How can we use the things we share in common to address some of the most challenging problems facing the world? This course examines issues concerning poverty, the environment, technology, health care, gender, education and activism to help us understand better how to initiate positive change.
Genealogy of the Idea of Social Good
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How to Change the World
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What are Social Goods? From the Commons to Moral Revolutions
Discussion about what our social good is, how we define it and how it can be sustainably used.
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Michael S. Roth
[MUSIC]
>> So who would be the standard bearer for the Communitarian view
in, or one of the standard bearers in the, in the tradition.
>> Well I think the best examples is, is Rousseau.
Rousseau in the discourse on the origins of inequality, explicitly takes on Hobbes.
Hobbes supposes that our private goods are
inherently conflicting, and they're inherently conflicting because
of scarcity. >> Right.
If I want something and you want it, we become enemies.
>> Right.
And because we're rational, and this is really
an interesting point about Hobbes Because we're rational, we
can see into the future, and we can recognize
that we're going to have needs in the future.
>> Yes.
>> And therefore we're going to want to have resources today to meet those needs.
>> Right.
>> And so, scarcity is augmented by our rationality.
If we were not such rational group beings, we'd be like dogs.
We'd be, we'd eat our meal, and then we'd fall asleep.
>> Yes.
[LAUGH] >> Until we got hungry again.
>> And Russo challenges this notion of, of rationality and scarcity being linked?
>> No, no, he doesn't.
He he doesn't approach it quite that way.
This is, the first idea is that material, the goods
and things that we want to satisfy our appetites are scarce.
The second
idea is that we, the scarcity is augmented by this for, capacity to look forward.
The third idea is that we all have
an inherent desire for what Hobbes calls glory.
>> Yes.
>> Or we might think of it as status. >> Right.
>> I want to stand above you.
You want to stand above me.
The thing with status is that it's zero sum by definition
>> Right.
>> Because my status is a function of how I stand relative to you.
So in the beginning
of part two of The Leviathan Hobbes supposes the question, why do some
social animals live together in societies, he mentions the ants and the bees.
>> Yes
>> Without some kind of power structure.
>> Right.
His answer is, man whose joy consists in comparing himself with others
can desire only that which is eminent. >> Mh-hm, yes
>> And so that's that's the intrinsic scarcity.
And Rousseau's critique of Hobbes is to
say, look, these kinds of desires aren't hardwired.
>> Right.
These kinds of desires are a function of the social world in which we.
>> Yes.
>> If we live in some kinds of social worlds, we'll develop those kinds
of desires, and in those social worlds, there is not much of a common good.
Because if your interests are inherently antagonistic.
>> Yes. >> Then there isn't
going to be a common good between you.
But in other social worlds where you come to have desires that
are compatible with the satisfaction of other people, and therefore no desires
that are based upon invidious distinctions of status, then you can have
a common good and you can organize the society in accordance with that.
>> So some societies are organized to promote this
pursuit of honor or what Rousseau always called vanity.
And other, and
others, could, they could organize, they could be organized differently.
>> Yes.
>> Or be disorganized, I guess.
>> [LAUGH] >> Is another way,
>> Yes, well, and of course to the extent that honor
and so forth are drives of the people in that society.
>> Right.
>> The societies are likely to be
characterized by high levels of competition and violence.
>> Yes.
>> Or practices like dueling and other kinds of practices that.
That lead to violence.
Pinker makes
a big point of this in his book on The Better Angels of Our Nature.
>> Yeah, maybe you can say a word about that.
Because we'll be fast-forwarding to, to more contemporary discussions.
Steven Pinker, who is a psychologist and
and commentator on social and political issues.
has, has talked about the potential for overcoming
violence, or the, actually the historical evolution away
from violence. >> Yes.
>> Maybe you'll say a word about that.
>> Yes, well, Pinkers argument is that we, we have moved
away from violence, both within domestic societies and at the world level.
As a result of the creation of political structures that secure
order for large, for large numbers of people and therefore we,
people don't have to, as it were, rely on self help to form some defense.
>> Right.
>> And so we're moving away from the kind of Hobbesian state of nature
>> Yes.
>> Toward's a state of civil order.
And he actually draws on Norbert Elias' work
on the civilizing process too, he discussed that.
>> So as you know in this class, we've read someone who
was we start off really with someone who was much more pessimistic than
Professor Pinker with Garrett Hardin's essay
on the Tragedy of the Commons, right?
And that seems to echo Hobbes.
In the sense that there's, although it may not be about honor in, in Arn's case,
but there's a sense of, of conflict that you pursue rationally.
I mean to go back to this notion of seeing
into the future, you pursue things rationally but our very
rationality leads us to tragic conflict.
>> Right, right, this is the, this
is that paradise we were talking about before.
From an individual point of view, I'm inclined to advance my own private good.
>> Right.
>> Since you're inclined to advance your own private
good, we could end up actually creating a situation
that's worse for both of us even though we're
being very, we're rationally pursuing our own private goods.
And Hardin
specifically talks about common property situations.
So, an example would be ocean fisheries.
The we've seen for example the exhaustion of
many of the richest, worlds richest fish stocks.
This is a result of the fact that individual fisher Fishers.
>> Fishers. [CROSSTALK] [LAUGH]
>> Go into these waters and take up as much
fish as they can. >> Right.
It's in their self-interest to do so. >> Exactly.
Right.
And, and so as a result of everybody
acting this way, The sustain, they, their total yield
exceeds the sustainable level of harvesting and over
a while, the fish stocks begin to die off.
Now they, their, their mutual interest to self, to back to
self-restraint, but they can't do it as individuals, because if I
restrain myself and you don't, >> Right.
>> I pay the full cost.
Of that self restraint. >> Right.
>> I have a smaller catch, and I don't get any of the benefits.
>> So it's rational to assume that the other guy would, would be a free rider
>> Exactly.
>> Or would take advantage of the situation.
And so, to prohi, to prevent that, or to mitigate its effects.
One pursues one's own self interest, but the result is that everyone
is worse off.
>> And we all, and we all spiral down, exactly.
And that's the same dynamic that Hobbes thought would
characterize the state of nature where we're concerned about security.
I want to, to secure myself and so therefore I see you as an, as an enemy and
so therefore It makes sense for me to strike
first to get you before you can get me.
>> Yeah.
>> But it's exactly the same on your part, and so as a result of this,
we're both extremely insecure.
And for both Hobbs and Hardin, the only way that they
could think of of getting out of the situation is to erect.
A form of authority >> Right
>> That will limit our choices and sanction us, coerce us.
>> Right
>> If we violate those surf's because otherwise
we'll all be defecting, we'll all be free riders.
And we'll fail
to bring about the common good.
>> So, so the, you can't, from that perspective you can't discover or
you don't discover the common good, or the social good on your own.
It has to be drilled into you, so to speak by a, by a, an
outside authority. >> Absolutely, and specifically talking
about an an institution that wields coercive power,
the ability to ultimately back up those rules that require our self restraint.
With force.
>> Yeah.
>> So that it becomes in our own
private interest to act in accordance with a rule.
>> Right.
>> That promotes the, the interests of the group as a whole.
>> So we don't have to deal with the authorities who have the
power of violence, or the power to fine us, or, or imprison us.
>> Yeah, of course that's, that's the problem.
[LAUGH] >> You have a new problem.
>> You, you erect the authority to control this problem and then you
hit a new one that the authority then becomes exploited and so forth.
>> So this is in some ways the flip side of the Adam Smith version, right?
Or where they, where that the pursuit
of our individual interest is mutually reenforcing
in a way that everyone benefits to
everybody's, the tide comes in, everybody rises.
>> Right, and
the first law of social science is some are, some aren't.
>> Right.
>> So, and so what we really need to think
about, and what is done in a lot of our courses
here at Wesleyan and especially in, in the Social sciences, economics
in particular, sociology, political science, are what we call government here.
>> Right.
>> It is to try to understand the conditions under which spontaneous
self-interested behavior generates good outcomes.
>> Yeah.
>> For the group as a whole, and conditions under which it doesn't.
>> Right.
>> And so, this goes back to Harden's point about the tragedy of the commons.
The first commons you could say is the is, is the land itself.
>> Right.
>> And if you think about say the way a
hunter-gatherer society operates, they treat the land as a commons.
They don't
actually take physical possession of the territory.
>> Right.
>> They harvest the, the goods and certainly, the foods,
>> Stuff.
>> The berries [LAUGH] and so on that they find in nature.
And that's fine as long as the carrying capacity of
the land is greater than the population of hunter gatherers.
But if the population of hunter/gatherers begins to grow, they will begin to
over harvest >> Right, right.
>> Just like the fishers in the ocean fisheries, and as a result of this,
it will degrade the carrying capacity of the land and everybody will be badly off.
The solution to that problem is privatization and this is, this is
The argument that we find first made in this form by John Locke.
>> Right.
>> In the Second Treatise of Government.
If we divide up the land,
>> Right.
>> And we move into settled agriculture,
the land becomes so much more productive.
That we will be able to support a much larger population than we
could have supported by treating the land as a commons and we won't
degrade it because every individual propriater has an interest in a, as in
insuring that the future flow of product from the land will be high.
Because they pay the full cost of
any investment or self-restraint they have to make.
But they also get the full benefit.
Whereas in the fisheries case that we talked about a minute ago, they
pay the full cost but they only get a small fraction of the benefit.
So by dividing up the common property resource, that's how
Harden is using the word commons. By making it, dividing it up into
private property you can so increase productivity, says Locke.
>> Yes.
>> That we'll all be better off than we were before.
>> So from Locke's perspective we don't need such a strong external authority
because it's in our self interest to preserve our land for the future.
We're seeing into the future, and in this case, seeing into
the future actually helps us be more productive?
>> Yes exactly, that's, I mean of course, prior to Hobbes,
the great philosophers of both the classical Greece and
Rome, of the Arab world, of the Christian Middle
Ages all thought that reason was the key to human harmony.
Because through reason, we could grasp the order of things
and see what our, where our duties lay and so forth.
So Hobbes has the extraordinary originality to turn that on its head and
see reason is actually in some ways the source of our, of our discontent.
>> Yes, and Harden, I guess picks up on that in a way, right?
Its because from Hardin's perspective its
also reason in a kind of, it's almost, I don't know if it's what we'd call it
game theory at that time, but If you
know the rational perspective will lead us to disaster.
>> Exactly.
>> Why did he think, what was he thinking about at that time?
What was the issue?
>> Well, he was specifically thinking about the problem of
population and at that time, there was a lot of concern
that population was growing at unsustainable rates.
>> Right.
>> And the, and he was saying we
should think about population or natality decisions reproductive decisions
as really kind of commons, because if the
world can only support a certain number of people
>> Right.
>> Then whenever you have offspring, you are not simply
effecting just yourself. >> Right.
>> And your immediate household.
You're effecting everybody else in the world.
>> That carrying capacity of the planet, I guess.
Right? >> Exactly.
Yeah, and so he, he thought that the solution would be to adopt some
kind of authoritative limitations, perhaps of the sort you saw
a few years later in China limiting what people could do in terms of birth.
This is a, you know,
characteristic kind of Hobbesian solution. >> Right.
[LAUGH]
>> You pass a law. You enforce the law.
[LAUGH] With the police.
>> Right.
>> And he thought very much along the lines that you were just suggesting that.
We can't preach to people and say, you should be responsible, you should practice
self restraint, because, those people are be,
in effect being being played as chumps.
>> Yeah.
>> Cause they'll practice self restraint.
The other people will go on behaving badly >> Right.
>> And over time the self-restrainers will disappear from the population.
It's kind of an evolutionary.
>> Right, because those other people will be having all thpse children.
>> Exactly.
Of course there's a lot of assumptions being made there.
Like, if I came from a big family I'm going to have a big family.
>> Right.
>> I'm a lip breeder.
My children will be breeder's. But, whatever.
>> But I guess that the, the article was you
know, it's brief, it's it's it seems in some ways delimited.
But it caught on so much, because, perhaps because of this notion that it was
our very rationality, the thing we're so
proud about, that was leading us to disaster.
I mean, I guess in some ways, Horkheimer and Adorno made a,
a, a, a parallel argument, like
it's, enlightenment itself is leading to Fascism.
That rationality leads to disaster.
I mean, there's a, there's a, I guess, in the
post war period, there was almost a critique of rationality with.
Does that seem reasonable?
That
>> Yeah.
I would actually perhaps say it's a critique of instrumental rationality.
If you think about say, a Kantian idea of practical reason
which involves the idea of finding a rational basis for norms,
like the norm of respecting other persons, treating them as ends in themselves.
Hob, Kant saw, rather in a pre-Hobbesian way, so to speak.
Kant saw the development of the human capacity for reason as enabling them
to grasp moral principles and therefor to learn how to live with one another.
>> Yes. And to bring a better situation
ultimately of perpetual peace in the world.
>> So that external authority gets internalized, right?
We have the, we have our norms that we conform to because
the norms are reasonable, and we restrain ourselves rather than needing the cops.
>> [LAUGH] Exactly and in fact, this is Well, we
probably need a little bit of cops in the background.
[LAUGH] Because you don't want to think, I mean, of
course the anarchists, I mean, you think about William Godwin,
they thought we could really do the, do, do the whole
thing and there was no need for any kind of external authority.
For people like Rousseau and Kant and people in that tradition We
need to recognize that we're imperfectly
reasonable and therefore there is slippage.
But the idea, the core idea behind this Kantian, and I,
actually he got it from Rousseau, I mean he only said that
>> Yes.
>> Is the idea of, the question of how
could we be free, and live in society with others.
'because if we're living in society, the society has to have an order.
Otherwise, it's just a deglomeration and if it
has an order, then there are rules or
norms that we're going to have to conform to
in order to bring, to create that order.
But if I have to conform to those rules, then how can I be free?
And their answer
is, well if those rules are rules that,
you, yourself will because you see they're reasonable.
At least that's in Kant's terms.
Then as rational beings, you are conforming to
those rules is conforming to your own decisions.
>> Yes. >> And therefore you are free.
>> So for when Rousseau says oh, freedom or the highest
form of freedom, is obedience to a law that you give yourself,
Harden's saying you'd be irrational, you'd be a chump to give that law to yourself.
Because other people are going to be cheating and you're missing out.
And worse than that, you'll disappear.
>> Exactly.
Unless of course, there's this external authority that's sanctioning things.
The law, yeah.
>> So, so tell us a little bit about critique's of Harding.
because I, pretty, although it caught on, it
was, it, it captured the imagination of people.
It also gave rise
pretty quickly to critique's within economics, within social theory.
>> Yes, absolutely.
the, the I think the There are number of critiques.
And they begin, they move away from Hardin's,
or the Hardin/Hobbes kind of H squared, [LAUGH]...
>> [LAUGH]
>> Position,
in an incremental way. There's no bright line here.
So, we might think about the work of Eleanor Ostrom
>> Right.
>> Who won the Nobel Prize. And she did, actually
did empirical studies of how social groups manage commons.
>> Right.
How farmers living in a relatively semi-arid
area for example, managed water resources, and
so on. >> Yes.
>> And she talked about the, all kinds of social arrangements
through which people could create, provide public goods for themselves.
>> Mm-hm.
>> Without having a centralized system of control and sanctioning.
>> Mm-hm.
>> Without the, the. >> Yes.
>> The, the police.
>> Yes. >> So to speak.
Now, there are always police in the sense that,
if we are involved in a situation that is
defined by norms that are specifying forms of reciprocity.
>> Right.
>> Your failure to conform to those norms will lead your
the people that you're cooperating with to withdraw cooperation from you.
>> Right. Right.
>> And so.
Is, to the extent, for example, that your behavior is visible.
>> Right, yeah.
>> So we can tell whether you're playing by the rules.
>> Right. >> And the extent that we
already have a normative structure in place.
>> Yeah.
>> Then, the system can be relatively self-regulating.
And we can, because it'll be in your long-term self interest.
>> Yes.
>> To conform to the rules. Uh-huh
>> Not alienating my fellows, yeah.
>> Exactly, because the opportunities for reciprocity with others
make you so much better off than you would be.
It doesn't pay to,
to take a one off and deviate then and have people withdraw from you.
This is the kind of core idea behind the idea of social capital.
>> Right. And Bob Putnam, you may know his work
>> Sure
>> In Italy, where he compares
governmental performance in difference areas of Italy
>> Yeah.
>> And argues that there are areas
of Italy where, the civic engagement and political
engagement and the self-organizing activities of people in
social groups to provide themselves with various goods.
Beginning in sort of the late middle ages with security and moving
forward into the modern period with
technology, knowledge, education and so forth.
Creates this high level of social
capital and high levels of governmental performance
in these areas where other areas it created very low
levels of civic engagement and low levels of government performance.
The irony is, is that the, the areas with the low levels is, of
civic culture Were areas that had the pure Hobbsian solution.
>> Yes, yeah.
Because they add the problem that create this
strong government, which actually doesn't solve the problem,
it creates other problem, right? Yeah.
>> Right, and it create, it tends to
break up the one on one relationships among people.
>> Yes.
>> That generates these webs of interconnectedness and so forth.
And there's an economic basis to this as well.
>> Right.
>> Because in the North where you had these things, you had small
proprietorships and you had, artisanal based economies and
that sort of thing.
Where as in the South, [COUGH] you had large land owners
and plantations, well, what we would call today, plantation style agriculture.
And you see the same thing in the United States.
Where in the North you have very strong, lots of small independent proprietors
developing as Tocqueville noted years ago. >> Yeah
>> The associational
life where they cooperated together to meet their mutual needs, and so forth.
Whereas in the South with the system of slavery and
the system on the large plantations and so forth, you didn't
have these kinds of things and the North is the
bastion of democracy, high levels of social capital and so forth.
>> Yeah. >> So.
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