ARNOLD KLING
August 14, 2011
The Top Political Contributors
August 11, 2011
Gender and the New Commanding Heights
August 11, 2011
Jamie Galbraith Makes an Assumption
August 11, 2011
Macroeconometrics: The Science of Hubris
August 10, 2011
Real and Nominal Bond Yields
BRYAN CAPLAN
August 14, 2011
The Effect of Thumb Sucking on Income
August 12, 2011
The Voice of Cold, Hard Truth to All Would-Be Educators
August 12, 2011
Ability, Morality, and Prosperity: A Paper and a Report
August 11, 2011
The Theory of Time and Frittering
August 10, 2011
Male Variance and the Remnants of the Gender Gap
DAVID HENDERSON
August 9, 2011
Hayek in "Unbroken", Part Two
August 8, 2011
Hayek in "Unbroken"
August 5, 2011
James Bovard on the Peace Corps
August 4, 2011
Summers Way Off on FDR and 1941
August 3, 2011
The "Amazon" Tax
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There go five hours of my life. Those tests are ridiculously compelling.
Great discussion, Bryan.
Rather than "property," I think that something more specific needs to be distinguished: the configuration of ownership.
Social democrats (so-called liberals) implicitly see property as collectively owned by the polity/people/"state", administered by the club's officials, the government. They see "private property" as sub-dominions carved out by this overlord.
All this relates to Haidt's ideas about purity/sanctity and authority/respect. If one takes a (classical) liberal view of the configuration of ownership, what is prominent is GRAMMAR type rules, which Adam Smith calls variously "precise," "accurate," and "indispensible." If one takes the social democratic view, what is prominent are AESTHETIC type rules, which Smith calls "loose, vague, and indeterminate." Likewise, you get a focus on commutative vs. distributive justice.
I explore these in the following paper:
http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/klein/PdfPapers/ResortingtoStatism.pdf
The paper interprets Conservatism as, like (classical) liberalism, based in grammar-type rules, but with an important difference in the configurations of ownership: Certain spirit lords, such as God and state, are among the array of owners.
As for ingroup loyalty, a further counterexample would be the left-wing "liberal"/socialist Democrat preference for protectionism versus the right-wing conservative/libertarian Republican preference for free trade. When it comes to trade and glocal capitalism the left turns out to be mildly xenophobic while the right tends to be far more cosmopolitan.
@Bryan,
One thing to note though is that, as far as I can tell, Haidt does not release the data he collects from the YourMorals.org surveys. So the task at hand (of winning the bet) is a little more difficult. You'd have to collect your own data. (I actually e-mailed and asked for data, but never got a response.)
I've actually been quite intrigued by Jonathan Haidt's Moral Foundation theory. However, I've wondered if the "liberals" he is talking about includes "progressives" (who, I believe, is what most people today think of when they say "liberal" in the U.S.). "Progressives" seem like they have a 5 foundation morality to me.