Attributions of causality
Like a lot of people, I think, I’m a bit dazed by the fact that apparently, really, the British public has voted to leave the EU. I’d prefer we lived in a world that was coming together rather than fraying apart. Other than that I’ll refrain from comment and just wish everybody the best.
I do want to remark on a piece by Kevin Drum, written perhaps too quickly in reaction to the results. Drum writes:
I am sick and tired of watching folks like Boris Johnson, Marine Le Pen, Donald Trump and others appeal to the worst racial instincts of our species, only to be shushed by folks telling me that it’s not really racism driving their popularity. It’s economic angst. It’s regular folks tired of being spurned by out-of-touch elites. It’s a natural anxiety over rapid cultural change.
Maybe it’s all those things. But at its core, it’s the last stand of old people who have been frightened to death by cynical right-wing media empires and the demagogues who enable them—all of whom have based their appeals on racism as overt as anything we’ve seen in decades. It’s loathsome beyond belief, and not something I thought I’d ever see in my lifetime. But that’s where we are.
I would never want to shush Kevin Drum. I’m extraordinarily fond of him. But I think he is making a mistake here, empirically and morally.
It is not in fact broadly true that emerging racially-tinged right-wing movements are a “last stand of old people”. Marine Le Pen’s Front National, for example
is strongest among younger voters. It took the votes of 30% of those aged under 35, 27% of those aged 35 to 59 and 21% (noticeably less than its average vote) among the over 60s.
Greece’s overtly fascist Golden Dawn movement
are mainly men with low incomes…43 percent of the voters are between 25 and 39 years, followed by 24 percent being 40 to 50 years old and 15 percent aged 55 to 64 years.
In Great Britain, Leave supporters skew old, as do Trump supporters in the US. But if you wish to look for commonalities between right-wing nationalist movements, I think you’d be better off looking at gender, or profession, or the economic status of the localities from which people hail, more than age.
Drum is certainly right to characterize the explicitly racist appeals of these movements as loathsome. But it isn’t enough to say “that’s where we are”. His interlocutors are right to point to economic anxiety and other disruptive changes rather than leave it there. We have to share the same world with every other human. Drum and I have to share the same country with Trump voters. We try to understand the world in order to better live in it. Explanations or assertions that don’t contribute to that are not worth very much.
How we attribute causality is a social choice, and it is a choice much less constrained than people who clothe themselves in the authority of “social science” or “the data” often pretend. Quantitative methods like instrumental variable analysis at their best indicate that some element is a factor in causing a measured phenomenon. For anything complex, they are rarely strong enough to even suggest either the necessity or the sufficiency of a factor. Social outcomes like susceptibility to racist appeals are affected by lots of things, and are probably overdetermined, so that one could generate equally strong results implicating a wide variety of different factors depending upon what is excluded from or included in ones model.
In political life, there are nearly always multiple reasonable models to choose from. Our choice of models is itself a moral and political act. For example, conservatives prefer cultural explanations for communities with high rates of young single motherhood, while liberals prefer economic explanations. These explanations are not mutually exclusive, both can be simultaneously true, but cultural explanations serve mostly to justify the social stratification that correlates with single motherhood, while economic explanations invite remedies. It might be true, and demonstrable in the usual statistical ways, that a certain neurological state “causes” the verbally expressed sensation of hunger. It might also be true and demonstrable that a prolonged absence of food causes the same expressed sensation. Both of these models may be true, but one of them suggests a more useful remedy than the other. And a more moral remedy. Prescribing a drug to blunt the hunger may yield a different long-term outcome than feeding food, in ways that are morally salient.
It may or may not be accurate to attribute the political behavior of large groups of people to racism, but it is not very useful. Those people got to be that way somehow. Presumably they, or eventually their progeny, can be un-got from being that way somehow. It is, I think, a political and moral error to content oneself with explanations that suggest no remedy at all, or that suggest prima facie problematic responses like ridiculing, ignoring, disenfranchising, or going to war with large groups of fellow citizens, unless no other explanations are colorable. It turns out that there are lots of explanations consistent with increased susceptibility to racist appeals that also suggest remedies less vague and more constructive than, say, “fighting racism” or censoring the right-wing press. With respect to Britain’s trauma, for example, Dan Davies points to Great Britain’s geographically concentrated prosperity, and the effect that has had on the distribution of native versus immigrant young people. I can’t evaluate the merits of that explanation, but it might at least be useful. It does suggest means by which the British polity might alter its arrangements to reintegrate its divided public.
I don’t mean to pick on Kevin Drum, whom I’ve read for more than a decade, and whom I really like a great deal. But it seems to me that the alleged “good guys” — the liberal, cosmopolitan class of which I myself am a part — have fallen into habits of ridiculing, demonizing, writing off, or, in our best moments, merely patronizing huge swathes of the polities to which we belong. They may do the same to us, but we are not toddlers, that is no excuse. In the United States, in Europe, we are allowing ourselves to disintegrate and arguing about who is to blame. Let’s all be better than that.
p.s. Read more Chris Arnade [and more].
Update History:
- 25-Jun-2016, 2:30 a.m. PDT: “writing off, or, in
itsour best moments, merely patronizing” - 25-Jun-2016, 3:15 a.m. PDT: Added extra “[and more]” Chris Arnade link.
This is very good. But I think you concede too much to social science. Attributions of causality are often really attributions of responsibility, and those can’t be settled statistically even in principle. We can only make moral judgements if we choose to break the chain of causality at some point. To say someone or something is responsible, gets credit or blame, is to say that we are choosing not to consider causes prior to them. So in this case, we can attribute agency to the people who voted Leave for bad reasons, or the Remain campaign that failed to make a positive case for Europe, or to the British political establishment that wanted, or to some broader elite. But where we put agency is a choice we have to make, for which data can only set broad boundaries at best.
June 24th, 2016 at 6:31 am PDT
link
There is no doubt that Kevin Drum expressed himself clumsily and while I agree with much of what you write I’m not sure your argument makes much sense.
Say a group of social scientists study the various populist movements from several different angles and conclude that racism and xenophobia really does seem to be a large part of what drives them. (Perhaps caused by a Minsky-style effect where receding memories of the horrors during WW2 make these opinions more acceptable). Should the scientists not publish the results because they are “unconstructive”?
The choice of model CAN be a moral/political act but it doesn’t have to be. I think it comes down to: Do we want scientists to describe the world as it is or should they describe it in such a way as to make problems seem solvable.
June 24th, 2016 at 7:17 am PDT
link
I really need to go back to regularly reading this blog, as opposed to only during crises.
It’s never a good idea to dismiss anyone’s views out of hand, and the #Trump and #Brexit folks do have some legitimate grievances. Large swathes of people are being left behind by globalization and their interests have largely been ignored. Kaldor-Hicks based justifications for free trade policies are irrelevant to these people when the compensation never comes. Steve is correct to point out that it’s not merely economic, either. I’m certainly no Islamophobe, but how can anyone take a serious look at the Pew survey data and not be horrified at these widely held views regarding the treatment of LGBTs, women, and apostates. So much of the reaction to #Trump and #Brexit has been dismissal and disgust rather than engagement and discussion, which will neither address the legitimate issues nor stem the turn towards populist demagogues.
June 24th, 2016 at 8:03 am PDT
link
@RueTheDay — Very well said! Thank you.
I sympathize with Steve R Waldman regarding Kevin Drum. I also read him regularly for more than a decade. But, in my opinion, he has painted himself into an unpleasant corner. He is in a logical hole and keeps digging. He’s making things worse by crying “racism” in a crowded theater.
Certainly there are politicians that should be called out. Ironically, one of the points where I most disagree with Drum is the extent of his support for Democrat politicians who are timid in calling out their Republican counterparts. For example, Obama refused to follow through on any of the numerous Republican atrocities committed during the Bush presidency. And Obama did not speak out forcefully during the “ObamaCare” debates, when the Republicans were crying about “death panels”. Likewise, Hillary trusted Bush with regard to the Iraq War (and was willing to play the race card in 2008, according to Drum).
Bernie Sanders has been much more direct and forceful in addressing such contemptible political abuses, while also recognizing economic legitimate grievances amongst voters who might be tempted to support Brexit and Trump.
Drum has been wrong about Trump from the start, and was wrong about Brexit. His assertions keep getting more stark and absurd, and sadly counterproductive as pointed out in this post by Mr. Waldman. I like Drum and hope that he will begin to move the political conversation in a more constructive direction.
June 24th, 2016 at 9:13 am PDT
link
This is very useful. If students need to understand how very smart, very moral, very well informed white men still manage to hold views that are factually wrong in ways that serve to support the hierarchies of the status quo.
The key to understanding how well meaning and compassionate elites can nonetheless be agents of reaction is to identify the tactic of “getting into the weeds.”
Every incentive in academia, from publishing to tenure to teacher evaluations, is designed to promote an always increasing number of weeds. Weeds are the lifeblood of specialized journals and “original” dissertations. If the weeds stop multiplying the Ponzi scheme known as graduate school
falls apart.
Classic weeds:
…How we attribute causality is a social choice, and it is a choice much less constrained than people who clothe themselves in the authority of “social science” or “the data” often pretend. Quantitative methods like instrumental variable analysis at their best indicate that some element is a factor in causing a measured phenomenon. For anything complex, they are rarely strong enough to even suggest either the necessity or the sufficiency of a factor. Social outcomes like susceptibility to racist appeals are affected by lots of things, and are probably overdetermined, so that one could generate equally strong results implicating a wide variety of different factors depending upon what is excluded from or included in ones model.
…
Is there any truth in there? Unknown, and unimportant. It’s a lot of words.
Waldmann is to be commended for also putting the actual claim he’s defending into words. Usually we don’t see this:
It may or may not be accurate to attribute the political behavior of large groups of people to racism, but it is not very useful.
The weeds have now thoroughly confused the issue. The only empirical claim that matters “Talking about the racism of large groups of people is not useful.” has, through hand waving weeds, become an a priori truth.
In other words, Waldmann is full of shit, and he’s far too smart to see it.
June 24th, 2016 at 12:04 pm PDT
link
I like what Detroit Dan has to say, and agree that Bernie Sanders has best threaded this needle in US politics. He is a gifted politician.
Waldman’s sentence is extraordinary:
“It may or may not be accurate to attribute the political behavior of large groups of people to racism, but it is not very useful.”
Was that true in the 50’s and 60’s,in the US? It seems to me passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was pretty useful. Attributing racism to large groups of people wasn’t all that was done to pass that bill, but it was a part of it.
June 24th, 2016 at 3:41 pm PDT
link
“…But it seems to me that the alleged “good guys” — the liberal, cosmopolitan class of which I myself am a part — have fallen into habits of ridiculing, demonizing, writing off, or, in its best moments, merely patronizing huge swathes of the polities to which we belong.”
Bingo , though I would have capped “alleged” for greater emphasis.
The bulk of the political upheaval we see on both sides of the pond is much more about class than race or anything else. Those in the comfortable class simply can’t fathom where all the anger is coming from. Drum can shift 180 degrees in a period of minutes in an effort to align himself with the zeitgeist , first claiming the middle class is doing better than ever , and that they should stop whining and vote Hillary like good worker-bees , and then reversing field to point out that the last several decades have been crappy , at best , for most workers.
Brexit votes were anti-“comfortable class” , as were Bernie’s. And Trump’s too ,misguided as they may be. And , yes , many of those “anti” voters may be in the comfortable class themselves. Comfortable? Perhaps. Secure? Uh , no , not at all.
Most everything else you see and hear – the mainstream , the establishment – is pro-“comfortable class” , and this includes the faux progressives like Drum.
It’s all hard to see and hard to swallow when you’re comfortable and want to stay that way , but would still like to think of yourself as a good guy. For most , guaranteeing comfort continuity is the priority , others , like Drum , twist themselves into human pretzels trying to have it both ways.
June 24th, 2016 at 4:25 pm PDT
link
“But it seems to me that the alleged “good guys” — the liberal, cosmopolitan class of which I myself am a part — have fallen into habits of ridiculing, demonizing, writing off, or, in its best moments, merely patronizing huge swathes of the polities to which we belong. They may do the same to us, but we are not toddlers, that is no excuse. In the United States, in Europe, we are allowing ourselves to disintegrate and arguing about who is to blame. Let’s all be better than that.”
Very well said, yes please.
June 24th, 2016 at 5:42 pm PDT
link
For over twenty years I’ve viewed the EU as a deeply misguided concept and the referendum result gives me great hope for our future (and the future of other people in Europe). That said, I found much of the leave campaign very very off-putting. I actually know someone, who was a staunch Leave supporter, who abstained because he was worried that Leave votes would be seen as anti-immigration. To all of those North Americans who fail to comprehend the Leave side of the argument : why doesn’t Canada join the US? What justification to you have not to join up together? And then what justification is there to stop there. If the EU is so great, is there any justification not to have just one country for all of the world?
IMO, I think it is vital that humanity doesn’t put all of our eggs in one basket. We need diversity. We need very different cultures and systems to all be being tried out in parallel at all times. Global uniformity would/will just lead to the whole world becoming stuck in a dysfunctional rut with the oppressed being told, “there is no alternative”.
June 25th, 2016 at 9:42 am PDT
link
Mark Blyth nails it ( as he so often does ) in this brief video :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwK0jeJ8wxg
stone ,
There’s no question that there’s a slice of the population with a nasty streak of xenophobia , but I don’t think it’s wise to pull your vote punches on an issue because someone might illogically link your valid reasoning to that population’s hate-based reasoning. For example , people can call me anti-semitic until the cows come home , but I’m still going to support the BDS campaign and any other such efforts to end Israel’s brutal repression of Palestinians.
To thine own self be true , as the saying goes. And if others have a problem with that , fuckum.
June 25th, 2016 at 12:16 pm PDT
link
@JW Mason – Well said. And it is always nice to read SRW’s thoughtful commentary.
Most of the commentary I’ve read dismissively and defensively attributes to “leave” voters motives like nationalism, racial animus, economic frustration, xenophobia, and distrust of elites and bureaucrats. But as it often does, this mainstream commentary focuses on what Bruce Yandle would call the bootlegger portion of the leave coalition and it neglects the more thoughtful motivations for backlash against the status quo and the centralization of European power. It also misses important cultural and moral-philosophic differences between much of the intellectual and bureaucratic class and parts of the leave coalition.
While I think many would prefer a less disruptive distancing of the UK from Brussels, a thoughtful leaver might genuinely value the rule of law and the decentralization of power, and they might consider the problem of social calculation when considering the value in taking cue from Eurocrats or of further growing safety nets. I think the following remark by SRW highlights the cultural differences between the intellectual left and a non-racist, non-anti-globalist:
“For example, conservatives prefer cultural explanations for communities with high rates of young single motherhood, while liberals prefer economic explanations. These explanations are not mutually exclusive, both can be simultaneously true, but cultural explanations serve mostly to justify the social stratification that correlates with single motherhood, while economic explanations invite remedies.”
What economic factor causes a father to abandon his offspring or a mother to choose to get pregnant out of wedlock? This seems to me to be a cultural problem, one that government and transfers may alieve or may protract, but not solve. The working poor recognize this, and the belief on the left that they can design the problem away, the refusal to refute this kind of behavior disenfranchises the very classes of people the intellectuals think they appeal to.
June 25th, 2016 at 1:04 pm PDT
link
It might help to remember, no matter how central racist concerns were to voters, or to the media perhaps, that the real issue was political: To what state shall we belong?/i>
It might help to remember that the European Union was sold to voters as an economic panacea, a solution to the economic problems faced by the peoples of nation-states.
And it might help to remember that the European Union turned out to be not such a great solution.
June 26th, 2016 at 10:21 am PDT
link
Liberals attribute crime among blacks in the US to socio-economic factors (and rightly so). To solve these problems we must address underlying issues of poverty. Why should not a similar analysis apply to working class persons who voted for Brexit? Or even to Trump supporters?
Is there no responsibility of mainstream liberalism to fix the impoverishment of the working class for which they are, in large degree, responsible? It’s far more productive to cure the conditions that create fascism than tut-tutting the oafishness of those who fail to fall in line with the prescriptions of their betters.
June 26th, 2016 at 7:14 pm PDT
link
I struggle to understand what is meant by “racism.” It has become such a blanket term it’s lost a lot of it’s meaning. Of course, systematically harming someone simply due to their race is deplorable. However, we are mostly debating much more nuanced issues. Is it racists to require extra immigrant screening from countries with a domestic terrorism problem? How is that any different from requiring extra screening for people arriving from ebola-stricken countries? I didn’t see many people calling that racist. Are Israelis wildly racist given all their intense screening?
June 27th, 2016 at 5:45 am PDT
link
In his rejoinder Kevin Drum took up the line that I focused on in my comment above:
So we have two white men who have decided, without evidence, that talking about racism is politically unhelpful.
I wonder if any black people have an opinion on the subject. Between Twitter and three blog posts, is there some good reason these two white guys haven’t asked themselves the same question?
June 27th, 2016 at 10:50 am PDT
link
I don’t necessarily find anything wrong with two thoughtful white men discussing racism without requesting input from non-whites. Racism in America is, after all, a problem with the way that white people have approached and treated the racial and ethnic Other, and it is thus a problem that we as whites need to address and deal with amongst ourselves.
Requesting, for example, black people to offer guidance as to how to solve white racial pathology seems to serve no other end but to rub salt on the open wounds created by white racism. It is not the responsibility of the brutalized to offer comfort or guidance to the brutalizer.
June 27th, 2016 at 12:28 pm PDT
link
Well said, Matthew.
It seems to me that many of the ostenably liberal commentators are bringing up race and racism as a reason to avoid advocating for progressive programs. In other words, the Hillary – Bernie campaign was steered in the direction of discussing race/racism instead of concrete proposals to improve the economy for the great majority of the people.
Anyway, Drum raised the issue in saying,
This wouldn’t be particularly controversial amongst liberals if not for the fact that Drum is on record as saying racism is the only driver of the Brexit/Trump phenomena. For example:
On the left, Drum has argued that the only thing different this year is Sanders. So inequality has skyrocketed and the middle class is shrinking, but all that is insignificant because racism?
It’s not so much that talking about racism is unhelpful as it is that talking about racism to the exclusion of other factors is unhelpful, in my opinion. Call out specifics statements and/or actions, but don’t make sweeping generalizations and discourage further discussion as Drum does.
June 27th, 2016 at 3:25 pm PDT
link
I think it is well worth reading Bryan Gould for a different perspective on Brexit:-
http://www.bryangould.com/their-hysterical-reaction-tells-us-why-the-remainers-lost/
June 28th, 2016 at 12:23 am PDT
link
Kate Hoey now seem all the more prescient:-
http://www.katehoey.com/kates-corner/articles/news.aspx?p=106135
“The middle-classes who have colonised the Left support the EU not because they are the Left, but because they aren’t.
They support it because they are middle class. No wonder they support it – it’s a middle class autocracy.
But on June 23 they should consider whether it is right or wise to exclude the working classes from politics by voting to stay in a system of government without electorate.
They can ask: is the EU building a safe and certain future or is it attempting a coup?
The EU is part of the global movement to remove democratic resistance to capitalism.
•BBC Receives £71,000 Of Secret EU Cash Each Month
•EU Chief Jean-Claude Juncker Threatens Britain over Brexit “Deserters!”
The project is to govern without having to face elections.
That is fascism.
Propaganda by the big capitalist interests – the IMF, the OECD, the US President, the World Bank – threatens economic disaster.
Meanwhile the socially democratic media – namely The Guardian and BBC – has tried to characterise the choices falsely by identifying opposition to the EU as either Right-wing or as nationalist.
This is a deliberate lie.”
June 28th, 2016 at 1:14 am PDT
link
Who is to blame for the plight of the poor in the UK? Their own domestic parliament. The policies they chose to enact are responsible for them becoming poor and increasingly having to rely on food banks. Does leaving the EU fix that? No. In fact, economists predicted that leaving the EU would be utterly negative for the economy. So far, the economists are shown to be correct.
The people that voted in the referendum, or any election, are adults. That means they are supposed to have a modicum of critical thinking and responsibility. They are not babies who are having a tantrum. They should be held accountable for their vote, or democracy is meaningless.
June 28th, 2016 at 5:12 am PDT
link
I’m British (resident as well) and not part of the working poor, thankfully. My position, and a few random thoughts:
1) I voted leave, thought long and hard about it, and only made my mind up on the final walk to the polling station. My vote was primarily motivated as vote against the European Commission and the essentially un-democratic methods it employs which I can see are endangering what is still an essential project. I hope that in due course the UK will be engaged in a genuinely reformed EU and not the kind of reformed EU Cameron could deliver.
2) I believe I understand the political construction of the EU better than probably 9/10 remain voters. I am also not racist, or a Little Englander. I do not want BJ for PM, but it is a risk worth taking given point (1). Nevertheless the atmosphere amongst my colleagues friend and family of my own social class discourage me from being straight about they way I voted and my reasons why. This is bad.
3) For leave to win, many ethnic minorities in the EU, particularly second or third generation asians must have voted for Brexit. In fact I know this to be true. It is a defensible position to hold that EU migration is essentially a white Christian migration, so not inherently more noble than immigration from the wider world.
4) As pointed out here and elsewhere, the point of democracy is being forced to engage with and respect the views of those you disagree with. Its farcical that the remnant of the neoliberal wing of the Labour party are trying to force Corbyn out for not being 100% pro EU when most labour voters voted leave. This amounts in my view to those MPs having written off those they are supposed to represent.
5) The problem many (but certainly not all) people have with such high levels of immigration arises from the fact that the social investment in housing, education and welfare to integrate new arrivals is not there. Until there is a political decision to make such investments and questions of Austerity and economic goals are properly debated there is every reason to want to take a little more time and want some control.
June 28th, 2016 at 7:57 pm PDT
link
SRW: “But it seems to me that the alleged “good guys” — the liberal, cosmopolitan class of which I myself am a part — have fallen into habits of ridiculing, demonizing, writing off, or, in our best moments, merely patronizing huge swathes of the polities to which we belong.”
You’re describing the smug style well captured in this article
Quote from that Vox article:
“It would be unfair to say that the smug style has never learned from these mistakes. But the lesson has been, We underestimated how many people could be fooled.
That is: We underestimated just how dumb these dumb hicks really are.
We just didn’t get our message to them. They just stayed in their information bubble. We can’t let the lying liars keep lying to these people — but how do we reach these idiots who only trust Fox?
Rarely: Maybe they’re savvier than we thought. Maybe they’re angry for a reason.“
June 29th, 2016 at 2:21 am PDT
link
The Brexit vote is not essentially racist. The immigration to which people object consists mostly of people of the same race, while the same people who voted most for Brexit did not vote for an anti-immigration policy when immigration was largely West Indian, Pakistani, and Indian. Brexit isn’t even Xenophobic, people aren’t objecting to the particular origin or existence of the extra people, or even to their foreigness. Nationalism and protectionism are the correct terms.
June 29th, 2016 at 4:18 pm PDT
link
I would frame it as follows: humans have a racist / xenophbic predisposition that populists can tap into if there are other enabling factors such as economic uncertainty or decline prevalent. And while human predisposition is a necessary factor in the equation it is also virtually impossible to address policy wise because it is hard wired into us.
July 1st, 2016 at 5:01 am PDT
link
When you can empathize with this (http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/04/18/the-perils-of-being-a-black-philosopher/) is the day you are allowed to use personal reflection as empirical evidence in discussions about the causal role of racism and the value of identifying it by name.
July 3rd, 2016 at 1:15 pm PDT
link
@matthew Eli and @Detroit dan
I am white. I have no objection with white men discussion racism. Are you economists? If so, that would explain your reflexive defense of white male thought experiments as valuable and representative empirical data.
July 3rd, 2016 at 1:20 pm PDT
link
@The Arthurian
It is the nature of political debates that they are about whatever people think they are about!
This whole thread is a testament to the inability of reason to arrive at useful answers to empirical questions. Reason can provide hypothesies, but the world is where the answers are.
July 3rd, 2016 at 1:40 pm PDT
link
” Brexit voters are not thick, not racist: just poor ”
http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/07/brexit-voters-are-not-thick-not-racist-just-poor/
“….The statistics are extraordinary. The well-to-do voted Remain, the down-at-heel demanded to Leave. The Brexiteer/Remainer divide splits almost perfectly, and beautifully, along class lines. ”
“….This rebellion wasn’t caused by racism or a paroxysm of infantile anger. It was considered. The workers spied an opportunity to take the elite that despises them down a peg or two — and they seized it. They asserted their power, and in the process, blimey: they changed the world.”
Kevin Drum would fit right in at Heritage , Hoover , or AEI.
Mary Harris “Mother” Jones must be spinning in her grave.
July 3rd, 2016 at 7:14 pm PDT
link
Thornton Hall asks if I am white (implied) and if I am an economist. My opinion is that we are better off listening to what posters are saying as opposed to imagining the race and occupation (and therefore prejudices) of those who are speaking. I am a Universalist (big U as well as small u), if you must categorize me.
With regards to, “if you are (an economist), that would explain your reflexive defense of white male thought experiments as valuable and representative empirical data”, I find this incoherent. I can’t imagine any other statement as being more ridiculous and removed from reality. You know nothing about me.
Take care, and I hope to continue the conversation here and there. It’s not all bad to share differing perspectives…
July 5th, 2016 at 9:04 pm PDT
link