War
Robin:
Hello, Agnes.
Agnes:
Hi, Robin.
Robin:
Let's talk about war, but let's start from something milder than war. Uh,
bankruptcy.
Agnes:
Okay.
Robin:
Um, so sometimes companies, like, uh, in the nine- two thousand and eight, uh,
crash, I guess, uh, General Motors, I think was at risk of going out of
business, and then the then-current president helped them with some interim
loans to not go out of business.
Agnes:
O- Obama, must have been.
Robin:
Obama, right. Yes. Um-
Agnes:
Okay.
Robin:
And that's been a political dispute often between, um, more hardcore
capitalists, if you will, and those who are more, as they say, caring, that
letting a firm go out of business, like General Motors, would be very
disruptive to many people. There's a lot of damage and destruction, in a
sense. Uh, the plants would be emptied, and someone else would have to try to
buy them later and restructure them for other purposes. There's just- there's
a lot of costs the world suffers when a firm goes out of business.
Agnes:
Mm-hmm.
Robin:
And all around the fir- world, actually, um, the United States is known for
being more willing to let firms go out of business, and often governments more
consistently just try to save businesses f- from that. Elsewhere in the world,
when families, say, are well-connected to a government, they often get the
government to support and, say, protect them from foreign competition, you
know, et cetera, in order to-
Agnes:
Yeah
Robin:
... make sure they don't go out of business. Now, um, from a abstract theory
of capitalism point of view, you might say, well, you just need firms to go
out of business so that good firms can replace bad ones, and so the whole
process can accumulate, uh, you know, firms getting better. Um, in fact, I
think there are studies, in fact, of in the United States and in, and, and in
capitalism, sort of the amount of innovation that happens because within a
firm, the firm gets better, and then between firms, you know, good firms
replacing bad ones. Bad ones leaving, good firms arriving, and I think most
innovation's, in fact, of that replacement sort, where-
Agnes:
Somehow it's very hard to take a bad firm and make it good.
Robin:
Well, it doesn't... It, it can get somewhat better, but that process is just
slower, less effective than the process of just replacing. And that's an
argument for capitalist competition. Uh, and many people, even myself, would,
you know, wince and, you know, try to force ourselves to go through with the
advice in particular situations where people we know would be suffering
because a firm went out of business.
Agnes:
Mm-hmm.
Robin:
But it still seems like the right thing to do, given these statistics I've
told you. But we have a similar argument for war, and the destruction of war
seems just much worse than the destruction from a firm going out of business.
Uh, so that makes me all the more reluctant to apply that advice in any one
concrete situation in front of me. Uh, to say, if I had a choice between
making a war start or making it end, I, I'm might well wanna make the war end
or not even start. But th- I have to see this larger argument and consider the
virtue of war as a process of selecting out better versions and suppressing
worse ones.
Agnes:
I mean, so one question is: What do we mean by applying the advice? So in the
case of the firms, there is this thing, the government, that could bail the
firm out or not, could offer them loans, right? So there's a choice to be
made. Um, but we don't have a world government that says, "You guys go to
war," or, "You guys don't go to war," right? Um, and so, uh, uh, it's not as
though... Le- let's imagine we didn't have a, um, a government, and we just
had these different companies, like, uh, and we were trying to- and we noticed
that, you know, um, sometimes innovation- a lot of times the best innovation
happens because they, they go out of business. We wouldn't tell any of the
companies to commit suicide or something, right? We would just be like, "Well,
it'll happen if it happens." So what does it mean to apply the advice in a
situation where there's no body that could apply it? Mm.
Robin:
So, um, over the last century, we've seen an enormous drop in the rate of war,
and maybe even this the last century and a half. That's one of the s- marker-
strong markers of the modern era.
Agnes:
Mm-hmm.
Robin:
Now, uh, it's clearest in small wars. That is, the rate of small wars has
dramatically declined, including small civil wars. But the few wars we've had
have often been very large, and so the statistics on those aren't, aren't as
much, so it's harder to say that the largest wars have declined. But it, it
does seem like war is way down, and it seems like that's-
Agnes:
I just checked by ChatGPT, and it agrees with you, so-
Robin:
Okay
Agnes:
... please go on.
Robin:
All right. Well, that's important. I, I need chat's approval. Um, so, uh, it
does seem like over this last century, many people have purposely been doing
things they've said to try to reduce war and taken positions, uh, in that
direction, and there have been international-... treaties, organizations, and
norms that have been in the name of reducing war. And then it does look like
they have had some effect. Maybe not most of the reduction of war can we
credit to those, but it does seem like they have been part of the process for
reducing war, is the norms against war.
Agnes:
But let, let's, let's, um, imagine the analog, right? So we're part of a
company, and there's no world... There's no government, that we're- somehow we
have to consider that. It's, it's a hard, it's a hard hypothetical. But
anyway, there's part of a company. Suppose we're doing a bunch of stuff not to
go out of business. Um, that's we really don't wanna go out of business, um,
and we're really trying hard not to go out of business. And, um, and then your
thought is, but maybe when you learn that innovation happens through companies
going out of business, you should not take so many measures to not go out of
business. Um, that- but that seems like it would be weird. It would be a weird
advice to give to the company. Of course, they don't wanna go out of business.
Robin:
So, so there, there have been nations in the last century where, in that
nation, they coordinate to try to prevent companies from going out of
business, such as if a company's having trouble, then other companies sort of
lack... You know, back off on them, maybe don't compete as fiercely, maybe
renegotiate the terms of their agreements with them to make it more favorable.
There have been places where there have been norms to try to discourage firms
from going out of business, so that, that has been a real thing. And again, in
the United States, our norms are more to let them go out of business, and so
we just do, in fact, have more things going out of business here, and that's a
more distinctive feature of our world. Um, I guess another analogy is
unemployment. For example, in Europe, uh, not only do they have strong norms
against war or firms going out of business, they have norms against firing
employees. And so firms are more reluctant to hire because they're more
worried that once you hire someone, it's harder to get rid of them, because,
in fact, laws and norms have made it harder to fire people. So when the
company is retrenching and might otherwise fire people as a way to deal with a
problem, then that's less of an option there. So that's, in character, sort of
a similar sort of f- you know, motive and norm that we want to prevent, you
know, the consequences to people of winners and losers.
Agnes:
Right, and maybe in particular... 'Cause there's a lot of different ways of
having winners and losers. Um, um, like even in negotiations, non-war
negotiations, there can be winners and losers. But maybe the general thing to
say is, we're trying to stop big things from going out of existence, where a
firm is a big thing, and like a country is a big thing. And like big, um,
organized entities, we want to preserve them.
Robin:
And that makes sense to some degree. The question is whether we're going too
far. So the, the biggest context here is to say that if we look at the last
10,000 years of human history-
Agnes:
Well...
Robin:
-and we see the changes in technology and capabilities and organizations over
that time, and we ask, "What are the main proximate causes that we want to use
to explain that?" It seems that war actually turns out to be the biggest
single thing that's credited with the long-term growth of the world economy
and the world, you know, larger societies, societies-
Agnes:
Well-
Robin:
... with larger tr- trade, more technology, more organization. All of that
seems to have been-
Agnes:
How about language? The development of language, is that from war?
Robin:
Uh, that's so far back that I don't think we really have much data about when
that showed up. Certainly, war has changed who speaks which languages, because
conquerors-
Agnes:
Right
Robin:
... will impose their language on a new place. Uh, and then, you know, the
size of vocabularies and languages do seem to be proportional to how many
people have spoken that language for how long. And so one of the main things
that's happened over the last ten years is the increasing scale of
organization. And larger organizations not only have larger languages with
more words, they have larger markets, more specialization, more trade. Uh, and
that's, you know, a big part of us getting rich in the world, is having these
larger, more integrated markets with more specialization that can more support
innovation. Uh, but war has been a central element in causing those
larger-scale units to exist.
Agnes:
But it, it seems like resisting war is also gonna be important to the growth
of those things. That is, it's, um, um... But as we increase the scale, um, of
organization, we get these larger entities, um, that are then holding people
together and preventing war, right? So, uh, um, the prog- the thing war causes
is a kind of progress that is itself, it seems like, a kind of anti-war state.
That is, a kind of large, unified, organized structure.
Robin:
So maybe this is a way to see a more micro version of the issue that you could
get your hands around. Um, it seems like in a nation like the United States or
a place like Europe, um, there's often a big war, and then there's a period
after the war until the next big war. And it seems like over thousands of
years, there's usually this conflict. Within any one unit, there are internal
parts that wanna fight-... and then there's an external threat, and there's
this trade-off in any one unit of staying united, suppressing internal
conflict, in order to deal with the external threat. And that has- that's, you
know, for encouraging people to have a unified attitude and sacrifice for a
unit- a unit, has been largely driven by external threats, largely war. So
that, in fact, say, you know, in Europe, up until World War I, in the United
States, there had been increasing polarization, because the longer it had been
since a major war, the more people are tempted to look internally and focus on
their internal conflicts. And then World War I and World War II unified these
places, created a much more unified cultures. But then, since World War II,
say, the world has been becoming more polarized, especially, say, the United
States, exactly because we don't feel external threats as vividly. And that's
this trade-off at a sort of micro time level of, unless we have war to unify
us, we probably will continue to become more focused on our internal conflicts
and less willing to sacrifice our issues for the larger unit.
Agnes:
But it seems like then, it's like there's just, there's just always war, it
just happens in different places, like we're at war with each other in kind of
a micro way. Um, and we could replace that micro war with a macro war against
China or Russia or whatever. Um, and then we would all be more unified
internally, um-
Robin:
But, but the scale of our world is the result of, you know, 10,000 years of
this process slowly building up larger units.
Agnes:
Right, but I, I guess my sort of worry is, um, that there- this proce- there's
a limit, right? Because you might think, well, we built it up to the nation
state, right? And then we hit World War I. And World War I and World War II
were sort of these wars of like, what happens when you, you know, when you,
the nation states then p- combine into these-
Robin:
Alliances
Agnes:
... Axis and Allied powe- powers. And ever since then, we've had sort of
further unification, further trade unification of the whole world. Um, and I-
it seems like now we need aliens or something. Um, we, we, that is- we keep,
we keep scaling up where the battles have to happen. And, um, uh, and so,
like, it's not clear that, um, just going backwards makes sense.
Robin:
Well, so one issue is, should we, you know, have smaller scale units that have
more overt conflict, or should we try to just have this large world unit that
we have now? But that-
Agnes:
Well, if we did have the smaller scale units, we would predict that what would
happen is what has happened, which is that over time, they would fight each
other, and then they would form these bigger units, and then we'll be back
where we are now.
Robin:
But the problem is just that we were... This destructive engine resulted in
us, after a great deal of pain, but it did result in our forming these larger
scale units and having- developing kinds of ways to organize units so that
they could function, managing large scale nations and their governments and
militaries and culture to be unified. And if we turned off this engine, that
is, then we should predict a decay in these things, that they will slowly come
apart. And is that, you know, is there anything to do about that?
Agnes:
But it, I guess what I'm saying is, it seems to me that the only way to not
turn off the engines is to fight the aliens. Because the, the story didn't end
with the nation state. When you say "we," right, I mean, that, that is it-
what you have is like Europe or, um, you know, you, you have NATO. Um, that
is, we have these blocks that are larger than a single country. Um, and um, in
fact, um, you know, as you've been noting, we're moving towards a kind of
global elite and, uh, homogenization of world culture. And yeah, that makes it
harder for us to fight each other, just the way that the unification of France
made it harder for one pa- part of France to fight another part of France.
But, um, it's just not, um, uh... It, it's not clear to me, like, one road
might be decay. I'm not disagreeing with you about that. But the alternative
to decay, it seems to me, is the aliens. And so if there's no prospect of us
fighting the aliens, then we're gonna decay one way or the other. We can decay
just to the nation state era, right? Just that far, and then fight, fight
other countries, and then eventually work our way back to where we are now,
and I guess we could decay again, right? So we could boomerang back and forth.
Um, that seems like one option. Um, or we could experience other kinds of
decay, and so maybe it's a choice between different forms of decay, unless
we're rescued by an alien attack.
Robin:
Of course, we might lose to the aliens, so...
Agnes:
Well, the rescue is just the war. That war would be good. Even if we lost,
that would be innovation. They would have better innovation because of that,
right? They would probably develop really good technologies through fighting
us, and so that's the process you're talking about going on. You know, maybe
we should be the losers.
Robin:
So I'm certainly not saying-
Agnes:
Or the company that goes out of business.
Robin:
I'm not, certainly not suggesting that these are obvious choices, but they
seem like really consequential choices.
Agnes:
But I, I guess I'm not seeing a choice. So that was my first question to you,
where you were like: "Should we apply this advice?" And I'm like: "How do we
apply it?" Um, and like, suppose we were like: Let's become pro-war, uh, and
let's start fighting each other.... that's decay. That is, it's a regression
to, uh, a, an earlier state where we were less unified. Which might be, in a
way, progress. I mean, um, um, or there might be some things that are good
about that, but, but the thing is, we can make a prediction about what will
happen if we do that. Like, if we start fighting China, and we don't, you
know, totally kill each other with nuclear weapons, um, uh, then, um, what
will happen is there'll be a period of fighting, there'll be a period of
rebuilding, and then eventually, we'll, like, start unifying again. That-
that's what we should predict, right?
Robin:
Well, I mean, one thing that's happened over, say, the last half century or
longer, is that when local conflicts arose, then the world powers tried to
come in and stop them.
Agnes:
Mm-hmm.
Robin:
To, to, you know, broker a peace, to, you know, offer things to each side in
order to stop the war.
Agnes:
Mm-hmm.
Robin:
So counterfactually, if we had not done that, then those wars might have
lasted hotter, longer. So that's a kind of policy. The world has been trying
to prevent war pretty explicitly.
Agnes:
Right. Um-
Robin:
So clearly we could have perhaps not gone in for each local conflict and tried
to negotiate and-
Agnes:
So-
Robin:
... put pressure on them to make sure there's not a war.
Agnes:
Part of my, um, like, kind of... I'm often confused in these kinds of
conversations, what we're allowed to assume and what we're allowed to vary.
Because it's like one response I can have is, like, "Sure, we achieved lots of
progress via war. Now let's do it another way, not by way of war." And you'd
be like: Well, look, what we have to do is just make an inference from what's
happened in the past to say maybe this is just how it has to happen. And then
that- I'm just using that same argument about war and be like, "Look, we could
do a thing where we're, like, not gonna interfere, and we're gonna let people
fight. Well, let's, let's let that play out." What happens? Eventually, we
become the people who interfere and don't let people fight again, and that...
Clearly, that's how it seems to go, right? That's how it's gone, so it'll go
that way again. Um, and then you might be like, "No, no, we could just decide
not to be those people. We can just decide to not interfere in wars." And
then, like, why is it that we're allowed to make that change in, like, the
deep structure of human nature, but not the change that says, um, we achieve
progress by means of war?
Robin:
The world of governments and culture and economy is a world of lots of, you
know, causal effects in many different directions-
Agnes:
Mm-hmm
Robin:
... which just makes it hard to cut out a counterfactual and saying, "Well,
let's just change this part"-
Agnes:
Yeah
Robin:
... because, of course, any one thing typically is the result of many things
that caused it. And you might ask: How could we have changed that one thing,
because there are all these forces that would've made it different?
Agnes:
Right.
Robin:
But, you know, that made it. So, but it doesn't mean that there's nothing we
can possibly do about the world. It means that it's hard-
Agnes:
Right
Robin:
... to think about what we can do.
Agnes:
Right. But if we can do stuff, like, how about we just, like, achieve progress
without war? Maybe we should look into that first.
Robin:
Okay, well, let's talk about that. So-
Agnes:
Okay
Robin:
... uh, we might say the key thing that war did was it made some things win
over others-
Agnes:
Mm-hmm
Robin:
... in a pretty stark and strong way. And, you know, repeating over and over,
having some things win over others is the engine that, you know, produced
innovation and growth over time, and could we substitute some other engine?
And the most obvious engine I can think of is just capitalism-
Agnes:
Mm-hmm
Robin:
... whereby we just allow firms to compete more fiercely, perhaps, than they
do now, and to control more kinds of things than they do now, and to see how
that goes. It's like one version is we could let firms own governments. We
could just have capitalist governments which have investors and some sort of
board of directors and, you know, invest- investment ownership structure that
then do all the things nations do, except in order to profit the investors.
That would be a quite unusual... So if you look at smaller-scale
organizations, most smaller-scale organizations in the world are that sort of
organization. But when you get up to larger organizations, like nations or
cities, suddenly almost none. There basically are none of that form. That's a
striking lack, so it suggests we could do that, except norms seem to be
blocking that. But it's a feasible thing.
Agnes:
Is it, though? Like, so, so, so is there a reason to think that the norms
blocking it are, like, something that runs very deep and that actually
wouldn't be feasible?
Robin:
Well, the way is to try. So for example, I visited this place called Prospera
in Honduras a couple of times.
Agnes:
Yeah.
Robin:
It's what they call a startup city. It is a capitalist small region inside
Honduras that, you know, managed to get some official government approval to
let, let them make their own laws, have their own rules, all, all sorts of
things. But then after a while, the Honduran government is trying to say, "No,
you, you can't have all that freedom," and now they have some lawsuit with
some world court about it. But apparently, this is the, being the biggest
success in this form, so it just seems like, in fact, you know, it is
mechanically feasible, but it's hard to get permission.
Agnes:
And why is it so hard to get permission?
Robin:
Because, as happened in Honduras, voters are... find it easy to suspect those
foreigners are, are up to no good because foreigners were involved in the
creation and funding and activities in this part of Honduras.... so national
pride prevents many sorts of experiments, uh, within national borders of
things that, you know, seem sort of- I mean, another example is that, a
related example is that at the level of agreements between nations, it's, it's
common knowledge that whatever they write on paper has very few teeth.
International organizations can't give those organizations very much actual
power, because voters at home, if they see that, they'll be really upset that
somehow somebody gave away national sovereignty in some treaty, creating some
international organization. And so in fact, these organizations do things, and
stuff happens, but it mostly has to happen without formal power, because
they're just... Everybody knows that voters would hate and, you know, punish
any politician who agreed to an international organization that has a lot of
teeth. So that's an analogous sort of national sovereignty obsession that
makes it hard to do these sorts of experiments.
Agnes:
And why don't people, like in Honduras, just try to make a charter city inside
of their own country? Why do- why is it always outsiders?
Robin:
Uh, well, um, basically, it's the attraction of capital that's, you know, will
make things happen, and the- there isn't that much capital inside Honduras.
But there is a- another charter city that is more inside Honduras, and that is
more locus- focused on internal Honduran investors. That's a thing that's
actually happening there. I met the guy, but, um, still the hostility is on
the foreign-funded ones.
Agnes:
Okay. So, um, um, I feel like the move from, um, competition via war to
competition via capitalism is a, is a good step, but maybe we can go another
step. So what makes capitalism better than war? Well, what- who's gonna win a
war is something like, um, who has better weapons, who has more people that
can fight, um, who has like, um, you know, better at fighting. Um, uh, you
know, where that could mean better-trained generals or whatever, right? And
that's gonna be sort of correlated with your having otherwise a good and
viable culture, but it's not gonna be perfectly correlated. Um, and you might
think, "What can we do to tighten that correlation and also kill less people?"
Right? And so now it looks like, okay, well, the nice thing about capitalism
is, you know, you make money if you produce stuff that people want. Um, and so
the successful companies, um, unless there's corruption, the successful
companies are ones where they are helping people. Um, and s- um, and, um... Or
at any rate, they're giving people what they want. Maybe sometimes people want
things that are bad for them. I think that's true, sometimes they do. Um, um,
and then the question would be... A- and that's gonna be, you know, um, that's
gonna be pretty correlated, like, pretty tightly correlated with actually, in
some way, having a good culture, namely doing things that g- producing things
that people want. Um, but maybe there's something yet tighter than that.
Robin:
I can-
Agnes:
Like, we want the best cultures to win.
Robin:
Well, I have a third model to consider in this comparison here.
Agnes:
Okay, just give me prediction markets.
Robin:
No.
Agnes:
Okay.
Robin:
It's gonna be the Amish and Haredim.
Agnes:
Mm-hmm.
Robin:
So let's say the Amish, uh, they have groups that are, say, between size 50
and 100, and when they reach a size 100, they split into two more groups of
50. And each group gets to decide all its rules, all its, uh, you know, r-
rules about how people behave, and then it decides how it invests its capital.
And in the 20 years between doublings, 'cause they double roughly every 20
years, they have to sort of acquire enough capital in order to fund doubling
their infrastructure. They have a-
Agnes:
Mm.
Robin:
If they're farming, they have to have a whole new set of farms. If they have,
you know, businesses, they have to have a whole new set of businesses. And so
they are, in fact, capitalist, uh, units, but they encompass all of culture
for these people, and so they are competitive, capitalist cultural units. They
are very religious and hap- fertile, but, um, in some sense, compared to, say,
Prospera or these other capitalist firms, they encompass a lot more of culture
in their whole unit of choice that they compete. And so each unit competes
with the others in the sense that they can just change all of their rules that
they like. Rules about marriage and work and, you know, what technology
they're allowed, allowed to use. Each one gets to make those choices
separately, and this is similarly true for the Haredim. Uh, but the Haredim
are more urban, and then they spend more time in school, uh, but still, they
are growing at a similar speed. So it offers an interesting contrast. It's a
co- very competitive world, and in some sense, it is on track to out-compete
the rest of the world. It might take a few centuries.
Agnes:
So how could be are these groups subsidized?
Robin:
They're not.
Agnes:
I mean, the Haredim are-
Robin:
The Hared- the, in, in Israel, they have rules about, like, not having to do
military service, say-
Agnes:
Right
Robin:
... and that would be, and then there may be welfare that they're getting. But
the Amish, I'm pretty sure, are not actually getting welfare. The Amish-...
negotiated not have to pay Social Security because they were not getting the
Social Security benefits, and then they often negotiate to not have to
contribute to local public schools if they're doing their own schools for
their own kids. But I think on net, they just aren't being subsidized. Well,
they, they are, you know, peaceniks in the sense that they, you know, try not
to send their kids to war, but they use the usual, you know, excuses for that.
A- and the same for the Haredim. Uh, I think once they're large enough, that
won't be an issue, but, but I- here I was focusing more on the comparison
between, say, nations competing at war, firms competing-
Agnes:
Right
Robin:
... um, in business, but most capitalism is a pretty limited sphere of our
lives being r- run by capitalism, and then Prospera is an interesting
variation where, okay, now we include government in capitalism, and now it can
make more choices. But even then, it's not choosing, you know, marriage and
parenting and stuff like that. Whereas for the Amish and Haredim, these little
units are, in fact, units of all those different life choices-
Agnes:
Right
Robin:
... and they are competing in a pretty direct way. That is, each, each of
these units saves up its own money and takes care of itself and takes care of
its poor people and its sick people, uh, as the-
Agnes:
Is that, is that competing? I mean, it's not as though the one succeeds if the
other one fails.
Robin:
Well, they're... You know, as they double every 20 years, they have to go find
places to survive and thrive. That is, you know, when they were very small,
there would just be a few niches that they wouldn't be fighting over very
much, but as they grow, they, they are... In fact, for example, the Amish in
the last generation gave up being primarily farmers. They had grown so big,
they thought that they couldn't just keep growing by being farmers. There
wasn't enough farmland for that, so they needed to move into rural small
business. And that, you know, presumably each, each Amish would say, "Well,
I'd rather stay being a farmer. Why don't you go be a real rural small
business?" But, you know, the competition would make being a farmer less and
less attractive, 'cause there are so many Amish-like farmers willing to do the
farming thing that that would drive down their income they could make from
farming, and so some of them switched off. And that- and when they fill up
your rural small business and run out of that, they'll have to, you know, get
bigger town small business in order to continue to grow.
Agnes:
Right.
Robin:
So they are facing those sorts of competitive pressures-
Agnes:
Mm
Robin:
... internal to themselves, and of course, they're also competing with other
farmers-
Agnes:
Right
Robin:
... other rural small business.
Agnes:
Right. Um...
Robin:
There may be things that war has selected for and capabilities they gave us
that the Amish-
Agnes:
Right
Robin:
... are not learning, and maybe, you know-
Agnes:
Right
Robin:
... that are going away. So certainly, you could say-
Agnes:
Right
Robin:
... our civilization has a lot of capacities that is not being embodied in the
Amish and Haredim-
Agnes:
Right
Robin:
... because they have such small-scale business.
Agnes:
Right, they're, they're not preparing for war.
Robin:
Right, and they aren't, you know, making supercomputers, and they're not, you
know-
Agnes:
Mm
Robin:
... building large oil refineries, and they're not, you know, making
airplanes. Many of the capacities of our civilization are not being developed
or even preserved inside them.
Agnes:
Right, and they're sort of existing inside this bigger kind of culture that's
peaceful towards them. Um, so they're not having to develop certain, um, like,
fighting ability.
Robin:
Right, and well, Prospera, of course, it wasn't large enough to need its own
military either, so-
Agnes:
Mm-hmm.
Robin:
But, you know, if things like Prospera got to be larger, then at some point
they would have to. And of course, many, many large firms do have security
arms. Uh, like, you know, I'm sure Walmart has to have a security arm that
makes sure people don't steal stuff from its, uh, stores. And so, you know,
they, they, they will develop military-like capabilities as needed.
Agnes:
Okay, but like, I mean, um, it seems like the sort of, like, ethos of the line
of argument that you're pushing is that there should just be small-scale
experimentation or something. But that, um, often the way that that's getting
expressed is, like, the whole world should come to an agreement that we don't
interfere in wars or whatever. Like, where that's like, um... That requires
this, the giant global elite consensus that you're-
Robin:
I, I think it's more the other way. I think, you know, often some people say,
"Eh, you know, maybe, maybe war isn't so bad," and they get sort of crushed
with, "How horrible! You terrible person, that you should say such a thing."
So they're... I mean, similarly for even questioning democracy or whatever.
Agnes:
Yeah.
Robin:
I mean, it does seem among our global elite culture, there is a strong, you
know, norm against ever tolerating war, unless, you know, the other people are
being evil in some way.
Agnes:
Right.
Robin:
Uh, and you know, so you could just imagine weakening those norms, not being
so horrified by war-
Agnes:
Yeah, but-
Robin:
... as we are.
Agnes:
But, but to weaken those norms would be to strengthen the global elite
uni-culture consensus. That is, um, it would be to like, um, kind of mobilize
this thing of like: "Look, let's the entire world get normatively on the same
page. War is not as bad as we were all separately saying it was," or something
like that. And it's like, I'm just confused why that isn't the problem, the
fact that, um, that we're inclined to say things like, "We should all..." or
something.
Robin:
... Well, that is a problem, but, I mean, both are things we could consider
promoting here, and it's just a matter of which we think are actually more
feasible or desirable. That's-
Agnes:
Maybe we shouldn't be promoting stuff, is what I'm saying. Like, isn't that-
like, what kind of a libertarian are you? Um, being like, "What should we all
promote?" Um, like, like, you know, if we're thinking Nozick, like, well,
everyone should just do different stuff, and we shouldn't be trying to control
what other people do, including what other people all do the same way. Um, we
should just, like, foster your own little independent thing, and then in the
end, it'll work out somehow, but not through somebody being in charge and
looking down and being like, "We all need to do things differently."
Robin:
I, I ask, like, what levers would you like to focus on? Our world is full of
levers, many of which may be actually not very effective. You turn the level
on, le- lever, and nothing happens. Uh, and many levers could be a lot harder
to actually make use of, even if they are effective, because so many other
people are fighting over those levers, and if you try to push it-
Agnes:
Right
Robin:
... somebody else is gonna be pushing the other way. So, uh, I'm open to
suggestions about what levers you would find most promising. Uh, you know, we
could write philosophy books about these things, and that would be another
potential lever in the world. Uh, but I'm- you know... But before we maybe
choose between particular levers, it's, it's worth just thinking about the,
the basic situation the world's in, and what are the issues? Like, what's
going wrong?
Agnes:
Well-
Robin:
What's going right?
Agnes:
Let's say, um, um, you know, there's somebody, like a busybody, and she's
always trying to help everyone around her by bringing, like, cookies over to
their house or, like, giving them advice. And then you're pointing out, like:
"Well, those people didn't want your cookies, and now they feel obligated to
bring you something, and so you really burdened them, and, like, they didn't-
they weren't interested in your advice, and you're not really helping." And
she's like: "Look, what levers do you want me to use? Like, how should I try
to improve the lives of all the people around me?" And you wanna say, "No,
you're just supposed to not do that." Um, then you might-
Robin:
I might- I wouldn't say that. I would look for some other things she could do-
Agnes:
Right, right
Robin:
... besides giving people cookies.
Agnes:
I, I, I get that. Um, um, I'm imagining a libertarian was in this room, um,
and- ... um, the libertarian might tell her, "People are supposed to pursue
their own good, and maybe if they ask- a particular person came to you and
asked for help, you could help that person, and they would help guide you as
to how to help them with their particular problem. But don't just go walking
around trying to improve the world, because you don't know what's good for
other people, and, um, that's a bad goal." So I'm kind of just wondering why,
why that attitude-
Robin:
Mm-hmm
Agnes:
... isn't the one we're applying here.
Robin:
Well, maybe you're the libertarian in this room-
Agnes:
Yeah, I think it's possible that I am
Robin:
... instead of me. I, I certainly tend to think that often interventions go
wrong, especially government, you know, driven and supported interventions.
But I'm not committed to the idea that nobody should ever try to do things to
solve problems. Uh, I would might recommend people try to use more private
means, charitable means, even bully pulpit means, rather than other means. But
the first step is to just try to understand what, what are the problems and
what- or what are the directions that might be helpful, and then you can try
to strategize about what particular ways you might try to move that way.
Agnes:
Well, a libertarian like myself does not think that nobody should ever do
things to solve problems. They think you should try to solve your own
problems. Uh, you might have big problems that you're not paying attention to,
um, but don't be too sure that you can solve other people's-
Robin:
Well
Agnes:
... problems.
Robin:
For example, I might say, "Look, there seem to be a lot of pretty badly run
nations out there in the world."
Agnes:
Yeah.
Robin:
"And there are a lot of people who would like adventure and of things, like
maybe they should go invade one of those nations and take it over and run it
better." Like, I might be less horrified by that suggestion if I think, well,
the world could use a little more war anyway, and that's kind of the process
that maybe should happen in the long run, is stuff that's run badly should be
conquered by stuff that's run better. And, I mean, this is maybe, you know,
colonialism. That is, the world, as you know, ran away from colonialism in a
pretty rushed and horrified way, a half century or so ago. And you might
think, well, maybe that was a bit of a mistake. Maybe colonialism made more
sense.
Agnes:
So, like, what we're trying to decide in this conversation is how horrified to
be by which things? That's, like, our topic?
Robin:
Well, w-
Agnes:
I kind of can't figure out what our topic is.
Robin:
Well, w-
Agnes:
Like, be less horrified by the prospect of war now that you know that war has
these good effects. Okay.
Robin:
And then maybe be less o- opposed to some agent of war, somebody who wants to
actually initiate war to cause some change in the world. So imagine some very
badly run country in the world, and somebody neighboring, you know, wants to
send an army there to take it over and run it better. I might go, "Depending
on how competent they seemed, maybe I should be less opposed to this."
Agnes:
What does it matter how opposed you are to it?
Robin:
Well, for example, if I might have an associate who was thinking of joining
it, uh, if I'm very opposed, then I will shame them and say, "I, I can have
nothing to do with you." I certainly wouldn't help them and train them or give
them, you know, advice. I, I would... That's a common reaction, I think, most
people in our world today. Hey, w- if somebody told most people around us, if
they were... If you were- you know, they were planning on joining a, an
invasion of some place, uh-... and, you know, wanted some advice, maybe a
place to stay, some tr- you know, training, a little, you know-
Agnes:
Yeah
Robin:
... help, they, they would-
Agnes:
Okay, so I'm t- I'm recalibrating my moral emotions in the event that somebody
who wants to take over another country wants to stay at my house- -while
they're preparing to take over the other country. I mean, I guess I could
prepare myself for this predicament, but I feels like there's a lot of other
predicaments I'd wanna prepare myself for first. Like, how to deal with your
kids all going to college, that's the thing that's gonna ha- actually is gonna
happen to me.
Robin:
Right. Okay.
Agnes:
I can prepare myself for that predicament. It seems, like, more practical than
to prepare myself for this predicament. Like, if I were a person in politics,
and I were thinking of which country do I take over, or do I take over a
country or not, this would be a very relevant discussion to have.
Robin:
Okay.
Agnes:
Um, but that's not... That's not gonna happen to me, nor does anyone come
asking me for advice on whether-
Robin:
Well-
Agnes:
... they should take over a country.
Robin:
I mean, when you give a lecture in a class-
Agnes:
Mm
Robin:
... at University of Chicago-
Agnes:
Yeah
Robin:
... do students at the end of the class say, "This didn't really help me make
a practical decision in my life about what to do if a friend visits or what
I'm gonna do if I'm a parent. Why didn't this lecture tell me anything about
that?"
Agnes:
I- right before this, I had a meeting with a student, and, um, he wanted to,
um, work with me on his BA thesis, but I can't, 'cause I'm already advising
too many other students. But- and he's like: "Well, the thing I liked about
your classes was, every time I walked out of class, I could see direct
practical relevance of how all this philosophy stuff was related to my life."
That's actually what he said.
Robin:
Okay.
Agnes:
I just... As it happened, I just got out of a meeting with someone who said
that. So like, yeah, the philosophy better be relevant to your life. It better
be directly relevant to, like, the next... how you spend the next day. Yes, I
think that is the criterion. Otherwise, what is all this thinking for if you
can't use it for anything?
Robin:
So what if somebody you know wants to be a mercenary?
Agnes:
Right.
Robin:
Wants to actually join a military effort? Uh, is that the sort of thing you
would be horrified by and, and want to never associate with them again? That,
that's one of the sorts of things that happens in our world to discourage
these things. That, our world is so a- against these things that, in fact,
anybody who said they were gonna be doing these things would just face strong
social shaming and, you know, exclusion on the basis of being even willing to
consider such things.
Agnes:
Yeah, I mean, um, um... I think it's very hard to know how to respond to a
hypothetical that's very, very far from your world. Like, um, no one I know
has ever, um, wanted to be a mercenary. Um, and I was just talking to a
student earlier today about an example that came up in a philosophy text. What
if somebody were trying to decide between a career as a concert violinist and
a career as a nuclear physicist? And I was, like, criticizing this
hypothetical example, 'cause I'm like, "I don't think anyone's ever faced this
choice," because by the time you get to the point of being close to being
either one of those things, you've given up everything else in your life. And
so this, this, this hypothetical that we wanna think and figure out how to
decide is not gonna arise. So I, I do think it matters, like, if you're trying
to think through how you would advise someone, you pick the set of situations
where you're likely to be giving advice, and this isn't one of them.
Robin:
But if our world... I mean, you've read enough historical, you know, stuff to
know that such centuries ago, this wasn't such a strange-
Agnes:
Right
Robin:
... thing.
Agnes:
And when I read about people going to war centuries ago, deciding to go to
war, and being given advice or whatever, I'm not horrified. I don't find it
impossible to empathize with those people. So I'm already- I'm capable-
Robin:
Right
Agnes:
... of, like, thinking through these things, right? As-
Robin:
Right, but th- this must be evidence that, in fact, our world culture is quite
different than back then. That is, if you, if you find- if you say, "Geez,
this is such a strange, unlikely scenario, I can't even imagine-
Agnes:
Yes
Robin:
... it as relevant," then we- that's clearly evidence that our world has
changed a lot-
Agnes:
Yes, absolutely, right
Robin:
... along these lines.
Agnes:
There's a lot of other things that, that, that happen in, um, uh, novels that
don't happen now anymore. Um, and so, yeah.
Robin:
We- and for each one of those, we could wonder, how has the world changed as a
result of that thing going away?
Agnes:
Uh-huh. I agree.
Robin:
And so I'm wondering here about, how has our world changed as a result of war
going away?
Agnes:
But you have the answer. W- it, it's become, um, you know, um, um, gonna be,
like, less innovative and all those other bad things, right?
Robin:
And then-
Agnes:
But that doesn't mean we can flip the lever back. That's- or that there is any
lever.
Robin:
Well, we could think about what consequences it has and think about what other
an- adjacent levels there are about adjacent sorts of things. What, what...
If, you know, if some- if s- innovation has declined as a result of this, can
we up innovation in other ways?
Agnes:
Yeah, I think that's reasonable. That's a reasonable question. Can we up
innovation, though? Is innovation the kind of thing we can up?
Robin:
Well, there's a literature on that, that, um, you know, economists talk about
different institutions for promoting innovation and different ways we could
promote it, but actually, we're somewhat embarrassed to find that we can't ...
It's much harder to promote innovation than you might think, in that, um,
we've looked at-
Agnes:
I actually would've thought it was hard, so I'm not surprised. Um, it's a
little bit like expect the unexpected.
Robin:
Probably one of the, the strongest supports of innovation we have is actually
research tax credits. So firms tend to get tax discounts for the money they
spend on research and development-
Agnes:
Mm
Robin:
... and that actually seems to be a substantial encouragement of innovation.
Uh-... that's a mechanism that doesn't let- have the government m- doing fine
grain ch- choosing of which kinds of research projects should be pursued. Uh,
it's just a, a, you know, if a business seems to find it in their interest to
pursue some research, then we think that's a good indication that that would
be something worth supporting. But only a modest subsidy, you see. They,
they'll still have to pay for most of it, and then we're less worried that
they're just gonna make up stuff to get paid for doing the research that we're
giving payments for.
Agnes:
So competition is like, it's like good for us, but we don't like it or
something? Um, a-a-a-and I'm kind of puzzled about that kind of structure. Um,
that is, if there is, um, a mode of interaction that is persistently sort of
adaptive and positive for us, why haven't we evolved to like it and approve of
it, um, in the ways that we l- have evolved to like and approve of the foods
that are good for us? Like, I don't like eating pencils, right? And also,
pencils are not good for me to eat, and those things are connected.
Robin:
Right. Um, it's a good question. Um, so one of the correlates of the rise of
nations was the rise of national solidarity, and that often went with nations
taking care of people as a way to show and solidify solidarity.
Agnes:
Mm-hmm.
Robin:
And that often... Taking care of people is often preventing bad things from
happening to them. Uh, so, you know, for example, unemployment insurance,
health insurance, things like that. One of the main reasons those have been
adopted actually is to support, um, national solidarity. In fact, those
things, you know, most clearly rose a lot in the context of war. That is, uh,
say, after World War I and World War II, the public in the US and Europe felt
like they deserved a lot more support, and that the rich needed to be taxed to
support them because they had sacrificed for the war. So in fact, in the
history of redistribution over the last century, it has been wars that have
been one of the clearest causal factors in causing the increase of those
things, and that's a way in which we are protecting people from things going
wrong. And you might think, you know, that's part of keeping firms from going
out of business, that they, uh, rely on and things like that. So there's a
sense in which solidarity, a national solidarity, has been, you know,
something that didn't exist before nation states, and we-
Agnes:
Right
Robin:
... that's only a recent thing, and that's a cultural creation, and it's often
created on purpose by national governments in order to create support for war.
And so then there's- in fact, many people have been disappointed in the lack
of the increase in redistribution since, say, the last major wars. And
possibly that's because without the wars, we don't have the sense of deserving
it, and that we're not actually going to increase redistribution much if we
don't have more big wars.
Agnes:
So this may be, um... I know we do need to go looking for costs of war, um,
'cause they're kinda obvious, but maybe a hidden cost of war is that it's a
form of competition that undermines competition. And so-
Robin:
Yes
Agnes:
... it's not sustainable, in another sense of sustainable. In one sense, war
is not sustainable, but in a deeper sense, it's not sustainable to have to
keep using the war mechanism to, um, create innovation. Because the war
mechan- mechanism creates innovation at the cost of cutting competition.
Robin:
It's- So there's this observation through history that, um, we have the rise
and fall of empires and smaller things, and so, you know, the proximate cause
of the rise of empires is that some group creates more internal solidarity,
and then it beats out competitors who have less internal solidarity. And then
in the rise of an empire, you have these units which have unusually high
internal solidarity, often perhaps achieved at the cost of preventing some
internal competition that might have disrupted that internal solidarity. But
then these larger units went out and create an empire, which then decays. So
we, we don't fully understand it, but there does seem to be some- this rise
and fall of empire thing, where something in the process of causing the
solidarity ends up having longer term consequences that undermine these larger
units.
Agnes:
Right. The, the empire decaying, you know, that's just competition, right? So
that, like, great! Because-
Robin:
Sure, sure, but it also seems to be some internal problems that seem to be
causing the decay, that... as opposed to external competition. Uh, that is,
the-
Agnes:
Well, it could be internal competition.
Robin:
R- right, but a lot of the lo- lo- the rise and the scale of organizations in
history is the trade-off between, you know, doing better against outsiders by
having less internal dissension -
Agnes:
Right
Robin:
... and more internal solidarity, and sometimes that may be achieved by just
preventing internal competition as a way to prevent internal conflict in order
to achieve the unified stance toward outsiders.
Agnes:
Right. But I guess, like, the more you succeed in... You get a unified stance,
right? And then you squash the outsiders. But once they're pretty well
squashed-... um, the pressure for your unified stance has gone away, and then-
Robin:
Right
Agnes:
-you're gonna start to fall apart. So you need to find an outsider that's just
at the right... It's like playing tennis against someone who's at the same
level as you or something.
Robin:
Right.
Agnes:
An outsider that's like a persistent threat. Um, because if you defeat them,
then the grounds of your unity are gonna be eliminated.
Robin:
Right. So if we say since World War II, um, we've faced less of an explicit
outside threat. So the Cold War was something of a threat, but it seemed less
threatening because it never got to much of a hot war. And now, with the fall
of the Soviet Union now 30 years ago, 35 years ago, I guess, that outside
threat has gone away so that we've just evolved in the direction you would
predict when we don't fear outside threats as much, which is to focus more on
internal conflicts, and that's a natural prediction of this sort of analysis.
And if you... Then that's- doesn't suggest there's much of a solution to our
rising political polarization problem. It's the natural result of lack of
outside threats.
Agnes:
Right, and if the other countries are also either small enough or themselves
polarized enough, uh, either weak enough or themselves polarized enough to
present a threat. Um, but maybe eventually we just kinda split up a bit, and
then we can fight each other, and then get unity that way.
Robin:
Maybe. Uh, I don't have answers here but, uh, it seems a hard thing to look
at, and therefore, maybe we should make ourselves look at it anyway. Uh, that,
uh, war has been something that has built us up and made many of the things we
assume and rely on around us, and that without it, well, things will decay.
Agnes:
I, I guess the thing is like, yeah, but the decay will also look like war. War
is just both processes, right? So the... It fosters competition, and it
squooshes competition, just in different spheres. Um, I, I'm not sure what
the, what the upshot of that is in terms of what anyone should do.
Robin:
Well, maybe we're-
Agnes:
We haven't yet found a non-self-undermining way to promote competition if
we're relying on war. Maybe capitalism is gonna be-
Robin:
Well, we suggested, say, more of these startup cities would be-
Agnes:
Right
Robin:
... more to, more competition of, for governance, capitalist governance
competition.
Agnes:
Right.
Robin:
Maybe-
Agnes:
So then the quest- there's a question: Is capitalism... Does capitalism get
you non-self-undermining competition? And I'm not sure that it does. Like,
that is- there's a question... Think of all the hatred, uh, of and resistance
to capitalism, how much of that is kind of an internal cause of cap- caused by
capitalism, and how much of it is just out... There's just people out there,
you know, bad guys out there, or whatever. Someone like Schumpeter thought,
"No, it's a kind of internal feeling," that like war, capitalism produces its
own, um, anti-competition forces. And so then, w- the, the thing we would
still be looking for, that we still haven't found, is a non-self-undermining
engine of competition.
Robin:
Well, I mean, undermining to a modest degree doesn't undermine overall, so,
uh, we'd have to ask about the magnitude of this-
Agnes:
So less self-undermining.
Robin:
Well, it might be sufficiently, you know, pro-mining that it, it works even if
it has this negative feedback loop. So the question is how strong that is. But
in the same way, we could talk about, say, the Amish or Haredim. They seem to,
you know, be producing... They at least don't seem to be producing much of
outside hostility, and they are growing in a-
Agnes:
I mean, you're really trying to help them out with that, but it hasn't been
working.
Robin:
I don't feel very hostile to them. I just feel a bit sad that if the world
became them, we would lose a lot. But that's part of their virtue, really, is
that they don't seem very threatening.
Agnes:
Okay, we should stop.
Robin:
All right. Till we talk again.
