Economics As Storytelling

I often discuss the more or less explicit normative or ethical content of economics, and sometimes I delve into the positive, simple but false engineering models / “science” / math parts, but I rarely talk about the fabled “storytelling” bit. Let’s do that now.

I mentioned before there seems a split in economics between those engaged in an intellectual pursuit about variously ethics, empirical prediction, optimization problems, and those engaged in storytelling, convincing people of things via appealing stories. Life coach storytellers, for example, seem prevalent among academic economists in a business school context, who seem often to take as their objective more preparing and encouraging suits to do battle for profit in the marketplace than any more serious intellectual endeavor. The function of economic storytellers in a business school context seems to involve encouraging their charges to see business, markets, in a favorable light, play up the normative arguments in favor of their quest for profits and economic power. Other academic economists may also engage in storytelling simply as a means of transmitting or promoting personal normative or ethical views or biases, as a way to make their views appear intuitive to students, under the guise of serious academics. As ostensible scientists, engineers, mathematicians, ethical philosophers, one may suppose academic economists would strongly rebuff or refute any storytelling function, but I think you’ll find a great many embrace it, accept it as legitimate.

It’s interesting to me because flaws in the reasoning of anti-democracy bad economics in the conservative style may appear as problems to those with serious intellectual objectives, but not necessarily to the storytellers, who may have rather different objectives, goals. When it comes to storytelling, life coaching, cheerleading, entertaining, proselytizing, that sort of thing, one may naturally prefer a ripping yarn, a false or simplistic self-serving fable to complicated, troubling reality; one may value rhetoric over substance.

In some way, this seems related to the oft-heard but cultish objective of getting students to “think like economists.” Economists should have some awareness of economic theory, of course, but normal thinking is still meant to apply. The goal of economics should be to have people thinking normally, logically, rationally, being concerned about errors in reasoning, definitions, and so on, while addressing economic theory and economic issues. It’s not about having them think in some special way unlike others. This risible notion economists think in a special way that transcends how others think can be a rhetorical tool conservative economists use to dismiss often very relevant, if not always perfectly phrased, criticisms of economics, particularly the normative component.

Much is said on the normative versus positive distinction in economics in the context of the positive or logical structure and analysis of normative arguments and normative influences on positive models, theories, but one important context seems often ignored: storytelling. Economics may seem to present an incomprehensible stew of positive and normative, an arcane mix of science, engineering, math, ethics, and storytelling, but careful analysis may distinguish the various elements and unravel the web of rhetoric and nonsense it weaves. It’s more important now than ever to address these issues, as recent years bear testimony to the damage false, misleading interpretations of neoclassical welfare economics, interpretation for which it seems purpose built, can do to our democratic society. Learn about it.

Entitlements

Can we talk this week about the rhetorical use of the word “entitlement?” Seems to crop up now and then and I think it’s a good example of the misleading, selective perception sort of wordplay, often about distributional issues, conservatives tend to promote.

Much like “rights,” one can think about entitlements in either a legal or ethical context. A legal entitlement is based on laws established by government and enforced by courts. An ethical entitlement is something one may make up based on one’s own subjective ethical theorizing. An ethical entitlement cannot be enforced in a court of law unless it coincides with a legal entitlement, based most likely in a democracy on other people holding similar ethical views. They’re two very different things. Voters via our democratic government make laws relating to the definition, distribution, and use of economic power, markets, and more broadly allocation of scarce resources. Under those laws, people are legally entitled to various things. Those things are legal entitlements. If one enters into a contractual relationship with someone to do some work for some amount of pay, and one does the work, that pay becomes an entitlement. One is legally entitled to it. If the other party doesn’t cough it up, one may take them to court to collect. If dear old mum leaves one some money in her will, that’s a legal entitlement. If one doesn’t get the money, one may take the matter to court to get the money to which one is legally entitled. It doesn’t depend on what so and so thinks about it, one is legally entitled to it.

There’s a tendency in conservative ideology to use “entitlement” as a pejorative meant to apply only to laws they personally dislike, so for example, Social Security may be castigated as an entitlement, but not other things as inheritance, for example. The rhetorical intent seems to be to draw implicit parallels to people who feel “entitled” in the vernacular, who think they’re special, should have things they’re not actually legally entitled to or possibly not ethically entitled to under some ethical theory or other. That’s not an intellectually honest or sincere way of expressing normative opposition to particular legal entitlements. One should, if one likes, simply say something like, “I don’t feel Social Security as a program is ethically justified. I oppose it.” Castigating it on the grounds of its status as a legal entitlement is misleading because it raises the possibility one proposes legal entitlements, in general, are unjustified, perhaps because one rejects democracy, or perhaps government, law in general. This disappearing government act by which opposition to certain laws, policies, regulations, whatever, become misstated as a generalized opposition to democracy, government, law, and so on, is what I call “fake anarchism” and it’s a very common technique in conservative rhetoric. It’s more common in right wing rhetoric than in left wing rhetoric. For example, although a leftist may suppose some level of profit, wages, returns on stocks, inheritance, whatever, ethically unjustified, one rarely hears them castigating them as legal entitlements.

We have a legal system that governs the definition, distribution, use of economic power. People are legally entitled to things. If voters change laws, people may be legally entitled to different things. That’s how laws work. So, do you oppose entitlements? Or particular laws? Remember conservatives will rarely try to talk sincerely, clearly, honestly to avoid confusion, conflict. They’ll do the opposite of that. They’ll play word games, equivocate on terms, conflate issues, be tricksy. One must keep one’s wits about one when talking with them.

Addendum

A reader pointed out that in addition to the general legal right sense of “entitlement” I discuss here, another definition involves a particular variety of legal right involving a defined benefit to a member of a specified group, so simple equivocation on different definitions of the word “entitlement” or really even a sort of level issue may be involved here. However, as far as that second definition, as I’ve argued before, I would suggest there is little substantive difference between voters operating through democracy making laws relevant to more general definition and voters making laws relevant to the more specific definition. Actually, I suppose at another level, all legal entitlements give defined benefits to a member of some class of people. For example, inheritance laws are not set up on behalf of Mr. Joe Smith, or whoever, in particular. They relate to the class of people who meet certain criteria.