The End of Civilization as We Know It? Not so much.
In which we discuss the new tax policy.
Early morning after the big Boxing Day open house. Place looks pretty good for having had nearly 50 guests. In part because the relatives staying with us helped the cleanup.
We had a couple of "real" scientists as guests, by which I mean particle physicists (dark matter and the Higgs boson respectively). And visiting with them got me to thinking about economics.
You see, economics is "a social science concerned chiefly with description and analysis of the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services." This dictionary definition doesn't make explicit something that should be better understood by theologians. It is a social science. The first tells you that its field of study is humans in society. The second tells you that it studies actual behavior, not how people should behave.
This distinction first became clear to me in the 80’s when I was studying Islam. Islamic Universities were being built to promulgate a new “Islamic” approach to higher education based largely on the theories of Fazlur Rahman and Muslim reformers from a century earlier.
The "Islamic Social Sciences" were to make Revelation (The Qur’an in this case) an equal partner with human observation of natural behavior in seeking to describe reality scientifically. It is a goal that many Christians also wish to pursue in higher education. And there is some basis for it. The concept of “natural” and “special” revelation pre-dates Islam in Christian circles and intellectuals like Tariq Ramadan (now at Notre Dame) are still working on how to explain it to Muslims, just as at SMU we’re still working on explaining it to Christians.
Still, the problem with “Islamic Economics” is that in the end they never studied human economic behavior, They ended up being descriptions of how: 1. the Islamic ethics that govern personal human economic behavior 2. can/should enforced as public policy in an Islamic society by a Muslim government. It was the equivalent of what Christians call "public theology." That’s why the so-called Islamic economists only cited the Qur’an and Hadith. They were theologians calling themselves scientists trying to direct politicians.
So Islamic economics tended to be neither social nor science. They were personal ethics turned into political mandates. And they were therefore ignored or only given lip service in making actual economic policy. And that remained true even when Islamic economists moved toward describing social ethics instead of personal ethics. Because neither personal nor social ideals cannot govern public policy if they are detached from actual personal behavior in society.
This is frustrating if you are a theologian. Which is why along-side every economic ideology formulated by theologians there is also a plan of public indoctrination into proper ethical behavior. Islamic economics invariably ends up with state sponsored programs to teach Muslims to behave like Muslim should behave.
And this happens, I note, in both progressive and evangelical Christian circles as well. The identification of personal and social ideals leads invariable to programs to indoctrinate children into behaving according to those ideals. OR alternatively to removing the supposed forms of indoctrination that lead them away from their presumed to be naturally virtuous social behavior. Just look at the vast growth of private religious schools from across the political and theological spectrum. Education has become the handmaiden of religious indoctrination.
What about the new tax plan, freshly passed by the US Congress and signed into law by the US president? Well it has something to offer real economists and theologians. Taxes, since the advent of modern economic theories, are never merely a way to raise revenue for the government. Taxes are a way of manipulating human economic behavior in the crudest possible fashion. They offer a set of rewards and punishments intended to direct citizens (individually and corporately) into what is regarded by the political party in power as virtuous economic behavior.
And for this reason well formed tax policy depends heavily on economists to describe, according to the state of their knowledge, how people will respond to the policy. And it requires theologians (and ideologues) to describe what kinds of behavior are virtuous.
The problem? First economists (including the amateurs we elect as politicians) disagree about the science. We are simply nowhere near Isaac Asimov’s world of the Foundation Trilogy in which social scientists could predict and tweak human behavior on a grand scale. (I leave it to you whether we have seen the rise of a “Mule” to throw a wrench in their work.)
There may be a consensus among economists, but even they will hedge their bets because they know that the variables are simply too complex and constantly changing to predict with high confidence the future results of current policy.
If you doubt this look at how badly the pet economists of the US medical industry mis-judged (and thus bet wrongly) on the long term effects of the Affordable Care Act. You can say “well the Republicans undermined it.” True, but the behavior of politicians is just one more variable that economists must take into account and which progressive politicians and a lot of economists across the board failed to take into account.
What about theologians? Well we really have a problem. We have conflicting ideals of economic behavior and don’t agree on ideal economic goals. Worse, we have our own conflicting theories of what motivates human behavior and these conflict with economic theories of what motivates human behavior.
And finally none of us take into account that culture deeply determines both motivation and desired results of economic behavior. And we live as we always have in a culturally diverse society,
Which is why I’m reluctant to believe the strident claims from politicians or economists or theologians that the new tax policy is the end of civilization as we know it, or that it will usher in God’s Reign of ever expanding prosperity.
It will probably lead to change, although our system seems to quickly seek a new equilibrium. And if voters rationally assess their understanding of the public good and vote for those who intend to enact that public good in policy then good changes will be perpetuated and bad changes will be ameliorated. Which for the last 250 years has generally and measurably been for the good.
And if voters and their representatives refuse to engage in making changes for the good because they believe it serves their political purposes? Well that has been the Republican strategy with regard to health care for the last 7 years and we'll soon see if they are punished for it by voters when the full implications become obvious. If Democrats adopt the same strategy, as they seem to be doing, then we'll see how that unfolds in future elections. If voters buy into the strident, self-serving lies that now make the basic communication patterns of both parties?
Then I may be wrong about the end of civilization.
Early morning after the big Boxing Day open house. Place looks pretty good for having had nearly 50 guests. In part because the relatives staying with us helped the cleanup.
We had a couple of "real" scientists as guests, by which I mean particle physicists (dark matter and the Higgs boson respectively). And visiting with them got me to thinking about economics.
You see, economics is "a social science concerned chiefly with description and analysis of the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services." This dictionary definition doesn't make explicit something that should be better understood by theologians. It is a social science. The first tells you that its field of study is humans in society. The second tells you that it studies actual behavior, not how people should behave.
This distinction first became clear to me in the 80’s when I was studying Islam. Islamic Universities were being built to promulgate a new “Islamic” approach to higher education based largely on the theories of Fazlur Rahman and Muslim reformers from a century earlier.
The "Islamic Social Sciences" were to make Revelation (The Qur’an in this case) an equal partner with human observation of natural behavior in seeking to describe reality scientifically. It is a goal that many Christians also wish to pursue in higher education. And there is some basis for it. The concept of “natural” and “special” revelation pre-dates Islam in Christian circles and intellectuals like Tariq Ramadan (now at Notre Dame) are still working on how to explain it to Muslims, just as at SMU we’re still working on explaining it to Christians.
Still, the problem with “Islamic Economics” is that in the end they never studied human economic behavior, They ended up being descriptions of how: 1. the Islamic ethics that govern personal human economic behavior 2. can/should enforced as public policy in an Islamic society by a Muslim government. It was the equivalent of what Christians call "public theology." That’s why the so-called Islamic economists only cited the Qur’an and Hadith. They were theologians calling themselves scientists trying to direct politicians.
So Islamic economics tended to be neither social nor science. They were personal ethics turned into political mandates. And they were therefore ignored or only given lip service in making actual economic policy. And that remained true even when Islamic economists moved toward describing social ethics instead of personal ethics. Because neither personal nor social ideals cannot govern public policy if they are detached from actual personal behavior in society.
This is frustrating if you are a theologian. Which is why along-side every economic ideology formulated by theologians there is also a plan of public indoctrination into proper ethical behavior. Islamic economics invariably ends up with state sponsored programs to teach Muslims to behave like Muslim should behave.
And this happens, I note, in both progressive and evangelical Christian circles as well. The identification of personal and social ideals leads invariable to programs to indoctrinate children into behaving according to those ideals. OR alternatively to removing the supposed forms of indoctrination that lead them away from their presumed to be naturally virtuous social behavior. Just look at the vast growth of private religious schools from across the political and theological spectrum. Education has become the handmaiden of religious indoctrination.
What about the new tax plan, freshly passed by the US Congress and signed into law by the US president? Well it has something to offer real economists and theologians. Taxes, since the advent of modern economic theories, are never merely a way to raise revenue for the government. Taxes are a way of manipulating human economic behavior in the crudest possible fashion. They offer a set of rewards and punishments intended to direct citizens (individually and corporately) into what is regarded by the political party in power as virtuous economic behavior.
And for this reason well formed tax policy depends heavily on economists to describe, according to the state of their knowledge, how people will respond to the policy. And it requires theologians (and ideologues) to describe what kinds of behavior are virtuous.
The problem? First economists (including the amateurs we elect as politicians) disagree about the science. We are simply nowhere near Isaac Asimov’s world of the Foundation Trilogy in which social scientists could predict and tweak human behavior on a grand scale. (I leave it to you whether we have seen the rise of a “Mule” to throw a wrench in their work.)
There may be a consensus among economists, but even they will hedge their bets because they know that the variables are simply too complex and constantly changing to predict with high confidence the future results of current policy.
If you doubt this look at how badly the pet economists of the US medical industry mis-judged (and thus bet wrongly) on the long term effects of the Affordable Care Act. You can say “well the Republicans undermined it.” True, but the behavior of politicians is just one more variable that economists must take into account and which progressive politicians and a lot of economists across the board failed to take into account.
What about theologians? Well we really have a problem. We have conflicting ideals of economic behavior and don’t agree on ideal economic goals. Worse, we have our own conflicting theories of what motivates human behavior and these conflict with economic theories of what motivates human behavior.
And finally none of us take into account that culture deeply determines both motivation and desired results of economic behavior. And we live as we always have in a culturally diverse society,
Which is why I’m reluctant to believe the strident claims from politicians or economists or theologians that the new tax policy is the end of civilization as we know it, or that it will usher in God’s Reign of ever expanding prosperity.
It will probably lead to change, although our system seems to quickly seek a new equilibrium. And if voters rationally assess their understanding of the public good and vote for those who intend to enact that public good in policy then good changes will be perpetuated and bad changes will be ameliorated. Which for the last 250 years has generally and measurably been for the good.
And if voters and their representatives refuse to engage in making changes for the good because they believe it serves their political purposes? Well that has been the Republican strategy with regard to health care for the last 7 years and we'll soon see if they are punished for it by voters when the full implications become obvious. If Democrats adopt the same strategy, as they seem to be doing, then we'll see how that unfolds in future elections. If voters buy into the strident, self-serving lies that now make the basic communication patterns of both parties?
Then I may be wrong about the end of civilization.
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