The Thinking of Obama Supporters in the Face of His Actual Policies

President Obama promised hope and change. Do his supporters believe he has delivered on his promises? He has apparently blocked efforts to end federal discrimination against gay people, he suppoets immunicty for federal agents who illegally engage in warrantless wiretapping, he has declined withdrawing from the war on drugs and the war on jihad, he failed to close the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, he helped deliver hundreds of billions of dollars to insolvent bankers and industrialist.

Perhaps supporters believe the health care law to be a positive accomplishment. The health care law made insurance giganticorps the centerpiece, the very corporatism supposedly Obama supporters dislike.

Many fiscal conservatives felt misled by Republican promises of limited government and fiscal restraint. Many turned against the policies of President Bush on civil rights as well. Is the same happening to the Democrats and President Obama. Are Democratic voters allowing themselves to be misled by promises of social expansiveness when President Obama seems to embrace much of the usual politics and policies that have caused so much mischief in the past and which are clearly against their interests?

In the case of those Obama supporters who continue to believe in his promises, how do they understand the policies he has promoted? For example, how do they view the actual results of health care?

Pessimism—A Property of Lack of Understanding?

Psychologically, what mechanism might help account for why and how some people hold pessimistic views about matters of political economy? Certainly there are social factors impinging on people's thinking but given social factors, why exactly are some people more pessimistic about matters of political economy that are others? For example, Matt Ridely is a "Rational Optimist" and certainly expresses a pro-freedom ideologic framework whereas by comparison, Naomi Klein or even Paul Krugman seem to be inclined to view society as having serious problems that need correcting. Certainly neither believes in more free activity as the solution.

For example, read Al Gore, Noam Chomsky, Al Franken, Naoimi Klein, Michael Moore, Barbara Ehrenreich, and perhaps the talk of many politicians, and the common sentiment seems to be one of pessimism. Society has big problems that require big governmnent. Take their pessimism as a given. Compare them to Russ Roberts, Don Boudreaux, Matt Ridely, Milton Friedman, Julian Simon, whomever of the free market types all who seem to be optimistic about human progress to the extent it is free. Take all that as given. The question is to explain how pessimism arises in human political economic thought.

Is pessimism a cause of pro-government thinking? Or does pro-government thinking look for and see problems and so result in pessimism? I think neither is the case. Could we investigate a variety of people's thinking to find out more about its forms and origins?

There may be a deeper reason that lies in a relatively undeveloped understanding of the fundamentally constructive aspect of human activity. Perhaps a view of human activity, particularly "unfettered" activity (pro-government thinking may prefer "unfettered" to "free" in typifying activity), that believes it to need constant oversight and guidance in order to result in proper development. Thus, the failure of society to provide good things necessarily is tied to lack of oversight and control over human activity. Human activity cannot be self-directed, self-regulating, or endogenously developmental in any constructive manner since its many forms can only come from some external source that imposes it on activity. There has to be some agent who is the source of order. How else to explain how order arises?

Such is my hypothesis. We might wonder then if pro-government types significantly differ in their level of pessimism compared to pro-freedom types. Is the world doom and gloom or are things getting better? And if pessimism is only an artifact tied to one's explanatory ideology for how the world works.

If pessimism correlates with pro-government thinking, then we will want to investigate the two views (perhaps the extrema of a pro-government/pro-freedom scale) to see whether the kind of theoretic understanding each uses in attempting to explain how societal development operates itself may moves toward explaining the source of pessimism/optimism.

Is Using a Rule Harder Than Using Discretion?

From the research, the answer is clearly 'yes;' it is more difficult to formulate and follow rules than to use discretionary decisions. Discretionary decisions are ad hoc and tied to situations; they don't necessarily require consistency from one instance to another. Rules hold across time and situations (or they must be changed).

The rules versus discretion seems to apply in many domains from parenting and interpersonal relationships to macro-economic policies of government. Here's an example from Cafe Hayek.

"John Taylor: lays out the case for rules vs. discretion and in the process, does a superb job of summarizing his case for why doing less or even nothing would have been better than the activist government response over the last two and a half years. At issue is economic policy by the government.

One of the interesting questions Taylor raises in his paper is why what seemed to be a consensus in favor of rules changed so quickly into a consensus in favor of massive intervention."

If rules are more difficult than discretion, then I would wonder if the reason following rules might be more difficult than using discretionary decisions is the difference in cognitive complexity between the two. Rules require a reflective abstraction that pulls out the more general form and moves mental activity towards explanatory thought, the principles that underly economic activity and in this case of political economy the role of government in attempting to produce changes in general economic functioning.

We know from research on the grasp of consciousness that to envision results or end goals is easier than grasping the method of production. In elementary mathematics, children first can combine two sets to produce a third without conceptualizing the operation itself. They "add" two numbers to "get" an answer, and even their interpretations of equations with a missing numeral show they are focused on the answer. If they see two numerals with + and = signs, 4 + __ = 7 they combine the two numerals, 4 and 7, without regard to the meaning of the operations.

What we find is a development from simple, one-way actions directed to a goal which are oriented by a functional and practical focus to a more advanced form. The advance consists not only of combining operations to form a rational system of reasoning marked by logical necessities but also an increasing awareness of the methods of production as opposed to the outcomes.

The Psychology of the Concept of Economic Ecology

Obviously, there is considerable difference of opinion regarding the role of government in economic activity. Some might consider government as a producer of the common good through collective action; others might consider government as the source of various rights and duties of citizens to conduct activities and pay taxes; others might see government as an essential oversight function and the source for establishing a legal framework within which economic activity can operate; but then we have those who see a far less role for government. At most, these folks believe government should only function to protect the free activity of citizens while some folks even believe this protection function should be developed outside of government; government should have no role.

People's understandings of the role of government in the economy appear to form an ordered series ranging from those at one end in which government is conceived as the essential source in producing the common good of society to those understandings at the other end in which government is understood as unnecessary or even as hindrance to citizens' construction of a society. Socialists and government activists more or less hold beliefs in government having a dominant and necessary role in the construction of a society while libertarians express the belief that government is unnecessary and mostly harmful.

Murray Rothbard expressed this libertarian belief in minimal government and the idea that government is the problem by presenting government in a challenging problem for pro-government folks to addres:

The argument is simple: If a private individual did what governments do, almost everyone would call him a criminal. If I took your money without your consent, I'd be a thief. If I forced you to work for me, I'd be slaver. If I killed you, I'd be a murderer - even if you 'provoked' me by resisting my demands for your money and labor. Note further: We'd still make these judgments even if I was acting if 'for your own good' or 'to help the poor.' (scare quotes optional!) But somehow when government does it, we change the names and our moral evaluation.

The psychological problem then not to determine who is right but to determine if in fact this ordered series of views of government are a result of development or whether they are simply learned in some manner or other.