Globalization and Moral Intuition

Tyler Cowen writes,

most people support their countries to a highly irrational degree in most international questions or disputes.

One way to view the Rodrik-Cowen dispute is from the perspective of Jonathan Haidt's "five-factor model" of moral intuition. In this post, I quote Will Wilkinson to the effect that the five factors are harm, reciprocity, ingroup, hierarchy, and purity. According to Haidt, both classical and modern liberals focus on harm and reciprocity (or utilitarianism and justice), giving short shrift to the other three. In that same post, I suggest ways in which modern liberals invoke the other three.

In any case, I agree with Tyler that opposition to trade is more about ingroup solidarity than about harm and reciprocity.

More on Haidt in this post. More recently, Will Wilkinson and Haidt had an illuminating dialog.

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