N. Gabriel Martin & the true intellectual impact of Black Lives Matter

N.Gabriel Martin writes in 3 Quarks-

Perhaps there is no greater testament to the triumph of individualism than the pro-gun slogan “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.”

This seems odd. Taken literally, the sentence means 'we must change the way people think and interact if we want to tackle the problem of homicide or that of armed robbery. Banning a particular weapon will have little effect. If people have murder in their hearts they will find other methods to inflict lethal violence. We need to come together in a manner such that our inward ethos is transformed.'

The sentiment here seems collectivist, or religious. An individualist would say- as some gun nuts do- 'Shoot first and shoot more rounds than the other guy. It's up to you to protect your own life from gun violence.'

It takes an extremely narrow conception of responsibility to deny that lax gun laws are to blame for high rates of gun violence, but that view is pervasive anyway.

No. The way to deny gun laws aren't to blame for gun violence is by showing gun laws can't be enforced. Conceptions of responsibility are irrelevant because everybody accepts that the guy who pulls the trigger, or who sticks the knife in, is responsible for the injury.

True there may be some people who say- 'people aren't responsible for shootings or stabbings. Gun or knives have magical properties. They leap into the hands of those they enchant so as to carry out their murderous designs.' But such people, if they exist, keep their views to themselves for fear of being laughed at.

Now, however, the Black Lives Matter movement is drawing broad popular attention to the fundamentally systemic character of racism, and giving us an opportunity to overthrow individualism.

If Racism is 'systemic' then police officers should get qualified immunity for killing black people. It isn't their own fault they shot or choked an innocent person. They were equally victims of the system. Instead of being sacked and sent to jail, they deserve a big pay-out for the trauma they suffered by being turned into murderous thugs by 'the System'.

This really isn't what BLM is about- at least for Black people.

Individualism stands in the way of serious public debate

No. Stupidity is what stands in the way.

about many of our most serious social and political problems—from gun control to the erosion of public infrastructure and the racial wealth gap. That’s because it makes the onerous demand that in order to identify a problem, you’ve also got to find out who is responsible.

No. We can identify a problem- e.g. how come this corpse has a hole in his head- without knowing who is responsible. But to solve the problem we do indeed need to find who is responsible.  No doubt, some people may prefer to just continually gas on about the problem rather than help solve it. I was a bit miffed when my paper of 'Fermat's last theorem' was rejected by Mathematical Journals on the grounds that saying- 'Fermat's problem is like a serious problem dude. Fuck I know how to solve it. It's a real head scratcher.'- is not a useful contribution to the subject. Those bastards made the onerous demand that I either shut up or do some actual math to solve the thing. Andrew Wiles succeeded in fulfilling this 'onerous demand'. That's why he is famous and an inspiration to millions.

F. A. Hayek, one of the principle architects of this ideology, put it like this: “Since only situations which have been created by human will can be called just or unjust, the particulars of a spontaneous order cannot be just or unjust: if it is not the intended or foreseen result of somebody’s action… this cannot be called just or unjust.”[i]

Hayek was wrong. He wasn't a Math maven and hadn't kept up with the literature. Still, he had got famous for saying 'Boo to Socialism' at a time when a lot of people thought Socialism would raise living standards faster than anything else. Thus, by the Seventies, he was welcome to write nonsense because everybody was doing it- Rawls, Nozick etc- and anyway most people were off their heads on coke.

According to Hayek, complaining about a circumstance for which no one is entirely to blame is like complaining about the weather.

This is silly. A good enough Structural Causal Model of the weather would be able to change it.

It isn’t enough to point to some inequality, such as the gender pay gap, to recognise it as a social problem that we should try to correct.

That's true. There is an inequality in age between me and my son. We should not try to correct this. I'd do myself an injury trying to squeeze into skinny jeans.

We can identify it as a fact, but in order to see that it is a problem, you have to find a culprit.

To see something as a problem we have to show some harm is being received. I'd welcome research on increasing longevity or alleviating the effects of ageing. This is because ageing genuinely sucks in all sorts of ways.

By working to improve our Structural Causal Model of a problem we find ways to alleviate harm that is received. This does not mean that there is necessarily a culprit- it is not the case that Tom Cruise, who is my age, has stolen my youthful figure and fine head of hair.

Otherwise, doing something that alters it would actually be unjust (it might take money away from men, or take autonomy away from corporations).

Doing unjust things for a stupid reason is certainly unjust and stupid.

The result is that we can prosecute the person who pulled the trigger, after they have already killed, but we’re powerless to do anything to stop the next gunman.

Nonsense! We can arrest a person whose behaviour meets a statutory, or other legal, test re. intent. Thus if I keep threatening Tom Cruise by email and his security team tips off the police, then they may keep me under surveillance and arrest me if I take steps to acquire a weapon and to travel to a location where he is expected to be.

An individualism which denies the reality of structural problems robs us of the tools we would need to change the circumstances that allowed the person to kill in the first place.

Any 'ism' which denies the need for better Structural Causal Models of reality is utterly stupid. Research into SCMs is important. Talking woke shite helps no one.

Even worse, individualism not only prevents us from recognising systemic problems and finding appropriate solutions to them, it also encourages us to look for inappropriate, counterproductive “solutions” that conform to the logic of individualism.

Utterly false. Individualism is compatible with 'Muth Rational' acceptance of better SCMs such that behaviour changes in a 'normative' way.

This is why we tend to try to address problems through the criminal justice system that don’t have a criminal justice solution.

The criminal justice system is only concerned with detecting and punishing crimes. But it is not the only type of justice system we have.

Take for example the FOSTA (Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act) legislation, which is not only unfit to address the real world problem of sexual exploitation, it actually makes the situation far worse. Sex workers campaigned energetically against the legislation, claiming that it would make their work more dangerous. Nevertheless, it received broad bipartisan support and was passed into law in 2018.

It is reasonable to say that FOSTA is based on a false SCM. Politicians wish to 'virtue signal' rather than tackle the underlying problem. But this has nothing to do with 'individualism'.

The flaws of the legislation are rooted in a misunderstanding of exploitation in the sex industry, but that misunderstanding comes from the way that Hayekian individualism obscures the real problem. Sexual exploitation is primarily an economic problem—it happens because financial need leaves people (mostly women) with few options aside from what is called ‘survival sex.’

This is quite true. There are many things which could be done immediately to reverse this outcome. Indeed, the Exchequer will benefit long run by taking the right measures.
What isn't true is that this repugnancy market is 'supply driven'. Sadly, it is 'demand driven'. Still we want to protect our local people even if this means outsiders come in to reap the profit on this vile trade.

Consequently, the measures that would help protect people from sexual exploitation are primarily changes to economic, social welfare, and immigration policy. A welfare program, access to medical care, and expanded immigration, would remove many of the difficulties that sometimes make survival sex the best or only option in the USA.

True enough and a thing worth doing even from a narrow, economic point of view. But the market won't disappear.

Instead of making systemic changes that could actually improve the conditions that put people in danger, however, FOSTA introduces new prosecutorial tools that make the lives of sex workers harder and more dangerous. FOSTA empowers prosecutors to shut down online platforms which sex workers had used to find and vet clients, making far more dangerous street prostitution unavoidable. It also makes it hard for sex workers to support each other by, for example, sharing an apartment. Now sex workers who live together and share rent can both be prosecuted for ‘trafficking’ each other.

Furthermore, the truly evil Crimelords remain safe while the police drive their independent competition out of business.

It would make sense to prosecute our way out of the problem if sexual exploitation happened the way it is portrayed in the 2008 film Taken, in which a teenage girl is abducted, forced into sex work, and rescued by her Father. That is, if there were some particular villain that needs to be prosecuted (or killed) so that their victim can be freed from a life of forced prostitution.

Most of us would love to see Liam Neeson garotting or pumping bullets into the Crime Lords in their palatial villas or penthouse apartments or super yachts. There are genuine villains. But they could have your family killed if you try to go after them. It is easier to round up a few poor people and claim to have saved Society from Sin.

However, this is rarely, if ever, the case. Survival sex workers do not need to be rescued, they need support.

Some trafficked women do need to be rescued.

Lawmakers’ obliviousness to the entirely foreseeable counter-productiveness of FOSTA is a testament to the way that individualism has limited their imagination for systemic ways to address social problems.

Lawmakers need a lot of money to stay in office. Why blame 'individualism' when corruption is rampant?

Individualism also conceals the persistence of racial oppression. Ever since the civil rights movement, expressing overtly racist sentiments has become socially and politically unacceptable.

Sadly, this was not the case. It is only quite recently- thanks perhaps to the internet and Social Media- that notorious racists are getting sacked. We can view Youtube Videos of complacent racists who are clearly not uttering a slur in the heat of the moment. They are expressing a view they believe all right thinking people would endorse. This is the shocking aspect of their behavior. We can't excuse it as a momentary lapse. Thus, the authorities are forced to take action. The benefit of the doubt ceases to apply.

But overt racism, like slurs, church bombings, and segregation, are only the tip of the racist iceberg that the movement was rallying against.[ii] The far greater problem is not overt acts of prejudice, but subtler and more disguised structures of racial oppression. As Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor put it: by focusing on making expressions of personal prejudice unacceptable “we risk reducing racism to the outrageous and intentional acts of depraved individuals, while downplaying the cumulative impact of public policies and private-sector discrimination that, regardless of personal intent, have crippled the vitality of African-American life.”

African American Economists, Jurists and Political Scientists have done a lot of painstaking research and it has paid off. Pigford v Glickman was a turning point. Thousands of black farmers have received substantial compensation for systemic racism through a consent decree. Pattern or Practice investigations at State and Federal level have had a substantial impact on things like Police Reform as a recent paper by Devi & Fryer shows.

Despite what many people outside of activist seem to think, there is nothing new about the use of the term ‘racist’ to refer to social structures. In fact, it is older than the use of the word to refer to individual acts or personal prejudice. It was Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Chair Stokely Carmichael (later Kwame Ture) and Charles Hamilton who coined the term ‘institutional racism’ in their 1967 book Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America. They wrote: “When a black family moves into a home in a white neighborhood and is stoned, burned or routed out, they are victims of an overt act of individual racism which most people will condemn. But it is institutional racism that keeps black people locked in dilapidated slum tenements.”[iii]

This was to understate the matter- which at the time was expedient. Since then, African American intellectuals have done a lot of research. They have found better SCMs and thus their mechanism design proposals are accepted and have measurably improved allocative efficiency in a manner which benefits everybody.  Sadly, this patient and thorough work does not get the praise it deserves. Still, in my view, 'no-drama' Obama, did not use his bully pulpit to express rage at this type of stupid, harmful, systemic discrimination. But then he assumed, as we all did, that Hillary would win by a landslide. She would implement the recommendation's of Obama's Task Force under more benign Economic conditions.

Martin Luther King, Jr. also identified racism as a fundamentally systemic problem: “The black revolution is much more than a struggle for the rights of Negroes. It is forcing America to face all its interrelated flaws— racism, poverty, militarism, and materialism. It is exposing the evils that are rooted deeply in the whole structure of our society. It reveals systemic rather than superficial flaws and suggests that radical reconstruction of society itself is the real issue to be faced.”[iv]

Dr. King, as a priest and theologian, was right to stress the spiritual side of things. But the hard work must be done by Jurists and Social Scientists on the basis of pragmatic Structural Causal Models.

In the decades after the civil rights era, the work they had done to reveal social and political structures of racial oppression was undermined by the promotion of the idea that racism is isolated to individual acts of racial animus.[v]

This was certainly the finding of Thomas Sowell. The White Liberal, it turned out, was harming the Black 'redneck'. Virtue signalling and gesture politics are toxic to those they claim to champion. 'Wokeness' is the drug- as the film Undercover Brother II shows- that is most harmful to the 'ghetto'.

The political unacceptability of overt racism made racism invisible, but it did not eliminate it, because structures that promote and perpetuate racial oppression (such as funding schools through local property taxes) persisted.

The bigger problem was Teachers Unions and stupid Curriculums and the manner in which elite institutions creamed off the 'talented tenth.

In fact, new ways to oppress African-Americans, through the dismantling of the public safety net and the expansion of the criminal justice system, for example, were devised.

The welfare system was destructive of family values and male work ethic. We must also admit that Media sensationalism caused Black Church leaders to suffer a 'moral panic' and endorse Biden's 1994 Crime Bill. Clinton actually preached a sermon from the very last pulpit Dr. King graced saying  "How would we explain that we gave people the freedom to succeed and we created the conditions in which millions abuse that freedom to destroy the things that make life worth living and life itself?We cannot." Mr. Clinton said he feared that if Dr. King could return to the pulpit today, he would feel a sense of betrayal. He might say, the President continued: "I fought to stop white people from being so filled with hate that they would wreak violence on black people. I did not fight for the right of black people to murder other black people with reckless abandon."

But, because they avoided mentioning race explicitly, they could not be pinned on the racist intent of an individual.

Let us be honest. Even if Reagan did not mention race explicitly when speaking of 'Welfare Queens' there were plenty of people who would ring you up and spell it out for you. Republican canvassers were not known for subtlety. It was a very different time. When running for office, you did say 'nigger' and 'kike' and 'spic' when addressing a particular audience. Of course, you would deny it to the NYT but then ring all your donors to bad mouth them nigger-lovin' Commies in Jew York.

The charge of racism could be denied, since in the individualist worldview that also came to dominate our worldview during this period, intent or foreseeability is crucial to ascribing responsibility.

The law on unintentional torts varies across jurisdictions but, by statute, there can be strict liability or the bar of 'standard of care' can be set very high. Since Pigford v Glickman, Enterprises are aware that if there is statistical evidence of discrimination then damages are payable even if no individual act of discrimination is proved.

It is not the case that 'individualism' decries tort law or calls for its abolition. Indeed, a Collectivist approach would let Corporations off the hook.

Indeed, it is plausible that the usefulness of individualism for lending the continued racial oppression a veneer of plausible deniability is partly responsible for this philosophy’s success.

No because 'individualism' still sees the necessity of tort law and purely statistical evidence is admissible in such cases.

The dismantling of the welfare state (from Nixon onward) was facilitated by an emphasis on individual faults and merits in order to explain why people stay impoverished.

No. 'Fiscal drag'- i.e. rising money wages with unchanged nominal tax brackets- caused the median voter to pay more and more in tax. On the one hand, bureaucracies wanted to expand and increase welfare-payouts to keep their share of the pie- this caused the 'replacement rate' to rise in the Seventies thus creating a 'poverty trap' while increasing the natural rate of unemployment- on the other hand, the working class revolted against the erosion of real wages and the reward to work. Clinton discovered that the working class prefers 'work-fare' to 'welfare' because work is a good thing for individuals and families and communities.

Nixon officials, such as Housing and Urban Development Secretary George Romney, shifted the blame for poverty onto the poor themselves: “Housing by itself cannot solve the problems of people . . . who may be suffering from bad habits, lawlessness, laziness, unemployment, inadequate education, low working skills, ill health, poor motivation and a negative self-image.”[vi]

This is true. But improved housing can reduce 'bad habits' and 'lawlessness' and poor health and poor motivation etc.

If poverty can be blamed on the personal defects of the poor, the reasoning goes, then it is not only unnecessary, but useless to address systemic causes of poverty or ways to ameliorate them.

But blame does not matter. Money does. Either the median voter wants higher taxes and benefits or she does not. Politicians can blame all the evils of the world on Shape Shifting Lizards from Planet X. This makes no difference whatsoever. Who listens to Professors of Ethics or holier than thou 'Mother Theresas' of Economics? Nobody at all. They are purely ornamental. Money talks, Bullshit walks.

This has been the governing ideology of administrations from Nixon until today.

Actually Nixon was a Keynesian. His big idea was 'Prices and Incomes Policy', but the Teamsters wouldn't have it. The truth is 'welfare' as a possible way of life had an evanescent if not wholly imaginary existence. 'Workers Comp' is a different story.

Since generations of segregation and discrimination, have left African-American communities more vulnerable, the dismantling of the welfare state has disproportionately affected them.

The truth is only a small portion of urban Blacks could rely on it in the first place. But its effects on the Community were not good, in their own view.

It is worth noting the effectiveness of individualist rhetoric in defending policies that perpetuate economic disparities and leave African-Americans vulnerable to other kinds of oppression.

Rhetoric can't overcome the problem of discrimination. However, 'mechanism design' and 'consent decree' based systemic reform can tackle the problem in an idiographic  manner. Collectivist rhetoric is particularly harmful. Back in the Sixties, the Communists pretended that all problems- that of gender, race, obesity, not being able to find your car keys- would be solved after the Revolution. That is why women and minorities became disillusioned with the Party. It may feel good to say- 'If the State gives free money to everyone then the discriminated against will disproportionately benefit.'  But people will think you are a cretin. You may as well add- 'Furthermore, if everybody could be bitten by a radio-active spider then poor people doing dangerous and  physically demanding work would disproportionately benefit because they would be fantastically strong. Moreover, their 'spidey sense' would warn them to get out of the way of danger'.

Rhetoric may have power- but that power is likely to be used in a mischievous manner. Still, elected politicians should use rhetorical skill to popularize needful reform based on the correct Structural Causal Model.

This rhetoric may be losing its power. Now that the Black Lives Matter movement, drawing on the focus on systemic racism of earlier movements for black liberation, has begun to overthrow it, the racism is exposed for anyone to see (as long as they are not determined not to).

The danger here is that there will be a backlash. Indeed, this is what Devi & Fryer's paper predicts will happen. 'Pattern and Practice' investigations resulting in 'consent decrees' are known to work. Visceral reactions to 'viral violence' lead to a Police 'work to rule' which raises crime and causes a backlash towards yet more brutal methods.

The recent protests, like most, were sparked by a particular incident—the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers. However, without diminishing the importance, or tragedy, of this particular act of violence, the movement has maintained focus on the underlying conditions that made it possible.

Sadly, the reverse is the case. Why are people not talking about the excessive power of Police and other Public Sector Unions? How is it that nobody is talking about implementing Obama's Task Force's recommendations? Why are actual Black People being marginalized from the debate?

As horrific as the murder in public, in broad daylight, of Floyd was, its horror is multiplied by the fact that it is not an isolated incident, but belongs to a pattern (several patterns, in fact—murder by police, more mundane police violence and harassment of black people, and the role that over-policing and mass incarceration play in the perpetuation of political and economic inequality—to name a few), with identifiable structural causes.

So, we need a correct Structural Causal Model. Virtue signalling and venting rage by repeating stupid lies will help nobody.

By chanting “Say his name!” one minute, and “Black Lives Matter” the next, protestors draw a powerful connection between the particular act of violence and the structural problems that are responsible for it.

No they don't. They should be denouncing the head of the Police Union who got 'killology' training for his members. The fact is a policeman who did security for a night-club murdered a colleague of his in full public view. Why? Did Floyd object to drugs being supplied to the customers? I don't know. But there is a nexus between the Police and Organized Crime. They arrest innocent or small time people so as to show they are 'tough on crime' but the Crime Bosses are untouched.

This connection is exactly what individualism has concealed, as the failures of gun control and the passage of FOSTA show.

A narrative about Racism as a social malaise conceals the culpability of public servants who work with the Crime Bosses while arresting and incarcerating poor people who can't afford smart lawyers.

But the movement has effectively used the particular act of violence to draw attention to the structural conditions that made it possible.

How would higher welfare payments have helped Floyd? He was a working man. Where did the fentanyl, or whatever it was which caused Floyd's inebriation, come from? What about legal opioids which have devastated communities? These are structural causes which demand effective action. Babbling about the evils of individualism helps nobody.

That is why the protests did not abate after charges were brought against the police officer who killed Floyd, nor after the other officers who stood by and let it happen were charged, instead gaining energy, fuelled by these incidental, but still important, victories.

Surely the impending Presidential election is a factor. It remains to be seen whether Trump gains by this.

Building on the awareness it has raised over the past seven years, and especially through the protests in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014 over the murder of Michael Brown, Black Lives Matter is tearing down the ideology of individualism and teaching us to be able to see and talk about social structures again.

But few want Socialism. Bernie lost. Talk of 'social structures' can keep Bernie bros from voting Biden. That's not what Bernie wants.
Instead of 'social structures' we need to focus on incentive structures. People must lose money or go to jail if they commit crimes or torts.

Public opinion seems to be following their lead; a recent CBS poll showed 60% agreeing with the ideas of the movement.

Only 60%? Surely 40% don't think Black Lives don't matter. It must be the case that some BLM activists-who aren't themselves Black- are scaring away decent people.

On social media, in the press, and in corporate statements this month, systemic racism is condemned, and occasionally it is even admitted that it requires systemic solutions. The argument that these incidents of violence are isolated cases, and the result of ‘a few bad apples,’ seems to have lost credibility and started to fall into disuse.

The Public Sector knows it is being targeted by 'Pattern and Practice' investigation and consent decrees. The Private Sector is aware of their tort liability for violating anti discrimination legislation. Still, they will fight the thing in the only place which matters- the Courts. Meanwhile there may be one or two high profile scapegoats sacrificed at this altar. But that changes nothing.

So how has it been possible for the movement to propel a structural understanding of social issues into the wider public consciousness at this moment?

This simply hasn't happened. Black intellectuals who have done laborious spade-work and found solutions are being sidelined or ignored. Consider the case of Omar Wasow- an African American Professor at Princeton. A white data-scientist was sacked for linking to his work. 

Who talks of Obama's Task Force? The poor fellow is keeping shtum for fear of harming his pal, Biden. When the Crazies take over, the Sane take cover.

And why has Black Lives Matter’s articulation of the systemic character of the problem they are fighting helped them get their message across, rather than alienating the public? Black Lives Matter is calling for a revolutionary shift in our understanding of what racism is. It requires us to jettison fundamental ways of seeing the world that are reflected back to us constantly by the way that journalists talk about these problems, and the good guy-bad guy formula of blockbuster movies and police-procedural television. It seems to be working. Does that suggest that the way to convince people is not by finding common ground, but by offering a better alternative, even if it is radical?

What is that alternative? Free Money for all? A Socialist Revolution? Seeing the world in a fundamentally different way such that everybody gets bitten by a radio-active spider?

There already is common-ground on the following points
1) We shouldn't be locking up or shooting Black people. We should be getting them into better paying jobs so they pay more in tax.
2) We should not tolerate misbehaviour by public servants no matter how powerful their Unions may be. We pay them and they cheat us. That's never good.
3) Society can be improved through better mechanism design based on alethic Structural Causal Models. 'Social Structures' aren't the paranoid shite that Lefty Academics pretend to believe in. They are Incentive Structures which can and should be made more allocatively efficient. Every type of price, wage, or service provision discrimination is associated with some type of 'dead weight loss'- if Knightian Uncertainty obtains. This is Econ 101.

I suppose the reason the best minds working in this field have been disintermediated and ignored- though they are predominantly African American- is because they use alethic, not paranoid, Structural Causal Models. Thus, it is the Right, not the Left, which is winning the intellectual argument at this time when everybody, across the globe, is of the same mind re. the abominable nature of the existing situation in many parts of an otherwise great country.