is the right approach. While I would have appreciated a greater emphasis on actual research into the causes of autism, it's true that we don't need to understand the biological roots of variance in order to adjust our societies to it (see also: gender identity). Intersectionality means, as I have mentioned before, letting minorities tell us what changes they need from society in their own voice: in giving voice to perhaps one of the largest minorities in the world, "Neurotribes: The Legacy of Autism" thus performs a valuable service. 

No panaceas: What MMT gets right, and wrong, about fighting inequality

I've been making an effort lately to understand more about so-called "Modern Monetary Theory" (MMT). There's been an uptick in the use of "MMT Welfare State" and "People's QE" talking points from well-meaning but naive progressives that's making me anxious, for reasons I'll get to in the final section of this blog. I've watched a bunch of interviews with and lectures by Dr Stephanie Kelton (Bernie's Chief Economic Advisor), as well as dived into the blog of Australian economist Bill Mitchell, and in all honesty found that there's not much in what they say I disagree with. What concerns me more is what they don't say, and the policy lessons that others are drawing from MMT with their tacit encouragement. 

What's good isn't original and what's original isn't very good

Let's start with what the MMT theorists get right, and that's their understanding of public finance and the role it plays in the economy. MMT proponents understand, in a way that neoclassical economists often elide or obfuscate, that the state is the consumer, producer and investor of last resort . Taxation and redistribution are not arbitrary and selfish activities undertaken by a rapacious bureaucracy, but necessary tasks to: compensate for insufficient or 'leaky' demand in the economy; guarantee social and economic rights; manage foreign trade; and address the dilemma of declining profits under capitalism and the paradox of thrift. 

MMT gets this right, of course, because it's a simple restatement of basic left economics. In general terms, competitive economic activity is characterised by a multiplicity of dilemmas of interdependence, which produce collective action problems for society as a whole. Taxation is an institutional solution to these problems which redistributes surplus profits to support demand-side consumption by those who are left behind by the competitive market. The government performs other essential institutional roles by regulating trade, supporting long-term investment in R&D and infrastructure and funding basic services that cannot be provided through self-help. Unlike classical economists, Keynesians and MMT proponents all accept that market failures are an endemic and permanent feature of competitive economic systems that require the existence of strong public institutions to correct. 

The chief motivating interest of modern monetary theorists is to counteract the right-wing talking point that government spending and deficits are harmful to the economy. They do this very well: governments which run a deficit are trading on their institutional reputation to pump extra funds into the private economy in much the same way that banks loan against the trusted value of real property to increase home ownership rates. But you don't need MMT to fight back against austerity and deficits hawks: any heterodox economic perspective will get you to that point. Which is why orthodox Keynesians consider MMT proponents to be radicals: they're not just interested in finance, but in the role of monetary policy in supporting public spending, a topic which most economists on both right and left treat with the utmost caution. 

The meat of MMT, therefore, lies in its account of the monetary system and the way in which currency is created and employed. While disconcerting for most people (and many economists!), there's little to disagree with in the MMT description of how Central Banks establish the value of currency through the purchase and redemption of government debt and the regulation of fractional reserve banking. MMT presents itself as a revival of German "Chartalist" ideas in which the value of money is set by laws and institutions. They often mix this account with the paranoid right-libertarian version of the same narrative, in which money is given its value through the state's monopoly on the use of violence and the coercive imposition of taxes to create debt. These narratives are uncontroversial, if incomplete. We've lived in a world of fiat money backed by trust in state institutions since the 1970s, and it works just fine. 

From a cultural evolutionary perspective, it's absolutely true that both the reputation of institutions and violent coercion can be used as mechanisms to generate compliance with a social norm (the value of money being essentially, a shared belief or practice). But institutions and punishments are not the only ways in which social order is established and maintained. MMT proponents are dismissive of the neoclassical exchange theory of value: that money obtains utility becuase it's an efficient shared unit of exchange and account. But as I write in Chapter II of my book, "Politics for the New Dark Age", the neoclassical account of exchange value as the product of intersubjective belief and social learning is essentially correct (once we adjust for structural inequalities). Although a powerful hegemon can establish the 'rules of the road' for the economy, the continuing utility of norms can be and is in fact supported by a combination of different social mechanisms including the tacit consent of citizens. 

And by dismissing this part of the picture, MMT proponents start to get things wrong. Because the value of money is mutually constructed by both the requirement of the state that debts be redeemable in its currency and the tacit consent of its citizens that fiat currency is a useful medium of exchange and unit of account, then the capacity of the state to spend by simply issuing currency is not unlimited, not even theoretically. A state *could* dictate the value of its currency using only coercion, but that would be a radically different governance regime to the liberal democracies we prefer to rule us. The Levy Institute, for example, advocates for capital controls typically employed by the very same fixed-exchange rate autocracies they purport to critique! Institutional trust in government and the state's power to coerce compliance are not unconstrained, and therefore the government's capacity to issue currency in pursuit of its policy aims is not unlimited in the way MMT suggests. 

MMT economists are extremely adept at arguing that the progressive economic policy space is  wider than that alloted to the state under neoliberalism. And as a description of the financial and monetary systems, MMT has much to teach lay economists. But MMT proponents are often guilty, I fear, of validating Hume's dictum that human reasoning slips too readily from describing what 'is' to prescribing what 'ought' to be. 

Big Asterisks

The common criticism of MMT is that it while it describes fiscal and monetary systems well, it underplays the complex interactions between them. Kelton and Mitchell, at least, are very open about the caveats they place on their work. But even so, these are pretty big fucking caveats. Inflation is the main issue lurking beneath the surface, and it's a problem that MMT theorists are far too glib about given how poorly it's understood. It's easy to argue that spending which increases productivity doesn't necessarily increase inflation (because the increase in the value of money in circulation is ideally being offset by an increase in the value of goods being produced). Although the right would no doubt disagree, in a demand-constrained economy like the current moment progressives can demonstrate that more spending on consumption will boost growth whereas further austerity will only choke it off. But the relationships between money, productivity and inflation are highly complex and non-linear, to say the least. 

Problems arise when monetary policy is employed on the assumption that there's a strict correlation between spending and economic activity ("Overt Monetary Financing"). If Central Banks are expected to support fiscal expansion (e.g. through the purchase of government bonds that private savers are unable or unwilling to absorb through open market operations), they risk exogenously devaluing the currency. Money supply is not the only factor leading to inflation, of course, but increasing the availability of any commodity does put downwards pressure on its value. Devaluing currencies drives up prices and corrodes the value of savings, which may counteract the domestic consumption and production effects one is trying to achieve through fiscal expansion (For Mitchell's counterargument on this, see: here) There's a reason the conventional policy view, a view I support in the absence of compelling evidence to the contrary, is to keep inflation low and the money supply conservative. 

The flip side of preventing inflation is ensuring that the supply of money remains meaningfully linked to the resources of the real economy. As Kelton herself says in one of the clips linked at the top of this piece, it's trivial for the government to give everyone money in their bank account. The more important problem is making sure there are goods and services that people can buy with those funds. That problem is definitely *not* trivial and it cannot be hand waved away - I've read MMT proponents go so far as to say that government spending is fully independent of the real economy. Production is not motivated solely by the macro-availability of money for production and consumption, but at the micro level by the rate of profit and the demand for consumption (this is the perspective I outline in Chapter XIII of my book).

In a market economy it won't matter if the funds to produce and consume necessary goods and services are available if the owners of capital and labour (i.e. workers) cannot be incentivised to produce them. If the rate of profit is low, capitalists have plenty of other things they would rather do with their wealth (i.e. investing overseas, buying into asset bubbles, rent-seek by privatising public assets etc.) than produce goods and services. And if demand for additional consumption is low (because government-supplied 'wages' are high), workers have little motivation to commit their time to perform additional labour. I'm not saying that fundamentally changing our economy to be less reliant on the profit motive and wage labour is a bad thing, only that leaning on MMT to advance these goals without tackling the bigger structural forces at work under capitalism is likely to be extremely counterproductive. 

MMT proponents offer easy solutions for hard problems. They correctly understand the state as a social mechanism for redistribution of wins and losses but don't engage directly with the political question of "who pays" and "who benefits". Distributional justice is the essence of political conflict, and by arguing that it doesn't matter (because the government’s fiscal resources are not scarce), MMT proponents are making a fundamental tactical and strategic mistake. 

Back to the future

I'm anxious about MMT economics rising to prominence on the left because the "MMT welfare state" that some evangelists have proposed looks to me like a fiat money version of 1960s Keynesianism or a demand-side version of post-GFC quantitative easing. If policy-makers are complacent about the critical role of public trust in money and the risk of inflation, there's considerable risk that progressives could walk headlong into a replay of stagflation and the liquidity trap - both of which dramatically worsened inequality We do not want to repeat on the demand-side the collossal failure and waste of supply-side QE, just because those we aim to help are more 'deserving'. MMT gets the diagnosis right, but the cure wrong. 

Another analogy: MMT social welfare states would look a hell of a lot like the oil-fuelled “socialism” of Venezuela. The resemblence should give anyone caution: the government in Caracas believed it had a quasi-unlimited store of exogenous wealth which it could use to create a welfare state without fundamentally taking on the institutional power of existing elites or reforming the structure of the economy. But of course the economy was more sensitive to international financial markets and the trust of people in its currency than it suspected. The result? For all its good intentions, the Bolivarian Republic is suffering currency depreciation, inflation, the corroding of normal economic production, increased repression and violent political instability.

There is no short-cut to economic equality: it must be built, step-by-step and by imposing direct costs on the wealth and privilege of those at the top of society. We must not only work to redistribute wealth and income, but to build a production system that does not generate belle epoque-levels of inequality in the first place. By all means, progressive governments should spend more, and worry less about the concern trolling of the deficit hawks. And to balance the books? Raise taxes, especially on the rich. Tax capital aggressively and abolish sweet-heart deals for the influential. Such a programme is going to make enemies, and create losers who will use their considerable resources to fight against us. But that's the kind of hard work politics is for: not throwing clever economics against hard problems. 

Climate Change broke the neoliberal consensus, too

We began my interview last week on the "Connected & Disaffected" podcast talking about political polarisation: what is it, where it's come from, and whether or not we should fear it. My contention in the interview was that the Global Financial Crisis, and to a lesser extent the Iraq War, broke the post- Cold War hegemony of the neoliberal ideological consensus. In other words, the cultural quasi-equilibria characterised by the dominance of neoliberal narratives about society and the economy proved to be no longer fit for its structural environment. As a result, formerly marginalised social narratives are (re-)emerging, an experience that is deeply disconcerting to a generation of people socialised to believe there is no alternative. 

One point from my notes that I didn't get to make in the interview was that climate change was the third and final nail in neoliberalism's coffin. I don't talk about environmental issues often on this blog: I'm not an environmentalist by nature and am generally content to let the experts come up with pragmatic fixes. As I write in Chapter XVII of my book, "Politics for the New Dark Age", I'm interested in the natural environment primarily as a source of free public services that marginalised people (especially) rely on to survive. I'm interested in how the exploitation and privatisation of the environment fuels the unjust accumulation of wealth by the powerful, and how the distribution of environmental harms of that exploitation often falls hardest on those already disadvantaged (see: Naomi Klein). In other words, I'm not the sort of person who declares that climate change is the greatest moral challenge of our times. 

A perfect little problem

Once upon a time, climate change was the perfect problem for the socially-conscious neoliberal. A potentially existential external threat, it has several elements that appealed to the technocratic elite: expert scientific evidence was required to establish the case for action; cooperation between states necessitated vast and complex international negotiations; domestic solutions envisaged creating a new freely-traded market commodity without changing the economic status quo; and there were opportunities to 'educate' the masses about their consumption patterns and nudge them to make 'better choices'. I think it's fair to say all these methods failed one way or another. We're already blowing past the climate targets we set just four years ago; barely half of US adults believe human activity causes climate change; and most of the rise in consumer energy prices has been caused by price-gauging privatised monopolies, not investment in renewable power. 

These failures are the result of the neoliberal worldview, and they should demoralise and delegitimise those techniques for anyone serious about social policy. 

• Experts are not a magic bullet. And scientific facts are not social facts. As I write in the early chapters of my book, governance is about making value judgements. Despite what utilitarians believe, there's no technocratic formula that will calculate the most ethical way in which to distribute wins and losses. Scientists have established the inevitability of potentially irreversible climate change to a virtual certainty, yet that fact alone tells us nothing about what we should do about it. People intuit this: the best studies show that expert evidence has no effect on public opinion about climate change policy. In fact, relying on appeals to scientific authority has only led the powerful opponents of climate action to develop sophisticated techniques to muddy the waters, conduct personal attacks on scientists and discredit the very idea of expert knowledge. So, good job on that one, neoliberals. 
• And then there's the wonkiest of wonk ideas: carbon trading. Why impose a new tax on pollution when we can create a complex new form of private property traded on indecipherably complex financial markets? Oh, and because this property right will be an artificial creature of state regulation, the price and quantity of carbon permits will be easily manipulated by lobbying interests on behalf the very industries that emit the most carbon. Australia's carbon trading scheme - while effective - was so convoluted and unpopular that the conservatives managed to repeal it FIVE YEARS AGO. As Democrats in the US have discovered with healthcare policy, when voters don't understand a public programme it's absurdly easy for opponents of regulation to portray it as a paranoid right-wing fever dream. Better simpler, direct policies that are easy to understand - and harder to attack. 
• Finally, when all collective solutions fail, neoliberalism tells us that fighting climate change is ultimately a matter of individual responsibility. And since individuals have every incentive to free ride in a collective action problem they have no power over, why we simply need to educate people to make choices contrary to their own rational self interest! I've written before why this kind of 'education' strategy is counterproductive: it creates new hierarchies of knowledge and hides existing hierarchies of power in such a way to generate increased resentment and anxiety from the have-nots. People don't want cheap energy because they're bad people who don't understand climate change: they want cheap energy because they're resource constrained and want one fewer stressor on their daily lives. Middle class neoliberals aren't better or smarter people because of their 'green energy choices', they're using their existing wealth to invest in a social signifier of status. South Park had this one down in 2006.

What's left unsaid

Y'know what's not on this list? The classical sort of central government action traditionally used to solve environmental problems. The same sorts of programs that actually have been implemented and are making the biggest difference in saving us from potential climate catastrophe. Where's China's central planning body setting national targets for solar energy expansion that have made it the world's largest manufacturer of solar cells? The public investment in basic science that led to Australian universities developing modern photovoltaics in the first place? The unilateral government decisions, like Angela Merkel's to close Germany's nuclear power plants, that leads to the market embracing renewables virtually overnight? The basic role of national industry policy in directing subsidies away from the fossil fuel industry and towards more environmentally friendly forms of power generation? The answer is that neoliberalism made these sorts of policy responses literally unthinkable. 

Solving collective action problems requires collective decision-making through national institutions (i.e. governments). As is true of social and economic dilemmas, so too of environmental ones. Nations that are on track to meet their targets under the Paris Agreement are going to do so on the back of their existing competence with industrial management and economic planning. Laissez-faire states without a tradition of government intervention in the economy, like Australia, are least likely to meet them. If you want to save the environment, you're first going to have to take a deeper look at how our societies and economies are structured. Ultimately, I'm with Naomi Klein on this one: our economic system and our relationship with the natural environment are so intrinsically linked that hoping for meaningful action on climate change under neoliberalism is self-defeating. 

Consider that my message for the voters in Batman.