Future generations are unlikely to be impressed by how today’s global challenges are being navigated today. It will be noted that South Africa’s stumbling transition highlighted dangers arising from cavalierly subordinating interests to ideals. Corruption eventually became obvious – but it is the deeper disconnects which provide early warnings.
Neither poverty-induced starvation nor violence have been eradicated, yet both have long been declining globally. Most societies have now lost sight of how the central organising principle for humans, along with all other species, has always been survival.
It’s satisfying for those enjoying peace and prosperity to shape public discourse around aspirational ideals such as equality. This is very different from debating and negotiating survival strategies among groups with conflicting interests. Instead, debating the pros and cons of various paths and trade-offs has given way in various countries to groups rushing to judge and depict other groups.
Indulging values is not new. Religions would tame or flame them – or dissenters. Yet today’s democracies have borrowed heavily from religious structures as well as ancient Greek ideals. Now, with life becoming more precious than precarious, survival instincts and religious touchpoints are fading. Yet, critically, the world having become a highly integrated and complex machine affects which ideals should be prioritised when, where and, most importantly, how. The trade-offs between poverty and climate change illustrate this.
Managing trade-offs
Few people are like Bill Gates, who rigorously assesses the extent to which efforts to reduce poverty and carbon emissions conflict. Everyone could benefit from managing the various trade-offs effectively. This would be far easier if they were packaged as competing interests rather than conflicting values.
We are conditioned to negotiate when the interests of diverse groups compete. The same cannot be said when values conflict. Conflicting values are difficult for homogenous groups or even individuals to manage internally. Choosing between a new car or redecorating is far simpler than choosing to be unfaithful to one’s spouse or code.
Competing economic interests are typically made manageable by bartered price adjustments. That manufacturers, farmers and transporters can frequently ignore environmental costs is a serious flaw within a very complex global economy. Fixing it by accurately allocating environmental costs would however inflict dire hardships on many poor people. Projected climate changes would eventually be worse still for most poor communities while benefiting some others – the Congo versus indigenous Canadians.
The world can manage both climate change and poverty challenges but this requires balancing values with evidence-based analysis. The same is true with South Africa’s competing priorities. However, campaign-trail rallying cries draw upon emotionally charged values. People cohere into groups around shared values. But then elected leaders must translate evidence-based analysis into effective policies. Values mustn’t be sidelined; nor should they block realistic perspectives.
Central organising principle
Economists have long differentiated between ‘positivist’ and ‘normative’ arguments. The former try to explain how the world works ‘free of value judgements’ whereas the latter focuses on ‘what should be’. While both should shape policy making, survival ceasing to be a central organising principle has greatly enthused those focusing on ‘what should be’ to ignore how the world works.
Once societies lose the anchoring that survival considerations had always provided, a ‘virtue is its own reward’ mindset offers much appeal. The global economy can easily feed all 7.8 billion humans and eradicate poverty because it has become so productive. Yet our policy makers are blind to how global integration and hyper competitiveness made this possible – and that these twin taskmasters are even stricter than the survival pressures which spawned them.
Globalisation unlocked the potential for labour price differentials to surge job creation in many low-income countries. Good intentions contributed little to the rise of Asia or the pummelling of global poverty. Rather, mid 20th century waves of mass starvation inspired both workforce industriousness and household savings. But this combination can only fast-forward poverty alleviation through value-added exporting which is dependent upon competitiveness.
Tradeoffs among groups are best negotiated around interests, as – unlike values – interests can usually be priced and bartered. South Africa is this era’s poster child for how wrong everything can go if values are over-indulged.
The post-Covid era will balance domestic values within many countries alongside China’s challenging the predominantly democratic world order. China’s hard-edged leadership is not restrained by the soft values which it believes make democracies weak and chaotic. More significantly still, we are on the cusp of an unprecedented shift in decision-making.
Indulging values
The era of survival and religion giving way to indulging values will soon be displaced. Machine learning is poised to pounce. The 21st century began with gathering and processing big data becoming absurdly cheap. The upcoming dispersion of machine-learning technology will make self-driving car technology the equivalent of the first smartphone app.
Machine learning can provide the much-needed practical grounding that survival challenges used to offer. Algorithms that can teach themselves how to drive a car better than humans possibly could can also digest massive reams of data to show unequivocally that many values-inspired decisions are profoundly counterproductive.
Our policy makers, blinded by over indulging values-induced perceptions, can’t see what the world offers as they drive the economy nowhere, leaving the entire country stranded. GPS technology is already ubiquitous and soon you will sit in a self-driving car. But don’t wait until then to consider how indulging ideals has corrupted our navigation capabilities.
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR
If you like what you have just read, support the Daily Friend