A coda on values and incentives
A short follow-up to my last post on values vs. incentives and why pundits favor talking about the former rather than the latter. I see I wasn’t the only one to get exercised by Tom Friedman’s decline-of-values argument. It’s worth quoting Jonathan Bernstein’s observation about the proper way to think about sacrifice in political economy: ...
A short follow-up to my last post on values vs. incentives and why pundits favor talking about the former rather than the latter.
A short follow-up to my last post on values vs. incentives and why pundits favor talking about the former rather than the latter.
I see I wasn’t the only one to get exercised by Tom Friedman’s decline-of-values argument. It’s worth quoting Jonathan Bernstein’s observation about the proper way to think about sacrifice in political economy:
Friedman’s insistence that politicians ask for citizens to sacrifice… gives me an excuse to link back to and quote my theory that we need a chess model of sacrifice. As I said then, everyone understands that a sacrifice in chess is self-interested. There is no moral or character component to sacrificing a piece; it’s a good idea if it helps the player win, and a bad idea otherwise. No one analyzes a chess game by saying that the player lost, but at least she was willing to sacrifice her rook, or that he didn’t deserve to win because he was unwilling to sacrifice anything. It seems to me that we’d be better off if pundits talked about sacrifice in that way, rather than in the morally loaded fashion (which I think is similar to the misguided way that sacrifice is discussed in baseball) that Friedman favors. Oddly enough, I think that the chess model of sacrifice, even though it appears to be cold, calculating, and cynical, would yield a much more healthy view of the collateral costs in human suffering often involved in Friedmanesque calls for sacrifice.
I think Bernstein is right, but I will admit that this kind of frame has less political appeal than Friedman’s incorrect frame — which might be why we don’t see it all that often.
Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast. Twitter: @dandrezner
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