The Bell Curve Part 1V- Living Together Chapter 22-A Place for everyone

How should policy deal with the twin realities that people differ in intelligence for reasons that are not their fault, and that intelligence has a powerful bearing on how well they do in life? The answer in the twentieth century was that government should create the condition of equality that society has neglected, or been unable to produce on its own. The assumption that egalitarianism is the proper ideal, however difficult to achieve in practice, changed contemporary political theory. Socialism, communism, social democracy and America's welfare state have been ways liberal thought has attempted to move toward the egalitarian ideal. During these attempts to level the playing field, the phrase social justice has become virtually synonymous with economic and social equality. Until now, the political movements have focused on the societal evils that are thought to produce inequality. Human beings, as the egalitarian theory teaches, are potentially pretty much the same except, of course, for the inequalities induced by society. These same theoreticians have rejected, out of hand, voluminous amounts of evidence showing that individual differences, most importantly, in cognitive ability, are to blame for the inequality in outcome that have plagued American life for the last 100 or more years. If we accept the fact that all people are not born equal, what can be done to make the best of the cards that we, as a nation, have been dealt? All of the great religious traditions define a place for everyone, if not on earth then in heaven. Unfortunately, with the passing of time, the have-nots and their political advocates have become increasingly unwilling to wait for their promised rewards in heaven; they want them now and will settle for nothing less than full equality of outcome regardless of their mental limitations or, for that matter, anything else! For Confucius, society was like a family with a ruling father, obedient sons, devoted husbands and faithful wives, benign masters and loyal servants. People were defined by their place, whether in the family or the community (The reader can see where the authors are going here, a place for everybody). So too for the ancient Greek and Roman philosophers: place was everything. The ancients accepted the basic premise that people differ fundamentally and searched for ways they could contently serve the community, the monarch, the tyrant or the gods, rather than themselves. In our era, political philosophers have argued instead about rights. In the 1600s Thomas Hobbes wrote about a principle whereby all people, not just the rich and well born, might have equal rights to liberty. Hobbes acknowledged that people differ, but not so much that they may justifiably be deprived of liberty in differing amounts. In the modern view that Hobbes helped shape, individuals accept constraints on their own behavior in exchange for ridding themselves of the dangers associated with living in total freedom, hence perfect anarchy. These constraints on personal freedom constitute lawful government. Later, John Locke conceived of people in a state of equality in which no one had no more power and jurisdiction than another and thought to preserve that condition in actual societies through a strictly limited government a theory that the American Founders brought into reality. For modern Americans, if aware of Locke at all, he is identified with the idea of man as tabula rasa, a blank slate on which experience writes or, as most liberals believe, a blank slate to be written upon by the environment. Most contemporary libertarians are hostile to the possibility of genetic differences in intelligence because of their conviction that equal rights can only apply if, in fact, people at birth are tabulae rasae, blank slates. Liberals who follow this train of thought conveniently forget that Locke also maintained that that there was a greater distance between some men than there was between men and some beasts. Locke went on to argue that men were equal in rights though they be unequal in everything else. By human rights Locke meant that all human beings had the right not to have certain things done to them by the state or other human beings, not the right to anything, except freedom of action. Today, the original concept of equal rights is said to be meaningless cant, outmoded as the horse and buggy; to take equal rights seriously, it is thought, requires enforcing equal outcomes. This is not what the framers had in mind when they wrote the constitution. Jefferson saw the consequences of inequalities of ability radiating throughout the institutions of society. The main purpose of education, he believed, was to prepare the natural aristocracy to govern. The "best geniuses", he said should be "raked from the rubbish annually" by competitive grading and examinations, sent on to the next educational stage, and finally called to public life. For Madison, the "great republican principle" was that common people would have the good sense and information necessary to choose "men of virtue and wisdom" to govern them. For Jefferson and Madison, political equality was both right and workable. They would have been amazed by the modern notion that humans are equal in any other sense. (As am I) Indeed we live in an upside down world. The idea of forbidding people to discriminate by race mutated into the idea of compelling everyone to produce, at any cost, equal outcomes based on race. In personal life the idea of forbidding people from interfering with members of other groups as they go about their lives has been extended to the idea of compelling people "to treat them the same". It is an indication of how far things have gone that many people cannot see the distinction between "not interfering" and "treating the same." The authors now discuss the policy implications of the material covered in the first 535 pages of The Bell Curve. The broadest goal is a society in which people throughout the functional range of intelligence can find and feel that they have found a "valued place" for themselves. You occupy a valued place if other people would miss you if you were gone. The fact that you would be missed means that you were valued. The authors suggest that policy decisions should be based, at least in part, on whether they aid or obstruct the goal of creating valued places for all members of society. In this respect, they emphasize the point that most people have sufficient intelligence to get on with life and make a valued place for themselves in American society. The problem is to make it possible for those that aren't very smart to find a valued place in an environment that values, with a few obvious exceptions, intelligence over everything else. Fromits high point in 1973, the medium income of non-farm labor had fallen 36 percent by 1990, a strong back wasn't worth near as much as it had been in the past. But wages and economic factors are not the only reason persons with low cognitive ability are finding it increasingly difficult to find a valued place in society. Communities are rich and vital places to the extent that they engage their members in the stuff of life- birth, death, raising children making a living, playing of the soft ball team etc. As communities enlarged functions like the local volunteer fire department, which provided a place of value for many men, were replaced by paid members of large professional fire departments. With the passage of time, Congress and presidents have removed more and more functions from the neighborhoods deeming them too difficult for voluntary organizations to perform. As a result, we have neighborhoods that are merely localities, not groups of people tending to their communal affairs and providing valued places while doing so. Places where you would be missed if you were gone. So, the first policy change the authors suggest is to restore, whenever possible, a wide range of social functions that are now performed by the federal and state governments to the neighborhoods where people work and live. The idea being to make people feel better about themselves by working to improve the community. Next, they would simplify the rules. The authors contend that the United States is run by rules that only the cognitive elite can understand and make life more difficult for everyone else. The income tax code is one example of the unnecessary complexity that makes life more difficult than it need be. Credentialing is a closely related problem. Now days, you must have a license to do just about anything. For practical purposes, this means jumping through bureaucratic hoops that have little to do with one's ability to do the job. The authors would like to simplify life for everyone, especially those with low cognitive ability, by stripping away the nonsense. For example, by replacing the present multi-page income tax form with a simple one or two page document that can be completed by almost anyone in a few minutes. The authors go on to argue that we should make it easier for everyone to live a virtuous life. With respect to crime, they believe that the rules for criminality should be simple and the consequences of breaking the rules should be equally simple. Punishment should follow arrest quickly, within a few days or weeks. At present, at every level, it has become fashionable to point out the complexities of moral decisions, and all the ways things that might seem "wrong" at first glance, are really "right," or at least excusable, when properly analyzed. The authors argue that it is much easier for people with limited intelligence to lead moral lives in a society that is run on the basis of " Thou shall not steal" than it is to them to be law abiding citizens in a society that is run on the basis of "Thou shalt not steel unless there is a really good reason to do so." Moving on to marriage, the authors argue that it has become increasingly difficult for a person with low IQ to figure out why marriage is a good thing, and once in a marriage even more difficult to figure out why one should stick with it through bad times. The sexual revolution is the most obvious culprit. One no longer has to marry a lady to sleep with her. This is particularly important because marriage constituted one of the richest of all "valued places." Once the law said, " Well, in a legal sense, living together is the same as being married" we as a society were in deep trouble. The authors policy position is to return marriage to its formally unique status. In particular, they urge that marriage once again becomes the sole legal institution through which rights and responsibilities regarding children are exercised. Finally, the authors deal with income. Ever since most people quit believing that a person's income on earth reflected God's judgment of his worth, it has been argued that income distributions were inherently unfair. Today, many believe that most wealthy people do not deserve their wealth nor the poor their poverty. That being the case, it is deemed appropriate for societies to take from the rich and give to the poor. The data in this book support the argument for supplementing the incomes of the poor, without giving any new guidance for how to do it. The authors believe that people working full time should not be so poor that they cannot have a decent standard of living, even if the kinds of work they do are not highly valued in the marketplace. This is not a realistic goal for many poor countries- but it is appropriate for rich countries (is America still rich?) to try to do so. How is this to be done? Any government supplement of wages produces negative effects of many kinds. Such defects are not the result of bad policy but are inherent. The lease damaging strategies are the simplest ones, which do not oversee the labor market or the behavior of low income people. Rather, they should be designed to augment the income of low skilled workers to a minimum floor. The earned income tax credit seems to be a generally good way to accomplish this goal, albeit with the unavoidable drawbacks of any income supplement. Irrespective of the methodology, some form income redistribution is here to stay. The question is how to redistribute the nation's wealth in ways that increase the chances for people at the bottom of society to take control of their lives, to be engaged meaningful in their communities and to find a "valued place" the themselves in an increasingly complex world. The authors end this final chapter of The Bell Curve by addressing the most pressing problem facing twenty-first century America, Americans, on average are becoming dumber with each passing day. (Finally, after 549 pages, they acknowledge the obvious), the most efficient way to raise the nation's IQ, and lessen its social problems, is for smarter women to have higher birth rates than duller women. The authors maintain that we already have policies that socially engineer who has babies, unfortunately they are encouraging the wrong women. They urge that policies which encourage welfare moms to have babies be ended! They recommend that we make better use of the variety of birth control options that are safe, increasingly flexible and inexpensive. Finally, they recommend that immigration laws be rewritten to reflect America's interests. There should be a shift from nepotistic rules which encourage reunification of families to policies that encourage and facilitate the immigration of bright educated people from foreign countries who have the tools to prosper in America and, in the long run, increase the IQ of its gene pool. Comment: I began this book review in January of 2015, almost a year ago. Was it worth the effort? Probably not, but as I sat here at the computer last January, with the nation crumbling around me, I felt compelled to do something to, perhaps, stem the tide. What better than to make an admittedly feeble attempt to revitalize one of the most important books every written. If even a handful of young people are informed and enlighten by the material reviewed, it will have been worth the effort. If they just realize that we are not all born equal, it will be enough. This last chapter of The Bell Curve is by far, the weakest in the book. I am not convinced that the solutions suggested by Herrnstein and Murray, such as simplifying the rules we live by; encouraging low IQ women to take birth control pills; or tweaking the immigration laws will be sufficient to change the self-destructive course our nation is on. Maybe nothing can, but in my first blog of the New Year, I will suggest a few simple steps we can take to right our floundering ship of state. In the mean time, I wish you a happy and prosperous New Year!