Shame! Shame! Shame!

Externalities in social markets and when and how to address them

When is it appropriate to use the tool of shame (or praise) to increase the cost (or benefit) to consenting adults of engaging in (or refusing to engage in) a particular social interaction or private behavior? Many of us have strong intuitions on this question when applied to specific cases, such as slut shaming or divorce. But I’ve recently been attempting to clarify the conditions under which I support leveraging social judgment in an effort to change the equilibrium level at which individuals engage in a given behavior. 

“When is it ethical to shame others?” is a subset of the broader question “when is it appropriate to, in any sense, “intervene” in consensual interactions or private behaviors?” The tools available in the general case include more aggressive methods than shame and praise, such as criminalizing, regulating, taxing or subsidizing certain interactions or behaviors. I’ll refer to criminalizing, regulating, taxing or subsidizing a behavior as leveraging legislative judgment. And generally speaking, you should have a much higher bar for imposing legislative costs (or benefits), which once imposed are in some sense enforced by everyone on everyone, than for imposing social costs (or benefits), which are always enforced in a more representative way since the degree of social shame (or praise) directed at a certain behavior is the product of many individuals agreeing to and acting on a belief that it’s shame (or praise) worthy. 

The social sphere is the product of individuals interacting in response to their desires (for comfort, excitement, status, meaning) and abilities, against a background of cultural norms and values which are enforced through shame and praise. And the economic sphere is the product of individuals interacting in response to their preferences (for various goods and services) and abilities, against a background of legislative rules and goals which are enforced through laws, taxes and regulations. The overall result of individual agents working within these systems is The Culture and The Economy respectively. 

In reality the economic and social spheres are interconnected; norms and values affect our economic interactions and taxes and regulations affect our social interactions, and are sometimes enacted specifically to engineer social outcomes. In the American context, people on the right tend to be cautious about levying legislative judgment to interfere in economic transactions but very comfortable levying social (and often legislative) judgment to interfere in social interactions. And people on the left tend to be comfortable levying legislative judgment to interfere in economic transactions but very cautious about levying social (and certainly legislative) judgment to interfere in social interactions.

In this post I’ll outline my general intuitions regarding the use of legislative judgment to shape the economy and how these differ from my intuitions regarding the use of social judgment to shape the culture. I’ve found analyzing the arguments for promoting specific social norms using economic terms to be very helpful for clarifying the source of my differences with social conservatives (both trad and libertarian) and wokies. Some of the time the source of disagreement is a value difference but often it’s largely a reflection of factual differences. Identifying what’s driving our differential conclusions is required if we hope to engage in a productive conversation and to avoid the easy (but generally false) claim that our opponents are simply “being dishonest”. 

To give a few examples of my value based and factual differences with these groups:

• I tend to value freedom from government intervention more and safety less than both the trads and the wokies (value difference) and to a similar degree as the socially conservative libertarians

• I tend to be more concerned about outcomes for minorities (e.g. gender non conforming people) relative to most social conservatives but much less concerned relative to most wokies (value difference)

• I think the past was worse than the trads do but also that human nature is less flexible and perfectible than the wokies do (factual disagreement)

• I think that the behavioral sex differences we see in the western developed world are mostly due to evolved biological differences in personality, abilities and proclivities while the wokies think they’re largely socially constructed (factual disagreement). But I also think that if we returned to a world with strong socially conservative norms, sex differences in that world would be more socially constructed than the trads think (factual disagreement).

I’ll make some rough analogies between economic and social markets including:

• Private ownership is the ownership of property (real estate, intellectual property etc.) by private agents. Private ownership implies the right of the agent to the use of and benefits generated from that property as well as the right to modify or sell that property. The concept of ownership can be extended to ownership of the body. Full bodily autonomy gives individuals the right to use their body as they please (so long as they don’t violate the bodily autonomy of others) and to capture the benefits generated by their actions as well as to modify their body and to sell access to or parts of their body to others.

• Free markets imply a minimal level of interference in consensual interactions from agents who are not involved in the interaction. 

  • In the economic case this means that the government doesn’t prevent individuals from engaging in consensual economic transactions and that these are subject to limited regulation or taxation from government, “laissez-faire capitalism”

  • In the social case this means that society doesn’t prevent individuals from engaging in consensual social transactions and that these are subject to limited social costs from uninvolved parties, “live and let live” 

• Central planning is defined broadly (for the purpose of this blog) as the setting of specific goals (economic or cultural) and the use of available tools to try to achieve them. 

  • In the economic case this looks like attempts to engineer growth or contraction in specific parts of the economy by changing regulation, taxes/subsidies or through direct government spending (and to a lesser extent by changing or strengthening norms). 

  • In the social case this looks like attempts to encourage specific outcomes such as a higher marriage rate or lower promiscuity by changing or strengthening norms (and in some cases by criminalizing or legally restricting certain behaviors or interactions).

My priors:

I think capitalism works better than communism because private ownership incentivizes people to produce things of value to others. And I think that free markets almost always lead to better results than central planning because determining the most valuable use of capital is very complicated (

Richard Hanania

does an excellent job illustrating how the free market position is one of humility). Because it’s incredibly complicated it’s better left to the market system which is able to aggregate information about preferences through the actions of individual participants. 

Private ownership can be compared to bodily autonomy which I see as a fundamental right. I generally favor free social markets and feel not only that there should be almost no government interference in consensual social interactions between adults but also that we should limit our shaming of the behavior of strangers. However, this prior against social interference is much weaker than my prior against economic interference, not only because my bar for levying social judgment is much lower than by bar for levying legislative judgment, but because central planning in the social realm seems much more defensible. Defining specific economic goals to aim for and incentivize, such as industry level production targets, seems like a fool's errand, while defining specific social goals to aim for and incentivize, like having more kids growing up in two parent households, does not. I think this is because humans have not evolved biologically nearly as quickly as our economy has. We have some understanding of how our evolutionary past informs our psychology and can map that on to behaviors and the types of relationships/community structures which tend to lead to fulfilling lives for most people. 

Still, I find social conservatives to be overconfident in their belief that they can accurately assess the value of interactions both for the individuals involved as well as for the broader society. While I’d definitely sign on to a vague goal like “improve the average quality of romantic relationships” I’d likely reject a more specific goal like “lower the median number of lifetime sexual partners”. This is because I don’t know what the “optimal” amount of promiscuity is and see the current level as the result of aggregating desires across many agents who are interacting freely with one another (but I’ll get into arguments for slut shaming below).

Consent and surplus:

We should generally not interfere with consensual economic transactions. This is because when people freely engage in a transaction they do so because they both think participating in the transaction will leave them better off than they were before. For example, when a good is purchased it generally benefits both the buyer and seller. The seller wouldn’t freely part with the item for less than she thinks it’s worth to her and the buyer wouldn’t freely buy the item for more than she thinks it’s worth to her. The difference between the sale price and what the item is actually worth to the seller is producer surplus and the difference between what the item is actually worth to the buyer and the price is the consumer surplus - the sum of the two (assuming no externalities) is the total economic surplus generated from the transaction. If the buyer isn’t willing to pay the seller more for the item than the seller is willing to sell it for, the transaction simply won’t occur. The overall market demand for and supply of a product or service will determine its equilibrium price and consumption level.

Similarly with social interactions my baseline expectation is that consensual interactions are good for both individuals since they generally wouldn’t engage in them if they weren’t. Both parties expect that they will gain some welfare from the interaction (although of course they could be wrong!). 

Why would we interfere in consensual interactions?

Still, there are various reasons which might justify interfering in a consensual interaction:

• Paternalistic concern. Interfering to protect economic or social agents who either don’t know or aren’t able to act on what’s good for them (in the example above what the good turned out to actually be worth to the buyer could be much less than what they thought it would be worth)

• To reduce market inefficiencies caused by externalities. Externalities are any positive or negative welfare generated as a result of an interaction for parties who did not consensually participate in it. Total surplus is the welfare generated for those who consensually participated in the interaction plus any externalities. Internalizing the cost or benefits of externalities to the consenting parties can increase the total surplus

• To shift the equilibrium such that outcomes are improved for a specific group of economic or social agents (e.g. men or women)

To give an economic example, we might place a new tax on cigarettes, making them effectively more expensive and lowering the equilibrium quantity of cigarettes purchased. We might justify our intervention on the basis of paternalistic concern, since cigarettes are addictive and bad for your health and since even many of the people who purchase them say they would like to stop. But we might also justify intervention as an attempt to correct an externality created by the higher healthcare costs which tend to result from smoking and which may be partially shared by the overall society (rather than being entirely borne by the smoker or the cigarette company). Finally, if you’re a non-smoker who thinks the smokers are gross and who wouldn’t want to date or befriend a smoker, you might support the policy simply because it will lead to an equilibrium result (one where you have more dating prospects) which is better for you and others like you.

To give a social example, we might encourage increasing the social shame and judgment towards promiscuous people, effectively making promiscuity more costly and lowering the equilibrium amount of casual sex. We might justify our intervention on the basis of paternalistic concern, since sex is tempting but also risky (particularly for women) and since we can find examples of people who regret their promiscuous past. But we might also justify intervention as an attempt to correct an externality created by easily accessible sex lowering the incentives to finding a stable relationship which in turn leads to less marriage formation which in turn leads to lower fertility and/or worse outcomes for kids which is bad for society overall. Finally, if you’re a single conservative man who thinks promiscuity devalues a woman and you would only like to date virginal women, you might support slut shaming simply because it will lead to an equilibrium result where people have a lower median number of sexual partners, which is better for you and others like you.

Still, after assessing these arguments I’m not convinced that we should engage in slut shaming. I’m not easily moved by paternalistic concerns in general because I expect that adults know better than random strangers what is best for them (factual difference about typical decision making ability) and that the ones that don’t can deal with the negative results of their actions (value difference in the importance of protecting people from themselves). That said, I share the concern that teaching women that their aversion to casual sex is just the result of living in a patriarchal society is bad, not because it encourages promiscuity per se but because it’s incorrect (on average). There’s plenty of evidence for meaningful average sex differences, including ones that affect the types of relationships which are desirable, and obscuring that is problematic. But for each trait for which there’s an average sex difference there’s also significant heterogeneity within each sex. Most women don’t enjoy casual sex but some do. And if the concern is paternalistic we’d want to avoid shaming the women in the subgroup that get a lot of value out of casual sex.

As for the claim that it creates a negative externality, it’s not totally implausible, but the causal chain is quite long. There does appear to be a correlation between the number of sexual partners and divorce rates (for both sexes). But that could be explained by a common factor which leads to both higher likelihood of divorce and a higher than median number of sexual partners (it’s not necessarily that a higher divorce rate is caused by a higher number of sexual partners). In that case it might be true that, all else equal, you’d prefer a partner with a lower than median number of sexual partners but it wouldn’t necessarily imply that society would benefit from less promiscuity overall. I disagree here not because I think the argument is inappropriate but simply because I don’t think the evidence I’ve seen in support of it is convincing (factual difference). In addition, because I see shame as imposing a real cost on others I support deploying it only when I see a relatively strong case that the consensual behavior in question is causing meaningful social harm (value difference). 

The argument that slut shaming would improve outcomes for conservative men that value virginal women seems correct, but that’s obviously not a reason for people outside of that group to support it. In my recent post, Thirst Trapping your way to the top, I examine why I sometimes feel a desire to shame women who intentionally capitalize on their sexuality within the intellectual arena. I acknowledge that my arguments suggesting it creates a negative externality are pretty weak and that my real motivation is selfish and so conclude that it’s wrong for me to shame women on this basis.

Conclusion

My goal is to model a framework for discussing disagreement on social issues which doesn’t devolve into claims that demonize those on the other side. Call me idealistic but I really believe that almost everyone (ok, probably not Tucker) is arguing for what they truly believe will promote better outcomes for society. Being able to pinpoint the facts, causal chains or value differences which divide us might not collapse every disagreement, but it seems like a first and necessary step.