Mark D. White

Writer, editor, teacher

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about

I’m a professor in the Department of Philosophy at the College of Staten Island/CUNY, where I teach courses in philosophy, economics, and law, and the author/editor/co-editor of several books.

  • An unintentional survey of the ethics of gays in the military in the WSJ

    Mark D. White

    In today's Wall Street Journal, Bret Stephens has a piece arguing why the GOP should let "Don't Ask Don't Tell" (DADT) lapse in the 2011 Defense Bill, and in it he happens to cover the three mainstream approaches to ethics: consequentialism (DADT forces the expulsion or rejection of qualified, eager men and women from the armed forces), deontology (DADT violates the rights of homosexuals), and virtue ethics (DADT discourages honesty). And, in a consequentialist twist on virtue ethics, he argues (correctly, in my opinion) that this incentive for dishonesty is what weakens the armed forces, not the existence of homosexual servicemen and women itself:

    In the meantime, it's worth noting that there are an estimated 48,000 homosexuals on active duty or the reserves, many of them in critical occupations, many with distinguished service records. If they pose any risk at all to America's security, it is, paradoxically, because DADT institutionalizes dishonesty, puts them at risk of blackmail, and forces fellow warfighters who may know about their orientation to make an invidious choice between comradeship and the law. That's no way to run a military.

    If you'll indulge me my comics habit for a moment, the origin of the new Batwoman included a similar message on DADT, when a young Kate Kane has to withdraw from the US Military Academy after word gets out that she is a lesbian. Her CO asks her to deny the rumor (subtly insinuating that he knows they're true), but she cites the military code of honesty, and chooses to accept a discharge rather than compromise that principle. (This scene can be found in Batwoman: Elegy, written by Greg Rucka and illsutrated by the incomparable J.H. Williams.)

    This shows that DADT not only asks our men and woman in the armed forces to deny an essential part of themselves, but also to deny the very principles on which the military is grounded, in order to serve their country. Stephens emphasizes the more basic consequentialist argument (which is certainly valid as well), but I favor the others (naturally)–just ask Batwoman!

  • Elizabeth Warren, financial reform, and Nudge

    Mark D. White

    Since the nomination of Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is currently making headlines (though not as much as if she were a disgruntled flight attendent), I thought it was a good time to share a recent paper of mine, "We've Been Nudged: The Effects of the Downturn on Dignity and Responsibility," which I wrote for Martha Starr's upcoming edited volume, Consequences of Economic Downturn: Beyond the Usual Economics, forthcoming next year from the Palgrave series "Perspectives from Social Economics." Here's the abstract/introduction:

    The economic downtown that began in 2008 has had tremendous consequences in the United States (and abroad), including declines in traditional economic variables such as gross domestic product, the stock indices, and employment, as well as the broader measures of well-being detailed in other chapters in this book. Scholars will argue for years to come over the true causes of the downturn – how much was due to imprudent practices on the part of business (chiefly, financial concerns), irresponsible behavior on the part of consumers and borrowers, and ill-designed regulation and intervention by the government – as well as the effects of various aspects of the government response.

    Regardless of the relative validity of these factors, the common perception seems to be that private institutions – the market in general and the financial sector in particular – failed, and government intervention is necessary to serve the functions that private institutions used to provide. As a result of this perception, the American people may be more open to increased regulation of economic and financial activity, including state intervention in personal decisionmaking, as typified by the “libertarian paternalism” made popular by the book Nudge and incorporated into proposed federal legislation to enact broad reform of the financial sector. I argue below that we should not be too hasty to surrender choice over personal decisions to the state, based on criticism of libertarian paternalism and its academic basis in behavioral law and economics from the viewpoint of dignity and autonomy as described by 18th century philosopher Immanuel Kant. I discuss the specific work in the area that inspired the most recent attempt at financial regulatory overhaul, and show how its features are consistent with the broader literature from which it derives, and also how it suffers from the same flaws epistemic and ethical shortcomings. Ultimately, I argue that the perception of the failure of the market that has led us to question our own choices results from a misunderstanding of the role of the market in society, and an improved understanding of the market will serve to reassert the importance of individual choice and dignity over the supposed benefits of government decisionmaking on the behalf of consumers.

    In this section on financial reform I discuss a bit of Professor Warren's work, mainly her 2008 paper "Making Credit Safer" with Oren Bar-Gill from the University of Pennsylvania Law Review. As I explain in my paper (with many quotes from Bar-Gill and Warren, plus others), these scholars share the same attitude toward consumers as Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein do in their academic and popular work on libertarian paternalism, which is ultimately based on incredibly simplistic and reductive understandings of human motivations and behavior (which is ironic, coming from behavioral economists), and a refusal to consider the autonomy and dignity of the consumers they presume to be helping.

  • Proposition 8 (and the tyranny of the majority) overturned in California

    Mark D. White

    Yesterday, Judge Vaughn R. Walker overturned Proposition 8, the voter-enacted amendment to the California Constitution that declares marriage to be exclusively between a man and a woman. This case will undoubtedly move up through the court system, but for now this is undeniably a huge step.

    I especially appreciated this passage in Judge Walker's decision (page 118 in the opinion linked above):

    That the majority of California voters supported Proposition 8 is irrelevant, as “fundamental rights may not be submitted to [a] vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.” West Virginia State Board of Education v Barnette, 319 US 624, 638 (1943).

    This echoes what I wrote in  "Same-Sex Marriage: The Irrelevance of the Economic Approach to Law" (International Journal of Law in Context, 6/2, 2010; draft version available here), drawing from the jurisprudence of Ronald Dworkin:

    If rights are in question, they should not be up for vote; a right either exists or it does not… And whether or not it does exist should be formally recognised by the part of the legal system responsible for deciding on issues of rights – the courts. To do otherwise is to invoke Mill’s "tyranny of the majority" by endorsing a system in which the majority can vote to rescind essential rights claimed by the minority. … But just as judges should not legislate or make policy, the standard legislative process cannot do justice to the principled matter of same-sex marriage, nor does it serve democratic principles to try. (p. 147)

    Aside from my approval of the substance of Judge Walker's decision, I especially appreciate the way in which he made it, confirming that some rights – especially ones so important as the right to marry the person of one's choosing – are beyond popular vote.

    Noentheless, the optimal solution remains that the state should withdraw from marriage entirely, leaving it a purely private matter between individuals, their community, and their faith (when appropriate), stepping in only to enforce private agreements or other aspects of the law that apply to married and non-married persons, and with no privileged (positive or negative) status accorded to marriage. Only when the state takes its finger off the scales will marriage be truly equal for all.

  • Tunnel vision and wrongful convictions

    Mark D. White

    I haev a new post at Psychology Today reviewing a fantastic new book chapter titled "Tunnel Vision" by University of Wisconsin Law School professor Keith A. Findley, also the co-director of the Wisconsin innocence Project and president of the Innocence Network. The chapter is forthcoming in the book, Conviction of the Innocent: Lessons from Psychological Research (edited by B. Cutler; APA Press), and is based on an earlier and more detailed article in the Wisconsin Law Review titled "The Multiple Dimensions of Tunnel Vision in Criminal Cases" written with his UW colleague Michael S. Scott.

    In the paper and chapter, Findley (with and without Scott) details the cognitive biases inherent in the decisions at every level of the criminal justice system, from apprehension and investigation to prosecution, sentencing, and parole. They provide examples of innocent persons wrongly convicted because (they argue) once they became the focus of their respective investigations, the various parties involved in the prosecution were subject to confirmation bias (which led them to interpret new evidence in such a way as to confirm their beliefs regarding the suspect's guilt) and hindsight bias (in which new evidence, selectively interpreted, makes their original suspicions seem inevitable).

    To combat these biases, they recommend increased transparency in the system as well as institutional reforms (to change incentives that reinforce these biases, such as rewarding prosecutors for conviction rates). In the blog post, I discuss the difficulty with these institutional reforms, given the information and incentive problems with motivating actions based on "justice." My suggestion is to argue that defense counsel needs to take a more forceful role in bringing these biases to light, so their distortionary effect on the prosecution's case can be (to some extent) negated.

    All in all, these are excellent and important pieces by Findley and Scott, and I hope they are widely read and appreciated.

  • Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg a Hayekian?

    Mark D. White

    While searching for readings for my legal philosophy class (now focusing on constitutional interpretation in light of the pending Supreme Court nomination and confirmation process), I lit upon this fantastic symposium on Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in the Ohio State Law Journal, in particular the article by Tobias Barrington Wolff entitled "Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sensible Pragmatism in Federal Jurisdictional Policy," in which Wolff writes (emphasis mine):

    Justice Ginsburg combines this concern over the inherent limitations of statutory language with a particular strain of interpretive conservatism. Her dissent in Surgeons, and her work in the area of procedure more broadly, exhibits a healthy respect for the wisdom of past practice as it develops over time. For Justice Ginsburg, the starting point in applying open-ended congressional language to a question of procedure or jurisdiction is an appreciation for the stable and sensible solutions that lawyers and judges have crafted in responding to analogous problems in past disputes. In this area of law, at least, her approach might be described as Hayekian in its respect for the value of the organic development of complex practices. (p. 858)

    Always nice to see Hayek invoked in unexpected contexts.

  • The Indignity of the Health Care Bill (A Reply to Wight)

    Mark D. White

    You beat me to it, Jonathan–I was going to wait until the president signed the bill, but since you said your piece, I will too.

    Universal health care coverage is a laudable goal–or, to be precise, universal access to coverage is laudable, since health care insurance should always be voluntary, with individuals bearing the risks of noncoverage. But this bill attempts to achieve this goal in the absolutely worst way imaginable (short of complete state control, which is a long-run inevitability), sacrifricing not only voluntariness but autonomy and choice, responsibility, patient- and physician-directed care, and technological and procedural innovation–all of which would be provided by a more market-oriented system than we currently have, not the bureaucratic behemoth this bill creates.

    With all due respect, Jonathan, utilitarianism is what got us into this mess, for two main reasons. First, the overwhelming emphasis on costs: saving money at any cost to choice, dignity, and health outcomes. Of course, markets are also driven in part by costs, but in markets individuals can always choose to bear higher costs if they choose and are able–this choice is made for them by some distant bureaucrat working on a spreadsheet. Second is the fact that utilitarianism neglects the process by which outcomes are arrived at–in case, most relevantly, the aspect of autonomous choice. Without the proper checks and balances, utilitarianism breeds social engineering, endorsing control over personal decisions by bureaucrats and regulators who "know better" what should be done (as was my main point in our paternalism debates), and removing more and more control over personal decisions for individuals themselves–and what decisions are more personal than those regarding the health of you or your loved ones?

    Regarding rights serving utility, such rights are no rights at all. For rights to be meaningful, they must trump utility or welfare in at least some nontrivial cases. Without rights, we are all pawns in the hands of the powerful, even if those in power will elected democratically (hence, Mill's warning about the tyranny of the majority). And the cynical, instrumental use of rights language to drive a utilitarian agenda which neglects true rights based on dignity is a travesty.

    Universal access to health coverage could have been achieved at (actually) lower costs, and keeping with the principles of choice, autonomy, and dignity, if the many state-created barriers and distortions in the health care market had been reversed: removing or restructuring the tax exemption on health care benefits that created employer-based health coverage (which ties people to inferior jobs for fear of losing their benefits), loosening the restrictions on interstate purchases of health coverage, and reforming medical malpractice law to make sure both patients and the doctors they rely upon are protected.

    But as it is, under the current proposal the government will inevitably ration medical resources through price controls, introducing more distortions into the "market" for health care. Less talented young people will go into the medical field, and less resources will be devoted to R&D for new medicines and technologies. Financial burdens for patients will be transformed into time costs, and bureaucrats will play a growing role in determining who gets what treatment and when–all in the interests of controlling costs, taking into account lives, health, and choice only in terms of their imputed monetary value.

    In short, the health care system did need fixing, but the answer was less government, not more–and certainly not this much more.

  • Health Care Reform Passes!

    Jonathan B. Wight

    I’m a supporter of health care reform, largely for utilitarian
    reasons. Expanding access to health insurance will (in theory) lead to greater prevention,
    and more kids will be covered in the womb and in infancy—when critical brain
    development happens. That is a good thing for promoting long run economic growth,
    and will be cost effective. The net benefits of spending on social services in a child's infancy likely far exceed that at any other age (think of the cost of incarceration).

    In addition, current health spending is disproportionately geared
    to administrative expenses—to identify and avoid clients with pending health
    needs.  How many people stay in their miserable
    jobs simply because they would lose insurance if they left? With reforms that prevent
    denial based on pre-existing conditions, many people may reallocate their labor to pursue entrepreneurial dreams.

    Part of making all this work is that everyone will be
    required to acquire health insurance, and subsidies will be provided for those
    unable to pay full freight. The Attorney General of Virginia is planning to sue
    the federal government on this point, claiming that no citizen has previously
    ever been forced buy a product.  But is
    that true?  Since the 1930s every working
    American has been forced to “buy” retirement benefits in Social Security.  Everyone who drives a car is forced to buy
    head restraints and air bags.  So, this
    argument doesn’t cut it for me. 

    However, there is a troubling point for me: Nancy Pelosi and President Obama have argued for health
    care based on it being a “right” and not a privilege.  What do you readers think about that?  A negative right (forbidding others from
    harming me) is much easier to argue than a positive right (forcing others to give
    me a benefit).  Interestingly, the Geneva
    Convention on Prisoners of War entails both:
    no torture is allowed, and reasonable health care must be provided. 

    I like Bentham’s observation that rights theory is “nonsense
    on stilts.”  Still, rights theory is a
    useful platform for motivating political reforms. In other words, rights theory can be helpful in a utilitarian way.

  • Books which have influenced me most

    Mark D. White

    The idea for this post (as well as the title) comes from Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution, who writes:

    Chris, a loyal MR reader, asks:

    I'd like to see you list the top 10 books which have influenced your view of the world.

    I'll go with the "gut list," rather than the "I've thought about this for a long time list."  I'll also stress that books are by no means the only source of influence.  The books are in no intended order, although the list came out in a broadly chronological stream.

    After providing his top 10 list, he writes, "I would encourage other bloggers to offer similar lists." So here goes (note these are my top 10, not Tyler's, and certainly not my co-bloggers', though I hope they will join me in this).

    (A brief note of explanation for something below that may seem self-indulgent, self-congratulatory, or just plain odd: much of my "intellectual development," such that it is, has consisted of having vague intuitions about things like liberty, humility, duty, rights, and the will, and then seeking out confirmation of them among the Great Thinkers, all of whom had already thought through these concepts and did a much better job than I could ever hope to have done.)

    1. Immanuel Kant, Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals: Well, duh. (If you don't know me well enough, see here.) I could also list The Metaphysics of Morals, plus books by Thomas E. Hill, Barbara Herman, Christine Korsgaard, H.J. Paton, and more, but I doubt you want to read a Kantian top-10 list. (If you do, just ask!)
    2. Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom: This confirmed and extended a lot of my early intuitions on liberty and the relationship between the individual and the state.
    3. Gary Becker, The Economic Approach to Human Behavior: Though I've soured on the amoral analysis of the essentially moral topics analyzed herein, this was the book (along with his A Treatise on the Family and Richard Posner's Sex and Reason) that inspired me to go to graduate school for economics.
    4. Amartya Sen, On Ethics and Economics: A book that opened up countless new avenues of thought for me, and really set me on my current path (or at least one of them).
    5. Amitai Etzioni, The Moral Dimension: Toward a New Economics: While I have some disagreement with the specifics of his models and analysis, Etzioni is up there with Sen as a major influence on my thinking on ethics and economics.
    6. John Searle, Rationality in Action: Another book that confirmed and extended intuitions, specifically that something was missng in the determinstic desire-belief (or preference-constraint) model of rationality.
    7. John B. Davis, The Theory of the Individual in Economics: Identity and Value: This book was a complete eye-opener for me–I claim no previous intuitions along these lines, and my thinking about the individual has never been the same since.
    8. Ronald Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously: After years of teaching his theory of judicial-making, I've come to believe that it is not only right as far as a matter of law, but it is also serves as a fine model for practical morality (a theme which I plan to explore in future work).
    9. Jules Coleman, Markets, Morals, and the Law: This book contains many essential and (IMO) devastating critiques of the economic analysis of law from one of the most original thinkers in legal philosophy, and inspired much of my critical thinking on the field.
    10. Lao-Tzu, Tao Te Ching: Possibly the most important book in my life, it influenced me more deeply than I can ever say (though someday I may try, more likely in that other blog).

    So what say you, loyal reader (and co-bloggers, hint hint)–what books influenced you the most?

  • Roberts on the role of economics (and philosophy)

    Mark D. White

    I don't know how I missed this article, but thanks to the great folks at Coordination Problem and Cafe Hayek, I saw it, and it confirms so much of what I tell my students, especially in macro, as well as my intuitions regarding the proper role of economics.

    The piece is Russ Robert's "Is the Dismal Science Really a Science?" from February 26's Wall Street Journal. Here are a few choice passages:

    If economics is a science, it is more like biology than physics. Biologists try to understand the relationships in a complex system. That's hard enough. But they can't tell you what will happen with any precision to the population of a particular species of frog if rainfall goes up this year in a particular rain forest. They might not even be able to count the number of frogs right now with any exactness.

    Exactly! I usually make the comparison to meteorology, also a complex system (perhaps not literally) but one made up of molecules and energy, neither of which has intentions, emotions, or quirks–they have no psychologies, and their course are determined by the basic laws of physics. But in a social science such as economics, we have persons, with intentions, emotions, and quirks–lots of them. Despite how they're reflected in economists' models, their actions are not determined solely by the forces around them, but also by the forces inside their heads–their preferences, beliefs, values, morals, principles, biases, prejudices, and so on. And if meterologists, with the aid of supercomputers and tremendously accurate data, cannot predict the weather in a week, much less a month or a year, with any accuracy, what hope have economists? As Roberts so wonderfully puts it,

    The defenders of modern macroeconomics argue that if we just study the economy long enough, we'll soon be able to model it accurately and design better policy. Soon. That reminds me of the permanent sign in the bar: Free Beer Tomorrow.

    But perhaps this passage struck me the most:

    Perhaps what we're really doing is confirming our biases. Ed Leamer, a professor of economics at UCLA, calls it "faith-based" econometrics. When the debate is over $2 trillion in additional government spending vs. zero, we've stopped being scientists and become philosophers. Do we want to be more like France with a bigger role for government, or less like France?

    I don't presume to know exactly how Roberts meant philosophers to take this, but regardless, I think the point is very important: the "big" questions are usually not economic, but more often philosophical.

    As Roberts implies, if the government has already decided to spend around $2 trillion dollars, then economists may be able to contribute to determining the precise amount necessary to achieve the desired end. But if the government is deciding whether or not to spend that large amount of money at all, or whether to nationalize health care, or bring back significant financial regulations, and so on–massive, qualitative changes in the economy, rather than marginal, quantitative changes–then a broader perspective is necessary, and philosophy certainly has a lot to offer to that discussion.

  • Ralph Nader on Citizens United

    Mark D. White

    You win some, you lose some. My most recent letter to the Wall Street Journal, in response to Ralph Nader and Ralph Weissman's February 11 article against the Citizens United decision, "The Case Against Corporate Speech," went unpublished (the published letters are here). For what it's worth, here's what I wrote:

    I hope Messrs Nader and Weissman realize that the end of their piece on Citizens United undermines their argument against it. They write that "corporations… were meant to be our servants, not our masters." Precisely right–corporations are legal instruments that allow people to increase their wealth by providing a service that others choose to purchase. But they are also instruments through which those same people can express their political opinions, including by contributing to campaigns (or selling their stock if they disagree with a company's donations). Before Citizens United, this alternative mechanism for political speech was blocked, and the Supreme Court was correct in providing more ways for citizens to engage in the political process.