Tag: Policy

The Complexities of Society

The Complexities of Society

Posted on by jabittan
I have a hard time debating and arguing with friends about how to think about society. A large reason why is because, at best, I often find myself making the argument of, “well, maybe?”  Politics is a never ending attempt to answer the question of who gets what and when. We have scarce resources like money, roads and infrastructure, and influence and fame. These things are distributed across individuals with deliberate decisions and sometimes seemingly by random chance. Occasionally we step in to try to change these allocations, to provide greater rewards and incentives for those who pursue certain resources and goals over others, and punish those who deviate from courses we find appropriate. But figuring out how people will react to any given decision and figuring out which levers will lead to which outcomes is nearly impossible. I almost always find myself unsure exactly that the changes people advocate for will really have the desired impact or that the problem they identify is really caused by the root cause they suggest. I often find myself saying, “well, maybe” but having a hard time convincing others that their thoughts should be less certain.
 
 
In his book The Better Angels of Our Nature, Steven Pinker discusses the complexities of society when writing about how hard it is to identify a single factor that has lead people to become less violent over time. Especially in WEIRD societies, there is a lot of evidence to demonstrate that people are less violent today than they used to be, but it is hard to point to a single (or even a few) key factor and explain how it (they) reduced human violence. As Pinker writes, “a society is an organic system that develops spontaneously, governed by myriad interactions and adjustments that no human mind can pretend to understand.”
 
 
The best social science experiments that we can develop and the best models from social science only manager to explain about 40% of the variance that we observe across societies. We cannot singularly point to racism, inequality, or the percent of high school graduates and understand a given social outcome. We can see correlations, but rarely do we see a correlation that explains anywhere close to 50% of the differences we observe between desired and undesired social outcomes. We are unable to point to a given factor (or even a handful of given factors) and confidently say that we have identified the most important or the clear driving factor(s) that determine(s) whether someone is a success or a failure, whether a society is peacefully democratic or violently autocratic, or whether a society’s economy will boom or bust.
 
 
This is why I am so frequently stuck with, “well, maybe,” as a response to so man of my friend’s arguments. When a friend or family member is convinced that people need to change one thing in order to make the world a better place I remember that the best social science models explain less than half the variance. So pointing to a single factor and claiming that the world would be dramatically better if we changed that factor doesn’t feel convincing to me. Maybe it would have an impact, but maybe it wouldn’t. The complexities of society prevent us from ever being certain that a single change or a single decision will ever have the intended outcome we expect or hope for.
Voting, Homelessness, and Gentrification

Voting, Homelessness, and Gentrification

Posted on by jabittan
I live in Reno, Nevada, a city that was hit very hard by the Great Recession and has turned around over the last few years with an explosion of gentrification. The city is in a valley between the Sierra Nevada mountains to the west and more smaller ranges to the East. The city is at a point where the valley has been mostly filled in, meaning that any additional urban sprawl will have to take place in valleys outside the main Reno/Sparks area. Consequently, prices have risen in the valley, driven by a limited supply, limited ability to spread, and an influx of new residents from California and neighboring states. At the same time that the city is gentrifying, new developments and new economic programs built on tech and outdoor tourism are changing the local landscapes. New trendy hotels are being built and large hotel casinos are being turned into condominiums and apartments.
Caught-up in the city’s transformation are the homeless shelters. The main area where homeless shelters have been concentrated downtown is transforming into a trendy place with local breweries and new restaurants. It is close to the still somewhat new baseball stadium and is close to an area where the University of Nevada, Reno is currently expanding student housing. This has put pressure on city leaders to clean-up the area, which means pushing out the homeless who have come to know the area as a place where they can find shelter and a meal.
“The very poor are a tiny minority,” writes Christopher Jencks in The Homeless, “and they hardly ever vote. Citizens who want the poor to live as far away as possible are a large majority, and they vote regularly. That leaves the poorest of the poor with nowhere to go.”
This quote from Jencks accurately sums up the current situation regarding the homeless in my home town. Rumos I have heard are that the Gospel Mission my wife and I volunteer at to serve the homeless will have to move and the building it occupies will likely be demolished for new hotels in the near future. I think this is a good economic move for the city, our ballpark, and the area around the stadium. Reno is a town that has always been in the shadow of Las Vegas as a less glitzy, downscale version of sin city. Many people want to reimagine Reno as something better, cleaner, and more attractive to the outside world than a sad version of Vegas. However, our homeless who rely on the shelter and know they can depend on the area for a place to eat and sleep are going to be pushed further away. A new, much larger, homeless shelter was recently built, but it is several miles down the road in a somewhat hard to access part of town next to the busiest freeway interchange. It was people with resources who vote that decided the homeless needed to go and that they would be pushed to one of the least attractive parts of town. The homeless, without any power themselves, certainly didn’t chose to be even further marginalized and outcast from a city that wants to ignore their existence.
55% of Chicago Homeless Looked Neat and Clean

55% of Chicago Homeless Looked Neat & Clean

Posted on by jabittan
If I pictured a homeless person in my mind I would imagine someone who was dirty, who may not have a shirt, and who had a mess of overgrown and ungroomed hair. Whether male or female, ragged clothes, unkempt hair, and bags full of stuff seems to be the typical image of a homeless person. However, there are many homeless people, perhaps even a majority in some cities at some times, who do not fit the stereotypical image of a homeless person.
In The Homeless Christopher Jencks writes about our expectations of what homelessness looks like, and what the reality of homeless often is for those experiencing homelessness. Regarding our expectations, he writes, “but appearances can mislead us … When [Peter] Rossi surveyed the Chicago homeless, his interviewers classified 55 percent of the people they interviewed as neat and clean rather than dirty, unkempt, or shabbily dressed.”
We don’t expect people who wear normal and clean clothes to be homeless. We don’t expect people who are generally well groomed and don’t smell bad to be homeless. But when Peter Rossi was writing his book Down and Out in America, a slight majority of people interviewed were dressed more or less normally and appeared to be typical people. These individuals are part of the group generally referred to as the invisible homeless. Rather than the visible people sleeping in tents who can’t shave, can’t shower, and have a few dirty possessions, these people appeared normal, but still didn’t have a home. They were missed and misunderstood in the debates and discussions of homeless people. They often hid their homelessness from the people they interacted with, creating space for the misperceptions about homelessness.
I think it is important to compare our stereotypical view of homelessness to the reality of homelessness for many people. When we see the visibly homeless we often have strong reactions, and those strong reactions generally dictate how we think the homeless should be handled. But those strong reactions and opinions fail to account for the kind of homelessness that perhaps a majority experience. This means that policies and programs to help the homeless (or more nefariously “address” the homeless) may fail to actually benefit the majority of homeless or to even focus on the leading drivers of homelessness. If someone who is neat and clean is in line at a soup kitchen, or asking for aid, they may not seem like they need it because they don’t look like the typical homeless person. Or, if we deny assistance to the homeless because we think they are all dirty, lazy, and possibly on drugs, then we fail to help those homeless who are trying to look and appear normal, who are tying to keep a job while homeless, and who are trying not to fall into the ungroomed stereotype of the homeless. It is important that we are aware of our expectations, biases, and prejudices around the homeless so that we can develop an accurate understanding of homelessness in our nation to actually address the problem.
The Cigarette Wars - Judea Pearl The Book of Why - Joe Abittan

The Cigarette Wars

Posted on by jabittan
Recently I have been writing about Judea Pearl’s The Book of Why, in which Pearl asks if our reliance on statistics and our adherence to the idea correlation is not causation has gone too far in science. For most people, especially students getting into science and those who have studied politics, reiterating the idea that correlation does not imply causation is important. There are plenty of ways to misinterpret data and there is no shortage of individuals and interest groups who would love to have an official scientist improperly assign causation to a correlation for their own political and economic gain. However, Pearl uses the cigarette wars to show us that failing to acknowledge that correlations can imply causation can also be dangerous.
“The cigarette wars were science’s first confrontation with organized denialism, and no one was prepared,” writes Pearl. For decades there was ample evidence from different fields and different approaches linking cigarette smoking to cancer. However, it isn’t the case that every single person who smokes a cigarette gets cancer. We all know people who smoked for 30 years, and seem to have great lungs. Sadly, we also all know people who developed lung cancer but never smoked. The causation between cigarettes is not a perfect 1:1 correlation with lung cancer, and tobacco companies jumped on this fact.
For years, it was abundantly clear that smoking greatly increased the risk of lung cancer, but no one was willing to say that smoking caused lung cancer, because powerful interest groups aligned against the idea and conditioned policy-makers and the public to believe that in the case of smoking and lung cancer, correlation was not causation. The evidence was obvious, but built on statistical information and the organized denial was stronger. Who was to say if people more susceptible to lung cancer were also more susceptible to start smoking in the first place? Arguments such as these hindered people’s willingness to adopt the clear causal picture that cigarettes caused cancer. People hid behind a possibility that the overwhelming evidence was wrong.
Today we are in a similar situation with climate change and other issues. It is clear that statistics cannot give us a 100% certain answer to a causal question, and it is true that correlation is not necessarily a sign of causation, but at a certain point we have to accept when the evidence is overwhelming. We have to accept when causal models that are not 100% proven have overwhelming support. We have to be able to make decisions without being derailed by organized denialism that seizes on the fact that correlation does not imply causation, just to create doubt and confusion. Pearl’s warning is that failing to be better with how we think about and understand causality can have real consequences (lung cancer in the cigarette wars, and devastating climate impacts today), and that we should take those consequences seriously when we look at the statistics and data that helps us understand our world.
Asymmetric Paternalism

Asymmetric Paternalism

Posted on by jabittan
While writing about the book Nudge by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, I have primarily focused on an idea that the authors call Libertarian Paternalism. The idea is to structure choices and use nudges (slight incentives and structural approaches) to guide people toward making the best possible decision as judged by themselves. Maintaining free choice and the option to investigate or chose alternatives is an important piece of the concept, as is the belief that we will influence people’s decisions no matter what, so we should use that influence in a responsible way to help foster good decision-making.

 

But the authors also ask if it is reasonable to go a step beyond Libertarian Paternalism. Is it reasonable for choice architects, governments, and employers to go further than gentle nudges in decision situations? Are there situations where decision-making is too important to be left to the people, where paternalistic decision-making is actually best? Sunstein and Thaler present an introduction to Asymmetric Paternalism as one possible step beyond Libertarian Paternalism.

 

“A good approach to thinking about these problems has been proposed by a collection of behavioral economists and lawyers under the rubric of Asymmetric Paternalism. Their guiding principle is that we should design policies that help the least sophisticated people in society while imposing the smallest possible costs on the most sophisticated.”

 

This approach is appealing in many ways, but also walks the line between elitism, the marginalization of entire segments of society, and maximizing good decision-making. I hate having to make lots of decisions regarding appropriate tax filings, I don’t want to have to make decisions on lots of household appliances, and I don’t really want to have to spend too much time figuring out exactly what maintenance schedule is the best for all of my cars. However, I do want to get into the weeds of my healthcare plan, I want to micromanage my exercise routine, and I want to select all the raw ingredients that go into the dinners and lunches that I cook. On some decisions that I make, I want to outsource my decision-making and I would often be happy with having someone else make a decision so that I don’t have to. But in other areas, I feel very sophisticated in my decision-making approach, and I want to have maximum choice and freedom. Asymmetric Paternalism seems like a good system for those of us who care deeply about some issues, are experts in some areas, and want to maintain full decision-making in the areas we care about, while exporting decision-making in other areas to other people.

 

Of course, prejudices, biases, and people’s self-interest can ruin this approach. What would happen if we allowed ourselves to deem entire groups of people as unworthy of making decisions for themselves by default? Could they ever recover and be able to exercise their freedom to chose in important areas like housing, retirement, and investment spaces? Would we be able to operate for long periods of time under a system of Asymmetric Paternalism without the system devolving due to our biases and prejudices? These are real fears, and while we might like to selectively trade off decision-making when it is convenient for us, we also have to fear that someone else will be making decisions for us that are self-serving for someone other than ourselves.

 

The point, according to Sunstein and Thaler, would be to maintain the freedom of decision-making for everyone, but to structure choices in a way where those with less interest and less ability to make the best decisions are guided more strongly toward what is likely the best option for them. However, we can see how this system of asymmetric paternalism would get out of control. How do we decide where the appropriate level is to draw the line between strong guidance and outright choosing for people? Would people voluntarily give up their ability to chose and overtime hand over too many decisions without an ability to get their decision authority back? Transparency in the process may help, but it might not be enough to make sure the system works.
Availability Cascades

Availability Cascades

Posted on by jabittan
This morning, while reading Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari, I came across an idea that was new to me. Harari writes, “Chaotic systems come in two shapes. Level one chaos is chaos that does not react to predictions about it. … Level two chaos is chaos that reacts to predictions about it.”  The idea is that chaotic systems, like societies and cultures, are distinct from chaotic systems like the weather. We can model the weather, and it won’t change based on what we forecast. When we model elections, on the other hand, there is a chance that people, and ultimately the outcome of the election, will be influenced by the predictions we make.  The chaos is responsive to the way we think about that chaos. A hurricane doesn’t care where we think it is going to make landfall, but voters in a state may care quite a bit and potentially change their behavior if they think their state could change the outcome of an election.

 

This ties in with the note from Daniel Kahneman’s book Thinking Fast and Slow which I had selected to write about today. Kahneman writes about availability cascades in his book, and they are a piece of the feedback mechanism described by Harari in level two chaos systems. Kaneman writes:

 

“An availability cascade is a self-sustaining chain of events, which may start from media reports of a relatively minor event and lead up to public panic and large-scale government action. One some occasions, a media story about a risk catches the attention of a segment of the public, which becomes aroused and worried.”

 

We can think about any action or event that people and governments might take as requiring a certain action potential in order to take place. A certain amount of energy, interest, and attention is required for social action to take place. The action potential can be small, such as a red light being enough of an impetus to cause multiple people to stop their cars at an intersection, or monumental, such as a major health crisis being necessary to spur emergency financial actions from the Federal Government. Availability cascades create a set of triggers which can enhance the energy, interest, and attention provided to certain events and bolster the likelihood of a public response.

 

2020 has been a series of extreme availability cascades. With a global pandemic, more people are watching news more closely than before. This allows for the increased salience of incident of police brutality, and increases the energy in the public response to such incidents. As a result, more attention has been paid to racial injustice, and large companies have begun to respond in new ways to issues of race and equality, again heightening the energy and interest of the public in demanding action regarding both racial justice and police policy. There are other ways that events could have played out, but availability cascades created feedback mechanisms within a level two chaotic system, opening certain avenues for public and societal action.

 

It is easy to look back and make assessments on what happened, but in the chaos of the moment it is hard to understand what is going on. Availability cascades help describe what we see, and help us think about what might be possible in the future.
Downward Spirals of Drug Addiction

The Downward Spirals of Drug Prohibition

Posted on by jabittan
In his book Chasing the Scream, Johann Hari describes the ways in which drug prohibition leads to downward spirals for those dealing with drug addiction. From what he has seen first hand, the drug war doesn’t stop people from using drugs and doesn’t help the planet get closer to a point where no one uses or abuses drugs, but instead creates more drug users. It forces drug addicts to the lowest possible rung on our social ladder and ensures they can never improve their lives.

 

Hari writes, “Prohibition—this policy I have traced across continents and across a century—consists of endlessly spreading downward spirals. People get addicted so we humiliate and shame them until they become more addicted. They then have to feed their habit by persuading more people to buy the drugs from them and become addicted in turn. Then those people need to be humiliated and shamed. And so it goes, on and on.”

 

People who abuse drugs and develop drug addictions are pushed out of our homes, out of public spaces, and out of the work force. We force them into dangerous situations where they can be taken advantage of, abused, and harmed by tainted drugs and needles. When people become so isolated and have no connections to help improve their lives, the only thing they can turn to is more drugs. To finance their habit they begin dealing drugs, often mixing the drug with other substances to have more to sell. They pressure the few people they have connections with to become drug users, so they can have some income to then further their habit.

 

The drug war doesn’t help rehabilitate these people, doesn’t show them that we care about them and want them to get better. It tells them they are worthless, and discourages and degrades them. The entire system creates negative downward spirals in peoples lives, in communities, and in our economy. It propels itself, creating the evil that it lives to fight against.
The Cost of the Status Quo in Policing

The Cost of the Status Quo in Policing

Posted on by jabittan
It is not always clear exactly what the cost is of the status quo. Policing is an area that is getting more attention now, and hopefully calls to defund the police are met with serious consideration as to how much money our police forces really need. The status quo in policing is that we spend a lot of money to lock up people we determine to be criminals, but not a lot of money on things that help rehabilitate criminals or prevent crime in the first place. We argue that tight state and federal budgets don’t leave us with enough money for anything other than incarceration, but when we consider just how costly policing really is, we can see that changing the status quo would open a lot of funding for other avenues.

 

Johann Hari addresses this reality in his book Chasing the Scream from 2015. At the time Hari wrote the following about a block in Brooklyn, NY, “In Brownsville, Brooklyn, the state spends one million dollars for every five people it arrests and convicts of midlevel drug offenses.” Our priority for our police has been to go after drug criminals and place steep penalties against them. The harsh costs, society thinks, should go to drug dealers and addicts, but the reality is that the costs fall on society itself. The current movement of defund the police is as much about how we prioritize our resources as it is about stripping the police from their ability to cause physical harm to those they encounter.

 

“In the United States,” Hari writes, “90 percent of the money spent on drug policy goes to policing and punishment, with 10 percent going to treatment and prevention.”

 

We complain about limited resources and being unable to introduce policy to truly make the lives of our fellow citizens better. But we spend huge amounts of money ($5 million dollars on five people) in the costs of arrests, trials, and incarceration. We are willing to pay huge amounts of money to round up the problem and remove it from our sights, but we are not willing to pay money to work with people and help address the problems that spiraled into the even worse problems that we arrest people for having. There are other ways to address crime, drug use, and the dereliction of the lives of the people we incarcerate. Shifting away from an arrest first and police first mindset can open up new resources to better address these problems and challenges.
Police and Violence

The Connection Between Police and Violence

Posted on by jabittan
A few weeks back the United States saw huge protests against police violence and use of force by law enforcement officers. That violence and use of force falls disproportionately on minority populations who have been evicted and incarcerated at rates beyond what one would expect given the demographic breakdown of the United States population. Amidst protests of police brutality, in several dramatic and high profile instances, what the United States saw was extreme police aggression toward protesters, bystanders, and media reporters that seemed to confirm the idea that police use of force was out of control and in need of reform.

 

Following the protests, there were questions about whether police presence at protests actually incited more violence than it prevented. People asked if police needed to show up in riot gear at Black Lives Matter protests, and what would happen to the police and during protests if police forces had not shown up with riot gear.  Many argued that the police themselves sparked the violence that they responded to with force – in effect, the argument suggests that police showing up prepared for violence furthered the violence.

 

The idea that police enforcement lead to an increase in violence is one that I came across about a year ago while reading Johann Hari’s book Chasing the Scream. In the book, Hari argues that greater drug enforcement and more police action against drug users and dealers leads to more crime, not less. He writes, “Professor John Miron of Harvard University has studied the murder statistics and found that statistical analysis shows consistently that higher [police] enforcement [against drug dealers] is associated with higher homicide, even controlling for other factors. This effect is confirmed in many other studies.”

 

Arresting drug dealers and gang members doesn’t reduce the demand for drugs in a given region. Arresting low level drug dealers and gangsters doesn’t lead to much other than an arrest record for the individual, making it hard for them to find legitimate work, leaving drug dealing as one of the few lucrative opportunities available. Arresting a high level drug dealer or gangster creates instability. If you remove a leader in the drug trade, then a power vacuum exists. Competing gang members will vie for the top spot, and might also have to face off against rival gangs to defend their turf. Arrests and enforcement end up creating instability and more violence than they solve. This is part of why homicides increase after a gang member is arrested.

 

Similar to police forces that respond to protests with riot gear, and contribute to the likelihood of people actually rioting, police who arrest gang members and drug dealers actually create more violence and murder, not less. At a time when we are questioning the role and effectiveness of our police services, we should think about whether their actions achieve their intended goals, or whether their actions create a cycle that leads to more police enforcement. If responding in force creates situations for violence violence, then our police should not respond forcefully before it is necessary. If enforcing drug laws creates more violence, then we should ask whether we should be doing something else with our law enforcement.

 

Our police can be what we need them to be and what we ask them to be. The last few decades, what we have asked them to be is a quasi-militant force. The focus was not saving all lives, but on showing force and dominance. It is fair to ask if this is the goal we really want for the police, or if we want them to actually contribute to more safety and less violence for all lives in our communities.
A Condescending Impulse

A Condescending Impulse

Posted on by jabittan
In my last few posts I have written about Johann Hari’s research into Harry Anslinger, the nation’s first Commissioner for the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, and what Hari learned about Anslinger and the start of the nation’s war on drugs. Anslinger held deeply racist views which he channeled into propaganda and drug policy in the Untied States. Hari was appalled by what he read, the common newspaper headlines about Anslinger’s raids from the time, and the quotes from the Commissioner himself. Writing about his research, Hari states,

 

“At times, as I read through Harry’s ever-stranger arguments, I wondered: How could a man like this have persuaded so many people? But the answers were lying there, waiting for me, in the piles of letters he received from members of he public, from senators and from presidents. They wanted to be persuaded. They wanted easy answers to complex fears. It’s tempting to feel superior – to condescend to these people – but I suspect this impulse is there in all of us. The public wanted to be told that these deep, complex problems – race, inequality, geopolitics – came down  to a few powders and pills, and if these powders and pills could be wiped from the world, these problems would disappear.” (Underlined text emphasis added by blog author)

 

We live in a complex world and we all lead busy lives that demand a lot of mental energy and attention just to keep the lights on. We hopefully figure out how to be successful and productive in our own lives, but we only ever get a single perspective on the world, our own. We want to believe that we are good people and that success in our society is entirely within the control of the individual (especially if we have become successful ourselves). When we face great uncertainty and complexity which doesn’t seem to line up with experiences of our lives or the heuristics we have developed for how we live, we seek simple answers that confirm what we want to believe. That is what Hari’s quote shows.

 

Anslinger was building a coalition of like-minded individuals with racial prejudices who wanted to be proven right. They feared drugs, and found drug users and addicts to be easy and defenseless targets. Drugs became a simple answer to the complex problems of why some people became dregs on society while others became wealthy successes.

 

Hari’s quote points out that we should recognize this, but not demonize people for it. We should acknowledge that this instinct is within all of us, and we should not fall into this condescending impulse and turn around a vilify those who are vilifying others. We must approach even our enemies and those among us who are wrong and hold dangerous beliefs with empathy. We must understand that the faults we find in them are faults that we too may have. The only way to connect and make real changes is to recognize and acknowledge these fears, and work to demonstrate how these simple answers to complex problems cannot possibly encompass all that is wrong in our societies so that we can move forward with better ideas and policies in the future.