Is Leviticus being Revived for a new Audience?

Everyone disagrees with Leviticus. Some because its moral strictures seem absurd, <insert example here>. Others, with a more complex perspective, due to their adherence to the tradition in which Leviticus plays a notable role, at least see the material in Leviticus as horribly outdated or somehow flawed. I would argue that this confusion is endemic to the field of "priestly writing."

One of the things that I have learned from working on "sin taxes" is that the priestly culture is still alive an well with us today. I am making a synthesis between priestly culture here and work by Peart and Levy on experts. (see a policy related application here or their scholarly work here). My basic model for thinking about this is a theory of hierarchy. Sin taxes build on the idea that people do not know how to choose for themselves. Much work has been done in psychology that supports the thesis, e.g. hyperbolic discounting. When it comes to the future, people discount the future heavily.

But what this allows are the same kinds of claims made by the priestly writers of Leviticus. For them both the reconciliation of the person to God as well as the reconciliation of the people of Israel to God were important aspects of founding the religion. The purity of culture that is at the end of both approaches to perfecting society is cut from the same cloth. While I certainly think that a priestly attitude is great for some, the disadvantages should be obvious. These can be summarized in two broad categories, degradation of self and degradation of the other.

Degradation of the self comes from thinking that one's own impulses are corrupt. What we learn from the behavioral literature is that people seem indifferent to their future selves. If we accept the findings of hyperbolic discounting, then we consider most actions people take towards self-indulgence to be irrational. But this faces a problem that has plagued economics since Bentham. There is no way to count the utils stimulated through irrational behavior. In fact, Bryan Caplan has suggested that irrational behavior itself generates utility. Even from a religious perspective coming to terms with man's fallen nature is important. The lesson is to recognize the process of perfection, not the achievement of it. What comes from trying to be perfect is the necessary disappointment of limited ability to do so. Here is where the state steps in. Since you want to change your behavior but lack the will, you will be protected from yourself through prohibitions, disfavored taxes, and administrative hoops forged in the name of libertarian paternalism. These administratively delivered self-denials are certainly part of the tool kit of reform, but why the one-size-fits-all approach?

Degradation of the other stems from this same process but calls on many more animal instincts. The tribal pull to want to extend our preferences to others helps to explain how our diets, our smoking choices, our retirement choices, and our sexual mores all become part of the public debate. What was good for us in reaching our own goals must be good for others, right? The problem is that with so many competing priorities for improvement, how do we narrow it down to a few categories? The economist wants to know how the marginal dollar is spent on improving behavior. Where should the emphasis be placed?

Inevitably the emphasis gets placed by those with the most voice. In a society where the priests have the most voice, the outcome looks like Leviticus.  In a society of politicians, how different is it? Our desire to think of our government as the rational embodiment of perfection is not all that different than the writers of Leviticus.  The groups may change over time, but I feel certain that in 3000 years our desire to perfect this society according to the moral dictates of the current group will be seen with equal reproach and disgust as their analogues in ancient history.  

More on Rules and a little on Bentham

Diana starts off the latest round of conversation talking about rules. I want to even take it back to a more basic point about rules.

What are rules designed to do?

If we proceed from a rule-utilitarian perspective than we have two routes to follow that I can think of. John Rawls has broken the path so well in terms of his reflexive equilibrium that many may only think of his approach, but I also want to consider a different approach that is less obvious. But first, we focus on Rawls.

The reflexive equilibrium is designed to produce rules that coincide with a desirable resulting state-of-the-world. Rules are adjusted like the throttle of a motor-bike to achieve the desired result. Each throttle is tuned to produce incentives necessary to reach the desired outcome. However, Rawls is not so naive as to not give us guidance as to what these throttles are aiming to achieve (his version of the teleos). The primary purpose is to achieve fairness and the possibility of allowing unfairness is only allowed in a dynamic context if the ultimate growth which results form the difference increases the least-well-off. Well certainly this changes the game for interpreting the rule-utilitarian approach. I defy you to find a better discussion of rule-utilitarianism than that which is surrounding the work of John Rawls. Even in economics, James Buchanan relies heavily on Rawls (both took Frank Knight very seriously, BTW). All of this is very rational and very optimistic about human reason. It also enshrines stability and order in rules.

Now that I have told you want is the standard approach to rule-utilitarianism, I want to go further. What I have discovered in reading late 18th and early 19th century texts is that before it was clarified by Rawls, some other thoughts were out there. The name of the game was to replace the interpretation of morality by clerics and create a secular basis for rationally articulating moral reasoning.

The work of the arch-utilitarian Jeremy Bentham is dripping with moral imagery while simultaneously dismissing rights-theory and organized religion. Bentham rejects what Hume would call superstition and enthusiasm, but he holds onto the subjective. [This last line is my own reading]. So what does a utilitarianism look like that includes this type of pursuit. It is something that is larger than the utilitarianism you have been taught was in Bentham.

For example: Bentham considers the question of committing suicide publicly when one's spouse dies. He considers the utility calculation for the individual to justify the position and to argue against it. Certainly the actor in question could be making an accurate representation of their decision, but also the person could feel as if society has put a great deal of pressure on them to do this. Barring an environment where we were clear about the person's actual intentions we would be against such a practice. We could assume society is implicitly compelling the act. However, were we to be convinced of the sincerity of their motivation to die with their spouse, we would be forced to stand aside and allow it to take place.

For a more pedestrian example, should people who borrow money be allowed to do so at high rates? They certainly are higher risk, but who if not the market should decide about the appropriate level of risk in a society (by bidding up returns)? Too many risk-lovers and the market becomes brittle. The 1997 Asian crisis is one concrete example of excessively brittle international relations. The US banking disaster in 2008 is another example of high risk. So what is a rule-utilitarian to decide? Why is it that Bentham breaks from other rule-utilitarians and critiques financial regulation (famously arguing that Smith's defense of usury laws was inconsistent with other parts of his own work)? Bentham believes that society progresses when people take risks. He also longs for more progress which he defines as a result of risk-taking. To use rule-utilitarianism as it is often used, to constrain growth in favor of stability, is to bias the result. There are types of rule-utilitarianism that favor risk, for example.

Ultimately, I want to construct an analysis of rule-utilitarians that distinguishes them according to their time-preference or preference for the status quo vs. progress. The results fly in the face of conventional left-right dynamics. For instance, social democrats and their penchant for redistribution implicitly believe in lower growth rates than do right wingers who are willing to embrace social mobility and high growth. I argue that the conservative / progressive dichotomy is reversed at least on this margin.

What say you?