The Three Languages of Politics by Kling Arnold

Author:Kling, Arnold [Kling, Arnold]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2013-04-12T07:00:00+00:00

9. Using All Three Languages: Examples

One benefit of being able to understand all three languages of politics is that it becomes easier to recognize the reasonableness of the positions held by others. Those positions still may seem wrong, but it will be possible to understand where other people are coming from.

For example, consider immigration policy. Like many libertarians, I am in favor of open borders. From the freedom-coercion perspective, an open border gives the individual a choice about government. The more that people are denied that choice, the worse off they are. Consider North Korea, for example, where citizens are essentially prisoners of the regime.

In the case of the United States, I would like to see anyone be allowed to work here and to apply for citizenship. I see the employment relationship as a voluntary agreement that benefits both parties. I do not believe that one's ability to live and work in America should be impaired because you happen to have been born somewhere else.

Obviously, not everybody sees it that way. To a conservative, opening the U.S. border would invite our culture to be buried underneath a sea of alien values. It would be an open invitation to terrorists and other barbarian threats. National boundaries are an integral part of the traditional order, and the potential for disorder from tearing them down seems alarming.

To a progressive, the idea of aiding people who are oppressed in other countries has appeal. However, the United States already has an asylum program that is intended to accomplish that. Progressives worry that allowing more people to work here will drive down wages, adversely affecting an important oppressed group, namely low-skilled working people. Those of us on the open-borders side of the issue would argue that protecting American low-skilled workers makes life worse for the low-skilled workers who are not allowed to immigrate, but this argument does not really compute along the oppressed-oppressor axis.

Although I think that conservatives and progressives are both wrong on the issue, I think they are being reasonable. Given their respective concerns, their positions make sense.

Consider another difficult issue, that of determining the cause of the mortgage meltdown that produced the financial crisis of 2008. Each heuristic can provide a plausible explanation.

Progressives assign much of the blame to banks exploiting weak individuals, which aligns with the oppressor-oppressed heuristic. There is certainly something to this. Financial institutions are more sophisticated than individuals. Many of the mortgages that borrowers took on were loans with adjustable rates that would have made them very expensive. Nevertheless, there are some problems with this narrative. Many of the borrowers began to miss payments well before the interest rates adjusted. Many of the loans that defaulted were for non-owner-occupied homes, indicating that borrowers were engaged in speculation. Finally, the financial cost of default was borne much more by investors than by borrowers. Because many of the loans were made with little or no down payment, the borrower could abandon the home with only a small financial loss. Investors lost

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