37. Envy

Note: This post is the thirty-seventh in a series. Click here for the full listing of the series.

Envy is considered one of the seven deadly sins, the ten commandments came out strongly against it and if Wikipedia is to be believed, it doesn't go over well in Islam or Buddhism either.

So what's so bad about envy?

Joseph Heath has an excellent essay on the topic of envy which can be read here.

Heath explains how envy can interfere with pareto-efficiency:

"The Pareto principle states that if a proposed change in the condition of society makes at least one person happier, and does not make anyone else unhappy, then that change should be regarded as an improvement. This principle forms the conceptual core of modern welfare economics, and exercises enormous influence in contemporary discussions of justice and equality. It does, however, have an Achilles’ heel. When an individual experiences envy, it means that the happiness of others itself becomes a source of unhappiness. As a result, envy has the potential to block any and all Pareto improvements. Making one person better off will automatically make someone else worse off, so there will be no point talking about efficiency gains."

Envy translates your gain automatically into my loss much in the same manner that a positional externality does. However, whereas nothing much can be done about a pure positional externality, envy can be reduced by the virtue of a people who will not allow themselves to feel worse simply because someone else has made a gain.

Heath notes that because of the problems that envy causes for economic theories of pareto-efficiency, theorists generally treat envy as an 'illegitimate' preference and exclude it from their model,

"Thus John Rawls assumes that rational agents behind the veil of ignorance 'do not take an interest in one another's interests.' Similarly, David Gauthier excludes any 'tuistic' preferences from consideration in his bargaining theory."

The problem is that, no man is an island and people may have good reason to be concerned about their relative position, which would imply that they need to be concerned about the position of everybody else. If a Canucks fan is upset that the Flames win a game against some other team, it may be that he hates the Flames and hates to see them do well, but it may also be that a Flames victory has a negative affect on the Canucks chances to make the playoffs, or win the division, or get home ice advantage. The question is where to draw the line between an illegitimate feeling of envy and a legitimate cause for concern. Heath provides an example:

"Imagine in a situation in which my neighbour acquires an air conditioner. This is a purely private transaction between himself and the merchant. Unfortunately, as a consequence of this purchase, I may find myself, on sweltering days, glaring enviously across the yard, resenting the comfort enjoyed by my neighbour and his family. Does this undermine the win-win character of the transaction between the neighbour and the merchant? There is a very strong moral intuition which suggests that, in this sort of case, the loss of welfare that I experience from my neighbour's new acquisition should not count as a consideration that speaks against the transaction.

On the other hand, the air-conditioner might also make a lot of noise, which keeps me awake at night. Then we might not want to regard the purchase as purely a private matter between the neighbour and the merchant. I become an unwilling participant, and my loss of welfare, it seems, should count for something. Economists would say that in this case the transaction creates a 'negative externality.' Thus when we talk about markets, the 'laundering' of preferences normally occurs in the decision that we make about which external effects of a transaction to treat as 'externalites' – and thus as part of the 'social cost' of an action."

The problem as Heath notes, is that "Despite the intuitive attractiveness of these distinctions, it is difficult to formulate a precise articulation of the underlying logic."

Heath spends the bulk of his paper working through the subtleties of trying to make that formulation and how to form policies that might recognize the value of people's legitimate concerns about their relative standing, while at the same time not providing legitimacy to simple envy. It's well worth reading, but too complex to summarize in detail here.

Heath concludes,

"The reasons for wanting to launder out envy from our social welfare judgements are for the most part sound. It is very important that we be able to identify win-win transformations in social outcomes, without being held back by people who get upset at the mere fact that somebody else is winning. The problem is that our preferences cannot be separated cleanly from one another, simply because our judgments – the very concepts that we use to articulate our needs and desires – have a deeply relative character.

...

If all of our desires were of this type, and everything were relative, then there would be no problem. The human race would have been locked into a state of hedonic homeostasis since its inception. The problem is that the relativity of our desires admits of degrees. As a result, it is possible to achieve Pareto improvements by shifting resources out of areas that have the structure of a zero-sum game, and into areas where improvements in absolute welfare level are still possible."

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The more general point I want to make is that the commercial, trade based system functions best when people and their preferences are independent of one another. This post was an example where people's welfare was negatively correlated (your gain is my loss or your loss is my gain (i.e. schadenfreude)). There can be other issues when people's welfare is positively correlated which I might get into in a later post.

To some extent, this is just re-covering earlier ground on the problems caused in markets by negative and positive externalities, but I though it was worthwhile showing how these externalities can have a basis in human emotion as well as in the physical world and that, where human emotion triggers negative externalities, it has been suppressed using moral means as far back as the Book of Exodus when God told his people, "You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor."

33. Prosperity Gospel vs. Austerity Gospel

A bit of a digression for this holiday season post...

Mike Konczal (of the blog Rortybomb), links toa pair of articles in The Atlantic on two different religious movements that involve questions of ethics, economics and debt:

The first is an article by Megan McArdle on Dave Ramsay, who preaches his gospel of living debt-free in evangelical churches and to the secular world as well:

"On a fine summer day at the end of August, I paid $220 for front-row seats on the floor of a minor-league hockey rink in Detroit, just to hear Ramsey talk for five hours. The ostensible topic: getting your financial life in order. Afterward, my fiancé, who grew up in the Bible Belt, called me to ask what I'd thought.

'I think I just attended my first prayer meeting,' I told him.

There was, of course, a great deal of talk about money, and what to do with it. But the format was more tent revival than accounting seminar, with the first 90 minutes or so mostly devoted to Ramsey’s personal story of ruin and redemption. We heard how, during the second half of the 1980s, a young Ramsey built up a multimillion-dollar real-estate empire—then lost it all as the bank got nervous and called his loans, ultimately forcing him and his wife into bankruptcy. How, searching for help in his hour of need, he turned to the Bible and discovered Proverbs 22:7: 'The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is slave of the lender.' At that moment, he told an audience so hushed that we could hear the ice squeak, Ramsey decided to never borrow another dollar again."

The second is an article by Hanna Rosin on 'The Prosperity Gospel'

"That Sunday, Garay was preaching a variation on his usual theme, about how prosperity and abundance unerringly find true believers. 'It doesn’t matter what country you’re from, what degree you have, or what money you have in the bank,' Garay said. 'You don’t have to say, 'God, bless my business. Bless my bank account.' The blessings will come! The blessings are looking for you! God will take care of you. God will not let you be without a house!'

Pastor Garay, 48, is short and stocky, with thick black hair combed back. In his off hours, he looks like a contented tourist, in his printed Hawaiian shirts or bright guayaberas. But he preaches with a ferocity that taps into his youth as a cocaine dealer with a knife in his back pocket. 'Fight the attack of the devil on my finances! Fight him! We declare financial blessings! Financial miracles this week, NOW NOW NOW!' he preached that Sunday. 'More work! Better work! The best finances!' Gonzales shook and paced as the pastor spoke, eventually leaving his wife and three kids in the family section to join the single men toward the front, many of whom were jumping, raising their Bibles, and weeping. On the altar sat some anointing oils, alongside the keys to the Mercedes Benz."

Reading the two articles, I was struck by how the two different approaches picked up different elements from the commercial set of ethics that Jacobs described in Systems of Survival: Ramsay emphasizes thrift, and investing for productive purposes while the prosperity gospel emphasizes optimism and the promotion of comfort and convenience. Neither one really seems quite right on its own. Ramsay's approach would cutoff prudent borrowing to fund a business venture while the prosperity gospel seems to just encourage imprudent borrowing in the belief that God will provide one way or the other.

Anyway, it's some interesting reading.

The Blogging Turtle Finally Reaches the Finish Line

So I meant to post on a certain article I saw this morning, but by the time I got around to it, Timmy, Mahigan, Pogge, Jonathan, Rick, Robert and Bill had already beaten me to it - good work guys.

But hey, am I the only anti-SpongeDob blogger with a day job or what? :)

Since Robert wrote last, his is the best summary of all that came before. For me, all I want to add to the initial article about the American religious groups who have made Canada their next target after bravely taking on Spongebob Squarepants, is to contrast it with this article from around the time of the U.S. election on what Americans think of people who meddle in other country's business.

Personally I kind of like the sounds of a nice Dobson-Harper (U.S. fundamentalist - Canadian Conservative) photo-op. Maybe at the corner of Church and Wellesley in Toronto on a late June weekend (say, the 26th), preferably in the run-up to an election campaign.

A Little Fishy

Strand #1: I first heard about the concept of 'Intelligent Design' from Darren Barefoot's post referring to this interesting article about it in Wired.

More recently, Pogge has posted on the topic and the New York Times had an article on it today (reg. req'd).

Personally, I find it hard to take the whole Intelligent Design concept seriously. In a nutshell, the argument is that the world is so complex that somebody (intelligent) must have designed it. e.g. If you were walking on a beach and found a watch, the purposeful nature of it's design would leave you to believe that it must have had an intelligent creator and not just occurred by chance. And like a watch has a watchmaker a body must have a bodymaker.

Now I'm not saying that the universe wasn't created by some intelligent being. I'm guessing that anyone with the power to create a universe would have the power to lead us to believe whatever they wanted, leaving the question moot.

But the fact that the universe is complicated (by our standards) doesn't prove anything one way or the other. Arguing that human's are so special that we had to have been made specially, just sounds way too much like arguments that the sun goes round the earth, that the earth is the centre of the universe, that humans have a soul or a 'free will' that other animals don't and all the other human-centred nonsense we like to make up to make ourselves feel special.

Especially when simple observation shows us how similar we are to the next most intelligent animals on the planet and when evolution clearly lays out how beings of greater complexity can arise out of simpler ones without the need for intelligent external intervention.

Strand #2: As long-time readers will know, after making the ill-advised decision to fly with Jetsgo, my flight home for Christmas was delayed by 28 hours. On the plus side, all my time waiting around at the airport allowed me to catch up on my reading. Specifically, I was able to read two books I had been meaning to get to for a long time: Wizard's First Rule by Terry Goodkind (readable but not great - The Amazon editorial review is pretty accurate in my opinion) and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams which was great fun, although I think it was wise to leave it as a fairly short book.

The Rope¹: Since I had read the Wired article on Intelligent Design, I was amused to come across the following passage in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (written in the 70's), which is written in reference to the Babel fish, a small fish you can put in your ear which will translate any language for you,

"Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mind-bogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God.

The argument goes something like this: "I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."

"But," says Man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED."

"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.

"Oh, that was easy," says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed at the next zebra crossing."

That pretty much sums it up.

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¹ Technically, according to Wikipedia, a rope is made from three strands, whereas my story only has two. But does this really bother me? I'm afraid not.

I Know Where You Live

'I Know Where You Live' is a phrase usually used as a joke in my experience, but I see that in a recent survey done by the Media and Society Research Group at Cornell University¹,

27% of people surveyed agreed with the statement, "All Muslim Americans should be required to register their whereabouts with the federal government."

I'm no historian, and I know 27% isn't a majority (I'd be curious to see the equivalent figure in Canada), but I'm thinking that when you look at the historical record of countries where unpopular minority groups have been asked to register their whereabouts with the federal government, the phrase 'I know where you live' probably lost some of it's humour value, to say the least.

On the other hand, I was also surprised that only

47% agreed that, "Islam is more likely to encourage violence compared to other religions."

In a nutshell, the report suggests that folks who watch a lot of TV news, who are Republicans or who are highly religious are more likely to: be scared, favour restricting the rights of Muslims, forbid people from protesting, authorize indefinite detainment of terrorism suspects, believe the media shouldn't criticize the government during a war, and of course, outlaw un-American activities.

On a more subjective level, the number of people who support most of these things, while still a minority, and relatively unchanged since 2002, seems pretty high to me - high enough that another attack could make a majority possible on a lot of these questions - especially among Republicans.

Troubled times in the U.S. these days, I don't envy them.


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¹ From the survey: "The survey was conducted between October 25 and November 23, 2004; it consists of 715 interviews from a national listed household sample. The response rate was 25.7% and the cooperation rate 54.5%, measured according to AAPOR standards. All results presented in this report have been weighted based on age, gender, and race. The margin of error for reported nationwide results is plus or minus 3.6 percentage points. Margin of error may be higher for reported results from sub-groups."