Raising a Moral Child
By Adam Grant  APRIL 11, 2014

PDF copy this item:

What does it take to be a good parent? We know some of the tricks for teaching kids to become high achievers. For example, research suggests that when parents praise effort rather than ability, children develop a stronger work ethic and become more motivated.

Yet although some parents live vicariously through their children’s accomplishments, success is not the No. 1 priority for most parents. We’re much more concerned about our children becoming kind, compassionate and helpful. Surveys reveal that in the United States, parents from European, Asian, Hispanic and African ethnic groups all place far greater importance on caring than achievement. These patterns hold around the world: When people in 50 countries were asked to report their guiding principles in life, the value that mattered most was not achievement, but caring.

Despite the significance that it holds in our lives, teaching children to care about others is no simple task. In an Israeli study of nearly 600 families, parents who valued kindness and compassion frequently failed to raise children who shared those values.

Are some children simply good-natured — or not? For the past decade, I’ve been studying the surprising success of people who frequently help others without any strings attached. As the father of two daughters and a son, I’ve become increasingly curious about how these generous tendencies develop.

Genetic twin studies suggest that anywhere from a quarter to more than half of our propensity to be giving and caring is inherited. That leaves a lot of room for nurture, and the evidence on how parents raise kind and compassionate children flies in the face of what many of even the most well-intentioned parents do in praising good behavior, responding to bad behavior, and communicating their values.

By age 2, children experience some moral emotions — feelings triggered by right and wrong. To reinforce caring as the right behavior, research indicates, praise is more effective than rewards. Rewards run the risk of leading children to be kind only when a carrot is offered, whereas praise communicates that sharing is intrinsically worthwhile for its own sake. But what kind of praise should we give when our children show early signs of generosity?

Many parents believe it’s important to compliment the behavior, not the child — that way, the child learns to repeat the behavior. Indeed, I know one couple who are careful to say, “That was such a helpful thing to do,” instead of, “You’re a helpful person.”

But is that the right approach? In a clever experiment, the researchers Joan E. Grusec and Erica Redler set out to investigate what happens when we commend generous behavior versus generous character. After 7- and 8-year-olds won marbles and donated some to poor children, the experimenter remarked, “Gee, you shared quite a bit.”

The researchers randomly assigned the children to receive different types of praise. For some of the children, they praised the action: “It was good that you gave some of your marbles to those poor children. Yes, that was a nice and helpful thing to do.” For others, they praised the character behind the action: “I guess you’re the kind of person who likes to help others whenever you can. Yes, you are a very nice and helpful person.”

A couple of weeks later, when faced with more opportunities to give and share, the children were much more generous after their character had been praised than after their actions had been. Praising their character helped them internalize it as part of their identities. The children learned who they were from observing their own actions: I am a helpful person. This dovetails with new research led by the psychologist Christopher J. Bryan, who finds that for moral behaviors, nouns work better than verbs. To get 3- to 6-year-olds to help with a task, rather than inviting them “to help,” it was 22 to 29 percent more effective to encourage them to “be a helper.” Cheating was cut in half when instead of, “Please don’t cheat,” participants were told, “Please don’t be a cheater.” When our actions become a reflection of our character we lean more heavily toward the moral and generous choices. Over time it can become part of us.

Praise appears to be particularly influential in the critical periods when children develop a stronger sense of identity. When the researchers Joan E. Grusec and Erica Redler praised the character of 5-year-olds, any benefits that may have emerged didn’t have a lasting impact: They may have been too young to internalize moral character as part of a stable sense of self. And by the time children turned 10, the differences between praising character and praising actions vanished: Both were effective. Tying generosity to character appears to matter most around age 8, when children may be starting to crystallize notions of identity.

Praise in response to good behavior may be half the battle, but our responses to bad behavior have consequences, too. When children cause harm, they typically feel one of two moral emotions: shame or guilt. Despite the common belief that these emotions are interchangeable, research led by the psychologist June Price Tangney reveals that they have very different causes and consequences.

Shame is the feeling that I am a bad person, whereas guilt is the feeling that I have done a bad thing. Shame is a negative judgment about the core self, which is devastating: Shame makes children feel small and worthless, and they respond either by lashing out at the target or escaping the situation

altogether. In contrast, guilt is a negative judgment about an action, which can be repaired by good behavior. When children feel guilt, they tend to experience remorse and regret, empathize with the person they have harmed, and aim to make it right.

In one study spearheaded by the psychologist Karen Caplovitz Barrett, parents rated their toddlers’ tendencies to experience shame and guilt at home. The toddlers received a rag doll, and the leg fell off while they were playing with it alone. The shame-prone toddlers avoided the researcher and did not volunteer that they broke the doll. The guilt-prone toddlers were more likely to fix the doll, approach the experimenter, and explain what happened. The ashamed toddlers were avoiders; the guilty toddlers were amenders.

If we want our children to care about others, we need to teach them to feel guilt rather than shame when they misbehave. In a review of research on emotions and moral development, the psychologist Nancy Eisenberg suggests that shame emerges when parents express anger, withdraw their love, or try to assert their power through threats of punishment: Children may begin to believe that they are bad people. Fearing this effect, some parents fail to exercise discipline at all, which can hinder the development of strong moral standards.

The most effective response to bad behavior is to express disappointment. According to independent reviews by Professor Eisenberg and David R. Shaffer, parents raise caring children by expressing disappointment and explaining why the behavior was wrong, how it affected others, and how
they can rectify the situation. This enables children to develop standards for judging their actions, feelings of empathy and responsibility for others, and a sense of moral identity, which are conducive to becoming a helpful person. The beauty of expressing disappointment is that it communicates disapproval of the bad behavior, coupled with high expectations and the potential for improvement: “You’re a good person, even if you did a bad thing, and I know you can do better.”

As powerful as it is to criticize bad behavior and praise good character, raising a generous child involves more than waiting for opportunities to react to the actions of our children. As parents, we want to be proactive in communicating our values to our children. Yet many of us do this the wrong way.

In a classic experiment, the psychologist J. Philippe Rushton gave 140 elementary- and middle-school-age children tokens for winning a game, which they could keep entirely or donate some to a child in poverty. They first watched a teacher figure play the game either selfishly or generously, and then preach to them the value of taking, giving or neither. The adult’s influence was significant: Actions spoke louder than words. When the adult behaved selfishly, children followed suit. The words didn’t make much difference — children gave fewer tokens after observing the adult’s selfish actions, regardless of whether the adult verbally advocated selfishness or generosity. When the adult acted generously, students gave the same amount whether generosity was preached or not — they donated 85 percent more than the norm in both cases. When the adult preached selfishness, even after the adult acted generously, the students still gave 49 percent more than the norm. Children learn generosity not by listening to what their role models say, but by observing what they do.

To test whether these role-modeling effects persisted over time, two months later researchers observed the children playing the game again. Would the modeling or the preaching influence whether the children gave — and would they even remember it from two months earlier?

The most generous children were those who watched the teacher give but not say anything. Two months later, these children were 31 percent more generous than those who observed the same behavior but also heard it preached. The message from this research is loud and clear: If you don’t model generosity, preaching it may not help in the short run, and in the long run, preaching is less effective than giving while saying nothing at all.

People often believe that character causes action, but when it comes to producing moral children, we need to remember that action also shapes character. As the psychologist Karl Weick is fond of asking, “How can I know who I am until I see what I do? How can I know what I value until I see where I walk?”

Adam Grant  is a professor of management and psychology at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and the author of “Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success.”

— ————————————————-

Praise for intelligence can undermine children’s motivation and performance.
Mueller, Claudia M.; Dweck, Carol S.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol 75(1), Jul 1998, 33-52. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.75.1.33
Abstract
Praise for ability is commonly considered to have beneficial effects on motivation. Contrary to this popular belief, six studies demonstrated that praise for intelligence had more negative consequences for students’ achievement motivation than praise for effort. Fifth graders praised for intelligence were found to care more about performance goals relative to learning goals than children praised for effort. After failure, they also displayed less task persistence, less task enjoyment, more low-ability attributions, and worse task performance than children praised for effort. Finally, children praised for intelligence described it as a fixed trait more than children praised for hard work, who believed it to be subject to improvement. These findings have important implications for how achievement is best encouraged, as well as for more theoretical issues, such as the potential cost of performance goals and the socialization of contingent self-worth. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved) Value Hierarchies Across Cultures

Taking a Similarities Perspective
Shalom H. Schwartz ,Anat Bardi
Abstract
Beyond the striking differences in the value priorities of groups is a surprisingly widespread consensus regarding the hierarchical order of values. Average value hierarchies of representative and near representative samples from 13 nations exhibit a similar pattern that replicates with school teachers in 56 nations and college students in 54 nations. Benevolence, self-direction, and universalism values are consistently most important; power, tradition, and stimulation values are least important; and security, conformity, achievement, and hedonism are in between. Value hierarchies of 83% of samples correlate at least .80 with this pan-cultural hierarchy. To explain the pan-cultural hierarchy, the authors discuss its adaptive functions in meeting the requirements of successful societal functioning. The authors demonstrate, with data from Singapore and the United States, that correctly interpreting the value hierarchies of groups requires comparison with the pan-cultural normative baseline.

Cultural Bases for Self-Evaluation
Seeing Oneself Positively in Different Cultural Contexts
Maja Becker,Vivian L. Vignoles,Ellinor Owe,Matthew J. Easterbrook,Rupert Brown,Peter B. Smith
Michael Harris Bond,Camillo Regalia,Claudia Manzi,Maria Brambilla,Said Aldhafri,Roberto González
Diego Carrasco,Maria Paz Cadena,Siugmin Lay,Inge Schweiger Gallo,Ana Torres,Leoncio Camino
Emre Özgen,Ülkü E. Güner,Nil Yamakoğlu,Flávia Cristina Silveira Lemos,Elvia Vargas Trujillo
Paola Balanta,Ma. Elizabeth J. Macapagal,M. Cristina Ferreira,Ginette Herman,Isabelle de Sauvage
David Bourguignon,Qian Wang,Márta Fülöp,Charles Harb,Aneta Chybicka,Kassahun Habtamu Mekonnen
Mariana Martin,George Nizharadze,Alin Gavreliuc,Johanna Buitendach,Aune Valk,Silvia H. Koller
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin May 1, 2014 40: 657-675
Abstract
Several theories propose that self-esteem, or positive self-regard, results from fulfilling the value priorities of one’s surrounding culture. Yet, surprisingly little evidence exists for this assertion, and theories differ about whether individuals must personally endorse the value priorities involved. We compared the influence of four bases for self-evaluation (controlling one’s life, doing one’s duty, benefitting others, achieving social status) among 4,852 adolescents across 20 cultural samples, using an implicit, within-person measurement technique to avoid cultural response biases. Cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses showed that participants generally derived feelings of self-esteem from all four bases, but especially from those that were most consistent with the value priorities of others in their cultural context. Multilevel analyses confirmed that the bases of positive self-regard are sustained collectively: They are predictably moderated by culturally normative values but show little systematic variation with personally endorsed values.

Social Forces June 1, 2013 91: 1499-1528
Position and Disposition: The Contextual Development of Human Values
Kyle C. Longest, Steven Hitlin, Stephen Vaisey
Abstract
Research on the importance of values often focuses primarily on one domain of social predictors (e.g., economic) or limits its scope to a single dimension of values. We conduct a simultaneous analysis of a wide range of theoretically important social influences and a more complete range of individuals’ value orientations, focusing both on value ratings and rankings. Results indicate that traditional institutions such as religion and parenthood are associated with more concern for the welfare of others and maintaining the status quo, whereas more individually oriented occupational factors like higher income and self-employment are linked to achievement and change-related values. Yet several factors, such as education and gender, have complex associations when individual values are examined as part of a coherent system rather than in isolation.
© The Author 2013. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology May 1, 2007 38: 333-360
What Defines the Good Person? Cross-Cultural Comparisons of Experts’ Models With Lay Prototypes
Kyle D. Smith ,Seyda Türk Smith , John Chambers Christopher
Abstract
“Good” is a fundamental concept present in all cultures, and experts in values and positive psychology have mapped good’s many aspects in human beings. Which aspects do laypersons typically access and consider as they make everyday judgments of goodness? Does the answer vary with culture? To address these questions, the authors compiled prototypes of the good person from laypersons’ free-listings in seven cultures and used experts’ classifications to content-analyze and compare the prototypes. Benevolence, conformity, and traditionalism dominated the features that laypersons frequently attributed to good people. Other features—competence in particular—varied widely in their accessibility across cultures. These findings depart from those obtained in research using expert-designed self-report inventories, highlighting the need to consider everyday accessibility when comparing cultures’ definitions of the good person.

The American Way of Equality
By DAVID BROOKS

PDF of this item:

Income inequality is on the rise. The rich are getting better at passing their advantages on to their kids. Lifestyle and values gaps are widening between the educated and uneducated. So the big issue is: Will Americans demand new policies to reverse these trends — to redistribute wealth, to provide greater economic security? Are we about to see a mass populist movement in this country?

Nobody was smarter on this subject than Seymour Martin Lipset, the eminent sociologist who died at 84 on New Year’s Eve. Lipset had been a socialist in the hothouse atmosphere of City College during the 1940s, and though he later became a moderate Democrat, he continued to wonder, with some regret, why America never had a serious socialist movement, why America never adopted a European-style welfare state.

Lipset was aware of the structural and demographic answers to such questions. For example, racially diverse nations tend to have lower levels of social support than homogeneous ones. People don’t feel as bound together when they are divided on ethnic lines and are less likely to embrace mutual support programs. You can have diversity or a big welfare state. It’s hard to have both.

But as he studied these matters, Lipset moved away from structural or demographic explanations (too many counterexamples). He drifted, as Tocqueville and Werner Sombart had before him, to values.

America never had a feudal past, so nobody has a sense of social place or class-consciousness, Lipset observed. Meanwhile, Americans have inherited from their Puritan forebears a sense that they have a spiritual obligation to rise and succeed.

Two great themes run through American history, Lipset wrote in his 1963 book “The First New Nation”: achievement and equality. These are often in tension because when you leave unequally endowed people free to achieve, you get unequal results.

Though Lipset never quite put it this way, the clear message from his writings is that when achievement and equality clash in America, achievement wins. Or to be more precise, the achievement ethos reshapes the definition of equality. When Americans use the word “equality,” they really mean “fair opportunity.” When Americans use the word “freedom,” they really mean “opportunity.”

Lipset was relentlessly empirical, and rested his conclusions on data as well as history and philosophy. He found that Americans have for centuries embraced individualistic, meritocratic, antistatist values, even at times when income inequality was greater than it is today.

Large majorities of Americans have always believed that individuals are responsible for their own success, Lipset reported, while people in other countries are much more likely to point to forces beyond individual control. Sixty-five percent of Americans believe hard work is the key to success; only 12 percent think luck plays a major role.

In his “American Exceptionalism” (1996), Lipset pointed out that 78 percent of Americans endorse the view that “the strength of this country today is mostly based on the success of American business.” Fewer than a third of all Americans believe the state has a responsibility to reduce income disparities, compared with 82 percent of Italians. Over 70 percent of Americans believe “individuals should take more responsibility for providing for themselves” whereas most Japanese believe “the state should take more responsibility to ensure everyone is provided for.”

America, he concluded, is an outlier, an exceptional nation. And though his patriotism pervaded his writing, he emphasized that American exceptionalism is “a double-edged sword.”

Political movements that run afoul of these individualistic, achievement-oriented values rarely prosper. The Democratic Party is now divided between moderates — who emphasize individual responsibility and education to ameliorate inequality — and progressive populists, who advocate an activist state that will protect people from forces beyond their control. Given the deep forces in American history, the centrists will almost certainly win out.

Indeed, the most amazing thing about the past week is how modest the Democratic agenda has been. Democrats have been out of power in Congress for 12 years. They finally get a chance to legislate and they push through a series of small proposals that are little pebbles compared to the vast economic problems they described during the campaign.

They grasp the realities Marty Lipset described. They understand that in the face of inequality, Americans have usually opted for policies that offer more opportunity, not those emphasizing security or redistribution. American domestic policy is drifting leftward, but there are sharp limits on how far it will go.The American Way of Equality

             Drones and the Democracy Disconnect
By Firmin DeBrabander

PDF copy this item:

With President Obama’s announcement that we will open a new battlefront in yet another Middle Eastern country — in Syria, against ISIS (the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) — there is widespread acknowledgement that it will be a protracted, complex, perhaps even messy campaign, with many unforeseeable consequences along the way. The president has said we will put “no boots on the ground” in Syria; he is wary of simply flooding allies on the ground with arms, for fear that they will fall into the wrong hands — as they already have. Obama wants to strike against ISIS in a part of Syria that is currently outside the authority of the Syrian government, which the president has accused of war crimes, and is thus, in our eyes, a legal no-man’s land. He has also made clear that he is ready to go it alone in directing attacks on ISIS — he has asked for Congress’s support, but is not seeking their authorization. All these signs point to drones playing a prominent role in this new war in Syria.

Increasingly, this is how the United States chooses to fight its wars. Drones lead the way and dominate the fight against the several non-state actors we now engage — Al Qaeda, the Shabab in Somalia and now ISIS. Drones have their benefits: They enable us to fight ISIS without getting mired on the ground or suffering casualties, making them politically powerful and appealing. For the moment, the American public favors striking ISIS; that would likely change if our own ground forces were involved.

If any group deserves drone strikes, it may well be ISIS.

This fundamentalist Muslim group, so brutal that even Al Qaeda shunned it, has taken to forcibly converting and exterminating Christians and other minority religious groups; one such minority, the Yazidis, may have narrowly escaped genocide at ISIS’ hands. The West has received vivid proof of the group’s ferocity. On Saturday it released its third video of a beheading — this time of a British aid worker — after two other such videos of the beheadings of American journalists within the past month.

The use of drones raises not just strategic and political problems, but ethical questions as well. In particular, what does our use of and reliance on drones say about us? How do drones affect the nation that endorses them — overtly, or, as is more often the case, tacitly? Are drones compatible with patriotism? With democracy? Honor? Glory? Or do they, as I fear, represent — and exacerbate — a troubling, even obscene disconnect between the American people and the wars waged in our name?

Writing in The Guardian in 2012, George Monbiot declared the United States’ drone strikes in Pakistan cowardly. He echoed the howls of many Pakistanis on the ground, who suffer the drone onslaught firsthand, while those who carry it out are safely removed thousands of miles away. The new breed of warriors is strange indeed: They are safely ensconced here in the United States, often commuting to work like ordinary citizens, and after a day spent monitoring and perhaps striking enemy targets, they return home to kids, homework and dinner.

Drone apologists, and many defense experts, claim drones are a reasonable development in warfare technology. The Slate commentator Jamie Holmes argues that extreme complaints about military innovations are hardly new. To people like Monbiot, or the BBC commentator Jeremy Clarkson, who scoffs that medals for drone pilots “should feature an armchair and a Coke machine or two crossed burgers,” Holmes says, “the hyperventilating about heroism being killed by machines misses the point. For one, the list of weapons once considered ‘cowardly’ … include[s] not only the submarines of World War I but also the bow and arrow and the gun. The point of each of these technologies was the same: to gain an asymmetrical advantage against adversaries and reduce risk.”

There are few philosophers more clear-eyed, frank, even cynical when it comes to war than Niccolò Machiavelli. In “The Prince,” he asserts that war is inescapable, inevitable. He praises the Romans for understanding the danger in putting it off. To the simple question of when you should go to war, Machiavelli’s simple answer is, “When you can” — not when it is just, or “right.” And yet, in another work, “The Art of War,” Machiavelli reveals that how a nation goes to war, how a nation chooses to fight is just as critical, perhaps even more so. At this point, the issue of military technology is pertinent, and Machiavelli’s discussion of the topic is highly reminiscent of our current debate about drones and character.

In “The Art of War,” Machiavelli again praises the ancient Romans, for their battlefield exploits, and states his worry that newly introduced artillery “prevents men from employing and displaying their virtue as they used to do of old.” Machiavelli ultimately dismisses such fears — though he was only contemplating cannons at the time. But elsewhere he declares that “whoever engages in war must use every means to put himself in a position of facing his enemy in the field and beating him there,” since a field war “is the most necessary and honorable of all wars.” Why is this? Because on the battlefield, military discipline and courage are exhibited and forged, and your opponent gets a true taste of what he’s up against — not only the army, but the nation he is up against.

For Machiavelli, military conduct is a reflection, indeed an extension — better yet, the root and foundation of a nation’s character, the bravery and boldness of its leaders, the devotion and determination of its citizens. Military conduct is indelibly linked to civic virtue, which is why he argues that nations should reject a professional army, much less a mercenary one, in favor of a citizen militia. Every citizen must get a taste of military discipline — and sacrifice. Every citizen must have a stake, an intimate investment, in the wars his nation fights.

Machiavelli was highly sensitive to the role military glory plays in inspiring the public and uniting, even defining, a nation. Great battles and military campaigns forged the identity, cohesion and indomitable pride of the Roman Republic, Machiavelli maintains — across the different social classes — and stoked the democratic energy of the people. Haven’t they served a similar purpose in our own republic? War has offered iconic images of our national identity: George Washington crossing the Delaware with his ragtag soldiers; marines hoisting the flag at Iwo Jima. These images are inherently democratic — they offer no king on his steed, lording over kneeling troops. To that extent, they nourish and reinforce our democratic identity and sensibilities.

This is no longer the case in the age of drones. I have strained to imagine the great battles drones might fight, which the public might rally around and solemnly commemorate. But this is a silly proposition — which cuts to the heart of the matter.

Never have the American people been more removed from their wars, even while we are the most martial nation on earth, and drones are symptoms, and drivers, of this troubling alienation. The United States has been engaged in two expensive and protracted wars in the past decade, as well as the seemingly endless war on terror spread the world over. The war in Afghanistan — where drones have made their mark as never before — is the longest in the nation’s history, and we have spent more money rebuilding Afghanistan than we did on Europe after World War II. Through all our recent wars in the region, however, most Americans have hardly felt a thing. Given the extent of our military engagement, unparalleled in the world, that is astounding, shameful even, and politically treacherous.

Critics have long warned that drones put too much war making power in the hands of few government actors, who increasingly operate on their own, or in the shadows. Many felt we saw a preview of political abuses to come when President Obama unilaterally ordered a drone strike against an American citizen in Yemen. This new technology has already emboldened our government to openly wage war in countries against which we have not officially declared war. We operate there with the tacit, and dubious, assent of a few ruling interests.

Perhaps it is not inevitable that drones are linked to arbitrary, centralized government; perhaps drone warfare can be waged transparently, democratically, legally, though it is admittedly hard to imagine what that would look like. What is certain, however, is that drone technology offers manifold temptations to those who would expand the borders of our wars, or wage war according to their own agenda, independent of the will, or interest, or attention of the American public.

Most American citizens are quick to let someone or something else bear the brunt of our wars, and take up the fight. Hence there is less worry about whether a given incursion is necessary, justified, logical or humane. Drones point to a new and terrible kind of cruelty — violence far removed from the perpetrator, and easier to inflict in that regard. With less skin in the game — literally — we can be less vigilant about the darker tendencies of our leaders, the unintended consequences of their actions, and content to indulge in private matters.

The United State is gradually becoming a warring nation with fewer and fewer warriors, and few who know the sacrifices of war. Drones represent the new normal, and are an easy invitation to enter into and wage war — indefinitely. This is a state of affairs Machiavelli could not abide by, and neither should we. It is antithetical to a democracy for its voting public to be so aloof from the wars it fights. It is a feature, I fear, of a democracy destined to lose that title.

Firmin DeBrabander, an associate professor of philosophy at the Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, is the author of “Spinoza and the Stoics” and a forthcoming book critiquing the gun rights movement.

—————————-

Gemli, boston
People have been killing each other for a long time. The grim history of warfare is summed up succinctly in Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey,” when the film jumps in a single frame from a proto-human realizing that a thigh bone can crush a skull to an orbiting nuclear weapon. The intervening millennia are skipped because the details are unimportant. People will kill each other with whatever is handy. Thigh bones, drones, it’s all the same if you’re on the receiving end.

It’s hard to place a value on words like honor, glory and patriotism since I’m sure the Nazis used these as well. These words are rhetorical recruitment tools, employed whether we’re actually defending ourselves from evil or merely taking other people’s stuff. Sometimes it’s hard to tell.

We allowed the “darker tendencies of our leaders” to get us into two wars. These wars were terrible and cruel, and the consequences were unintended but not unpredictable. Drones didn’t lull us into these pointless and ruinously costly conflicts. We were drawn in the old fashioned way, with tales of WMDs and promises of a quick and easy victory. We ultimately left, but not before more soldiers were dying of suicide from moral injury than were being killed in battle.

ISIS believes in beheadings, female circumcision and stonings for trivial offenses. Honor is off the table. Machiavelli isn’t here. I don’t think he’ll mind if we send in the drones.

Steve Fankuchen     Oakland, Calif.
There is absolutely no relationship one way or the other between the use of drones and democracy. Democracy is about the way decisions get made. Drones are simply a weapon with which some decisions, right or wrong, are carried out. One would expect DeBrabander, a professor of philosophy, to be more precise in the use of language.

Calling the use of drones “cowardly” is absurd! War and sanctioned killing is not about a “fair fight;” it is about winning, however that may be defined.

As to being removed from intimate contact with the effects of one’s weapons, drones are nothing new. Two thousand years ago catapults were wrecking mayhem within walled villages, the results not immediately apparent to those who launched projectiles with them. Guns allowed individual soldiers not to see the close-up damage, and artillery, whether on land or on boats, carried the removal further. With the advent of planes and bombs, especially the B-52s and high altitude bombers, you could look in a gadget, push a button, and be done with it. Drones merely go a little step farther in a well-established continuum.

The author claims drones are cruel. How in the world is getting blown up by a drone any worse than getting shot by a gun, turned to hamburger by a mine or a V-2 rocket, or having one’s head cut off?

A fair fight? That is called sports unless, of course, you think Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr had the right idea, and we should bring back American honor and glory with duels.

MLP     Pittsburgh
If Machiavelli was right, if military conduct is indeed a reflection of a nation’s character, then drone warfare may well be the quintessential expression of contemporary American character: a nation of couch potatoes playing “video games” where real flesh and blood human beings are the targets but who are too insensitive and clueless to comprehend the inevitable consequences of their actions. Sooner or later, others will have drone technology capable of inflicting harm upon the United States, and when that happens the couch potatoes will call it “terrorism” and moan “why do they hate us?”

Bob Garcia     Miami
Drones are an example of our self-blindness, which is an important element of our Exceptionalism. For example, why aren’t drones considered weapons of terror? Look at the parallels between the use of hijacked planes on 9/11 and our now routine use of drones. The main difference is that by definition nothing we do is considered terrorism, whether with drones, torture, or kicking in doors of peasants at midnight. Or widespread use of contractors who are outside all law of accountability, just possible recall by their employers.

And have we legitimized the use of drones? For example, if the Chinese unilaterally decided to use drones to kill alleged Uighur or Tibetan terrorists in the United States, would it be reasonable for them to carry out such strikes in the United States — limited only by the practical matter of avoiding being shot out of the sky? Would it be accepted that sometimes they’d make a mistake and blow up a wedding party? Would it be OK for them to negotiate with Mexico or Honduras to site drone bases?

Harold V. McCoy       Pinehurst, NC, USA
If Mr. DeBrabander is looking for glory, honor and national character in war, he has obviously never been in one.

Chuck     S C
I can’t help but think of what Robert E Lee said:”It is well that war is so terrible, otherwise we would grow too fond of it.”

The further our technology removes us from the God-awful stench of war, the more likely we are to grow fond of it. That will lead to greater hubris and the nemesis that will inevitably follow will be devastating.

PogoWasRight     Melbourne Florida
It appears that The President, as many others before him, is continuing to weave a tangled web, one in which we ourselves could become entangled. As an old retired career military person, I have never been able to understand that if we drop a bomb on a home or factory or office in some foreign country, will we create a friend or will we create an enemy? All I am sure of is what I would become if it were done to me. A situation most times called “a no-brainer”. And that is not the end of all possibilities. Consider what is in store for us in the future when missile-armed drones become affordable and available to terrorists around the world, as they certainly will. Instead of flying from “here” to “there”, those drones will be flying from “there” to “here”. Not a pleasant thought. But an inevitable outcome. As Eliza Doolittle said: “Just You Wait!”

Hoff     Philadelphia, PA
The author neglects the reality of the modern battlefield when bemoaning our lack of intimacy with the opposition. The enemy we face doesn’t form ranks and march across the desert. He hides in civilian homes in areas removed from global society and conspires to release his own versions of remote weapons; theology-addled recruits on consciencless suicidal missions to achieve a glorious afterlife. And he does not hesitate to use his tools to their maximum range and effect. This is fundamental asymmetry to ‘honorable’ war-making, and to match the threat we spend multitudes of fortunes trying to stay on the high road.
To say that we feel nothing in the West is absurd in the extreme. We reap daily harvests of horrors through the press, our economy struggles to overcome the $trillions we spend on these conflicts, and our politics have devolved to fighting over the bloody scraps from administration after administration of strategic losses to nearly invisible enemies. You’ll have to forgive me for my lack of guilt over finding a way to score a win out of range of the stench of my adversaries’ death.

Bruce Balfe     Valparaiso
I fail to see the distinction between drones and ships lobbing ordinance from 30 miles out at sea or planes dropping bombs from 35000 feet. It is all long distance warfare. If we can conduct our wars, however distasteful they are in the first place, in a way that minimizes putting our troops in dangers way, then why not?

Chris Koz     Portland, OR
…
there needs to be a distinction made between the utilization of words like Patriotism, Honor, Glory by civilian leadership and military personnel. Civilians often use these words, even with the best of intentions, as a recruitment tool, a source of rhetoric, and to beat the drums of nationalism. The jingoism sold by politicians, the military industrial complex, and armchair warriors is largely self-serving.

Conversely, these words are the very vehicle by which the military chain of command survives and to argue, as some commentator’s have, honor does not matter when fighting an honor less enemy simply do not understand this code; the “disconnect” the writer speaks of grows out of the former.
…

 

Sotomayor’s Race Dissent

The most complete explanation of Barack Obama’s and Eric Holder’s reasoning on race.
By Daniel Henninger
April 30, 2014 The Wall Street Journal Click here for a pdf version

Attorney General Eric Holder, in a speech to Justice Department employees, praised Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent in last week’s Supreme Court decision upholding Michigan’s ban on race-based admissions to its state universities. He called it “courageous and very personal.”

It was personal. Toward the end of her 58-page dissent, she said this about the six Justices who formed the plurality:

“More fundamentally,” Justice Sotomayor wrote, the plurality “ignores the importance of diversity in institutions of higher education and reveals how little my colleagues understand about the reality of race in America.” Those colleagues are Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Kennedy, Alito, Scalia, Breyer and Thomas.

Justice Sotomayor’s dissent in Schuette v. BAMN provides the most complete explanation I’ve seen of the reasoning behind the views on race of President Obama and Attorney General Holder. Over five years, the administration has repeatedly challenged various states on their voting practices, intervened to alter the racial composition of public-school populations and racial patterns in housing. Disagreement between Democrats and Republicans over voter ID laws has been particularly contentious.

Some of this is politics. But some of it is belief about the status of race in America a half century after passage of landmark civil-rights legislation in 1964.

“Race matters,” Justice Sotomayor wrote. It matters “because of persistent racial inequality that cannot be ignored and that has produced stark socioeconomic disparities.”

In 2006, Michigan voters by 58% approved a constitutional amendment that forbids the use of race-based preferences for admissions to the state’s universities. Eight other states have similar bans, including California.

Michigan’s ban on race-based admissions, says Justice Sotomayor, is not the result of “invidious intent” to discriminate as in the past. Instead the Michigan “majority” resorted to something that she calls “the last chapter of discrimination.” Its admissions amendment unfairly “changed the rules” of the political process. Prior to the amendment, she says, minorities persuaded Michigan’s elected Board of Regents to use “race-sensitive” university admissions policies. The voters’ ban eliminated the Regents’ policy and therefore “burdened racial minorities.”

Some, including the Court’s majority, would say the amendment was a proper exercise of the democratic political process. Justice Sotomayor replies: “While our Constitution does not guarantee minority groups victory in the political process . . . [i]t guarantees the majority may not win by stacking the political process against minority groups permanently, forcing the minority alone to surmount unique obstacles in pursuit of its goals.” In Michigan, that goal was the value of “racial diversity” in the student body.

Equal protection, she adds, is about groups, not mere individuals: “Discrimination against an individual occurs because of that individual’s membership in a particular group.”

And so believes the Obama administration.

Last year, Justice sued to stop Louisiana’s school vouchers program, arguing that when black parents took their kids out of public schools to attend, say, a Catholic school, this increased “the racial identifiability” of the schools. That is, the abandoned public schools had too many white students and so were no longer diverse and had become unequal.

This presumably would also be the rationale for the Justice Department’s interventions against voter ID laws, most famously its lawsuit last year against North Carolina. By requiring an ID, the majority is “changing the rules” in a way that disadvantages black voters. In Justice Sotomayor’s words: “This means vigilantly policing the political process to ensure that the majority does not use other methods to prevent minority groups from partaking in that process on equal footing.” These are what she calls “third-generation barriers.”

In the last line—a footnote—of his concurring opinion, Justice Scalia (joined by Justice Thomas) says that Justice Sotomayor is likening the “majority” in Michigan to the same “majority” who created the Jim Crow laws. She denies that. So what is an average voter supposed to believe?

The Sotomayor dissent in Schuette, as its supporters say, is an important statement of progressive belief about race. Let’s assume they, Justice Sotomayor, President Obama and Mr. Holder wish most Americans would agree with their point of view on race and so support it. If only all could read the Sotomayor dissent to render a national opinion about their racial views.

We can guess. I think it’s fair to say that many who read her reasoning on how Michigan’s voters or other “majorities” are using the political process to harm minorities and produce inequality in every aspect of American life would say: I just don’t get the argument. They might, for instance, ask her about the four-decade catastrophe of urban public schools.

The intricate case she is making about “third-generation barriers” to equality and such—arguments developed by liberal law professors the past 25 years—is not persuasive. I doubt an open-minded majority would agree with it. It could, of course, be imposed anyway by court mandate.

One is left to conclude from the Sotomayor dissent that no matter how much progress people think has been made toward fulfilling the mandate of the 14th Amendment, an argument of some sort will be fashioned to say that equality is forever disappearing toward the horizon, and unattainable. After 50 years, where does that leave us? Polarized.

Letters May 7, 2014
Racial Diversity Seems to Have Become an End in Itself
I’ve thought of racial diversity initiatives as a means to an end, but Justice Sotomayor seems to view racial diversity as the desired end of public policy.

Regarding Daniel Henninger’s “Sotomayor’s Race Dissent” (Wonder Land, May 1): Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent in Schuette v. BAMN brings into better focus the Eric Holder-President Obama understanding of race and race relations in America. I’ve thought of racial diversity initiatives as a means to an end, a way to break down the separation that resulted from de jure and de facto segregation, and enable people to experience one another as fellow human beings. In that light I think it has been useful and has enjoyed a degree of success. But Justice Sotomayor’s opinion in the Michigan case and the Justice Department’s position in the Louisiana school-voucher case and voter-ID disputes seem to view racial diversity as the desired end of public policy. Anything that has the potential of reducing racial diversity, even in the smallest way, is suspect.
This is bizarre. Doesn’t such a policy assume that there are inherent differences in people based on race? Doesn’t it assume that a majority race cannot be expected to treat a minority race fairly on its own? Doesn’t it assume racial conflict as a permanent human condition? Aren’t these points of view, in fact, racist? We’ll never free ourselves completely from conflict, but we have made significant and important progress in accepting one another as equals. Attempting to maintain diversity in appearance through fiat doesn’t help. The Court’s decision allows the social process to play itself out with due regard to the facts and circumstances of time and place.
John D. Hatch
Tarpon Springs, Fla.
—
That racial disparity is still a fact in America is undeniable. The Supreme Court’s ruling reminds us of our division on the question of how much government should do to try and rectify it. Let’s say we land on one side or the other of that divide based purely on whether we believe government action can be effective. Those among us who believe it cannot be are boosted by the Court’s decision. But there’s a bigger question for all of us here. If down the road we find racial disparity continues to persist with or without government action, is that OK?
Michael Young
Port Hueneme, Calif.
—
Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissenting opinion in Schuette v. BAMN stands in stark reaction to the revolutionary idea that created the U.S. Constitution as a restraint upon the government. Justice Sotomayor envisions the Constitution as a restraint upon the American people.
Morgan Foster
Indianapolis
—
If, as Justice Sotomayor insists, equal protection of “individuals” must be understood in the context of “membership in a particular group,” when can her version of racism be deemed defeated except when a plurality of oppressed “groups” achieves victory over the apparently monolithic “group” that does the oppressing? As the demographic trends of the so-called “minority-majority” accelerate America’s coalescence into a country with no racial majority, will the oppressing “group” still be deemed too powerful by progressive elites and their allies in federal government?

By emphasizing individual experience viewed in light of race, the Obama-Holder-Sotomayor race camp may effect a future outcome that is the opposite of what they claim to intend. Whether the Balkans in the 1990s, Czechoslovakia in the late 1930s or Ukraine in the present day, history provides stark examples of individuals acting in the name of “groups.”
Kurt Hofer
Altadena, Calif.
—
A black attorney speaking to my high-school law class more than 30 years ago said that “when minorities start winning the game, those in power change the rules.” That is the constitutional wrong that Justice Sotomayor addressed in her dissent and that Daniel Henninger fails to adequately address.
But it was Justice Sotomayor who got it right. Her passionate, perceptive and well-reasoned dissent reminds us that what that attorney said to my class so long ago is still a reality, but one not permitted by our Constitution.
Rick Nagel
Mercer Island, Wash
—
TOM PAINTER Wrote:
Sotomayor has been mis-educated – thanks to “progressives” in academia and “living constitution judges – and herself come to accept, an erroneous understanding of the “equal protection” clause.
It has NOTHING to do with any constitutional mandate on the use of federal authority to “make us equal”.
Example: A man applies for a liquor license, having observed he meets the qualifications for one and has fulfilled all the requirements of applying for one. His license is granted. A second man follows the same path and his license is denied. He sees that nothing other than his “race or national origin” distinguishes him from the man whose license application was approved. The “equal protection” clause can be the second man’s basis of a suit – the law was not applied equally, due only to his race or national origin. With some technical caveats that very simple example represents the form of circumstances that the equal protection clause was written to help prevent – a law as written not being applied as written on equal terms no matter someone’s race or national origin. That’s all.
The Michigan state constitutional amendment is in complete respect of the equal protection clause, while Sotomayor actually seeks to deny “equal protection” of the laws and have the law discriminate on the basis of race or national origin. Her’s is not a belief or respect for the Constitution but belief and respect only for a political agenda NOT supported by the equal protection clause.
—
Charles Frederick Wrote:
Sotomayor describes herself, and these are her own words, as “a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences (who) would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”
What hubris and what a sorry explanation to rationalize her radical leftist ideology
—

Jonathan Murray Replied:
Diversity is a false front for affirmative action.
—
Tom Painter
The “diversity” meme is inherently racist. It assumes you MUST think differently because of your race. From that erroneous meme Liberals have come to loath “minority” Conservatives who have broken out of the Liberals’ intellectual plantation and don’t fit the mold they have tried to CREATE for “minorities”.

Richard Davidson Replied:
I can tell you only this. When I started at Motorola in 1967, located in Chicago back then, minorities in the professional jobs were almost non-existent. When a friend gave me a tour a few years ago at their Schaumburg, IL site, the technical and management people were from every conceivable race, creed, nationality, and color. It was like a tour of the UN.
Something happened in those 40 years. Diversity is the corporate mantra. You explain it
The alleged benefits of diversity that you assert are unproven. There is evidence that diversity of thought is productive in places like businesses, but there is no evidence that diversity based on skin color confers any benefit to anybody except for affirmative action candidates and the industry that feeds off of them.
—
DAVID KNUDSEN Wrote:
What is the evidence that diversity benefits minorities ?
—
Michael Love Wrote:
Unfortunately, the hour is late and I have miles to go before I sleep but please ponder the entire context of the racial progress you allege. In 1960, a dark skinned American driving in most anywhere USA would have a significantly higher likelihood of being pulled over by the police. That hasn’t changed today. What has changed over the years is the rate of incarceration in our nation and especially of minorities. From 1980 to 2008 the rate of incarceration quadrupled in the United States from roughly 500,000 people to 2.3 million people. African Americans constitute nearly 1 million of this 2.3 million population. African Americans are incarcerated at a rate six time that of Whites. Examine the following from NACDL: Together, African American and Hispanics comprised 58% of all prisoners in 2008, even though African Americans and Hispanics make up approximately one quarter of the US population. According to Unlocking America, if African American and Hispanics were incarcerated at the same rates of whites, today’s prison and jail populations would decline by approximately 50%. One in six black men had been incarcerated as of 2001. If current trends continue, one in three black males born today can expect to spend time in prison during his lifetime. Five times as many Whites are using drugs as African Americans, yet African Americans are sent to prison for drug offenses at ten times the rate of Whites. It’s widely reported that 35% of black children grades 7-12 have been suspended or expelled at some point in their school careers compared to 20% of Hispanics and 15% of Whites. So what? Well that’s the actual progress in establishing racial fairness that has been made in American during the last several decades. The majority that Justice Sotomayor calls out is insulated or detached and apparently unable to see the broad picture in terms of our history or past their living rooms walls and further than their television sets. Those six justices and the author of WSJ opinion piece fail also to recall that protecting minorities from oppression by the oppressive majorities is part of the fabric of our founding ideals. Racism is alive and well. Bigots are not just occasional cranks–it’s not just the moocher rancher in Nevada or the twisted NBA franchise owner in Los Angeles. Racial bias still permeates everyday America, and when you look at the criminal justice system it’s like mounting a slice of America on a wet-slide to put under a microscope. Look objectively. Shuck your defensiveness and ideological agendas, the fashionable labels of liberal and conservative once unencumbered you too see the effects of racism in action as played out in our schools and our courts. The biggest change in racism from 1960 to today is that we give equality lip service and racial bias has been camouflaged. The majority via Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action simply yields to ocholcracy because in their myopia, they see racism as a problem of the past and now solved. What’s next? Perhaps allowing other states to reestablish segregated schools on ballot initiatives? It’s a slippery slope when the Court abandons principal.
On Ochlocacy, See John Adams, A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, Vol. 3 (London: 1788), p. 291
—
WILLIAM L. JOHNSON Replied:
Michael,
You have no clue. The incarceration rate among blacks is because they COMMIT CRIMES! Have you ever been in the hood….at night? In Chicago, there are 20-30 shootings PER NIGHT on the weekends and 5-15 during the week. And that’s only the ones that hit someone. These black youth that you believe have been “railroaded” into jail, they have rap sheets a mile long……..literally, 4 to 8 PAGES of crimes that they have been convicted of before they are 21. I have 2 good friends who work in the system: a DA and a PO. I get to hear these stories all the time. How about the one with the liberal, lenient judge who lets off the 18 yr old defendant with only probation even in the face of a long rap sheet, and he gets rearrested within an hour because HE BROKE INTO THE JUDGE’S CAR TO STEAL HIS LAPTOP AND RADIO!
And I live in a retirement city, not an urban center
—
Stephen Carroll Wrote:
(4) Sotomayor should step down. She has shown a level of bigotry that can no longer be tolerated in our country. We must end the hate in our country that this woman of the past has exposed in her thoughts. Obama is right. If you want to see just how ignorant a person is just let them talk. Racism at any level is wrong and coming from the uneducated it is regrettable. Coming form the educated it is inexcusable. Her sin is worse because she knows better. A step backward not only for whites but for blacks. All men are created equal. You cannot punish the sons and daughters for the sins of their parents. Obama, Holder and now Sotomayor have added mightily to racism. Are there any liberals of good heart or are you all blinded by your hate
—
Douglas Oglesby Wrote:
.The Wise Latina was a leader in the National Council of La Raza. Ginsburg, the other dissenter, was general counsel of the ACLU. Ideology and, at least in Sotomayor’s case, outright racism trump objective legal analysis every time.
< “More fundamentally,” Justice Sotomayor wrote, the plurality “ignores the importance of diversity in institutions of higher education and reveals how little my colleagues understand about the reality of race in America.”>
Is there any evidence that diversity as practiced by elite schools such as the University of Michigan, i.e. admitting minority students with lesser academic qualifications in the interest of “diversity,” actually benefits minorities who would not have gained admission on their merits? Is there any evidence that such students would not have been better served (e.g., higher graduation rate, success in STEM programs) in different universities that would have accepted them without racial preferences? Won’t the accomplishments of minorities admitted to elite universities on their merits be diminished because such universities also admit minorities with lesser qualifications?
How do Sotomayor and Ginsburg explain the academic success of Asian students, recalling that Asians were the victims of rampant racism (e.g., Chinese laborers in California goldmines and railroad construction in the mid – late 1800s, internment of Japanese in WWII)? Prior to the passage of California’s Prop 209, the number of Asians admitted to the UC system was cut back from what their number would have been under a race-neutral admission policy because their admission rate based on merit would have been vastly disproportionate to their representation in the overall CA population. Even today, whites are third in representation in the UC schools (36% Asian, 29% Hispanic, 27% white). Would the dissenters agree whites should be entitled to preferential admission?
—
Steve Haynes Wrote:
We are fortunate that in this case, the Supreme court made the right decision, however we all know it seems to be hit or miss.
The bigger point is that our court is being used to make moral decisions and impose a social direction for our country. You can see how upset Sotomayor was for losing this opportunity. These people were not elected yet our country waits with baited breath for every decision they make. The framers never intended the courts to be used in this manner.
Obama and Dems are continuing to pack the courts so this avenue will no longer be an outlet of justice. Soon the Scalias and Thomases will be gone – they last bastions of our constitution. The lower courts are already filled with Sotomayors and Kagans – they legislate through emotion and agenda, there is no rule of law anymore. This is why Harry Reid went nuclear – no more objection to judges.
Our country is in dire need of citizens that are involved and active. Federal involvement is not enough, acting locally is critical – the leaders of tomorrow come from smaller government in state and city locations.
We are in a dangerous place, but through the citizenry things can change if we work together
—
John Kelly Wrote:
Explaining Sotomayor’s opinion, Henninger said, “The voters’ ban eliminated the Regents’ policy and therefore [quoting Sotomayor] ‘burdened racial minorities.’ ” Any elimination of governmental privilege, whether that privilege is earned or unearned, “burdens” the formerly privileged. As Justice Sotomayor uses this arguement, she sides with former slave owners, who felt themselves unfairly burdened when the slaves were freed.
—
Scott Horsburgh Wrote:
Here’s a radical idea. Instead of “affirmative action” based on race, why not give an additional boost to students who overcome adversity (poverty) and achieved anyway? Isn’t that what we should be trying to accomplish, give the benefit of the doubt to a kid that just missed the cut at an elite university, but didn’t have the advantage of living in an upper-middle or high income household? Is a poor white kid less deserving of a hand up than a minority kid from a high-income family?
—
Anthony Brunsvold Replied:
Why is diversity merely skin deep?
Wouldn’t many of these same institutions benefit if they out reach to poor rural whites for example? Based on my experience most of the people at institutions of higher learning have not had much experience like them nor come from that background. Such whites could bring insights and experiences that are rather new to many on the college campus. Yet, for all the discussion of diversify one never hears about this kind of out reach.
Oh, based on my experience my guess is the answer (and it is a guess since I don’t know you personally) is that the Paula Dowlings of the world don’t mind their sons and daughters hanging out with a black liberal, a Hispanic liberal…. but to hang out (much less marry) a hick would be too much.
Liberal bigotry tends to just take on different forms but make no mistake it still exists
—
Richard Davidson Replied:
It benefits society when fairness in hiring, housing, education, and everything else is the norm.
They said during the enactment of the Civil Rights Act that you could not legislate morality. We can, and we did. That is what George F. Will, the conservative commentator, said on an ABC This Week roundtable.

 The Science Delusion

The Case for Nationalism

Click here for a pdf version
By John O’Sullivan    March 21, 2014
(Trying to abolish or replace the nation-state is almost certain to produce more evils than it deters. )

Incessant “antifascist” propaganda from Moscow, baseless claims of attacks against Russians in Ukraine, incitement of Russian-speakers in eastern Ukraine, Russian troops without insignia seizing official buildings in Crimea, a stage-managed illegal plebiscite there and then its annexation by Russia, assurances from President Vladimir Putin that he has no further territorial designs in Europe (though, alas, he may be forced to intervene elsewhere to protect ethnic Russians)—yes, it all has the disturbing ring of the 1930s.

Isn’t this where nationalism leads—to fascism and war?

That is a common interpretation of Europe’s recent crises. It is also, coincidentally, Mr. Putin’s interpretation of events in Ukraine, which he blames on neo-fascist followers of the nationalist leader Stepan Bandera, who was murdered by the KGB in 1959. But this view is really too simple by half.

Nationalists are certainly implicated in the Ukraine crisis, but more as victims than perpetrators. The crisis began as an attempt by Moscow to rescue its stillborn concept of a Eurasian Economic Union by forcing Ukraine to join it and to reject associate membership in the European Union.

Mr. Putin, who isn’t a nationalist (see below) but the ruler of a shaky multinational empire hostile to nationalism, sparked off the crisis by closing Russia’s borders to Ukraine’s agricultural exports. He did so to compel a reluctant President Viktor Yanukovych to abandon the more popular EU option.

The Ukrainian government, encouraged by Mr. Putin, unified the assorted democrats, nationalists and activists of the left and the right who protested this move by firing indiscriminately on them. Mr. Yanukovych’s power crumbled almost visibly; he fled; and a new Ukrainian government that includes nationalists took over.

Nationalism was thus one impulse in this general movement. Others were love of freedom, desire for a more democratic system, economic hopes for greater prosperity through ties to Western Europe and simple human decency. The Ukrainians inspired by these aims have just sustained an (inevitable) defeat in Crimea, but they still govern most of Ukraine, which is now escaping from Moscow’s post-Soviet institutions. While that remains the case, Mr. Putin has suffered a reverse overall.

If Ukrainian nationalists have been reactive, even victimized, in this crisis, what about Mr. Putin himself? His actions have certainly been objectionable—ruthless, aggressive, deceitful, illegal, repressive, subversive. But to describe them as “nationalist” is to reduce the concept of nationalism to a politics of aggressive self-assertion. There is no reason to suppose that nations and nation-states are more prone to indulge in such folly than are federations, empires or states founded on nonnational principles.

Mr. Putin has indeed acted ruthlessly of late, but he has done so in the service of what he sees as clear state or even personal interests, not from a commitment to Russian peoplehood.

The history of the 1930s is instructive for making the necessary distinctions here. World War II began as the result of a conspiracy by Hitler and Stalin—the Nazi-Soviet Pact—to invade Poland and divide Eastern Europe and the Baltic states between them. Nazi Germany was a state built upon the ideology of racial nationalism (which places race above nationhood), the Soviet Union upon the ideology of proletarian internationalism (which rejects nationalism entirely). Both acted far more brutally and unrestrainedly than any conventional nation-state of the period.

Besides, today’s Russian Federation is itself not a nation-state but an empire. Mr. Putin’s conduct of the crisis, in addition to being aggressive, might best be described as imperialist or neo-imperialist, not nationalist. We should not illegitimately associate the nation-state with crimes that aren’t uniquely nationalist and may even be less likely to be committed by stable nation-states.

This matters because nationalism is an increasingly necessary word that is too often misused as a term of abuse. Nationalisms and nationalist movements are popping up all over Europe. These can take very different forms: left, right and ambivalent. Some are straightforward secessionist movements, like the nationalist parties in Scotland and Catalonia, striving to establish new states rooted in historic nations. Others are movements resisting further integration of their existing nation-states into the European Community, such as the True Finns party in Finland and the U.K. Independence Party in Britain.

Still others want to protect the nation and its distinctive political spirit (the National Front in France), or the welfare state (the Danish People’s Party in Denmark) or “liberal values” (the Party of Freedom led by Geert Wilders in Holland) that each feels is threatened by mass immigration. Even the mercifully cautious Germans have the Alternative for Germany party, which, though not avowedly nationalist, emits a distinctively postwar German anti-Euro economic nationalism—and should probably be renamed the Alliance of Patriotic Bankers.

Most of these parties, which didn’t exist 20 years ago, are now represented in Europe’s parliaments. They are expected to do well in May’s elections. They probably won’t win power or enter government, but they force mainstream parties to deal with such issues as the loss of national sovereignty.

In the eyes of Europe’s various political and cultural establishments—what the British call the Great and the Good—none of this should be happening. It is akin to water running uphill. For several decades now, we have heard from these precincts that the nation-state is on its way out, losing power upward to supranational institutions and downward to organized minority groups. Behind their hands, the critics of resurgent nationalism murmur that it is nothing but xenophobia, authoritarianism or even fascism, in folkloric drag. They see Europe’s rising nationalist parties as the preserve of bitter losers or those in the grip of nostalgia.

Herman Van Rompuy, the president of the European Council, expressed this view perfectly in 2010 when he announced for the umpteenth time that the nation-state was dead, adding: “The biggest enemy of Europe today is fear; fear leads to egoism, egoism leads to nationalism, and nationalism leads to war.”

This pronouncement didn’t foresee Mr. Putin’s recent actions. But it illustrates nicely how Europe’s political elites see events like the Ukraine crisis in the distorting mirror of anti-nationalism. This view persuades them to consider nationalism a threat, but a dying one. And it is, quite simply, wrong on both counts.

A practical refutation of this view lies in the fact that there are more nation-states in the world today than ever before. They have multiplied since 1945 in two great leaps forward: the decolonization period of the 1950s and 1960s, and the years following the dissolution of communism in 1989 and 1991. Some of these nations gained their independence, alas, by war and revolution—Zimbabwe, Croatia, Bosnia, Kosovo. Others did so by peaceful negotiation. Most former British colonies and Soviet republics took this route, but the most significant example of it is the “velvet divorce” that produced successful Czech and Slovak states.

This upsurge of nationhood might be dismissed as a detour on the high road to global governance if the establishment view of nationalism weren’t so absurdly crude. It elides vital distinctions and treats all forms of national loyalty as if they were the most aggressive and exclusivist type. In reality, the full spectrum of nationalist loyalties runs roughly as follows: from Nazism, which is totalitarian racial nationalism; to fascism, which is authoritarian and aggressive nationalism; to ethnic nationalism, which is exclusivist, treating ethnic minorities as second-class citizens (if that); to civic nationalism, which opens full citizenship to all born in the national territory in return for their loyalty to the nation and its institutions; and finally, to patriotism, which is that same national loyalty plus simple love of country—its scenery, its sights and sounds, its characteristic architecture, its songs and poems, its people, its wonderful familiarity.

Here, for instance, is George Orwell, perhaps the most famous critic of nationalism, upon returning to southern England from Spain: “Down here it was still the England I had known in my childhood: the railway-cuttings smothered in wildflowers, the deep meadows where the great shining horses browse and meditate, the slow-moving streams bordered by willows, the green bosoms of the elms, the larkspurs in the cottage gardens; and then the huge peaceful wilderness of outer London, the barges on the miry river, the familiar streets, the posters telling of cricket matches and Royal weddings, the men in bowler hats, the pigeons in Trafalgar Square, the red buses, the blue policemen—all sleeping the deep, deep sleep of England.”

England has changed since then, of course; men no longer wear bowler hats. But it would be as absurd to condemn such a tender patriotism as likely to lead to fascism as it would be to abstain from all interest in sex on the grounds that it might lead to promiscuity. Ordinary people, attached to reality as they must be to survive, feel exactly that sense of absurdity when they hear statements like Mr. Van Rompuy’s.

But that hasn’t hitherto affected their political behavior. Why have they suddenly begun thinking and voting in line with such sentiments?

One obvious reason is that all the ideological rivals to patriotism have been largely discredited. Orwell pointed out that those who abandoned patriotism generally adopted a more virulent ideological substitute. In our day, the most obvious rival ideologies are Europeanism in Europe and multiculturalism in the U.S., both of which seek to weaken national patriotism to change the political character of their societies.

Scots who hope to break away from the U.K. rally in Edinburgh in September 2013, a year before a scheduled referendum on independence for Scotland. Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

But neither of these creeds has yet become more than a niche loyalty, even though they enjoy lavish official support and the sympathy of those government officials, international bureaucrats, NGO executives, “denationalized” corporate managers and academics ambitious to be the vanguard of the new or transformed nation. Old-fashioned patriotism survives, perhaps weakened by such defections, but not seriously challenged. It remains in the shadows until tempted into the open by a 9/11, or an anniversary of D-Day or the funeral of a Margaret Thatcher. It is then suddenly recognized as the sentiment of most of the nation.

Until recently, those voters for whom patriotism and the national interest were determining issues found comfortable homes in parties of both the left and the right. But that has gradually ceased to be true.

As parties of the left swapped their working-class identity for that of middle-class liberalism, they began to think patriotism vulgar, cheap and xenophobic. At the same time, mainstream parties of the right drifted unthinkingly into a posture that treated nationalist and socially conservative voters as somewhat embarrassing elderly relatives whose views could be safely ignored. Party leaders reasoned that their atavistic voters had nowhere else to go.

The result can be seen most dramatically in Britain, where the U.K. Independence Party, having secured its base among traditional middle-class Tories, is now harvesting new votes from patriotic blue-collar Laborites. But one can see similar outcomes throughout Europe.

Another factor in this resurgence is a change of intellectual fashion toward bigness. Fewer people in all classes are still confident that the future belongs to the big battalions. They have noticed that smaller states are likely to be richer, easier to manage and closer to the people than larger states. As the Economist magazine pointed out a few years ago: “Of the 10 countries with populations of over 100 [million], only the U.S. and Japan are prosperous.”

These economic facts remove an important obstacle to secession. And if there ever was a link between prosperity and bigness, it has been dissolved by free trade and globalization, which ensure that the size of a nation need no longer coincide with the size of the market open to it. At the same time, a government can shrink to the size that its citizens find most convenient to control.

The U.S. is the exception to these rules—it is both large and prosperous—because its federalism distributes power to states and localities, where it can be better controlled. Switzerland is another example. Europe might imitate America’s success if it were to model itself on Switzerland and distribute power downward. But the opposite is happening—in both Europe and America.

A final brief argument is perhaps the strongest: Nation-states are an almost necessary basis for democracy. A common language and culture, a common allegiance to national institutions, a common sense of destiny, all within a defined territory, with equal rights for all citizens—these seem to be the conditions that enable people with different opinions and interests to accept political defeat and the passage of laws to which they strongly object. There are a few exceptions to this rule—India, Switzerland—but many more confirmations of it.

None of these many considerations justify supporting nationalism as a universal principle of statehood. There is no such principle. States rooted in ideas as different as popular consent and the dynastic principle have been handed down to us by history. Wholesale reconstruction of them is utopian and nearly always fails. The best we can hope for is to improve them by piecemeal reform along the grain of their history.

But trying to abolish or replace the nation-state is almost certain to produce more evils than it deters. The lesson of recent history is that nationalism is here to stay—and that secure, stable and satisfied nation-states are likely to want friendship with neighboring countries rather than their conquest. Wise political leaders anxious for peace will concentrate on shaping their people’s nationalism into an amiable patriotism rather than on submerging it in a new sovereignty and driving it toward its darker manifestations.

Mr. O’Sullivan is director of the Danube Institute in Budapest and a senior fellow of the National Review Institute in New York.
— —
Jason C. Taylor   Fayetteville, N.C.
John O’Sullivan’s positive case for nationalism rooted in patriotism flies in the face of conventional wisdom and a powerful trend toward global governance in the West, but it was wonderful to read his heretical challenge to internationalist orthodoxy (“The Case for Nationalism,” Review, March 22). Academics interested in transforming nations tend to gloss over the fact that aggressor countries in World War II—Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union and Imperial Japan—were the nations with the biggest, most powerful central governments. Their messianic missions, driven by racial purity or collectivist ideology, were possible only with authoritarian or totalitarian regimes unchecked by voters and democratic institutions.

As patriotism has become the domain of narrow-minded, right-wing extremists in the U.S. (according to leftist elites), we may forget that the overwhelming desire of most “extremist” patriots is to shrink our federal government and return power to state and local governments and individuals. There is a distinct (and potentially dangerous) isolationist streak in the conservative movement that wants a stronger national defense, but only for defense, not for intervention in world affairs. But the underlying logic of the conservative isolationist streak is peace through strength.

If most of the world’s bloodiest confrontations in the past century are attributable to very powerful, non- or faux-democratic central governments, why in the world does it make sense to elevate and consolidate governance in global bodies that have little or no accountability to an electorate? The leftist goal to extinguish nation-state loyalties in favor of a commitment to an international ruling body of elites is mind-bogglingly naive. As Mr. O’Sullivan eloquently explains, nationalism is a unifying and positive sentiment in societies that cannot or do not let their government bureaucracies grow too big.

David Gallup
President and  General Counsel , World Service Authority , Washington
The case for nationalism dependent on “secure, stable and satisfied nation states” and “wise political leaders” is flawed. More than 70% of the world’s population lives in nations that aren’t stable or whose political leaders don’t respect human rights.

World law reaffirmed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights provides a framework for global peace that is not dependent on allegiance to nation-states. Without a global legal framework, “amiable patriotism” cannot prevent nations’ “darker manifestations.”

Ronald J. Glossop   St. Louis
Mr. O’Sullivan seems not to understand that federations can be a way of preserving nations and nation-states while maintaining peace by subordinating them to a higher centralized authority. He seems to think that one must choose between having small, good nation-states and large, bad ones. He regards the U.S. and India as exceptional rather than as large federations that could act as guides for the future.

The continuing integration of the peoples of planet Earth will eventually lead to a democratic world federation that ends global anarchy while preserving nation-states and internal autonomous provinces as subordinate entities. It will produce world peace and a readiness to deal seriously with global problems, something thwarted now by unlimited national sovereignty. Loyalty to the nation and to the nation-state won’t be eliminated, but it will be subordinated to loyalty to humanity, “humatriotism.”

Basil Coukis :
As of right now, tail-chasing circumlocution in the article has inspired more than a hundred impassioned comments, many of them quoting Wikipedia and other high authorities. No need for scholarship. Human nature is not complicated.

The human condition is one of war of everyone against everyone else. Since the many always overwhelm the few, an individual is advised to seek out other individuals and form a temporary alliance with them. The alliance can then fight everyone who is not part of the alliance.

Alliances are formed by those who share the belief that if someone has to die, it is preferable that this be our neighbor. To ensure that we all understand this requires that we can talk among ourselves. Hence, the first condition for any effective alliance is a common language.

The second condition is to justify why our neighbors must die so that we live. Realizing that our alliance contains sensitive souls who abhor armed conflict, we resort to arguments attractive to sensitive souls. Which is to say, metaphysical ones. We loudly proclaim that we deplore violence, that the mere thought of war is repulsive to us, that we shall never wage war unless we are forced into it, that if we are forced into it we shall prevail because we are not fighting to oppress but to bring peace on earth and goodwill to all living creatures. In fact, we fight this war to end all war. More specifically, we fight this war to make the world safe for democracy. Obviously, the uses of metaphysics in the fabrication of alliances are considerable.

But one problem lurks. Size of the alliance. The bigger the alliance, the greater the temptation to enlarge it further. Soon enough, it may contain groups which do not speak the same language and do not subscribe to the beliefs and superstitions of the founding members. Past a certain size, all alliances become impotent and fall apart. In short, viable alliances must be ethnically, linguistically and doctrinally homogeneous.

NATO is not.  Russia is.

ROBERT WOLFF:
“The Gun Is Civilizing”  By Maj. L. Caudill USMC (Ret)

“Human beings only have two ways to deal with one another: reason and force . If you want me to do something for you, you have a choice of either convincing me via argument, or force me to do your bidding under threat of force. Every human interaction falls into one of those two categories, without exception. Reason or force, that’s it.

“In a truly desirable, moral and civilized society, people mainly interact through persuasion . Force has no place as a valid method of social interaction, and a thing that removes force from the menu is the personal firearm, as paradoxical as it may sound to some.

“When I carry a gun, you cannot deal with me by force. You have to use reason and try to persuade me, because I have a way to negate your threat or employment of force .

“The gun is the only personal weapon that puts a 100-pound woman on equal footing with a 220-pound mugger, a 75-year old retiree on equal footing with a 19-year old gang banger, and a single guy on equal footing with a carload of drunk guys with baseball bats. The gun removes the disparity in physical strength, size, or numbers between a potential attacker and a defender.

“There are plenty of people who consider the gun as the source of bad force equations. These are the people who think that we’d be more civilized if all guns were removed from society, because a firearm makes it easier for a [armed] mugger to do his job. That, of course, is only true if the mugger’s potential victims are mostly disarmed either by choice or by legislative fiat – it has no validity when most of a mugger’s potential marks are armed.

“People who argue for the banning of arms ask for automatic rule by the young, the strong, and the many, and that’s the exact opposite of a civilized society. A mugger, even an armed one, can only make a successful living in a society where the state has granted him a force monopoly .

“Then there’s the argument that the gun makes confrontations lethal that otherwise would only result in injury. This argument is fallacious in several ways. Without guns involved, confrontations are won by the physically superior party inflicting overwhelming injury on the loser.

“People who think that fists, bats, sticks, or stones don’t constitute lethal force, watch too much TV, where people take beatings and come out of it with a bloody lip at worst. The fact that the gun makes lethal force easier, works solely in favor of the weaker defender, not the stronger attacker. If both are armed, the field is level.

“The gun is the only weapon that’s as lethal in the hands of an octogenarian as it is in the hands of a weight lifter. It simply would not work as well as a force equalizer if it wasn’t both lethal and easily employable. Our social structure can help by finding effective ways to prevent ownership or ownership privileges (concealment, etc) by felons (untrustworthy) or mentally disturbed (incapable) individuals to the best of its ability.

“When I carry a gun, I don’t do so because I am looking for a fight, but because I’m looking to be left alone. The gun at my side means that I cannot be forced, only persuaded. I don’t carry it because I’m afraid, but because it enables me to be unafraid. It doesn’t limit the actions of those who would interact with me through reason, only the actions of those who would do so by force. It removes force from the equation… which is why carrying a gun is a civilized act. ”

The problem is that loss of ethical protocols and the “amoral revolution” put the solutions into the realm of force since institutions no longer recognize Balance of Power as a desirable status quo. When is all about winning in an environment where there are no constraints on the means of competition then the only other choice is force – and an arms race at all levels of society.

Peter Borregard Replied:
Sigh. The fictional Maj. Caudill again.
This was written by author and blogger Marko Kloos. As much as I enjoy his writing, he is setting up a false dichotomy. It isn’t force or reason. It’s force or persuasion. Maybe by reason, maybe not.

Emmanuel Goldstein Wrote:
.>> Nation-states are an almost necessary basis for democracy. A common language and culture, a common allegiance to national institutions, a common sense of destiny, all within a defined territory, with equal rights for all citizens—these seem to be the conditions that enable people with different opinions and interests to accept political defeat and the passage of laws to which they strongly object. <<
Borders – Language – Culture
It doesn’t get much simpler than that.

ROBERT WOLFF Replied:
James,

You are missing Capitalism, which is also an internationalist system, based on world rule by capitalist institutions. The despotism of the international banks that control world governments can be compared to the despotism of allied world governments under Communism that control world financial institutions.

The issue is, “Which institution controls the other?” See http://www.amazon.com/The-End-Free-Market-Corporations/dp/B008D6SC9O – “The End of the Free Market: Who Wins the War Between States and Corporations?”

The ideal of Balance of Power, among institutions that provides checks and balances on the despotism of one institution over others whether it be a private or public institutions, means all institutions require the power not to seek monopolistic power but to maintain ethical relations with other institutions that have become despotic.

In the current case of Russian switch in their economic architecture to a political institution in control of banking institutions within their area of responsibility, versus allowing the despotism of the Western banking system to determine Russia’s future is really nothing more than Russia checking the power of the Western banking establishment (New World Order, supported by NATO) that has proven to be a poor partner to Russia since the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Russia actually has no choice but to establish an alternative Eurasian Economic Union backed by a unified military force of those member nations to combat the despotism of the NWO/NATO that refuses to admit Russia.

Nationalism is the counterforce to despotism by an internationalist institution that is destroying national governments and national economic societies worldwide. Thus nationalism can be a force for “Balance of Power” among institutions worldwide. Having read a number Putin’s writings, that is clearly his current philosophy.

Frank Pecarich Wrote:
The author says, “A common language and culture, a common allegiance to national institutions, a common sense of destiny, all within a defined territory, with equal rights for all citizens—these seem to be the conditions that enable people with different opinions and interests to accept political defeat and the passage of laws to which they strongly object.”

Compromise is only possible among competing interests when they can agree on an overarching goal. That has been impossible in the US. Citizens are deeply divided about who should get the benefits of government and under what conditions. This problem has been made extraordinarily difficult by the cultural diversity in the country. Many public policy analysts see no fix to that.

Dr. Byron Roth in his 2010 book “The Perils of Diversity: Immigration and Human Nature” argues that the debate over immigration policy in the Western world is critically uninformed by the sciences of evolutionary biology and psychology. In his work he examines the intersection between culture, genetics, IQ and society. Prominent among the fundamental features of human nature is a natural bias toward one’s own kind, making harmony in multi-ethnic, multi-cultural societies problematic at best. He says , “All historical evidence indicates that “diversity” is not a strength, and that blood is thicker than water. Ignoring such biological realities leads to failed social experiments that may cause great human suffering.”

Roth points out that “multiculturism denies historical and scientific evidence that people differ in important biological and cultural ways that makes their assimilation into host countries problematic. Frank Salter presents a powerful case for the adaptiveness of ethnocentrism. Different human ethnic groups and races have been separated for thousands of years, and during this period they have evolved some genetic distinctiveness. This genetic distinctiveness constitutes a storehouse of genetic interest

Morals and Markets

Armin Falk,  Nora Szech –  Abstract    Editor’s Summary   Click here for a pdf version

The possibility that market interaction may erode moral values is a long-standing, but controversial, hypothesis in the social sciences, ethics, and philosophy. To date, empirical evidence on decay of moral values through market interaction has been scarce. We present controlled experimental evidence on how market interaction changes how human subjects value harm and damage done to third parties. In the experiment, subjects decide between either saving the life of a mouse or receiving money. We compare individual decisions to those made in a bilateral and a multilateral market. In both markets, the willingness to kill the mouse is substantially higher than in individual decisions. Furthermore, in the multilateral market, prices for life deteriorate tremendously. In contrast, for morally neutral consumption choices, differences between institutions are small.

It is a pervasive feature of market interaction to impose costs on uninvolved third parties. Producing and trading goods often creates negative externalities, such as detrimental working conditions for workers, possibly associated with reduced life expectancy, child labor, suffering of animals, or environmental damage. People who participate in markets by buying such goods often seem to act against their own moral standards. The risk of moral decay through market interaction has been discussed in politics, ethics, and in the social sciences (1–7). Observing that with technological progress and the increasing ubiquity of market ideas, markets continue to enter further and further into domains of our social life (8), political philosopher Michael Sandel has recently reemphasized this critique, stating that “we have to ask where markets belong—and where they don’t. And we can’t answer this question without deliberating about the meaning and purpose of goods, and the values that should govern them” (9). The relationship between markets and values has received attention both in theoretical work (10, 11) and in empirical cross-sectional studies that compare the level of prosociality across different market societies and cultures (12–14). Identifying a causal effect of markets on values is difficult with cross-sectional or historical data, however, simply because institutions and values coevolve. Moreover, comparing values across societies implies comparing a set of multiple institutions at the same time with unknown and possibly interacting features. For example, markets are observed in very different legal systems, which renders the isolation of the effects of “markets” across societies extremely difficult. For these reasons, we implemented a controlled environment by randomly assigning subjects to different institutions. This allows identifying a causal effect of institutions on outcomes. Our evidence shows that market interaction causally affects the willingness to accept severe, negative consequences for a third party.

The Mouse Paradigm

Our paradigm for studying moral values and detrimental effects on third parties is the trade-off between a mouse life and money. In our main treatments, human subjects faced the decision to either receive no money and to save the life of a mouse, or to earn money and to accept the killing of a mouse. This paradigm involves a drastic and irreversible decision and is well suited for studying moral conflict: Although the content of morality is culturally determined and time and space contingent, there exists a basic consensus that harming others in an unjustified and intentional way is considered as immoral (15).

In all treatments of the experiment (16), which was approved by the Ethics Committee of the University of Bonn, subjects were explicitly informed about the consequences of their decision. They knew that their mouse was a young and healthy mouse, which in case it survived would in expectation live for about 2 years in an appropriate, enriched environment, jointly with a few other mice. For illustrative purposes, we presented to subjects the picture of a mouse on an instruction screen (fig. S1). The instructions informed subjects explicitly about the killing process, in case they decided to kill their mouse. The killing process was also shown in a short video that was presented to subjects (17).

The mice used in the experiment were so-called “surplus” mice: They were bred for animal experiments, but turned out to be unsuited for study, e.g., because some specific gene manipulation had failed. They were perfectly healthy, but keeping them alive would have been costly. Although it was true that the mice would live or be killed based on the decisions of subjects in the experiment, the default for this population of mice was to be killed, as is common practice in laboratories conducting animal experiments. Subjects were informed explicitly about the default in a postexperimental debriefing (18). Mice that were chosen to survive because of subjects’ decisions were purchased by the experimenters and kept in an appropriate, enriched environment. Thus, these mice survived precisely as stated in the instructions. As a consequence of our experiment, many mice that would otherwise have been killed right away were allowed to live for roughly 2 years.

Markets are institutions where sellers and buyers interact and can trade items. Trade occurs whenever a seller and a buyer agree on a price. For our main result, we analyzed three different conditions (see table S1): an individual treatment in which subjects decided between the life of their mouse and a given monetary amount, a bilateral trading market, and a multilateral trading market. Treatment assignment was random. The individual treatment serves as a benchmark and comparison standard for decisions made in markets. The bilateral market is the most basic form of a market situation with one buyer and one seller bargaining over prices in order to trade. In the multilateral market, many buyers and sellers potentially trade with each other. In comparing decisions from the individual treatment to decisions made in markets, we abstract away from the question of whether a good is priced at all. In all treatments, subjects could exchange life for money.

In the individual treatment, subjects faced a simple binary choice, labeled option A and option B. Option A implied that the mouse would survive and that the subject would receive no money. Option B implied the killing of the mouse and receiving 10 euros. This treatment informs us about the fraction of subjects who are willing to kill the mouse for 10 euros. One hundred and twenty-four subjects participated in this treatment.

To study markets, we implemented the so-called double auction market institution, which is widely used in economics to investigate market outcomes [for an overview, see (19)]. In the bilateral double auction market, one seller and one buyer bargained over killing a mouse for a total gain of 20 euros that the two parties could split up between themselves. The seller was endowed with a mouse. As in the individual treatment, he or she was explicitly told that the “life of the mouse is entrusted to your care.” Bargaining over the 20 euros was conducted during a continuous auction, i.e., buyer and seller could make as many price offers as they liked (16). If a buyer and a seller agreed on a trade, the buyer received 20 euros minus the price agreed upon. The seller received the price. In addition, the mouse of the seller was killed, reflecting a situation in which trade takes place to the detriment of a third party. If a seller or a buyer did not trade, earnings for both were zero and the mouse survived. A seller in the bilateral market was in the same situation as a subject in the individual treatment in that he or she could either refuse a monetary amount or accept a monetary amount and kill a mouse. Subjects were told that no market participant was forced to make price offers or to accept an offer, that their mouse would be killed only if a trade occurred, and that the mouse would survive if they decided not to trade. There were 10 trading periods. Seventy-two subjects participated in this treatment.

The multilateral double auction market treatment was exactly like the bilateral market treatment, except that in this condition seven buyers and nine sellers bargained over prices (16). The nine sellers were all endowed with one mouse each. Subjects on both sides of the market could make as many price offers as they liked. All subjects could accept a price offer from the other side of the market. Available price offers of both market sides were always shown on a screen. Once a price offer of a trader was accepted, trade occurred implying the killing of a mouse. Payoff consequences were identical to those of the bilateral market. There were 10 periods. We ran six sessions with a total of 96 subjects.

To allow for further analyses, we ran several additional treatments (for details see below). In the individual price-list treatment, we offered subjects a menu of prices to elicit the monetary amount needed to pay subjects to make them indifferent between killing and receiving money. To establish a benchmark in terms of how markets affect morally neutral values, we conducted an individual price-list treatment and a multilateral market treatment analogously to the mouse treatments, but for a consumption good. Finally, we ran two further control treatments based on the individual treatment. In sum, we ran nine treatments with a total of 787 subjects.

Our key hypothesis was that markets would display a tendency to erode moral standards, relative to individual decision-making, because of three essential features of market interaction. First, in markets, it takes two people who agree on trading to complete a trade, implying that responsibility and feelings of guilt may be shared and thus diminished (20, 21). Second, market interaction reveals social information about prevailing norms. Observing others trading and ignoring moral standards may make the pursuit of self-interest ethically permissible, leading further individuals to engage in trade. In addition, the mere existence of a market may provide social information about the appropriateness of trading, rendering the killing of mice more allowable (22, 23). Third, markets provide a strong framing and focus on materialistic aspects such as bargaining, negotiation, and competition, and may divert attention from possible adverse consequences and moral implications of trading (11, 24). In contrast to our market conditions, subjects in the individual condition do not interact with other subjects and therefore receive no social information, do not share responsibility if they trade, and are not exposed to a market framing.

These three features are present in all markets, even in simple bilateral markets. In addition, in the multilateral market with its presence of competing sellers, the notion of being pivotal may be diffused as well (25); unless a seller cares specifically about his own mouse, he may argue that if he does not trade his mouse with some buyer, another seller may conclude the trade with that buyer, selling and killing his mouse. This common feature of markets may make subjects feel less responsible, rendering it more difficult to sustain moral values even if values per se remain unchanged. In sum, we therefore expected a higher willingness to kill in the bilateral and the multilateral market compared to individual decision-making. In addition, owing to notions of being less pivotal, the killing rate was expected to be even higher in the multilateral than in the bilateral market. We further hypothesized that the decay of moral values would also be reflected in prices, such that mice would be killed for lower prices in the market treatments compared to the individual treatments. Finally, we studied markets where the cost of trading involves opportunity costs of consumption rather than moral costs. For these morally neutral consumption good markets, we hypothesized no decline of values through market interaction.

Markets Erode Moral Values

Figure 1 shows our main result. Given our interest in studying the effects of institutions on moral valuations in a given population, we compare the fractions of subjects who are willing to agree to the killing in the individual treatment, the bilateral market, and the multilateral market for monetary amounts below or equal to 10 euros (26). For both markets, fractions are calculated with the lowest prices accepted by sellers in actually concluded trades. We focus on lowest accepted prices to approximate from above sellers’ reservation values for killing a mouse.

Fig. 1.  Market interaction erodes moral values, relative to individually stated preferences: fractions of subjects who are willing to kill a mouse for monetary amounts below or equal to 10 euros in the individual treatment, the bilateral market, and the multilateral market. For both markets, fractions are calculated using the lowest prices accepted by sellers in actually concluded trades. Error bars show standard deviations at the means. Differences between the individual treatment and markets are significant at the 1% level. Individual versus bilateral market: P < 0.01, n = 160 (two-sample test of proportions). Individual versus multilateral market: P < 0.01, n = 178 (two-sample test of proportions). The difference between markets is not statistically significant.

In the individual decision treatment, 45.9% of subjects were willing to kill their mouse for 10 euros. In contrast, 72.2% of sellers in the bilateral market were willing to trade for prices below or equal to 10 euros. The increase in willingness to kill relative to the individual condition is statistically significant (P < 0.01, n = 160, two-sample test of proportions) (16). In the multilateral market, the willingness to kill was also substantially higher compared to the individual condition: 75.9% of sellers were willing to kill a mouse for less than or equal to 10 euros (P < 0.01, n = 178, two-sample test of proportions). This is actually a lower bound because in a given period, only seven of the nine sellers could trade at all.

To provide a more detailed understanding of the effects of markets on morals, we implemented an additional individual treatment, the individual price-list treatment. This treatment informs us about how much money subjects would need to receive in the individual condition to yield a similarly high killing rate as in markets. In this treatment, subjects faced an increasing price-list, which is a standard procedure for eliciting individual values and preferences in an incentive-compatible way. As in the individual treatment, subjects were shown a list of binary alternatives, labeled option A and option B. Option A implied that the mouse would survive and that the subject would receive no money. Option A was the same in each decision row. Option B implied the killing of the mouse and the receipt of a monetary amount. Monetary amounts associated with killing the mouse increased from row to row, starting from 2.50 up to 50 euros, in steps of 2.50. Subjects were informed that one choice situation would be randomly selected after all choices had been made. The choice in this situation would be implemented, including payment consequences and, in case option B had been chosen, the killing of the mouse. The switching point from option A to option B informs us about the minimum monetary amount that makes a subject willing to kill the mouse, i.e., the moral value attached to the life of the mouse. The earlier a subject switches, the less he or she values the life of his or her mouse relative to earning money. Despite differences in elicitation procedures, including randomness of the selected choice, the fractions of subjects willing to kill for 10 euros or less were almost identical between the individual and the individual price-list treatment (45.9 versus 42.7% of subjects, respectively; P = 0.636, n = 220, two-sample test of proportions) (fig. S2). Ninety-six subjects participated in the individual price-list treatment.

As shown above, in the bilateral trading market, 72.2% of sellers were willing to trade for prices below or equal to 10 euros. In comparison, in the individual price-list treatment, a similarly high willingness to kill (71.9%) was reached only for monetary amounts of 47.50 euros. Thus, it is necessary for subjects to receive considerably more money in the individual than in the market condition to observe a comparable willingness to kill. Turning to the multilateral market, a similar picture emerges. Here the killing rate was 75.9% for prices below or equal to 10 euros. A similar rate in the individual price-list treatment would require paying subjects monetary amounts above 50 euros. In line with our hypothesis, actual prices in the multilateral market were much lower than 10 euros, however (Fig. 2). The overall average price level was only 5.1 euros (27). In the individual price-list condition, the fraction of subjects who were willing to kill the mouse for 5 euros was only 34.4%. Thus, for prices that actually evolved in the multilateral market, the willingness to kill was much higher than in the individual price-list condition.

Fig. 2.  Evolution of trading prices in the multilateral mouse market and the multilateral coupon market (means over all trades). The downward trend in prices in the mouse market is significant (P = 0.006, n = 297, random effects regression). No significant price trend is observed in the coupon market (P = 0.319, n = 233, random effects regression).

The price-list treatment can also be used to illustrate the decay in valuations in terms of the predicted fraction of trade (16). Assuming that valuations in the price-list condition and the bilateral market were the same, we can use valuations from the price list to simulate the predicted trade probability in the bilateral market. The simulated trade fraction is 25.9%, which is in sharp contrast to the actually observed trade frequency of 47.7% in the bilateral market (P < 0.01, n = 168, two-sample test of proportions). This provides a further confirmation that valuations for mice have declined considerably.

Moral Versus Morally Neutral Values

The final step of the analysis compares decay in moral versus morally neutral values. We hypothesized that for moral values the decay is more pronounced than for private consumption values, where trading involves opportunity costs of consumption rather than costs to third parties. To test this, we ran two additional treatments, identical to the multilateral market and the individual price-list treatment but using consumption goods. The good we considered was a coupon that could be used to buy products at the merchandising shop of the University of Bonn (16). In both treatments, the price-list and the market treatment, subjects were endowed with a coupon. In case they accepted a monetary amount (in the price-list condition) or decided to trade (in the market condition), they had to return their coupon, which was then invalidated. Parameters, instructions, and procedural details were identical to the mouse treatments. Thus, consequences were similar in the mouse and the coupon treatments, except that in the latter, the cost of trading involved opportunity costs of consumption rather than moral costs, i.e., loss and invalidation of a coupon versus killing of a mouse.

To assess the effect of markets on moral versus private consumption values, we use valuations from the individual price-list conditions and compare them to valuations in the respective multilateral markets (16). The dependent variable is a subject’s minimum trading price. Running Tobit and interval regressions, we find that in the mouse treatments, there is a strong negative and statistically significant effect of market interaction. Thus, for a given monetary amount, subjects reveal a higher willingness to kill in markets than in the individual condition. For coupons, the effect of markets is much smaller and insignificant. We also find that the effects of markets differ significantly between mice and coupons (16). In addition, we observe a difference in the price dynamic between multilateral mouse and coupon markets (Fig. 2). In the mouse market, average prices start at rather low levels (compared to the individual condition) and decline from 6.4 euros in the first period to levels as low as 4.5 euros in the final period. This decline in prices is statistically significant (P = 0.006, n = 297, random fixed effects regression). The downward trend provides a further indication of moral decay in the mouse market and is suggestive of social learning and endogenous social norm formation. Intuitively, observing low trading prices in the market may make it normatively acceptable to offer or accept low prices as well (16). In contrast to the downward trend in prices in the mouse market, no significant price trend is observed in the coupon market (P = 0.319, n = 233, random fixed effects regression). The analysis thus reveals a systematic difference between markets involving moral versus morally neutral values: When identical procedures, parameters, and market institutions are used, moral values decline significantly more than values that are morally neutral.

Whereas prices decline in the multilateral mouse market, trade volumes in both bilateral and multilateral markets are constant across periods, suggesting that a number of subjects were not tempted to engage in trading. Apparently, markets did not erode values of all subjects (16). We speculate that subjects who refused to exchange money for mouse life at all may have followed a rule-based, e.g., Kantian, ethic: “… everything has either price or dignity. Whatever has price can be replaced by something else which is equivalent; whatever, on the other hand, is above all price, and therefore admits of no equivalent, has a dignity” (16, 28).

Robustness and Discussion

Three potential concerns may be raised with respect to our main finding. First, one could argue that we observe the main treatment effect because total surplus was greater in markets than in the individual condition (20 versus 10 euros). If traders dispose of social preferences, they may have cared not only about their own payoff but also attached some value to the payoff of the other trader (buyer). We therefore ran a control condition, which was identical to the individual condition but in which we introduced a second passive participant. One hundred and sixteen subjects took part in this control treatment, with 58 subjects participating in the role of active decision-makers. A passive participant received 10 euros if the active participant decided to kill the mouse (such that the death of a mouse generated a total surplus of 20 euros as in the market treatments). The observed fraction of killing among subjects in the active role is 44.8%. This fraction is significantly different from fractions in both market conditions (bilateral market, P = 0.009, n = 94, and multilateral market, P = 0.001, n = 112, two-sample test of proportions). Furthermore, this fraction is remarkably similar to the individual condition (P = 0.890, n = 182, two-sample test of proportions).

Second, subjects may have perceived killing the mouse as a side-effect of the act of trading in the market treatments, whereas in the individual treatment subjects may have perceived killing the mouse as a direct means to earn money. If this were the case, subjects may have found it more difficult to opt for killing in the individual treatment. We therefore ran another control treatment identical to the individual treatment but in which subjects could buy a lottery ticket for 2 euros. This renders it more likely that subjects perceive the mouse death as a side-effect of a buying decision. The lottery paid out either 10 or 15 euros, respectively, both with 50% probability. We chose an expected net value of 12.50 – 2 = 10.50 euros to compensate for possible risk aversion of subjects. If subjects bought the lottery ticket, a mouse got killed “as another consequence” of the buying decision, i.e., as a side-effect. Forty-three subjects participated in this additional control condition. Again, outcomes are very similar to those in the individual condition: 46.5% of subjects decided to buy the ticket accepting the killing of a mouse. This fraction is significantly different from fractions in both market conditions (bilateral market, P = 0.021, n = 79 and multilateral market, P = 0.003, n = 97, two-sample test of proportions). Unsurprisingly, the killing rate is not significantly different from the individual condition (P = 0.946, n = 167, two-sample test of proportions).

Third, let us comment on why we used the minimum trading price as our main dependent variable to assess a seller’s willingness to kill a mouse in markets [see also (16)]. Very likely, traders tried to negotiate higher prices than their reservation values to realize positive gains from trade. This should be the case for any market situation with information rents in which reservation values are private, as in our case. For example, a seller in the bilateral market with a reservation value of 5 euros is unlikely to actually trade at 5 euros. Instead, he should try to negotiate higher prices. We therefore think that concluded prices provide an upper bound for the sellers’ reservation values. One may also argue that using the minimum concluded price could bias results if sellers made mistakes, erroneously agreeing to trade at prices lower than they would have actually liked to accept. We believe that it is unlikely that traders made such mistakes, because trading involved a deliberate decision to either accept or make offers. Yet, accounting for this possibility, we also calculated median values of concluded trading prices below or equal to 10 euros. The corresponding killing fractions are 67% for the bilateral market and 76% for the multilateral market, very similar to the ones reported in Fig. 1. These fractions are statistically significantly different from the individual condition (P = 0.029 for bilateral market and P < 0.001 for multilateral market, two-sample test of proportions).

We stress another aspect of our results: following the methodological standards in experimental economic, it was essential to incentivize subjects’ decisions in the individual condition, i.e., subjects needed to receive money according to their decisions. Otherwise, a comparison with market outcomes would have been misleading. For subjects, it would be “cheap” to claim that they are moral if being moral costs nothing. The comparison of the individual treatment with markets did therefore not involve paying money versus not paying money. Yet, introducing a money prime may already lower moral standards, as several studies have pointed out. For example, it has been shown that material primes or labels reduce helpfulness or prosocial behavior and increase competitiveness (29–31) and that an economics background correlates with selfishness (32). Hence, the impact of markets on moral behavior may in general be even more pronounced than our study suggests.

We have shown that market interaction displays a tendency to lower moral values, relative to individually stated preferences. This phenomenon is pervasive. Many people express objections against child labor, other forms of exploitation of the workforce, detrimental conditions for animals in meat production, or environmental damage. At the same time, they seem to ignore their moral standards when acting as market participants, searching and buying the cheapest electronics, fashion, or food, and thereby consciously or subconsciously creating the undesired negative consequences to which they generally object. We have shown that this tendency is prevalent already in very simple bilateral trading where both market sides are fully pivotal in that if they refuse to trade, the mouse will stay alive. In markets with many buyers and sellers, diffusion of being pivotal for outcomes adds to moral decay. This “replacement” logic is a common feature of markets, and it is therefore not surprising that the rhetoric of traders often appeals to the phrase that “if I don’t buy or sell, someone else will.”

In the experiment, subjects were fully aware of the consequences of their decisions in that they could save the life of a mouse if they refused to accept a monetary amount. Our findings therefore suggest that appealing to morality has only a limited potential for alleviating negative market externalities. For example, anti–child-labor or environmental protection campaigns may not be that effective because markets for goods undermine the relevant social values. The results also suggest why societies do ban markets for certain “repugnant” activities (33). Historically, dispute about the marketability and the appropriateness of markets has led to some of the most fundamental upheavals within modern societies. For example, the abolishment of trading human beings was a major issue in the American Civil War. Martin Luther’s critique of the trade of indulgences, in which buyers and sellers exchanged money for the freedom from God’s punishment for sin, was a key element of the Protestant Reformation. Karl Marx’s idea that capital stock should not be tradable, that it must belong to the workers themselves, is a cornerstone of communist ideology. With the recent financial crisis, discussion has arisen about the appropriateness of markets for complex financial products like derivatives involving high risks. Stock traders have been criticized for riding bubbles and for cashing in short-term profits without thinking about possible negative long-term impacts on companies, as well as on society in general.

Markets have tremendous virtues in their capability to generate information about scarcity and to allocate resources efficiently. The point of this study is not to question market economies in general. Indeed, other organizational forms of allocation and price determination such as in totalitarian systems or command societies do not generically place higher value on moral outcomes (34). Furthermore, the development of a complex market structure may require and therefore correlate with the prevalence of moral and social values, such as trust and cooperativeness. Results confirming this intuition, in line with the Doux-commerce Thesis (35), are expressed, e.g., by Kenneth Arrow (36). However, focusing on the causal effects of institutions, we show that for a given population, markets erode moral values. We therefore agree with the statement quoted at the beginning that we as a society have to think about where markets are appropriate—and where they are not.

Supplementary Materials
www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/340/6133/707/DC1
Supplementary Text
Figs. S1 and S2
Tables S1 and S2
References (40, 41)

References and Notes
1.J. Barnes, Ed., The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation (Princeton Univ. Press, Princeton, NJ, 1984).
2.K. Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (Kerr, Chicago, 1904).
3.G. Simmel, The Philosophy of Money (Routledge, London and New York, 1990), chap. 5.
4.M. Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology (Univ. of California Press, Berkeley, 1978), chap. 7.
5.K. Polanyi, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time (Beacon, Boston, 2001).
6.S. Lukes, in Worlds of Capitalism. Institutions, Economic Performance, and Governance in the Era of Globalization, M. Miller, Ed. (Routledge, London, 2005), chap. 12.
7.A. Shleifer, Does competition destroy ethical behavior? Am. Econ. Rev. 94, 414 (2004).
8.↵ For an example of a new type of market, consider, e.g., Indian surrogate mothers bearing babies for U.S. families.
9.M. Sandel, in What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 2012), p. 202.
10.S. Bowles, Endogenous Preferences: The cultural consequences of markets and other economic institutions. J. Econ. Lit. 36, 75 (1998).
11.S. Bowles, Is liberal society a parasite on tradition? Philos. Public Aff. 39, 46 (2011).
12.J. Henrich et al., In search of Homo Economicus: Behavioral experiments in 15 small-scale societies. Am. Econ. Rev. 91, 73 (2001).
13.J. Henrich et al., Markets, religion, community size, and the evolution of fairness and punishment. Science 327, 1480 (2010).
Abstract/FREE Full Text
14.B. Herrmann,  C. Thöni,  S. Gächter, Antisocial punishment across societies. Science 319, 1362 (2008).
Abstract/FREE Full Text
15.J. Haidt, S. Kesebir, Morality, in Handbook of Social Psychology S. Fiske, D. Gilbert, G. Lindzey, Eds. (Wiley, Hobeken, NJ, ed. 5, 2010), chap. 22.
16.↵ See supplementary materials for details.
17.↵ Comparable demonstration videos showing the killing process are publicly available at laboratories conducting animal research. The video presented to subjects showed how mice are gassed.
18.↵ This information is irrelevant for the consequences of subjects’ decisions. If they choose to save their mouse, the mouse survives. If they decide to kill it, they receive money and the mouse is killed. We could have introduced another framing, informing subjects about the existence of “surplus” mice. Although this would not have changed any consequences, it may have changed the perception of the situation at hand, e.g., in line with evidence on the so-called omission-commission bias; see, e.g., (37).
19.↵ C. R. Plott, V. L. Smith, Eds., Handbook of Experimental Economics Results (Elsevier, Amsterdam, 2008), vol. 1.
20.B. Latané,  J. M. Darley, Group inhibition of bystander intervention in emergencies. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 10, 215 (1968).
21.B. Latané,  S. Nida, Ten years of research on group size and helping. Psychol. Bull. 89, 308 (1981).
22.U. Fischbacher,  S. Gächter,  E. Fehr, Are people conditionally cooperative? Evidence from a public goods experiment. Econ. Lett. 71, 397 (2001).
23.R. B. Cialdini,  R. R. Reno,  C. A. Kallgren, A focus theory of normative conduct: Recycling the concept of norms to reduce littering in public places. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 58, 1015 (1990).
24.E. Krupka,  R. A. Weber, The focusing and informational effects of norms on pro-social behavior. J. Econ. Psychol. 30, 307 (2009).
25.J. Sobel, Markets and Other-Regarding Preferences (Discussion Paper, Economics Department, Univ. of California, San Diego, 2010).

26.↵ Median and modal prices in the bilateral market are 10 euros. Of all trades, 80.7% were in the range of 9 to 11 euros. In the multilateral market, all prices were below or equal to 10 euros, with one exception of a price of 10.1 euros.
27.↵ The average price level in the bilateral market is 4.7 euros higher than in the multilateral market (P < 0.0001, n = 468, random fixed effects regression, with clustered standard errors on session level).
28.I. Kant, Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals (1785), L. Denis, Ed. (Broadview, Toronto, Canada, 2005), p. 93. 29.K. D. Vohs,  N. L. Mead,  M. R. Goode, The psychological consequences of money. Science 314, 1154 (2006).
Abstract/FREE Full Text
30.A. Kay,  C. Wheeler,  J. Bargh,  L. Ross, Material priming: The influence of mundane physical objects on situational construal and competitive behavioral choice. Organ. Behav. Hum. Decis. Process. 95, 83 (2004).
31.V. Liberman,  S. M. Samuels,  L. Ross, The name of the game: Predictive power of reputations versus situational labels in determining prisoner’s dilemma game moves. Pers. Soc. Psychol. Bull. 30, 1175 (2004). Abstract/FREE Full Text
32.R. Frank,  T. Gilovich,  D. Regan, Does studying economics inhibit cooperation? J. Econ. Perspect. 7, 159 (1993).  Search Google Scholar
33A. E. Roth, Repugnance as a constraint on markets. J. Econ. Perspect. 21, 37 (2007).
34.R. E. Lane, The Market Experience (Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, 1991).
35. Charles-Louis de Montesquieu, Adam Smith, and Thomas Paine all expressed the view that markets and social behavior go hand in hand (Doux-commerce Thesis); see (38).
36.K. Arrow (39) points out that markets may require high levels of “professional ethics” (p. 36) to perform complex transactions under private information.
37.M. Spranca,  E. Minsk,  J. Baron, Omission and commission in judgment and choice, . J. Exp. Soc. Psychol. 27, 76 (1991).
38.A. Hirschman, Rival interpretations of market society: Civilizing, Destructive, or Feeble? J. Econ. Lit. 20, 1463 (1982).
39.K. Arrow, The Limits of Organization (Norton, New York and London, 1974).
40.B. Greiner, An online recruitment system for economic experiments: Forschung und wissenschaftliches Rechnen. GWDG Bericht 63, Ges. für Wiss. Datenverarbeitung, Göttingen, 79 (2003).
41.U. Fischbacher, z-Tree: Zurich Toolbox for ready-made economic experiments. Exp. Econ. 10, 171 (2007).
42.Acknowledgments: We thank F. Kosse and S. Walter for excellent research assistance. For technical, programming, or administrative support, we thank in particular M. Antony as well as T. Deckers, U. Fischbacher, H. Gerhardt, B. Jendrock, J. Radbruch, S. Schmid, and B. Vogt. We also thank J. Abeler, K. Albrecht, S. Altmann, J. Costard, T. Dohmen, M. Gabriel, S. Gächter, H.-M. von Gaudecker, J. von Hagen, D. Harsch, P. Heidhues, D. Huffman, S. Jäger, S. Kube, G. Loewenstein, C. May, A. Oswald, F. Rosar, N. Schweizer, A. Shaked, G. Wagner, M. Wibral, F. Zimmermann, and participants at various seminars for helpful comments. Finally, we thank all students, colleagues, and post-docs for helping to run the experiments. We acknowledge financial support by the German Science Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) through the Leibniz Program. Data reported in the paper are available at www.cens.uni-bonn.de/experiments/falk-szech/. This study was approved by the Ethics Committee of the University of Bonn (reference no. 066/12).

— ——————————

Letters The Systematic Place of Morals in Markets—Response Armin Falk, Nora Szech
Science Vol. 341  no. 6147  p. 714  16 August 2013. Christoph Luetge and  Hannes Rusch

Research Article Morals and Markets Armin Falk, Nora Szech
Science 10 May 2013:  707-711.

In their Research Article “Morals and markets” (10 May, p. 707), A. Falk and N. Szech gave participants a choice between saving the life of a mouse and receiving money. The value of the mouse’s life was higher when participants sold it directly to the experimenter than when they bargained over the price with other participants.

For the particular comparison they draw between selling a mouse’s life directly and bargaining for it, the findings mark a substantial advance in experimental economics and experimental moral philosophy. We do not believe, however, that the general claim that “markets erode moral values” (p. 710) can be justified by this observation. The real-world examples of “immoral markets” chosen by the authors—slave trade and the sale of indulgences—are extreme cases. It is easy to find counterexamples in which markets lead to moral improvements. For example, as Falk and Szech acknowledge, replacing potentially arbitrarily acting private or state authorities with markets can benefit all affected parties (1, 2) and is a direct moral improvement. More important, free markets can sometimes even create incentives for their participants to morally improve, such as by yielding lower returns to vendors who discriminate against certain groups of customers (3, 4).

The moral consequences of real markets, we think, are mostly determined by the regulatory framework in which those markets are embedded (5, 6). Falk and Szech’s conclusions reach too far in that they claim to discuss “the market” without taking into account that different markets, while using the same mechanism of supply and demand, are subject to quite distinct rules.

Finally, Falk and Szech’s design, ingenious as it is, is unable to answer the crucial question: Which institutional alternative to markets would cause less moral erosion? Therefore, their critique of the market mechanism does not lead to any constructive policy recommendation.

Christoph Luetge,
Hannes Rusch

References
1W. L. Megginson,  J. M. Netter, J. Econ. Lit. 39, 321 (2001).
2R. A. Posner, J. Pol. Econ. 83, 807 (1974).
3G. Becker, The Economics of Discrimination (Univ. of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, 1971).
Search Google Scholar
4.O. Ashenfelter,  T. Hannan, Quart. J. Econ. 101, 149 (1986).
5.S. Storm,  C. W. M. Naastepad, Industrial Relations 48, 629 (2009).
6.M. Olson, The Logic of Collective Action (Harvard Univ. Press, Cambridge, MA, 1965).
Search Google Scholar
— —
Science 16 August 2013:  Vol. 341  no. 6147  p. 714
•Letters
The Systematic Place of Morals in Markets—Response

In our Research Article, we ran a series of controlled laboratory experiments and report a causal effect of market institutions on moral transgression. Our findings contribute to the literature on the malleability of morality in general and the effects of institutions on moral transgression in particular.

As we argue in our Research Article, we do not aim at questioning market economies per se. Markets often improve social welfare for market participants in efficiently allocating goods (1). Competition in markets may also pressure firms to reduce discrimination against certain groups of workers or customers (2). Our research interest, however, was not to study effects of markets on active market participants but on third parties—i.e., those who are not directly involved in market trading, and who potentially suffer from trade. Our study shows that market interaction reduces how people value harm and damage done to third parties.

To study how markets affect moral outcomes, we implemented bilateral and multilateral markets, using the double auction institution. This is a well-established and widely used market set-up in economics, which displays the positive properties of allocation mentioned above (3). We deliberately abstained from imposing additional regulatory details, to allow for more general conclusions. As is standard in economics, these markets are real, with real participants and real incentives. Thus, we are convinced that the chosen market institution is well suited for the research questions at hand.

We agree that our findings raise the pressing question of how to design policies that mitigate the problem of moral erosion in markets. This, however, requires a thorough understanding of the relevant underlying mechanisms, as we discuss in our Research Article. First, markets generate information about selling and buying behavior and thus provide systematic social information about prevailing norms. Second, because trading involves at least two parties, market interactions allow traders to share guilt associated with immoral outcomes. Third, in markets with many buyers and sellers, the notion of being pivotal is diffused: Traders may apply a “replacement logic” (4), telling themselves that if they do not trade, some other trader may. These mechanisms potentially play a crucial role not only in markets but also in many nonmarket contexts. For example, in group decision-making, sharing of guilt and diffusion of pivotality may contribute to moral transgression. In recent work, we used the same mouse paradigm and found causal evidence that the diffusion of pivotality in groups erodes moral behavior compared with individual decision-making (5).

We hope that our study laid ground for thinking about moral consequences of market interaction and that it will stimulate research on relevant mechanisms.

Armin Falk,  Nora Szech

Science 10 May 2013:  Vol. 340  no. 6133  pp. 707-711

References
1.K. Arrow, An Extension of the Basic Theorems of Welfare Economics (Univ. of California Press, Berkeley, CA, 1951).   Search Google Scholar
2.G. Becker, The Economics of Discrimination (Univ. of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, 1971).
Search Google Scholar
3.C. R. Plott,  V. L. Smith, Eds. Handbook of Experimental Economics Results (Elsevier, Amsterdam, 2008), vol. 1.    Search Google Scholar
4.J. Sobel, Markets and Other-Regarding Preferences (Discussion Paper, Economics Department, Univ. of California, San Diego, CA, 2010).    Search Google Scholar
5.A. Falk,  N. Szech, Organizations, Diffused Pivotality, and Immoral Outcomes (Discussion Paper, Centre for Economic Policy Research, London, 2013).    Search Google Scholar