No matter how controversial your political views are, there are always people on “your side” who hold a more extreme position than you do. How do you account for such people?
Top scenarios:
1. The extremists are actually right, but their proposals are “politically impossible.” It’s better to ask for half a loaf and get it than demand a totally unattainable whole loaf.
2. The extremists are actually right, but their proposals are politically unstable. Even if the extremists prevailed in the short-run, the long-run effect would be a mighty backlash, leading to a crushing defeat for your side. It’s better to ask for half a loaf that you can actually keep than demand a whole loaf that will soon be confiscated.
3. The extremists would be right, except that foolish and/or knavish resistance to their proposals would be extremely costly. As a result, it’s better to pursue your more moderate approach, which is inferior in principle but elicits less strident opposition. It’s better to peacefully obtain half a loaf than to fight a bloody battle for a whole loaf.
4. The extremists are wrong because they take a good idea too far. A moderate move in your preferred direction makes the world better; an extreme move, however, makes it worse. It’s better to eat half a loaf and remain at a healthy body weight than to eat a whole loaf and become morbidly obese.
5. The extremists are wrong because they take your side’s rhetoric too literally. Yes, moderates like you often exaggerate and oversimplify, but you know you’re doing it. Your extremists, in contrast, naively believe your side’s exaggerations and oversimplifications, leading them to advocate ineffective or even dangerous policies. Just because your slogan loudly proclaims that “Bread is the staff of life” doesn’t mean you should follow an all-bread diet.
6. The extremists are wrong because they fail to grasp the intellectually sophisticated position held by moderates such as yourself. If they would just patiently listen, they’d discover the intricacies of your worldview. Alas, they rarely bother. Thus, you derive the value of a half a loaf of bread from a detailed examination of human nutritional requirements – and the extremists childishly fixate on getting “all the bread.”
The meta-point, naturally, is that there are also always people on your side more moderate than yourself. So when you dismiss your extremists, you really should wonder: How confident am I that people more moderate than myself couldn’t rightfully dismiss me?
All of which leads to three questions for discussion:
1. Where do your extremists go wrong?
2. Where would your moderates say that you go wrong?
3. What makes you think you’ve discovered your side’s “Golden Mean”?
READER COMMENTS
Nodnarb the Nasty
Dec 10 2019 at 1:02pm
Easy (I’m a libertarian):
1: racism (see Lew Rockwell and Jeffrey Tucker’s old stuff, but also internet discussion boards and comments on popular blogs)
2: they say democracy is at least as important as liberty
3: the Madisonian compound republic
Thaomas
Dec 10 2019 at 1:04pm
#4, 5, and 6 seem very similar. The extremist have mistaken values of the parameters of model that yielded the optimal (moderate) policy conclusion. But none of these mean that I should “dismiss” views more or less moderate than my own. My model may be wrong in either a more or less extreme direction.
One reason you did not mention is that the parameters of the model that give rise to the “extreme” policy are estimated from experience with non-extreme values of those parameters, but the parameters may not actually be fixed (or the true model may not be linear in those parameters, so its best to carry out the “moderate” policy and then re-estimate the parameters. [# 1,2,3 might be examples of this objection]
Denver
Dec 10 2019 at 1:50pm
I try not to identify with any particular “side”, but many would consider me a somewhat radical libertarian, so in the spirit of things:
1. Oversimplified views of social science and philosophy. So I guess I’m partial to 6. Though there are also probably some qualified applications of 4 (e.g. violence is often wrong, but not always).
2. I’ve had 1 and 6 thrown at me quite a lot. Though, with enough time, I can typically argue people away from 6 (though maybe not convince them of my views), once they see my views have at least some nuance to them.
3. The honest answer is that I’m not completely certain I have discovered any sort of golden mean. However, I have thought about these questions quite a lot. Probably a lot more than most people. Ultimately, that’s really all you can say, though most people probably think their position is well thought out, even when it’s not.
Steve S
Dec 10 2019 at 2:14pm
My gut is somewhere between 1 and 2. Not necessarily that their ideas are impossible or unstable but that they don’t think incrementally or on the margin. Maybe they want change faster than our society can adapt?
Don’t “abolish Medicare/Medicaid”. Work on licensing restrictions, certificate-of-need processes, medical professional supply side problems. Eventually you build a system that works so well you may not need the other programs.
Maybe you could accuse me of wanting to slowly boil the frog into a land of full-fledged liberty rather than dropping it into the boiling big-L Libertarian water…but that’s a criticism I’m happy to take.
Michael Rulle
Dec 10 2019 at 2:22pm
I usually dislike people who are too lazy to answer a tough question—-so they resort to denying the validity of the question itself. Well, today, that guy is me.
I just have trouble with the whole premise of the question. I do not tend to view myself on a continuum of “moderate to extreme”—therefore I don’t view others that way either. I call myself a “classical liberal” for simplicity’s sake. But does that make Marx more “extreme” than me? I would say Marx is simply wrong.
If I prefer a 20% flat tax to our current tax system, does that make me more or less extreme than those who prefer a progressive tax scheme? No, we just have different views—-
Having said the above, I do think that sometimes “extreme” views are necessary to move the public’s opinion. For example, strict affirmative action rules might have been useful (might be a bad example) to get people to accept general equality.
“extremism” implies one can step outside their own opinions and place them on a continuum. Most people simply believe what they believe.
This set of questions are useful. “Extremism” is an empty term—–which is what I take away from this essay——I do not say that as a bad thing—-but quite the opposite.
Christophe Biocca
Dec 10 2019 at 3:33pm
Consider narrowing the question to one topic, and looking at people with similar reform proposals that go further than yours or stop earlier (relative to your starting point).
Income tax simplification is a good example. I assume you’d be getting rid of the EITC and mortgage interest deductions? What would you say if someone else used argument 1, saying that keeping those two is the only way you’d get enough support for a 20% flat tax?
It’s harder to phrase what your extremists look like, because it depends on what principles make you prefer this policy to others, but here are some options:
If it’s to simplify the tax code and reduce the deadweight loss associated with compliance costs, then your extremists might be Georgist single-land-value-tax proponents.
If it’s based on making the tax collected more closely match the actual benefits, your extremists would be those who want to fund more of the government’s activities directly through user fees.
If a flat 20% tax would decrease government revenue (ie. it’s not a revenue neutral tax reform), your extremists and moderates are people proposing a 19% and 21% flat tax, respectively.
robc
Dec 11 2019 at 8:36am
As one of those extremists, I am actually moderate compared to the anarcho-capitalists. I think some government is necessary. I am not sure on what the optimal size is though, is it spending (fed/state/local combined) 5% of GDP or 10% or 2%? I don’t know. I just know the answer isn’t 0% or 30%. I figure it has to be less than 10%, because that is what Samuel warned the Israelites that having a King would cost them.
A Georgist SLT would collect about 1/3 to 1/2 of what governments at all levels are spending now…that works for me as a good starting point. Maybe we can lower it from there, but I would be happy at that point.
robc
Dec 11 2019 at 8:51am
My numbers on the land tax are a little high, I think it would bring in 5-6% of GDP, and the total spending is pushing 40%. So more like 1/7th, not 1/3. But is still in the range that I think would be reasonable for a nightwatchman state.
blacktrance
Dec 10 2019 at 6:49pm
Another possibility is that “my side” isn’t so much a side as a historically contingent alliance. For example, in the Soviet Union the anti-regime side might include a libertarian (extremist) and a democratic socialist (moderate). They share some motivations and objections to the status quo, but have significantly different end goals.
To a lesser degree, this holds for many groups. There’s some overlap between the political programs of libertarian-leaning conservatives and left-wing market anarchists, but the latter aren’t simply more extreme versions of the former – they have different goals, motivations, views of the good, etc.
Mark Z
Dec 10 2019 at 8:55pm
If one forgets about ‘sides’ then these questions become fairly meaningless, and people are each just looking for the best set of positions, and, if we treat each position as a variable for simplicity’s sake, there’s nothing peculiar about the optimal value of x is 5, while someone else thinks it’s 3 and another person thinks it’s 8. “Sides” may just be an artifact of psychology or of politics (like the fact that you need a coalition of 50% of the electorate to win) that lead us to think in terms of sides. If this is true, a more interesting question might be: if you’re position = 2, do you feel more sympathetic or in greater agreement with someone whose position is 10 (an extremist on your side) than with someone who’s position is -2 (a moderate on the other side)? If so, why? Two likely answers that come to mind are: A) that you’re being misled by mood affiliation, or “my side bias” and should realize that you’re actually more in agreement with the moderate on the other side, or B) deep down, you might think 10 is really the right value, but you take a more moderate position for strategic purposes (e.g., think of the saying that ‘a socialist s just a liberal in a hurry’).
I’m not sure which of these explains why even many moderate people seem more sympathetic to extremists on their own side than moderates on the other side; my guess is it’s more explanation A than explanation B.
robc
Dec 11 2019 at 3:09pm
I think it is C) strategy. If we are at 0 now, and you want to go to +2, then voting with the -2 crowd is going the wrong way, even if it is close to your position. Voting with the +10 crowd moves things in your direction, and it isn’t like we are going to go all the way to +10 all of a sudden. Even if we end up at +4, that is closer to your preferred position than -2, and next election you can switch to the other side and try to pull it back down a bit.
Steve Bacharach
Dec 11 2019 at 11:19am
Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?
George Carlin
robc
Dec 11 2019 at 11:27am
Following up on my posts above but answering the questions:
1. My extremists (anarcho-capitalists) are wrong because of #4 and #6, with maybe a touch of #2. #2 because anarchy isn’t just unstable, it doesnt exist. Nature abhors a vacuum, and, at the least, you get warlords filling the gap.
2. My moderates would say I was wrong on #1 and #3, I am just pushing too far, too fast. I am clearly operating outside the Overton window.
3. I am not sure I have discovered it exactly, which is why I gave a pretty wide range. I want less than 10% of GDP, but I am not sure how far below that we can safely go. As I said above, I think an SLT could raise 5-6% of GDP (maybe more with other taxes gone) and that might be a good sweet spot.
Phil H
Dec 11 2019 at 8:46pm
I got this point from Penn Jillette, of all people. He says he’s a libertarian, but explicitly eschews any vision of what that “ultimately” means. He says, I don’t know and don’t care what a perfectly liberal society would be. I just know that the way we ought to be moving from here is in the more liberal direction.
I think that’s a useful distinction to make. Because sometimes we know where we want to go, but for the most part, politics is about solving the problems that exist now, rather than aiming for some ideal. (The great totalitarian experiments of the 20th century offer a grim warning against ideals.)
If you look at political positions as “where next” rather than “where ultimately”, then you can effectively ignore the extremists.
Thomas Sewell
Dec 12 2019 at 2:15am
Yeah, I’m the “extremist” in terms of principles, but the “moderate” in terms of means.
I’m happy to help push the ship of State as long as it’s in the right (extremist) direction, even if it’s just a little tiny bit (moderate).
Daniel Klein
Dec 12 2019 at 3:18am
Great post.
Another thing to consider.
John and Jake are broadly aligned and allied.
It might be right for John to propound a more extreme, challenging position and for Jake to take a more moderate, bargaining position — and both John and Jake rightly applaud the discourse of the other. Two different positions are advocated, with each guy acting perfectly virtuously and, indeed, being right in all he says about the desirability of his position as compared to the status quo.
There will certainly be affinities between John’s perfectly virtuous conduct and Jake’s perfectly virtuous conduct, but it should not be assumed that those two conducts would necessarily coincide in positions advocated.
Phil Murray
Dec 12 2019 at 9:48am
On immigration, an advocate of open immigration goes wrong according to scenarios (1)-(5). (1) Voters will accept more immigration, not illegal mass immigration they associate with chaos. (2) Isn’t the current rate of immigration causing a backlash? (3) Why argue for open immigration when arguing for free trade in goods is tough enough? (4) There can be too much of a good thing. At least some legal immigrants oppose illegal immigration. At least some immigrants who bothered to learn English criticize those who don’t. (5) Open immigration is not a panacea. Can an advocate of open immigration give any examples of undesirable immigrants? We want bread, but we get dough. Or we get an opaque package of something.
My moderates would say I go wrong according to scenario (4). They’d say it’s okay to let selected groups such as farm workers and English speakers immigrate, but no one else.
I oppose open immigration and advocate more immigration without claiming to know the Golden Mean.
Hansonianish
Dec 12 2019 at 3:26pm
Another possibility:
Extremism and moderatism are more a function of individual temperament and what kind of signaling is valued in one’s social context. Two folks who might share the same end goal advocate different stances on the extremism axis because one works and socializes with wonkish knowledge workers who say things like “well, it’s complicated” and “but on the other hand…” a lot; the other it’s among firey activist types who hate hypocracy and half measures.
Whether the two positions are complimentary (the extremist moves the Overton window and the moderate seizes the opportunity for policy change) or at cross-purposes (the extremist tars the moderate’s position with unpopular measures or breaks from the coalition if they don’t get what they want) will vary substantially.
Thaomas
Dec 16 2019 at 2:34pm
Slightly off topic and Caplan was probably no the one to make the decision, but still it is frustrating not to be able to comment on Caplan’s piece on externalities republished on Dec 14.
Amy Willis
Dec 17 2019 at 3:48pm
Hi Thaomas,
Sorry about your frustration. That piece, however, is not an EconLog post, but rather an entry from the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics.
Joe S
Jan 5 2020 at 5:01pm
My extremists go too far per (4), “they take a good idea too far.” For this to hold true I’m assuming extremists’ gravamen is essentially the same as mine. That isn’t always true, but we are speaking in a very general way.
People more moderate than me would use 1-4; those more extreme would use 5-6; those on the other side (essentially ‘more moderate’) would use 4-6. It all depends on one’s view of oneself as to which rationale they employ. Even my own judgment of extremists, above, speaks to my own view of myself.
I’m comfortable with my view of things because I accept that for any issue there will likely not be a good fit between an idea and maximal policy and the downsides dictate moderation or even forbearance. That’s a calculation most everyone makes on at least some issues. There are things we could do to (theoretically) stop crime that would have terrible downsides — eg repealing the 4th Amendment. Whether I’m looking at extremists on my side or those on the other side, convincing each other of acceptable costs is the hardest part. Sometimes the competing costs are too dear — moral, constitutional, human lives — and an impasse is reached when the conversation concerns which to abandon.
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