[Martin Taylor 2011.04.14.17.13]
[2011.04.16.23.47] Developing the ideas in this message has become
too long for a single posting, and the initiation has been too much
delayed, so I am posting an unfinished proposal. I hope it is enough
that the general direction of thought can be clear enough for
comment.
···
I thought that the "Cause versus Mechanism..." thread had moved a
long way from the discussion Bill had hoped to engender with his
original posting on this topic, and that the 'ts-'tisn’t discussion
on libertarian concepts was unlikely to come to any resolution
relevant to PCT, so I altered the subject line to what I (vainly)
hope might be a direction in which one might begin to consider the
libertarian ideals (which I think we all hold though we may not
agree with the libertarian mechanisms).
The following quotes are intended only to set the theme, not for
individual comments.
[From Adam Matic, on or about 2011.04.14.15.44]
On Wed, Apr 13, 2011 at 10:57 PM, Bill > Powers <powers_w@frontier.net> > wrote:
BP: Yes, I was initially attracted to Mises' writings
because of those similarities and the recognition of
purposiveness. But I was gradually turned off by the uses to
which these principles were put…
AM:
…
The anarchist among libertarians hold that the government
uses too much coercion and that protection and judging could
be transferred to private companies who could compete and
invent new ways of resolving conflict between two clients.
BP: ...The "subjective theory of value" sounds very
impressive, but it’s nonsense when examined in detail.
AM:
The subjective theory of value is just the part that says
value is not inherent to a product. It might sound trivial,
but some other theories of value say that a product is worth
the amount of labor it took to produce it or the sum of prices
of commodities used to produce it or some combination of
those.
Only if the exchange is agreed upon between both parties
and if there was no fraud in the process, it could be said
that it’s a win-win situation.
If a company sells things people want to buy, and people
are satisfied with their products, that we could say everyone
wins.
BP: I don't think libertarians pay
much attention to the problem of Bad Guys. …
Libertarians don’t seem to care much about what happens to
people who end up on the short end of the stick. Maybe the
losers deserve to be weeded out as unfit.
AM: I didn’t get that impression about libertarians. …
It wouldn't be an ideal system with milk and honey flowing
and lambs playing with wolfs, just a more free system.
BP: How is malinvested money lost? Isn't it paid to
someone? What happens to it then?
AM:
It doesn't make more wealth. If the government makes, say,
a bridge just to employ people and the bridge doesn’t get used
- the money is lost.
And so forth.
Before I get to measuring freedom, I'd like to ask Adam how the
money is lost if the bridge isn’t used? Doesn’t it just get
transferred into other people’s pockets to be used for things they
value more than the money itself? So far as I can see, money is lost
only when someone defaults on a loan. What is lost when the unused
bridge is built is the labour used to design the bridge, manage its
funding and construction, and physically build it. That effort is
lost only in the sense that it might have been deployed elsewhere,
to provide environmental affordances for other people to control
more perceptions than they might otherwise be able to control.
Which provides a segue into how we might go about measuring freedom.
FREEDOM FROM vs FREEDOM TO
An important distinction is the difference between freedom FROM and
freedom TO. Libertarians tend to talk about freedom FROM – freedom
from coercion, freedom from taxation, freedom from legal regulation,
and so forth. Freedom TO, on the other hand, is seldom mentioned
explicitly, even though the primary effect of increased freedom from
regulation, taxation, (etc.) is to increase one’s freedom to control
more perceptions over a wider range of possibility. In my opinion,
the critical measure is freedom TO, whereas freedom FROM is of
concern only because it affects freedom TO.
In what follows, I identify "freedom" with freedom TO. The more I
can do, the more free I am. I do not suppose that everybody wants
unlimited freedom. In what follows, I am assuming that it is a “good
thing” that each person be able to set their own reference level for
how much freedom they want, including levels far above the degree of
freedom they actually could achieve. Hence, the underlying
assumption is that it is desirable for as many people to have as
much freedom as is possible to achieve. This statement is, I think,
the only place in the discussion where that underlying assumption is
made explicit, and I mention it only to point out that the degree of
freedom available to someone may be greater or less than the degree
of freedom they would like to have.
UNITS of Freedom
What might be a unit of freedom? I suggest that the minimal unit is
the ability to control any one perception over some minimal range of
attainable reference values. In 19th and early 20th century
psychophysics, such a “minimal range” was called a “Just Noticeable
difference” (JND), which later research showed to be a rather labile
value. Nevertheless, for our purposes here, we can (sloppily) use a
similar concept as the minimal range of perceptual control – the
“just controllable difference” (JCD), below which one cannot
reliably control a perception. A more precise specification might be
based on something such as the magnitude of disturbance for which
the correct direction of countervailing action is chosen 75% of the
time. But JCD will suffice for the argument that follows.
More freedom exists when a perception can be controlled over a wider
range of reference values, or when more different perceptions can be
controlled over a minimal range of reference values. The limits on
range have many possible sources: physical constraints (someone in a
hospital bedl has a smaller range of reference values for which his
perception of his location can be controlled than does a man in a
jail cell, and still less than a CEO with access to a private jet),
skill or strength constraints, availability or lack of environmental
aids such as lenses or supportive robots, or, importantly, other
people willing to follow your wishes. When Bell was a monopoly
supplier of telephone service, most people had a smaller range of
achievable reference values for the perception of the supplier of
telephone service than they do now.
If you accept this two-dimensional approach to "measuring" freedom
(in quotes because it’s not a true measure at this point), then the
quantity of freedom available to a person is analogous to an area,
defined by its extent in two different dimensions (number of
controllable perceptions multiplied by ranges in JCDs). The quantity
of freedom available to a society is analogous to a volume, the
summation of the freedom available to the individuals in the
society. More total freedom in the society could result from more
people having a given amount of freedom or from some people having
more freedom individually.
Let me use a politician's phrase: "I want to be very clear about
this", and emphasise that this definition of freedom refers to what
one is ABLE to control, not what one is ALLOWED to control. To
illustrate the difference, almost every US citizen is ALLOWED to fly
first class to Europe and take a holiday using only luxury hotels.
Very few US citizens are ABLE to take such a holiday.
LIMITS on Freedom
Ignoring all social interactions, what limits one's freedom? Within
an order of magnitude or so, we are all endowed with more or less
the same sensory and muscular systems, and similar (as compared to
other species) mental capacities, though some of us are
unfortunately limited by birth or by accident in these respects. Yet
there are vast differences in what some of us can control as opposed
to what others of us with equal sensory, muscular, and mental
endowments can control. Where do these differences come from?
Since the parts of the control loops internal to all individuals are
fairly similar in capability, the difference must lie in the
environment. Some of us have access to mechanisms that are not
available to others. If I have a car and you don’t, I can control my
perception of my location over a much wider range than you can, even
if you use public transportation. In this dimension, I have more
freedom than you. My car is an environmental affordance not
available to you. Likewise, if I live in a semi-desert part of
Africa, and you live in England, you can successfully control a
perception of having roses growing in your garden, whereas I cannot.
You have more freedom than me in that you have a controllable
perception that I cannot have. Environmental affordances matter.
VALUE as change in quantity of Freedom
Now let's include the simplest of social interactions, a trade of
money for some good or service. As Adam notes, in the absence of
fraud, this is a win-win situation. The buyer gets perceives the
good or service to be of greater value than the money, while the
seller loses something perceived to be of less value than the money.
But as Bill notes, this may not be true under a wide range of
condition, such as that the seller has more power to influence the
buyer than the buyer has to influence the seller. However, even in a
“money or your life” coercive situation, the choice by the victim
does argue that there is a balance of values. The mugger’s offer not
to kill the victim is of more value to the victim than is the money,
but of less value to the mugger than the money.
Setting aside (for the moment) Bill's limiting case objections,
there remains a problem with any instance of trade, and that is the
notion of “value”. Why does a person feel that one otion has a
greater value to her than does another option? I propose that the
“value” is exactly the perceived change in the quantity of freedom
available to the person.
If I buy a car, not having had one, I now have a wider range of
possibility for control of my perception of my location than I did
before. But I have less money that could have been used to buy a
wide range of other things, which also could have given me a wider
range of possibility for control. Whether that loss of money
substantially alters my freedom in the dimension “number of
controllable perceptions” depends on how much money remains
available to me. If I don’t have much money, the reduction of
freedom in controllable perceptions may be substantial. If I do have
a lot of money, it may be negligible.
This last observation is important when considering the amount of
freedom a person has. The amount of money one has makes a big
difference on how free one is. The value of a dollar is normally
less to a rich person than to a poor person because gaining or
losing a dollar makes very little difference either to the range or
to the number of controllable perceptions available to the rich
person (though there could be occasions when the rich person needs
one more dollar to achieve some objective, in which case the dollar
might have great value to that rich person). The function relating
monetary wealth to freedom as defined above is not a linear
function, by any means. For one thing, everyone has to eat if they
are to control any perceptions at all, and unless one has the
environmental affordances to grow all one’s own food, to eat costs
money. At the very least, the cost of eating has to be subtracted
from the money available to enhance one’s freedom.
There is another, more significant, way that the function relating
money to the quantity of freedom is nonlinear. As the number of
perceptions controllable by way of using money as part of the
feedback path increases, a different limit becomes increasingly
important. That is the limit everyone has on the degrees of freedom
for output. We time multiplex (do one thing then another) to get
around this intrinsic limitation, but there is a limit to how
rapidly one can shift from controlling one perception to controlling
another. We call it “being run off one’s feet.” If one had an
infinite supply of money, this internal limit would bound one’s
available freedom.
Let's consider non-linearity a little further, and go a little way
out on a limb. As Bill Powers and Rick Marken showed a long time
ago, the well-known Stevens’ Power Law (x = y^r) will be found if
the perceptual value of x (call it p(x)) is a logarithmic function
of x (p(x) = alog(x)), while p(y) is a logarithmic function of y
(p(y) = blog(y)). The exponent “r” of the power law is then b/a.
Consider this in the context of the relation between perceived
wealth and perceived freedom. As a first approximation, it seems
reasonable to suppose that the perceived value of an extra dollar is
proportional to the percentage increase in wealth that it
represents, or in other words, perceived value of wealth is a
logarithmic function of actual dollars.
The situation is a little different for perceived freedom. The
dimension “range of available control” for a given perception may
well be perceived logarithmically. If you can get a car, that’s
good. If you can get two, that’s better, but not as much better as
getting the first one. In fact, how good it is depends on your
reference level for number of cars you own, so there is no possible
function relating the number of cars you own to the perceived value
of those cars. But “range of available control” doesn’t treat that
case. It deals with how many cars you could get if you actually
wanted that number. So the question is how differently you would
perceive the ability to get 2 cars as opposed to being limited to
being able to get only one, or to be able to get 26 as opposed to
being able to get only 25. Here, I think it plausible to suggest
that for most perceptions, the perceived value of the range of
control in JCDs is likely to be logarithmically related to the
range.
The other dimension of freedom is the number of different
perceptions one is able to control. When one takes this into
account, it becomes obvious that the ranges in JCD are likely to be
very different for the different controllable perceptions.
Nevertheless, by assumption, each will have a logarithmic relation
between the perceived and the environmentally measured range. I will
return to this point later.
The remaining consideration is the perceived value of increasing the
number of controllable perceptions. Above, the concept of “being run
off one’s feet” was suggested as showing that there is a point
beyond which there is no value in adding more controllable
perceptions. The function clearly cannot be logarithmic, but must be
some function that approaches an asymptote, whether it be linear,
logarithmic or anything else when the number of controllable
perceptions is small.
SOCIAL effects on Freedom
At this point in the argument, we have not considered limits on
available freedom imposed by conflict. Conflict means that at least
one, and possibly both conflicted parties cannot effectively control
any perception that depends on the source of the conflict, thus
reducing the number of controllable perceptions for one or both, and
certainly reducing the total freedom of the dyad. Nor have we
considered limitations on freedom imposed by limits on the range of
control for individual perceptions.
And most importantly, we have not considered the implications of
Kent McLelland’s conjecture [From Kent McClelland 2010.11. 5.1130
CDT] : “I would guess that on balance the massive stabilizations of
the environment associated with modern civilization have increased
the degrees of freedom available to everyone on the planet.”
All of these, and particularly the last, invalidate a naive idea
that one might readily derive from the non-linearity of the relation
of freedom with money, that the overall total quantity of freedom in
a dyad would always be enhanced by transferring money from the
richer to the poorer. Instead, we should look for the ways in which
the total available quantity of freedom is maximized. If this
analysis leads to some statement about how money might most
effectively be distributed, so be it. If not, also so be it.
The key to the continuation of the argument is that physical
constructions such as bridges, cell-phones, houses, roads, and so
forth all provide environmental affordances that extend the range
and in many cases the number of controllable perceptions for more
people than the number for whom they reduce the range or number of
controllable perceptions. Likewise, social constructions such as
shops, businesses, church groups, political parties and the like
increase the possibilities for controllable perceptions for some
people while reducing it for others. Kent McLelland argues that the
environmental (physical and social) rigidity that occurs when many
people control many perceptions through a common space in itself
provides a net increase in the possibilities for control, and hence,
in the definition above, an increase in total freedom.
It is impossible to determine just what social structures enhance,
and what structures decrease the total freedom of a population. To
say that more government means less freedom is to assert that one
has done a thorough analysis of the possibilities. Likewise, to
assert that to be constrained by the limitations imposed by the CEOs
of unregulated companies necessarily implies a reduction of freedom
is to assert that one has done the required analysis. Both positions
seem to me to be untenable, and to be based on nothing more than
intuition.
The point of this message is to suggest a direction in which
research could be directed using the base concept of PCT and a
formal measure of “freedom”, to discover whether there exists any
one kind of economic-political system that would maximize the
overall freedom of the population. I would like to be able to
further with this, but as I said at the top, the message has become
too long delayed within the thread that started it. I would be
interested in any comments on the general thrust, less interested in
comments on the speculative detail.
UNSUPPORTED BELIEFS (for what they are worth)
I believe (without data to support this belief) that the happiest
people are the most free. I also believe (again without supporting
data) that such a society as is proposed by libertarians would
result in freedom being concentrated in very few people, so that the
population as a whole would be much very less free than the optimum.
Martin