Conservatives sometimes claim to be more realistic about human nature. But there are a few conservative talking points that show amazing naitvette on that front. Witness (HT: Think Tonk):
21. Racism and poverty — not a lack of fathers and a crisis of values — are the primary causes of violent crime in the inner city.No. Poverty no more causes crime than wealth causes virtuous behavior.
Does anyone honestly believe that Bill Gates is just as likely to mug someone for chump change as someone who’s been dirt poor all his life? Of course not. Notice, though, the change from “violent crime in the inner city” to “crime vs. virtue.” The very rich are certainly more likely to try to profit from violating corporate law than any poor inner city youth, and even if not for that, not being a criminal is different than being virtuous.
The lesson for human nature is that what determines whether people will commit crimes is often not “values” but cost-benefit analysis. The cost-benefit analysis for Bill Gates becoming a mugger is awful, that’s what keeps him from doing it. Human beings are basically selfish all around, we just express it in different ways.
Also:
9. Marriage should be redefined from male-female to any two people.No. The State is involved in marriage in order to promote a legitimate common interest, namely, that there be healthy families in which men are tamed, women are protected, and children are socialized.
The idea that legal marriage does anything at all to tame men is a joke. Most men in this day and age would be pretty tame without legal marriage, and the ones who aren’t tame aren’t going to be tamed merely be the presence of a legal framework. Indeed, some of them can be seen going around telling their fellow men what a raw eal the present legal framework is.
What both these examples show, I think, is that the “conservative realist” view of human nature really involves a fantasy that the bad stuff in human nature can be erased if Society comes in and Instills Virtuous Values. But the main thing society can do is give people selfish incentives to be a bit nicer to each other. I do agree a little bit with Will Wilkinson that culture and norms matter, but even what culture and norms develop depends in large part on what ones people have incentives to adopt.
Two comments:
First, though I agree that the cost-benefit analysis is far, far more important than conservatives give it credit for, I wonder (and worry about) whether the idea from social science and economics that people always act on rational self-interest isn’t self fulfilling, and treating them as such makes them act more so, and thus actually causing something of a “crisis of values.” I remember reading about a study that suggested that this way of thinking does affect how people act, but I can’t find where I originally read it.
Also, I actually agree to the conservative idea of marriage to a fair extent. I know, at least, that relationships have gone a long way in “taming” me and my friends: in college, in terms of drinking and partying, and now that I’m out of college, my relationship forces me to think much farther ahead and base my decisions not only on my own needs but on that of my girlfriend. I also know that I have already had to rely on her for a bit of financial support, and that no doubt she will have to rely on me to some extent in the future. I also know that marriage will solidify our commitment further–maybe not so much the legal marriage, but certainly the heft of family expectations and of our own commitment.
What conservatives of this kind seem obviously blind to is that 1. security and “taming” goes for both sexes, and 2. the case is just about the same for homosexual couples.
Though I’d like to find the study, you’re probably right about it. Exhibit A:
http://roissy.wordpress.com/2008/01/24/thoughts-on-morality/
I should be clear that the idea that people always act on rational self-interest is very definitely wrong. It’s just a depressingly close approximation, and it’s been a depressingly close approximation for most of human history. And the clearest way it fails is just as depressing: even when people adopt norms that run counter to the traditional economic notion of rationality, the norms involved are still often, on some level, in their self-interest to adopt.
Semi-related fact: New York street thugs may have beaten economists to the punch on this one. There’s a scene in Malcolm X’s autobiography where he plays Russian roulette with himself, in view of the other members of his burglary gang, and tells them “never cross a man who isn’t afraid to die.” It’s not the kind of thing an economist’s Rational Man would do, but the thinking behind it was spot-on. Same for the thinking behind the fact that he and another New York criminal almost killed each other over chump change. If none of this is obvious to you, you need to spend more time reading human psychology and game theory.