Spontaneous Orders' Opponents - A Listing

Each spontaneous order has its detractors.

The free market has socialists and others who hate markets.

The technological order has Luddites.

The monetary order has those opposed to usury.

The scientific order has creationists and intelligent designers.

The religious order has the anti-religion atheists (not all atheists are anti-religion).

The philosophical order has various anti-philosophers, from some religious thinkers to sophists of all sorts.

The artistic and literary orders have censors.

The social sciences have anti-economists, anti-sociologists, and those opposed to psychology.

The political order has anarchists.

The philanthropic order has any number of groups who use their opposition to out-groups as an excuse to be selfish. Racist, sexist, homophobic, etc. groups that engage in group-think are anti-philanthropy (love of humans).

In making this list, I note two things. The opposition to the newest social orders come from some of our oldest drives and beliefs -- various xenophobias and religion in particular. However, two of our oldest orders -- religious and political -- have more recent enemies.

Frank Underwood as the Purely Strategic Mind

My wife and I started watching "House of Cards," and we are very much enjoying it. It's an excellent piece of literary fiction, and everyone should watch it for it's story, characters, and truths.

The most fascinating aspect of the show is Frank Underwood's purely strategic reasoning. I have never seen a character who takes a pure-strategy approach. Most people have at least some mixture of strategic and analytical thinking. Those with autism are much more strongly analytical, of course. But Frank Underwood is literally the opposite of autistic.

Of course, one can immediately see the problems that will arise through a pure-strategy approach. The show is, after all, called "House of Cards," and that is precisely what you will get if you are strategic-only in the way you deal with others and with reality. Analysis provides a foundation for what you want to do, and the stronger one's analytical abilities, the stronger one's foundation. Of course, there are some who end up doing nothing but build foundations and fail to erect the building. But Underwood builds his house without any foundation. He hopes the cards he leans against each other will each hold all the others up. That is what strategy-only will get you.

For someone who is on the Spectrum, watching Underwood at work is fascinating. He is my opposite in almost every way. Yet I recognize that many of the things he does are things it would benefit me to be able to do. Each of us are extremes in our ways of thinking; between the two is a golden mean which, because of our respective neural structures (can a fictional character have neural structures? They would be fictionalized as well, but as true as any fictional character is true, meaning they are idealized).

A great deal of literature is dominated by analytical minds. Hamlet is a great example. He analyzes for 4 hours of stage time. And most literature since Hamlet has been dominated by such characters mulling over every little thing. It's the sort of fiction I have written -- not surprisingly, given the way I think and view the world. Thus, Frank Underwood is an unusual character in literature. But he is also perhaps a little more realistic in the sense that most people are more strategic in their thinking than they are analytical. That he is an extreme of this style of thinking is hardly a problem -- literature should purify to clarify and shed light on the truth of things. No, in many ways Underwood is a breath of fresh air to literature. The highly strategic thinker needs to be understood (and, dare I say, analyzed) through literary representation. Only then can we see the kinds of worlds such minds build. Only then can we really see how badly such people, such ways of thinking need to be balanced.

Moral Theories on Theft and Taxation

There are several moral universals, yet at the same time, there are several interpretations of those morals. There is little question that prohibitions against theft, murder, rape, and incest are universal; yet there are variations on each one dependent upon culture. More, there are different interpretations of those morals even within a given culture. In Therapy for the Sane, Lou Marinoff lists deontology, teleology, virtue ethics, providential religious ethics, existentialism, Objectivist ethics, prima facie duties, sociobiology, other-centered ethics, Buddhist ethics, and legal moralism as interpretations of morality. Which is true? Perhaps all of them have some truth to them. But in any case, there are consequences of each.

Let's take theft as an example. We might have to first define what it means to steal something, though. To steal something is to take something that belongs to another for yourself without permission from the original owner. There is implicit in this definition a requirement for the existence of private property, because you cannot steal something that is communally owned. To prohibit theft necessarily implies the existence of ownership of property.

Deontology is also known as "duty ethics." But duty toward whom or what? Historically, it has been duty toward God and/or duty toward government. There is not a set of religious or political laws that do not prohibit stealing. With Kant, though, we see the development of individualistic deontology with his categorical imperative.

With religious-based deontology, the prohibition against stealing is pretty straightforward. It applies to all equally. But with government-based deontology, we run into some real problems. Governments will of course prohibit theft, but we end up running into the issue of whether or not taxation is a form of theft. Under the definition of theft I gave above, if individual citizens are in fact the owners of the property within their possession, then all taxation is theft. However, if we are mere stewards of the government's property -- whether it be land or money or anything else -- then taxation is not theft. So when we argue that government should have the same duties toward us as we have toward it in regards to theft, we have to be clear as to whether or not the property is in fact privately, individually owned and ownable, or if the government is in fact the real owner, and we are mere stewards of it (meaning when we buy property, we are merely buying the privilege of stewardship over that property).

For me, then, taking the government-based deontological view is both clarifying and telling. If taxation is legitimate, then we do not have truly private property, and if we have truly private property, taxation is theft.

With Kant's individualistic deontology, we do not run into these problems. We have duties toward each other as human beings, whom we ought to treat as ends themselves and not as means. Theft is again a straightforward prohibition, and one cannot legitimate it even if one is in government. When government taxes, it treats people as means rather than ends. More, a government that is taxing is acting as though the people in it wish that taking others' property ought to be a universal law.

Teleology is also known as consequentialism. With it, what matters is the end result far less than the means to get there. Should you steal? Well, what will be the end result? One can use this to argue that people in general ought not steal, because a society based on stealing will in the end be a more violent, less trusting, less prosperous society. But does this mean that you ought not to steal this or that? And what about taxation? Well, one of the consequences of taxation is that you have a government with enough money to do any number of activities. If you think it is good for governments to have lots of money to do lots of things, then consequentialism will let you argue that governments ought to be able to tax. In the end, we just end up self-justifying whatever actions we take or what others to take on our behalf. In the end, I'm not sure that that's really morality.

Virtue Ethics -- taught by Aristotle, Buddha, and Confucius -- views morality as a kind of moderation of action. Theft is a form of immoderate action. It is a vice, pure and simple. You learn not to steal by being taught it is wrong and through habituation of the virtue of respect for others' property. The purpose of the virtues is to ensure that humans live the most human of lives, which is to live as a social being. Societies that are full of thieves are weaker, less trusting, poorer societies. These are all reasons to oppose theft.

But what about taxation? What makes for a virtuous government? Is it the same as what one needs to have virtuous people? What constitutes a moderate government? Is one even possible, or are they necessarily prone to immoderation? Can there rather be a virtuous form of governance, one which is inherently prone to moderation in action? It seems to me that the morality of taxation would depend on the nature of property ownership, as mentioned above. Unfortunately, I'm not sure virtue ethics is exactly clear as to what the nature of property ownership ought to be. One may make the case that anarchic communism is one extreme, while government (single) ownership of all property is another extreme, and that private property is the golden mean between the two. If one were to make that argument, there is little question that government cannot tax.

Providential Religious Ethics simply means that if you do what God(s) want, you will be rewarded in the next life, and if you don't, you'll be punished. Under this ethics, we are under the care and protection of God(s), and any suffering in this world is a test for you. Under Christianity specifically, we are told to "render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and render unto God what is God's." If you accept money printed by government, don't complain when they want it back. Money printed by the government is the government's money; it is their property, and they can properly tax it. This may make income taxes acceptable, but it would still leave problematic property taxes. All of this, of course, leaves wide open the question of what on earth it is that God wants. We are often told what God wants by religious leaders, all of whom claim to have been appointed by God. None of which really helps us, except for the fact that we are again faced with the universality of religious prohibitions against theft. But if may also be true that God wants us to support our governments, that our government is set up by God, and we must therefore support it. Still, as I suggest in this poem, things may not always be so unambiguously pro-government as this.

Existentialism views morality as emerging from our actions and existence in the world. Morality is thus determined by us. For the existentialist, there are no moral universals. Stealing is not being your authentic self; it is an expression of inauthenticity. Why? Because the theft is not taking personal responsibility for himself and his actions. He is making another bear the responsibility for whatever reason he feels the need to steal.

But can a government be a responsible agent? Of course not. So when a government is taxing, is it stealing? The individual agents within the government are not, themselves, engaging in the act of stealing; they are rather simply "doing their jobs." They are responsible for their jobs, but not necessarily for the outcome of the institution for which they work. Should one feel responsible for the actions taken on behalf of the institution for which you work? I would think so, meaning one is being inauthentic working for a government that taxes. Thus, it may not be immoral for government to tax, but it may be immoral to work for a government that taxes. But even then, that would depend on the property rules. If the government is the one that really owns all property, taxes are fine, but if property is individually owned, taxes are theft.

Objectivist Ethics is the ethics of enlightened self-interest.This ethics is highly individualistic, and the individual takes precedence over the collective. Too many interpret this as "selfishness." If it were pure selfishness, theft and other immoral acts would be just fine. However, since I already noted that only if there is collective ownership can there not be theft, and since under objectivist ethics individuals take precedence over the collective, there cannot be collective ownership and there must therefore be theft. Individual ownership is real and therefore theft is immoral, since theft violates ownership. But does government ownership of property and subsequent stewardship violate objectivist ethics? Only if government ownership is understood as collectivist ownership. If government ownership and collective ownership are one and the same, then governments cannot tax under objectivist ethics, because taxation is theft. But this equation between government ownership and collective ownership raises the issue of what theft itself means. As noted, only if there is ownership can there be theft. Why would a government prohibit theft if it were the true owner? To maintain the illusion of private ownership among its stewards. And why would a government want to do that? To have the benefits of private property-based free enterprise along with the benefits of being able to legitimately tax. There is a great deal here to object to using objectivist ethics, and it should be clear how this ethics in many ways forms the foundation for a great deal of classical liberal philosophy.

Prima Facie Duties if a theory of ethics which views humans as part of a social contract, meaning we have rights and benefits, and duties and obligations. If we have duties to others, we cannot steal from them. But if we have duties to others, that may also mean taxation is a legitimate way to fulfill our duties. I won't dwell on the issue of whether or not government programs are the best way to fulfill that duty, though one may legitimately suggest that we have a duty to find out what the best way to help people is.

Sociobiology attempts to find our morals in our biology. Too many this means biological determinism. In other words, there is no ethics; we are determined by our genes, and that means we really shouldn't judge anyone's actions as right or wrong. Of course, this is not at all what biologically-based ethics really says. Sociobiology recognizes human beings as a hypersocial species of mammal. Any actions that undermine that hypersociality is unethical, and theft is therefore immoral because it fosters distrust within the social group.

Humans are also a hierarchical species with a person on top. This is the foundation for government. Humans originally evolved in a tribal setting, and it was the tribe itself which was the owner of the territory on which the tribe lived. This suggests a collective ownership of property that gets translated into tacit government ownership of territory with the expansion of social/political order beyond the tribe. From this perspective, taxation is fine, since it is the government which really owns the territory.

This would seem to undermine any sort of liberal order and support the government-as-property-owner-and-individuals-as-stewards point of view. If all we are and will ever be is fundamentally tribalist, this makes sense; but what if this is only half of the equation? What if there is something about our hypersociality that allows us to break out of our tribalist morals?

Other-Centered Ethics is the view that we have responsibilities to others simply because they exist. And we care due to empathy -- their pain causes our pain. Thus, if we steal, we cause another pain, which causes us pain. We should never steal from anyone, whether they are part of our group or not.

This ethics also does not necessarily tell us if governments should tax. It depends on who truly owns property. However, government should be other-centered, meaning those in government should not be looking out for themselves. This would suggest that our government ought to be more efficient and less corrupt than it is. But it could also be used to support the existence of social programs and of the taxation needed to support it.

Buddhist Ethics seeks to reduce suffering. If someone steals from you, you suffer because of it. Thus, one should not steal because it increases suffering. Along these lines, taxation also causes suffering. Whether the person taking my stuff is a criminal or a government, I will suffer as a result of that loss. This will be true whether or not there is private property or stewardship. More, since stewardship means the government can take the property over which you have stewardship any time you fail to pay taxes, stewardship itself is a cause of suffering. Private property is the form of property ownership that causes least suffering, from the perspective of the government not being able to legitimately take it from you.

Legal Moralism equates lawfulness and morality. What is law is moral, and what is moral is law. This theory just basically avoids the question of morality entirely. Theft is immoral because it's illegal. But why is it illegal? Taxation is moral because it's legal. This boils down to "so what?" To me this is just an abdication of morals. It is following authority because it is authority. Whatever this is, it's not morality in any sense of the term.

Observations

In going through this exercise, I came to realize a few things. One is that it is at best difficult to argue that taxation is theft without first making the case that property ought to be privately owned rather than set up as individual stewardship over government property. The ought of "government ought not take my property" is founded on the ought of "property ought to be privately owned." But that's another "ought" entirely.

What we also see, though, is that if a government taxes, that means that we necessarily do not have private property, but rather stewardship of government property. The government can legitimately take back into possession its own property over which you have stewardship. This solves the ethical dilemma of taxes as theft, but it also makes clear that private property under a regime of taxation is an illusion. So long as we have taxes, we do not and cannot have private property. 

As for regular theft, we see that whether we are talking about private property or stewardship, we should expect theft to be considered immoral and to be punished somehow. The reason with private property should be obvious, but in the case of stewardship, the transference of property between stewards has to be legitimate. Paying for the right of stewardship over a piece of property transfers that right legitimately from one person to another. But when someone steals from you, that is an illegitimate transfer of stewardship, and the government will come in to make sure that the right person maintains stewardship. That helps maintain its legitimacy and maintains the illusion of private property necessary to maintain a market economy.

My conclusion is that the best moral foundations for a liberal order of truly private property would be Kant's individualistic deontology, objectivist ethics, and Buddhist ethics. In different ways they deny the legitimacy of government-ownership-and-private-stewardship of property. With stewardship, people are treated as means rather than ends, which makes this approach illegitimate with Kantian deontology. Objectivist ethics already takes the individualistic point of view, and with Buddhist ethics, we see that the negative consequences of taxation makes illegitimate stewardship over private ownership.

I am sure there are other ethical views. And I think it's important to expand on the sociobiological view to include self-organizing scale-free network processes as a legitimate outcome of human interactions. But these are a start. I encourage others to include their suggestions and criticisms of my descriptions here.

Autism, Empathy, and Practicality

I have previously written about the issue of whether or not people with autism have empathy or not.My son's reactions to two recent episodes suggest that the claim people with autism do not have empathy is in fact quite wrong.

First, our babysitter for our two youngest recently hurt her leg mowing her grass. The lawn mower threw out a brick, and cut and bruised her pretty badly. Daniel's response was, "I'm going to grow up and become a doctor so I can fix your leg."

What this suggests to me is not a lack of empathy, but a focus on solving the problem. Rather than giving a "there-there" response that may make one feel better emotionally, he gave a (to a 4 yr old) practical solution to fix the problem. Is that a lack of empathy or evidence of it?

More recently, our youngest, Dylan, hurt himself shoving a q-tip into his ear. He was bleeding and we took him to the emergency room to make sure he was okay. Anna and I were in other rooms when it happened, any only Daniel saw what Dylan had done. So when the doctor asked what happened, Daniel stepped up and started trying to explain what happened. Understand that Daniel was in a strange place for the first time, talking to a strange person -- but he was more concerned making sure the doctor knew what happened than he was with being in a new situation with a new person. More, he went up to Dylan while he was crying and patted him on the leg. Again, Daniel focused on the practical, but in this case he also tried to comfort Dylan.

As for me, I stayed calm as I first cleaned Dylan's ear to try to look at it, then took him to the emergency room. Was the fact that I was calm an indicate that I did not have empathy? It might to some people. Am I being unempathetic when I focus on the practical and try to figure out ways to actually solve the problem at hand rather than say or do something that sounds nice but doesn't actually help anyone? I don't think so.

In fact, on this last point, the very reason I am a libertarian is because I have a great deal of empathy for the poor and I want them to have much better lives. I am persuaded that the evidence overwhelmingly supports the role of free markets in eliminating poverty. Support for welfare programs and such all amount to saying or doing something that sounds nice but doesn't actually help anyone. More, they actually harm the people they are supposed to help. I don't find support for such programs empathetic. I find them unthinking and lazy.

More on Hobbesean Libertarians

Yesterday I discussed two kinds of libertarians: Hobbesean and non-Hobbesean libertarians. I want to discuss this idea a bit more.

The difference between Hobbeseans and non-Hobbeseans boils down to whether you think humans in their original state were isolated individuals who have had to be organized or if you think humans in their original state were social and that social order and organization are natural, respectively.

Hobbeseans believe that humans have to be organized to be made social. How that happens may be from people doing the will of God and creating that order or from people using reason to create that order. In either case, social order comes about from the top-down, and all evidence of order is evidence that there is someone somewhere creating that order.

Now, most people think that social order is good. The left and the right may disagree about which particular way to order people is the best and right one, but both are in complete agreement that someone somewhere has to do the ordering. Both believe people are naturally nasty, brutish isolated individualists who have to have their nasty tendencies reigned in and their individualism suppressed for the greater good. For them, planning society is not just possible, but desirable.

However, there is another group of Hobbeseans who think that social order is bad. These people tend to think that all social order is indeed created by someone somewhere. Planning for them is possible, but not desirable. There is a tendency for such people to believe in grand conspiracies, that there is some man behind the curtain pulling all the levers. They tend to argue even against social pressure against practically any activity. They want to get rid of government because they equate government with society, and they want to get rid of society so they can do whatever they please without judgement. These people tend to identify themselves as libertarians, though their libertarianism is not necessarily informed by economics, and it is driven not by improving society, but by bringing society as such down to bring back the Hobbesean jungle.

That leaves us with the non-Hobbeseans, who I already discussed yesterday.

Non-Hobbeseans tend toward classical liberalism, believing people are naturally social, and that it's through our social networks that we individuate. The two are co-dependent and not at all at odds, as the Hobbeseans believe. Social order is natural and emerges naturally. Social pressures are to be preferred to legislation because people are then free to change, evolve, and move.

The Hobbesean libertarians and the non-Hobbesean classical liberals are in many ways incompatible. Indeed, almost all of the conflicts I have seen within libertarianism boil down to this underlying incompatibility. You have the "brutalists" and "conspiracy theorists" on one side and groups like the Bleeding Heart Libertarians and other classical liberals on the other. One is anti-order; the other is pro-order.

One can probably pick apart at the edges and borderlands of this model, but the exception doesn't negate the rule. The fact that there exists these two general groups suggests that the deep conflicts in libertarianism will continue so long as the two identify with each other under the same label.

Hobbesean and Non-Hobbsean Libertarians

Human beings are a species of social mammal. 

It may seem odd to have to say that, but this seems to be a foreign concept to too many. Both the left and the right tend to think that human beings are only social if there is a government around to force people to be social. Otherwise there would be a war of all against all, and people would live in isolation. The fact that all of the evidence from anthropology, evolutionary psychology, sociobiology, primatology, and the social sciences demonstrate that human beings are not just naturally social mammals, but are in fact hypersocial, is not taken into consideration at all. The fact that we are naturally hypersocial means human are going to be social no matter what. Legislation will not make it so.

It is the belief that humans are naturally social and that our social rules emerge naturally from our interactions that underlies classical liberal thought. The right tends to take the position that rigid hierarchies are natural and that rules come from the top-down – typically from God and His representatives on Earth. The left tends to take the position that everything can be developed through human reason, that humans are a blank slate on which those rules developed through human reason can be written. Both tend to deny the fact humans are naturally social and that our rules emerge naturally and evolve over time. Both groups thus tend to be anti-evolution when it comes to the human mind and to human society.

Among libertarians, there are those who support the libertarian world view precisely because it is the most pro-social world view. Such libertarians view government legislation as being fundamentally anti-social in nature. Legislation tends to make the law more rigid and, thus, less able to adapt to changing circumstances.

Take, for instance, the laws surrounding marriage. Many states in the U.S. continue to prohibit same-sex marriage, and both major parties have opposed same-sex marriage until recently. The legislation in many states is lagging far behind social views on the matter. In other words, the naturally emergent laws surrounding marriage – regarding whether or not same-sex couples can marry – is well ahead of changes in legislation. Legislation does not necessarily change with changing circumstances, and when it does, it is typically well behind where the rest of society already is.

However, there are also libertarians who support the libertarian view because they think it is a fundamentally anti-social world view. In this sense, they in fact agree with the left and right that it is government which makes us social. These libertarians favor libertarianism because they want to be free to do any number of things that are currently illegal and may or may not be unethical. You can typically identify these libertarians by the fact that they will complain not just about government legislation, but about social pressure against unethical behavior. They want the world to fall into disorder, and view libertarianism as the pathway to that end.

 But the world is not a Hobbesean jungle just waiting to happen the moment governments disappear, as these latter libertarians, the right, and the left would all have us believe. This world view is not supported by any of the evidence we have about human beings. It is only the classical liberals who truly believe in our evolved human nature. That can, of course, give rise to a wide variety of beliefs about the proper role of government, from a basic income guarantee welfare state to anarchy, but such discussions are at least discussions of real human beings as hypersocial primates. And that is how all discussions about the economy, culture, government, philanthropy, and all other social interactions ought to proceed.

Asperger's, Autism, and I.Q.

It seems that people who process sensory information differently are those we identify as having a high I.Q.

Of course, "sensory processing problems" is a main aspect of autism. Does this mean that those with autism ought to have a high I.Q.?

Well, historically people with autism have been shown to have lower I.Q.s than the general population. However, those with Asperger's generally are seen to have higher I.Q.'s than average. Now, if Asperger's is, in many ways, simply autism without the language delay, then this raises some interesting issues. Are the low I.Q. scores for those with autism a result of language issues? It seems that that may in fact be the case. Indeed, when alternative measurements of intelligence have been used with certain people with autism, their I.Q. scores jumped from "mentally retarded" to "genius."

Consider the results from the first article. Two of the aspects of people with high I.Q.s are the ability to focus and to pick out details. These are aspects commonly found in people with Asperger's especially. It is part of bottom-up thinking -- the details give rise to the big picture for someone with autism. Neurotypicals, on the other hand, see the big picture first -- this is part of top-down thinking. As a result, they may miss the details, just as bottom-up thinkers may miss the big picture.

In a sense, this means that "high I.Q." is practically equivalent with "having autism." Or at least "having Asperger's." And as we find more and better ways of reaching non-verbal and low-verbal autistics, I suspect we will find more and more high I.Q.s out there.

Part of the issue involves the general ability to integrate the details. Integration of details becomes increasingly problematic as you move along the autism spectrum. Those with Asperger's can integrate the best among those on the spectrum, whereas the most sever may not be able to integrate at all. Such a person would, of course, be identified as having severe mental deficiency, since they cannot make any sense of the world at all. The result, it would seem to me, would be a sort of U-shaped range of I.Q., with large numbers with high I.Q. being closer to the Asperger's end and there being a tipping point of inability to integrate then resulting in very low I.Q.s at the extreme other end.

The result of this would be a situation where those with Asperger's would appear to have high I.Q.s on average, whereas those with autism would appear to have average I.Q.'s on average. Of course, if you average a group that in fact has two groups in it -- one with high I.Q. and another with low I.Q. -- you would expect the average of that larger group to be average I.Q. All of which points to some problems with looking at groups statistically without paying much attention to the details.

400 Distinct Autisms (and some ADD)

In complex systems, many causes can have a single effect. This is true in social systems, neural systems, and biological systems. And we can see this in the fact that there are at least 400 distinct autisms, at least from the perspective of causes.

The above linked article also notes that one of the causes of autism is also a known cause of ADHD. It has been suggested by a friend with ADD that our daughter, Melina, might have it as well. If there is in fact a connection between ADD and certain kinds of autism, that would make sense, given my (obviously) heritable autism. There is a known protective effect from being female when it comes to autism, and it may be that ADD is what peeked out with Melina.

This points, too, to the fact that when it comes to multiple causes, we have to understand that those causes are all interacting with other causes, affecting effects. This is true in biological systems, neural systems, and social systems, equally.

Left-Handedness, Autism, and High Steroid Levels In Utero

Being left-handed, I have done a bit of reading on the topic. So I have known for a while that one of the causes of left-handedness is the presence of higher than normal levels of testosterone in utero. If there is a high level of testosterone during certain stages of brain development, hemisphere dominance can change, and left-handedness can be a result.

A new study by Simon Baron-Cohen shows high levels of steroid hormones in utero for children who later show signs of autism. Testosterone is, of course, a steroid hormone. This made me wonder if there is a correlation between left-handedness and autism.

Not only is there, but we have known about it since 1983.While the general population shows 37% non-right handed dominance (meaning left-handedness or various forms of ambidexterity; left-handedness alone is about 18%), that number is almost twice as high in people with autism: 62%. This is pretty much a complete inversion of neurotypicals' handedness. More recent papers all suggest people with autism may be three times more likely to be left-handed.

Of course, autism is not the only condition strongly associated with left-handedness. Dyslexia is as well. And so are many other mental disorders. Equally, about half of lefties are clearly neurotypical (not autistic, dyslexic, etc.), so it's important to understand that while the presence of left-handedness may indicate non-neurotypical neural architecture, it does not necessarily do so.

Still, the correlation between high testosterone levels and left-handedness and the correlation between high steroid levels (including testosterone) and autism points toward Baron-Cowan's theory of autism as a more male brain. Now, given that I subscribe to the "intense world theory" of autism (at least for myself and my son), I have to wonder if there is a relationship between these high steroid levels and neurohyperactivity.

Life Consulting

I really like helping people solve their problems. I really like to help people understand the world better. I certainly don't claim to have all the answers -- but I do have a great many questions. And sometimes it is the right questions we need to hear.

We have all heard of therapy -- it's based on the current psychological theories and can involve a psychiatrist or a therapist or a trained therapist. There is also philosophical therapy -- it is based on the questions philosophers have asked over the millennia. Lou Marinoff calls it "therapy for the sane." There is also literary therapy, which attempts to do something similar to philosophical therapy, but with literature. And there are people called "life coaches," where the aim is to help people achieve certain goals in life.

Now, what is "therapy"? Therapy means "curing" or "healing." A therapist is attempting to cure or heal a person of what ails them. The psychological therapist of their mental "disorders," the philosophical or literary therapist of their dis-ease with life.

"Consult" comes from the Latin word for "to discuss." Consultants are thus professional people with whom you can discuss a matter or situation. The consultant gives you feedback, provides you with an outside perspective of the situation, and then allows you to do what you wish with the information.

Sometimes people just need to sit and discuss things. They may need to discuss their job situation. Or their home situation. Or their frustrations with their autistic child. Or their writer's block. Or any number of other things. And wouldn't it be nice to be able to discuss those things with someone who can point you to the right things to read or who can ask you the right questions or who can make you think about things from a new perspective?

A life coach is trying to help you realize a goal. A life consultant is not necessarily goal-oriented.
A therapist is trying to cure or heal you of something. A life consultant is just a discussant; any healing will be done on your own, and if your consultant's consultations led you in that direction, great.

The key is to provide as judgment-free discussions as possible. The key is to lead people to greater understanding. It's what great teachers do. It's what practical philosophers do. It's what the humanities are all about. It is what I would love to provide people.

Those Crazy Innovators

I recently wrote about the fact that most people are copiers rather than innovators.This is of course hardly a condemnation of the vast majority of humanity, given that being strong social learners is what allows for our high levels of cooperation that make complex society possible at all.

But the fact remains that if everyone were strong social learners and, therefore, copiers of others, there wouldn't be much social evolution at all. The occasional mistake will sneak in, and people will of course copy those mistakes that work out best, but such a system would be a relatively slow process.

Enter the innovators. You don't want too many innovators, because such a society won't hold together too well. You want fewer innovations of things that work well, and if you have a lot of innovators, you are likely to get people innovating away what works.

It is perhaps not surprising that when humans evolved ultrasociality -- meaning we started undergoing far more group selection -- a balance was struck between copiers and innovators. Copiers dominate by far, but there are just enough innovators around to innovate.

But who are the innovators?

In my last posting I mentioned that people with autism and sociopaths are good contenders for this role. To that one should add schizophrenics and bipolars, among others we label as "mentally ill." Many artists, for example, are known to be at least slightly bipolar. The Nobel Prize winning game theorist John Nash was, famously, schizophrenic. Many cultural creatives are known to be autistic. More, autistic people tend to be more analytical than strategic (sociopaths, on the other hand, are far more strategic and, thus, more like neurotypicals in their thinking; they only lack a conscience, which can free them up to do quite a number of anti-social things).

Historically, human societies have needed a combination of less social individuals. Those individuals were needed for cultural creativity, technological innovation, and quite often ruthlessness in war. The latter is where the sociopaths come in.

A group with sociopaths is likely to have someone who is willing to kill and otherwise exploit others to get what he wants; such a person might be a good leader in a war, especially given their strong strategic abilities. As we move more and more toward a global civil society, we are finding we need our sociopaths less and less. But that doesn't mean we have gotten rid of them over time. Sociopaths, with their charm and strategic thinking, often end up in government or as CEOs -- when they don't end up in prison (and sometimes that is their path to prison). Places of power are highly attractive to sociopaths, and their charm and strategic thinking make them attractive to neurotypicals, who typically swarm in the direction of the person most determined to go in a particular direction. And sociopaths are quite determined people. Thus we should not be surprised if the highest concentrations of sociopaths are in government. In fact, sociopaths make bad CEOs, because they tend to run far less productive companies (due to their arrogance and tendency to try to subvert the system to their advantage, traits which are rewarded in government), so there are fewer sociopathic CEOs (as a percentage) than elected officials.

At the other end are the autistics -- creative, analytical types who are more interested in their obsessions than in other people. Your nerds and geeks, technological innovators and socially awkward artists. They don't seek to rule anyone. They just want to be left alone to do their work. But of course, their work, being creative and innovative, tends to be socially disruptive, so they are further treated as social outcasts by neurotypicals (and their tendency to be socially awkward anyway doesn't help). Only if they create something that is adopted by the early adopters -- that group of people who are adventurous enough to try things out, but not creative enough to innovate -- can they become "accepted" into polite society. And then, not really. Nobody is dying to hang out with Bill Gates; nobody was dying to hang out with Steve Jobs. But most people deep down never fully trusted them. Their products made our lives better, but they did so only by disrupting our lives. And disrupting others' lives is anti-social behavior (no matter how good the outcome).

And then there are the outliers labeled as "mentally ill." This can often include people with autism, who are more prone than the regular population to being bipolar or schizophrenic. It is perhaps not surprising that such people tend to be cultural innovators more than technological innovators. Artists and religious innovators are well represented here. A few of the greatest scientists as well. They see the world in unusual ways, making them mad to the general populace. Once upon a time, hearing voices was proof positive that one had a strong connection to God or the gods (or to demons); now it is proof positive you have schizophrenia. We are too rational for such religious innovations, and so we tend to hospitalize such people. Unless they can prove their worth in the arts or sciences. John Nash could hear voices all he wanted, so long as he controlled himself and produced game theory.

What percentage of the population are we looking at here? It is estimated that, worldwide, about 1% of the population are sociopaths (2% in the U.S., whose history of open borders attracted the more adventurous, a group with includes a large number of sociopaths). The percentage of people with autism is closing in on about 2% of the population. The mentally ill might be another 1-2%. We can cut this in half by removing the extreme outliers -- the sociopaths in prison, the autistics and mentally ill so severe they cannot contribute their creativity and innovations to society. Thus, our 4-6% outliers becomes about 2-3% innovators in any given society/culture. This is probably about the maximum number of innovators a society can have and still hold together. And we must keep in mind that much of that innovation is killed off by the sociopaths in government, whose policies are very often anti-innovation. Thus, we probably see innovation at about 1% of the population. Given that fact, it is quite impressive what human beings have accomplished in only a few tens of thousands of years.

Innovators and Copiers

I recently finished Wired for Culture by Mark Pagel. I will be officially reviewing the book soon, so I'm not going to go into a lot about the book right now. But there is something he points out that I think is very important, and which I have been thinking about lately.

Pagel observes that (despite pop psychological narratives to the contrary), the vast majority of people are neither creative nor inventive. Rather, the vast, vast majority of people are ultrasocial -- they copy what others do exactly as those others do them. This is known as social learning, and it is what allows human beings to live in such huge groups. In fact, if most people were in fact creative or inventive, that would undermine ultrasociality (237).

Yet, it seems obvious that humans are inventive and creative. Look at all the technology we have around us. Look at all of the art and scientific discoveries.

Yes, and look at all the outrage over the latest discoveries. Look at all the outrage over the latest styles in the arts. Look at all the complaints about technology. Most people are reluctant adopters of anything new, and are in many ways Luddites at heart.

Thus, we see the same patterns for science, the arts, and technology. We have the inventor/discoverer. Then we have the early adopters. Then, when enough people adopt it, we have everyone else adopt it -- once they see that it is good, they copy it.

The great innovations are rare. More common are social learning plus mutations, resulting in slow cultural evolution.And truly revolutionary innovations are extremely rare -- and often result in the creator/inventor becoming social outcasts for their trouble. More strategic innovators will tinker on the edges of what we have so that others will accept the new things more easily. Poetic innovations go farther with more people if you introduce them in the context of poetic forms people like and know.

Humans are, overall, very good copiers, but very bad innovators (340). He observes that in game theory models, systems with many innovators tend to do far worse than those with many copiers. The systems that survive best are those in which almost all of the agents copy and there are only one or two innovators. The copiers all free ride off of the innovators, but if that did not happen, there would not be the kinds of complex societies we find in the world. To have spontaneous orders, you need mostly copiers, with few innovators disrupting the system.

I have primarily discussed artists, scientists, and inventors as innovators disrupting things, but there is another kind who also arises: political leaders. Political leaders emerge precisely because most people are strong social learners and, therefore, followers (362). As a result,

the cooperative enterprise of society is always finely balanced between the benefits that derive from cooperation on the one hand and the benefits that derive from trying to subvert the system toward your own gain without being caught or overpowered (363) 

as all rulers in fact try to do. The difference between scientists, artists, and innovators and politicians is that the latter use their tendency to innovate to try to subvert the system and make it work toward their own advantage, while the former are not working so strategically, and are primarily interested in their narrow interests.

Coincidentally, there are two groups of people widely recognized as being unaffected by social pressures.

There are poor social learners, like those with autism -- whose poor social learning may allow them to be more innovative, since they don't feel the need to adapt to what everyone else is doing. Such people also happen to be rather focused on narrow interests. If this sounds like most scientists, artists, and innovators, it may not be entirely a coincidence.

Then there are the sociopaths, who are good social learners and highly strategic, like the vast majority of people, but who do not have a conscience. They work to subvert the system toward their own gain without being caught or overpowered. We see this in the cheaters of society, those who try to scam people, those who try to get power over others. Governments are full of these people. We elect them all the time.

People from either group lead the world. The rest of the world copies them and their innovations. In the case of the cultural innovators, the result is ever-more wealth for everyone. In the case of the sociopaths in government, the result is ever-more power for themselves.

Trigger Warnings

The humanities have been besieged with political correctness for a long time. I'm hardly going to argue that some of it hasn't been good. Those who have insisted that we have a larger canon, for example, have in doing so managed to introduce many in the West to a wider variety of works of literature from around the world. One of the consequences of this is that people are brought into other minds, other ways of living, other cultures and beliefs through the characters of the works, in the safe play space that is literature.

Of course, the flip side of political correctness is that it precisely views literature as anything but a safe play space. Literature is considered dangerous, not safe; and literature is to be taken with utmost seriousness, not as a place of play. It is this tendency that results in the politicization of literature. It is this tendency that results in the reduction of literature to a few political points, and which has finally resulted in the idea of "Trigger Warnings."

Most ideas out of the politically correct crowd have primarily triggered only a handful of cranks on the right. But the mostly negative reaction to this idea of trigger warnings has come from every angle, from the right as well as the left, conservatives and liberals. Jay Caspian Kang has written about it in The New Yorker, Jennifer Medina has written about it in The New York Times, Jill Filipovic has written about it in The Guardian, Conor Friedersdorf has written about it in The Atlantic, and Kevin Drum has written about it in Mother Jones. These are hardly right-wing outlets.

What, exactly, is a trigger warning? It is a warning that a work may contain scenes of rape, incest, murder, racism, sexism, homophobia, colonialism, violence, war, etc., so that those who don't want to read about such things can opt out. The fear is that if you have been raped, you may not want to read about someone being raped, because that might trigger a negative response in you. Many are treating this like the supporters are saying that the last thing on earth anyone would ever want to do is make someone even the slightest bit uncomfortable. What they are saying is much more ignorant of what literature does to and for the reader than that.

Since at least Aristotle we have known that literature has a cathartic effect. One way to understand this effect is to understand that works of literature act as a safe play space. You are in a place of pretend, where nothing is real, and where you can experience things -- danger, joy, fear, love, hate, outrage, hope, wonder -- in a safe place. There is nothing real at stake, so you can experience a variety of actions and emotions, ideas and beliefs in a place you can enter into and exit out of at will. By experiencing these things, you learn how to deal with them -- or not deal with them. You learn what it feels like to be a woman if you are a man, a man if you are a woman, someone of another race or ethnicity or culture or belief system. You experience different times and different ways people treat each other. Thus, literature acts to create greater empathy for others. More, it trains our emotions, so that we are in more control of those emotions.

This latter is exactly why, if you have been raped, you ought to read works of literature in which a rape has occurred. Why, if you have experienced racism, you ought to read works of literature in which racism is presented. Why, if you have experienced colonialism, you ought to read works of literature in which colonialism is a theme. By raising those emotions in the safe play space of literature, you learn to deal with those emotions better. You learn to be in more control of those emotions.

In other words, if you understand the cathartic role of literature, you cannot be in favor of trigger warnings. But I suspect those who favor them have probably not read Aristotle's Poetics (his being a DWM makes reading him un-PC). Had they read and understood Aristotle, they would understand that the best thing that could happen is if you read things that make you uncomfortable, and evoke an emotional response. It is then that literature has its transformative effect (one of them, anyway). If you warn people away from works of literature that might trigger the very emotions literature needs to trigger to have its cathartic effect, then you are preventing them from reaping one of the great benefits of literature. You are ensuring that those people will remain delicate, fragile, emotionally immature.

I cannot imagine the emotional wreck I would be had I not read works of literature that dredged up -- and, subsequently, made me deal with -- some quite negative emotions. The Sorrows of Young Werther by Goethe would have perhaps gone unread by me had I been warned off -- and, as a consequence, I wouldn't have dealt with a number of emotional situations I was faced with in the mid-1990s. I could say the same of Crime and Punishment by Dostoevski. Or The Immoralist by Andre Gide.

And those are works that had a personal effect on me, helping me deal with a variety of emotional and personality issues. I could go on and on about works that opened my eyes to different ways of living, different ways of being, different ways of believing, that have contributed to my increasing liberalism. That is the effect of literature -- to liberalize and emotionally mature the reader. And it is those effects that "trigger warnings" seek to ensure people avoid. Thus, the politicization of literature has finally come around to realizing its true intent: to eliminate literature from our lives, so that we won't be liberalized and emotionally matured.

If we reduce literary works to political talking points and "triggers," then we lose the beauty of the works, the complexity of the works, the role those works play in developing the soul. But losing those things is of course exactly the point. The mostly negative reaction to this idea of "trigger warnings" is a good sign, though. Let us hope that this is indeed the step too far, and that it does not become widely used and gotten used to. For if we do get used to it, we will lose literature itself. And we will have done it voluntarily.

Herman Melville on Free Will

aye, chance, free will, and necessity---no wise incompatible---all interweavingly working together. The straight warp of necessity, not to be swerved from its ultimate course---its every alternating vibration, indeed, only tending to that; free will still free to ply her shuttle between given threads; and chance, though restrained in its play within the right lines of necessity, and sideways in its motions directed by free will, though thus prescribed to by both, chance by turns rules either, and has the last featuring blow at events. -- Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Ch. XLVII

There is remarkable insight in this passage, an insight scientifically discovered in the form of far-from-equilibrium processes on the borderland of order and chaos. Order -- necessity; chaos -- chance. And on the borderlands, the far-from-equilibrium state -- free will. Free will? Indeed, the realm between order and chaos, between necessity and chance, is the realm of maximum freedom, the far-from-equilibrium state, where strange attractors emerge and create emergent complexity. And this includes free will. We are, psychologically, neither chance nor necessity -- alone. We are both, together. And not just us, psychologically. Our social systems and cultures are the same -- and thus, free. Our living cells are the same -- and thus, free.

Science, again, discovers what the poets knew.

Blogging at LibertyChat

I will be contributing, about once a week, to LibertyChat.com. My first piece asks Do Americans Have Property Rights? The answer may surprise you.

"Asperger's" and "Other" Poems at Awe in Autism

Two of my poems have been published at Awe in Autism, a website dedicated to art created by autistic people (or by people writing about autism). My two poems are "Asperger's" and "Other." Since discovering I have Asperger's (autism, according to the DSM-5), I have been working out how I feel about it. Yes, we do have feelings! We often just have difficulties articulating those feelings. For someone like me, poetry truly is an attempt to say the unsayable.

Answering a Few Questions from A Field Guide to the Hero's Journey

I have recently finished reading A Field Guide for the Hero's Journey by Jeff Sandefer and Rev. Robert Sirico. I highly recommend it.

At the end of each chapter are a series of questions. I thought I would answer a few of them.

What skills and talents do you possess?

I have good writing and proofreading/editing skills. I have a talent for storytelling. I am good at seeing complex patterns, and I am highly analytical. I have developed several skills related to writing poetry -- particularly writing in rhythm (especially iambic).

What do you enjoy doing?

Reading, writing, proofreading/editing, creating plays and poetry, working on spontaneous order theory, thinking, and cooking. I also enjoy watching plays and movies. I enjoy talking about things which interest me. I enjoy time alone to read and think. I enjoy time walking in nature. I enjoy my family, and I often delight in my children.

What do you love doing so much that you lose yourself in it?

Writing.

What do you hate doing?

Pretty much anything I don't enjoy. I hate driving in heavy traffic. I hate dealing with bureaucracies and bureaucrats.

Do you tend to rush into things, or hesitate too long?

I tend to hesitate. I overthink things, and I am sometimes unsure about social situations.

Do you tend to save up for a rainy day, or does every cent burn a hole in your pocket?

Neither, though I am working on doing the former.

Are you a perfectionist who always demands the best, or are you satisfied with better-than-before?

I try to both do my best and to do better than before.

Are you a natural optimist, or do you tend toward pessimism?

I tend to mix the two, which I call "hope."

What do you have to offer?

A love of beauty, a love of ideas, hope for the future, poetry.

What can you do that no one else can do?

No one can write the exact poems and plays I write, because nobody else has the exact combination of skill and experience (life and reading) I have.

What needs do you see in the world around you?

I see a need for people to adopt a more positive, supportive culture, one that is more trusting and more conducive to the creation of wealth across as broad a range of people as possible. I see a need for more liberty so that people can realize their dreams more readily, and so that virtue and hard work are rewarded. I see a need for less poverty and for less collectivist thinking (racism, sexism, homophobia, etc.), for the development of a more heterogeneous culture with institutions that increase trust and social interactions, creating the conditions for wealth production and thus the elimination of true poverty.

Are you willing to take risks in the hope of great rewards?

In respect to my education, I have a history of taking risks; in respect to my career, I have a history of caution. I am willing to be willing to take risks in the hope of great rewards.

Are you ready to use your resources---your natural talents, your ideas, your money---instead of burying them?

I am always using my natural talents and my ideas. However, I need to be more willing to make public my playwriting skills.

Who do you want to become?

I want to become a great playwright and poet.

What would you like to be known for?

My plays and poetry. My work on spontaneous order theory.

What would you like to have accomplished?

I want my plays to be performed around the world. I want to write more plays. I want to write and publish a book on the varieties of spontaneous orders.

What sort of person would you like to have become?

I want to be generous. I like to help people -- especially in the area of writing. I want to be more expressive of my feelings (more expressive outside of my art).

Culture and Wealth Creation

Culture is an important element to a society's wealth-creation.

Suppose you live in a culture in which members of your culture encourage each other to do well, whether it be in school or financially or any other aspect of life. If you do well, your family is happy about it. Your parents want you to have a better life than they had. People are willing to help you do well -- even if there is an expectation that when you do do well, that you will reach down and help those who helped you. Perhaps it is precisely due to this expectation. Doing well is praised and admired. When you see that someone has more than you, you are inspired to try to achieve what that person has achieved.

Now suppose you live in a culture in which members of your culture do not encourage each other to do well. If you do well, your family complains you think you're better than they are. Your parents expect you to have the same life as they had. Nobody is willing to help you, and there is no expectation that when you do well, that you will help anyone. Doing well is disparaged and seen as evidence you cheated someone somewhere somehow. When you see that someone has more than you, you are envious and wish they did not have more than you.

Let's take it up a notch. Let's suppose you live in a culture in which people actively discourage each other to do well. If you do well, you are shamed and shunned. Your parents don't care if you have a worse life than they had, so long as it's not better. People are actively trying to tear you down; everyone is out for themselves and expect to better their position by stabbing others in the back. Doing well is definite proof that you are a liar and a cheater, at best. When you see that someone has more than you, that is evidence they are a thief, and it is perfectly acceptable to steal and cheat to separate that person from their wealth.

Which of these cultures will result in the creation of wealth? Which of these cultures will create a stagnant culture? Which of these cultures will wallow in poverty?

Which of these is a high-trust society? Which is a low-trust one?

Which of these would you prefer to live in? What are you doing to live in it?

In what direction is American culture evolving? Why?

Autism, Empathy, and ADD

One theory of autism is that of "mind-blindness," developed by Simon Baron-Cohen. Out of this mind-blindness come a general lack of empathy. If you are mind-blind, you literally cannot empathize, after all.

Being a person with Asperger's and having a son (Daniel) with autism, I both know what it's like to have autism and to live with someone with autism. This is a quite different experience than is studying autism in the lab, through surveys (of neurotypical parents), etc.

For example, when I am ill, Daniel doesn't notice that I'm ill the way my neurotypical daughter does. She immediately notices and shows empathy. Daniel is still primarily interested in getting me to do whatever it is he's interested in doing. Most would argue that this proves lack of empathy. However, something interesting happens when my wife points out to Daniel that I am sick: he immediately looks worried and asks me if I'm okay. When you direct his attention to how I feel, he shows empathy. And he will periodically ask me how I'm doing until I'm well again. Also, we have a set of doctor toys, and he will go get them and give me a "check up" with them to make sure I'm okay. If those behaviors aren't empathy, I don't know what is (of course, my being autistic myself might mean I don't in fact know what empathy is -- but my answer to that is the same as that of George Takai on an episode of The Big Bang Theory when he was questioned as to how he could know anything about what a woman wants: "I read!").

In any case, this at least has the surface appearance of empathy. And I do in fact feel bad when my wife feels bad, and seeing her in pain induces feelings of pain. More, when my father lost his left arm in a mining accident when I was in high school, I experienced sympathy pains. Now, I will also admit that I don't always come across as the most empathetic person -- but that might be due to what I suggested with my son: I probably need my attention brought to the fact that the person is suffering. I am quite sensitive to suffering in general -- it affects my politics and support for free markets -- but I sometimes miss it in person.

Missing someone's suffering is part of the general problem of being constantly bombarded with information. It can be distracting. If there is any amount of noise in the house, I have a hard time hearing the television. While neurotypicals have the ability to cut off all but what they are trying to pay attention to -- indeed, can make background noise just that: background -- I hear the background noise at at least the same level, or higher, than what I want to pay attention to. Thus, I have to turn the T.V. volume up quite a bit. When there is nobody in the house, I can hear the T.V. at a volume of 30; when people are in the house, I have to have the volume up to at least 70, and I may have to have it all the way up to 100. And I'll still have to tell people to please quite down so I can hear.

This happens too when I am in public, at say a Starbucks, with a friend. My eyes are all over the place, noticing everyone and everything. At the same time, I am able to remain focused on the conversation. The distraction is thus sense-dependent. I can be visually distracted and pay attention to what you say. I can have auditory distraction and think and write. (I can even think while talking.)

Since much human communication is through visual cues, the fact that I am often visually distracted while I'm supposed to be focused on you, I can miss those visual cues you are communicating to me. This can result in socially awkward situations and an appearance of a lack of empathy on my part.

If this sounds a lot like attention deficit disorder, that may not be a coincidence. Many with autism are also diagnosed with ADD. I would not be surprised if ADD were in fact part of the spectrum, if we were to extend the spectrum out beyond Asperger's. Mere ADD does not result in missing social cues -- or at least, not as many as are missed by those with autism -- which is what keeps it outside the autism spectrum, but I must wonder if it is not unrelated. I will also note that, like autism, far more boys have ADD than do girls.

Crowdfunding asTruly Democratic Decision-Making

Bookforum reviews The People's Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age. With a title like that, you would think this would be a celebration of things like Kickstarter and other crowdfunding platforms. However, this review makes it seem that it's more of a complaint that crowdfunding could replace things like the National Endowment for the Arts (and for the Humanities):

A central argument in Astra Taylor’s The People’s Platform is that Web-enabled innovations like crowdfunding make for wonderful add-ons to, but very poor substitutes for, existing cultural institutions.

Taylor argues for what she terms "cultural democracy," which seems to not be democracy per se, but rather central government spending on the arts. There is a huge difference between the two, which Taylor seems to not understand.

For example:

A good example of cultural democracy in action is France’s Lang law, which seeks to protect small bookstores from chains and online retailers like Amazon by banning the discounting of books.

Now, can someone please explain to me how it is that banning the discounting of books -- which would make books more affordable for poor people to buy -- makes culture more democratic? It doesn't. Rather, it cuts off a large number of people from buying books by making books less affordable. Culture is not democratized; rather, a few businesses are protected at the expense of everyone else -- and the culture.

Now, the reviewer does ask a rather pertinent question. I would include myself in the "some", given the example given:

what does it mean to democratize culture? To some, it means getting rid of gatekeepers such as the National Endowment for the Arts and replacing them with some kind of direct democracy, in which citizens can simply cast their votes for or against particular films or books.

I would hardly get rid of all gatekeepers. There are roles for journals, magazines, publishing houses, etc. and their editors (and galleries, etc. for the arts). But when it comes to funding, it seems clear to me that direct funding of works you would like to see made is indeed more democratic than having a government-run gatekeeper.

But this is definitely not how Taylor sees it. “Democratizing culture,” she writes, “means choosing, as a society, to invest in work that is not obviously popular or marketable or easy to understand. It means supporting diverse populations to devote themselves to critical, creative work and then elevating their efforts so they can compete on a platform that is anything but equal.”

What makes Taylor think that "society" is ever going to want to invest in works not obviously popular or marketable or easy to understand? Think about it. Somehow all of the individuals of society don't want your work that is not popular, marketable, or easy to understand, but when they are collectivized into "society," they suddenly have the insight and wisdom to not only do so, but to pick those works that will stand the test of time. This is nonsense on stilts. Government "experts" are not democratic. Government experts are oligarchic. Aristocratic, at best (and more typically, the worst get on top). And those government experts are not even democratically elected. They are appointed. And the only one appointed is the top person, who is more of a figurehead, while the people making the actual decisions are neither elected nor appointed by an elected official. In other words, there is nothing even remotely democratic about the NEA or NEH. More, picking works that the majority would not pick is also not democratic, but is outright anti-democratic. If you want to defend the existence of the NEA and/or NEH, "democracy" is about the silliest approach one can take.

Of course, I suspect that Taylor is like altogether too many people nowadays, who call "democratic" any outcome with which they agree. That is a perversion of democracy. But that is another topic.

The real problem is that Taylor does not seem to understand that crowdfunding is much more likely to fund works not obviously popular, marketable, or easy to understand. You don't have to have a majority vote to get funded; you need a small minority who believe in your project enough to put up money for it to get funded. It is much more likely that your odd project will find a few people who want to see that odd project brought to life than it is that your odd project will get the attention of a bureaucrat off in Washington, D.C. This makes crowdfunding a far more democratic way of doing things.