A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles by Thomas Sowell
Very similar assessments are to be found in later writers with the unconstrained vision. Evil in the existing society is "neither incurable nor even very hard to cure when you have diagnosed it scientifically," according to George Bernard Shaw.15 International conflicts are likewise neither inevitable nor inherently difficult to settle. The issues in military conflicts are usually things which warring nations "could have settled with the greatest ease, without the shedding of one drop of blood, if they had been on decent human terms with one another instead of on competitive capitalistic terms."16 Existing society is "only an artificial system susceptible of almost infinite modification and readjustment-nay, of practical demolition and substitution at the will of Man," according to Shaw.17 Every successful private business was an example of "the ease with which public ones could be performed as soon as there was the effective will to find out the way."18
In short, the intrinsic difficulties which dominate the constrained vision are not the real obstacle in the unconstrained vision, in which deliberate obstruction and obfuscation account for many evils, and in which what is crucially needed on the part of the publicspirited reformers is commitment.
In Edward Bellamy's famous social novel Looking Backward, a citizen of an advanced future society remarks to a man from the past on "the singular blindness" of the old society, in which "social troubles" and "dissatisfactions" necessarily portended changes,19 that things had to be done "in the common interest."20 To take control of the economy was not difficult, for "the larger the business the simpler the principles that can be applied to it...."21 Purely clerical devices provide "all the information we can possibly need."22 A "simple system of book accounts" is all that is required.23 Competition for resources was not intrinsic but due to "a system which made the interests of every individual antagonistic to those of every other ...... 24 Concepts of waste,25 blindness 26 and the public interest27 abound along with repeated assertions of the intrinsic simplicity of rationally managing a society.28
More sophisticated modern versions of the unconstrained or rationalistic vision are variations on the same themes. Even where societies are conceived to be more complex, modern expertise is able to master the complexities, making its central management still quite feasible. Thus, in more sophisticated versions of the unconstrained vision, whole societies remain readily manageable, though by experts rather than by the mass of ordinary people. Third-party decision-making plays a key role: "Delegation to experts has become an indispensable aid to rational calculation in modern life."29 What is "desirable" or "undesirable," "preferred," "satisfactory," or "unsatisfactory" are referred to in passing, without explanation, as apparently things too obvious to require explanation.30 "Needs" are also treated in the same way.31 There are analogies given to engineering or "scientific" social decision-making by third parties:
Bureaucracy itself is a method for bringing scientific judgments to bear on policy decisions; the growth of bureaucracy in modern government is itself partly an index of the increased capacity of government to make use of expert knowledge.32
This modern promotion of the use of experts echoes a tradition which goes back at least as far as the eighteenth century, when Condorcet saw the physical sciences as providing a model which the social sciences should follow.33 Indeed, he used the term "social science"34 and urged that quantification and theories of probability be used in formulating social policies.35
Another recurring theme in the unconstrained vision is how profoundly different current issues are from those of the past, so that the historically evolved beliefs-"the conventional wisdom," in Galbraith's phrase36-can no longer apply. Nor is this a new and recent conclusion. In the eighteenth century, Godwin declared that we cannot make today's decisions on the basis of "a timid reverence for the decisions of our ancestors."37 Such terms as "outmoded" and "irrelevant" are common in dismissals of what, in the opposing vision, is called the wisdom of the ages.
The issue is not as to whether changes have occurred in human history, but whether these are, in effect, changes of costumes and scenery or changes of the play itself. In the constrained vision, it is mostly the costumes and scenery that have changed; in the unconstrained vision, the play itself has changed, the characters are fundamentally different, and equally sweeping changes are both likely and necessary in the future.
PROCESS COSTS
All social processes-whether economic, religious, political, or other-involve costs. These costs are seen very differently by those with the constrained and the unconstrained visions, just as they see differently the kinds of attitudes needed in these processes-sincerity versus fidelity, for example. These costs may be due to time or to violence, among other sources, their corresponding benefits may be apportioned justly or unjustly, and their recipients may be free or unfree. All these aspects are assessed differently in the constrained and the unconstrained visions.
Time
The passage of time, and its irreversibility, create special decision-making difficulties, social processes, and moral principles-all of which are seen quite differently by those with the constrained and the unconstrained visions. Both recognize that decisions made at one point in time have consequences at other points in time. But the ways of coping with this fact depend upon the capabilities of human beings, and especially of human knowledge and foresight.
Accretions of knowledge over time mean that individual and social decisions made under conditions of lesser knowledge have consequences under conditions of greater knowledge. To those with the unconstrained vision, this means that being bound by past decisions represents a loss of benefits made possible by later knowledge. Being bound by past decisions, whether in constitutional law cases or in marriage for life, is seen as costly and irrational. The unconstrained vision therefore tends toward seeking the greatest flexibility for changing decisions in the light of later information. In arguing against Locke's concept of a social contract, William Godwin took a position that was applicable to intertemporal commitments in general:
Am I precluded from better information for the whole course of my life? And, if not for the whole life, why for a year, a week, or even an hour?38
To Godwin, "One of the principal means of information is time." Therefore, we needlessly restrict the effect of knowledge on our actions "if we bind ourselves to-day, to the conduct we will observe two months hence."39 Future commitments require a man "to shut up his mind against further information, as to what his conduct in that future ought to be."40 To live by "anticipating" future knowledge was to Godwin as "improvident" as living by anticipating future income.41
In the unconstrained vision, there are moral as well as practical consequences to intertemporal commitments. Gratitude, as well as loyalty and patriotism, for example, are all essentially commitments to behave differently in the future, toward individuals or societies, than one would behave on an impartial assessment of circumstances as they might exist at some future time, if those individuals and societies were encountered for the first time. Where two lives are jeopardized and only one can be saved, to save the one who is your father may be an act of loyalty but not an act of justice.42 Thus, in behavioral terms, gratitude and loyalty are intertemporal commitments not to be impartial-not to use future knowledge and future moral assessments to produce that result which you would otherwise consider best, if confronting the same individuals and situations for the first time. From this perspective, loyalty, promises, patriotism, gratitude, precedents, oaths of fidelity, constitutions, marriage, social traditions, and international treaties are all constrictions imposed earlier, when knowledge is less, on options to be exercised later, when knowledge will be greater. They were all condemned by Godwin.43 All were prior constraints on that "uncontroled exercise of private judgment"44 which Godwin espoused.
The binding of judicial decisions by constitutions and legal precedents was seen by Godwin as another example of intertemporal commitments based on lesser knowledge impeding better decisions based on greater knowledge tha
An enlightened and reasonable judicature would have recourse, in order to decide the cause before them, to no code but the code of reason. They would feel the absurdity of other men's teaching them what they should think, and pretending to understand the case before them before it happened, better than they who had all the circumstances under their inspection.45
All those things condemned by Godwin-loyalty, constitutions, marriage, etc.- have been lauded and revered by those with a constrained vision. The process costs entailed by intertemporal commitments depend on (1) how much more knowledge, rationality, and impartiality human beings are capable of bringing to bear as a result of the passage of time and (2) on the cost of accepting the disadvantages of moment-to-moment decision-making. Where the capability of greater knowledge and understanding is considered to be large- as in the unconstrained vision- the case for avoiding commitment is strongest. Where this capability is considered to be inherently very limited- as in the constrained vision- the benefits are correspondingly smaller and more readily overbalanced by other considerations.
In social principles, especially, Burke saw no fundamental advance to be expected from the passage of time:
We know that we have made no discoveries, and we think that no discoveries are to be made, in morality; nor many in the great principles of government, nor in the ideas of liberty ...46
More generally, the very concept of "social science," which largely originated among those with the unconstrained vision, beginning with Condorcet in the eighteenth century, is often viewed skeptically by those with the constrained vision, if not rejected outright as a pretentious delusion of being scientific where the prerequisites of science do not exist.47 Changing historically evolved principles on the basis of "social science" theories or studies has become the hallmark of modern social thinkers with the unconstrained visionand the bete noir of those with the constrained vision. Government, according to Burke, requires "more experience than any person can gain in his whole life."48 Given this premise, the incremental gain in individual knowledge by avoiding commitments is trivial, compared to the gain to be made by fidelity to the accumulated experience of the society.
In a world where the individual is to be guided by the collective wisdom of his culture, in accordance with the constrained vision, culture must itself have some stability in order to serve as a guide. Without this stability, "no man could know what would be the test of honour in a nation continually varying the standard of its coin," according to Burke.49 The judicial situation posed by Godwin may well lead to poorer decisions than if judges were completely free to decide each case ad hoc, but the constrained vision offsets such losses against the prospective guidance provided by known rules, leading to fewer criminal law violations or needs for civil litigation. To Burke, "the evils of inconstancy" were "ten thousand times worse than those of obstinacy and the blindest prejudice."50 In short, process costs arising from unreliable social expectations outweighed the value of incremental individual knowledge, or its more finely tuned application.
Given the perspective of the constrained vision, a judge should not even attempt to reach the socially best decision in the case before him. According to Hayek: "The only public good with which he can be concerned is the observance of those rules that the individual could reasonably count on." The judge should "apply the rules even if in the particular instance the known consequences will appear to him wholly undesirable."51 The cost is justified only because other (and larger) costs are entailed by alternative social processes, according to the constrained vision of human capabilities. Such a conclusion is, however, anathema to believers in the unconstrained vision. The courts "will never permit themselves to be used as instruments of inequity and injustice," according to a landmark court case.52 To knowingly accept injustice is unconscionable in the unconstrained vision. But in the constrained vision, injustices are inevitable, with the only real question being whether there will be more with one process than another.
To Adam Smith as well, general stability was more important than particular benefits: "The peace and order of society is of more importance than even the relief of the miserable." Therefore, even though he believed that "the rich and the great are too often preferred to the wise and the virtuous," he noted that determining the former involved lower process costs, so that "the peace and order of society" would rest more securely "upon the plain and palpable difference of birth and fortune than upon the invisible and often uncertain difference of wisdom and virtue."53
Once again, where those with an unconstrained vision see a solution, those with a constrained vision see a trade-off. The unconstrained vision seeks the best individual decisions, arrived at seriatim and in ad hoc fashion. By contrast, the constrained vision trades off the benefits of both wisdom and virtue against the benefits of stability of expectations and standards. It may concede that one process offers abstractly better individual decisions, but deducts the process costs of those decisions to arrive at a net balance which may turn out to favor the less prepossessing alternative-palpable distinctions of rank versus less perceptible differences of wisdom and virtue, for example.
This calculation need not always come down on the side of the status quo; many of the leading exemplars of the constrained vision were advocates of unpopular and sometimes drastic changes, as noted in Chapter 3. But the fact that better decisions in themselves were not sufficient to justify change, because of process costs, provided a basis for those with the constrained vision to reject many proposed changes that would otherwise be compelling on the basis of the unconstrained vision. In short, human beings as conceived in the unconstrained vision should logically follow very different policies from those to be followed by human beings as conceived in the constrained vision.
Social rules are as central to the constrained vision as unfettered individual judgment and individual conscience are at the heart of the unconstrained vision. As F. A. Hayek has put it:
We live in a society in which we can successfully orientate ourselves, and in which our actions have a good chance of achieving their aims, not only because our fellows are governed by known aims or known connections between means and ends, but because they are also confined by rules whose purpose or origin we often do not know and of whose very existence we are often unaware.54
Commonly shared implicit rules thus reduce process costs. But process costs are less and less of a consideration, the greater is the individual's capacity to decide each issue on its merits as it arises. Rules thus range from a nuisance to an intolerable burden in the unconstrained vision. The difference between the two visions is therefore especially sharp as regards rules and practices relating to intertemporal commitmentsloyalty, constitutions, and marriage, for example.
At the extremes, the constrained vision says, "My country, right or wrong," while the unconstrained vision casts its exponent in the role of a citizen of the world, ready to oppose his own country, in words or actions, whenever he sees fit. Patriotism and treason thus become a meaningless distinction at the extremes of the unconstrained vision, while this distinction is one of the most central and most powerful distinctions in the constrained vision.
The constrained vision is premised on "necessary and irremediable ignorance on everyone's part," in the words of Hayek,55 who also sees that individual, rationalistic decision-making of the unconstrained vision "demands complete knowledge of all the relevant facts." To Hayek, the latter is utterly impossible, for the functioning of society depends upon social coordination of "millions of facts which in their entirety are not known to anybody."56 To Hayek, it is a delusion "that all the relevant facts are known to some one mind"57 making a decision and considering its wider ramifications. In the constrained vision, the benefits of an advanced civilization derive from the better social coordination of widely dispersed fragments of knowledge-not from greater knowledge in the individual. According to Hayek:
In civilized society it is indeed not so
In this vision, it is especially unwarranted for the individual to place himself outside or above the society which makes his life and his understanding possible. Even great achievements by an individual are deemed to be necessarily confined to a narrow slice of the sweeping spectrum of concerns which a society coordinates, and therefore provide no basis for him to imagine that he can disassemble and reassemble in a better way the complex society around him. "Their very excellence in their peculiar functions" may leave such outstanding individuals less than qualified in others, according to Burke.59 In a similar vein, Hamilton argued that even the "greatest genius" would overlook decisive considerations which an ordinary man might see.60