Whose welfare are we talking about anyways?

Should society be structured to enhance median, outlier or average welfare?

When discussing ideal norms and laws, or whether a technology is “good” for society, I often find it helpful to ask: are we talking about the median, the average or the outlier individual (either victim or elite)? I’ve noticed that different political tribes tend to implicitly emphasize the potential effects for individuals at different points in the distribution:  

• Mainstream conservatives tend to be concerned with how well society is working for the median individual (right now or in the near future). This jives with the conservative worldview since significant change can often be bad for the median individual in the short term, even if it’s likely to be good for society (as a whole) in the long term. They’re not so much concerned with progress as with maintaining institutions that accord with human nature such that a relatively functional and peaceful society can be maintained.

• Left-wing progressives today worry more about the experience of outliers (right now or in the near future), but only if those outliers are seen as powerless, vulnerable or historically victimized. Old school leftists were focused on maybe the 30th or 40th percentile based on wealth, and cited the economic system and compounding gains as the reason freedom alone won’t suffice. Today’s left looks towards “blank slatism” such that any inequity must imply unequal treatment based on identity characteristics and thus sees anyone with power as suspect. They’re more concerned with their version of moral progress than they are with economic progress.

• Free-market progressives are generally more concerned about elite outliers than are members of other political tribes, because they believe that such outliers tend to produce massive positive spillovers/externalities which enhance average welfare (now but also further out into the future). A focus on maximizing average welfare means they are willing to accept higher variance (inequality) between people in the short term. This is because they think long term economic growth and higher living standards dominate most other concerns and believe that a handful of elites drive the vast majority of social and economic progress. They’re therefore more concerned with their version of economic progress than they are with moral progress.

A few examples:

Social media use

Jon Haidt and Tyler Cowen recently argued about the utility of social media use for children and teenagers. As Ruxandra Teslo points out, much of the argument centered around the variability of the effects of social media on kids and on which kids deserve our concern. She says:

It seems like Tyler is internally screaming at Jonathan Haidt: “But are you thinking of the benefits to the best kids? And the wondrous positive spillovers letting these children be free to explore their passions might have for the entire world? Maybe the bright young kids who are set free by the internet will solve aging.” Meanwhile, Haidt seems to scream back “BUT WHAT ABOUT THE AVERAGE CHILD??”

My only edit to the above is replacing the word “average” with “median” or “typical”. Tyler (free market, progress focused type) is concerned that preventing or in any way limiting kid’s use of technology, including social media, could reduce the potential for right tail outcomes. Maybe some super smart kid who’s socially minded and into robotics will use social media to connect with likeminded young scientists, which will ultimately result in him solving some important real world problem years earlier than he would’ve otherwise! Jonathan (conservative, in the sense that he wants kids to play and socialize in the good ol’ ways) is less concerned about whether the top percentile kid learns robotics three years earlier and more about the potential for worsening mental health for the median child. 

Economic policy and technological change

Lefties are most concerned with redistributing wealth so that the losers in a capitalistic system are provided for, and they’re willing to do that even at levels that will retard overall economic growth (although most of them will simply deny there’s any tradeoff here). 

Your average conservative assumes that most of the losers just didn’t work hard, but then will worry a lot about how new technology or outsourcing might affect the median worker. They might argue that we should prevent automation or outsourcing even if it means more expensive consumer products (although most of them will simply deny there’s any tradeoff here, and yes, lefties often do this too but I see the resistance to change as fundamentally conservative). 

Free marketers will bite the bullet and say growing inequality can be worth it if it incentivizes behaviors which grow the pie for everyone (concern for future average welfare). They often see redistribution more as a means of keeping everyone engaged so that society remains functional and less as a matter of fairness or justice. They also tend to think that people who spend most of their time arguing about how to slice things up are missing the bigger picture! 

Gender and sexual identity

The median person is cis and hetero. So conservatives argue that our norms should reflect that and need little if any additional flexibility relative to the past. 

Lefties have (in my opinion) convincingly made the case that even if these norms work at the median, people are quite heterogeneous and many are painfully constrained or excluded when subjected to rigid norms. There’s no need for minorities to suffer severely when we can often include and accommodate them at little cost to everyone else. 

From my perspective, the loosening of many of these norms was initially positive for average welfare; whatever discomfort the inclusion of non conformers apparently causes the median person seems small relative to the social, economic and sometimes legal punishment non conformers faced in the past. 

However, there are limits to this, and the norm that’s best for a given minority isn’t always the best for the average individual! And I think that in some places, like Ontario, the norms around gender identity have been pushed too far in the direction of serving the minority group. As I said in my post, Gender Norms and Gender Trouble:

The integration of gender theory into elementary school curriculum, such as in Ontario where teachers are expected to “challenge cisgenderism” and “integrate trans-positive, gender-inclusive, and 2SLGBTQ+ positive content into the teaching in all subject areas from Kindergarten to Grade 12” (emphasis mine) seems likely to impose an unnecessary individual struggle with gender and sexuality for children that are actually straightforwardly gender conforming (which is most children). An excessive focus on gender questioning is not costless. Useless is not simply useless, useless is bad. Children could be exploring other dimensions of their personality, goals etc. instead of reflecting on gender. 

The wage gap

Ambitious women would typically be counted as elite outliers, but because they’ve been historically marginalized they fall within the left-wing circle of concern. Until relatively recently, these women were often socially punished if they wanted to pursue goals other than motherhood, or were outright prevented from doing so. Because of this past, lefties are concerned to make sure that these women can finally break that damn glass ceiling! 

They see that when women become mothers their wages fall off a cliff while the same isn’t nearly as true for fathers. And they correctly recognize that this is because women take on more of the work of childcare while their husbands continue to work primarily outside of the home. They assume that these women are being pressured into the drudgery of domestic life rather than getting to pursue their dreams and see it as unjust, sexist, retrograde! 

Conservatives on the other hand stress that most people don’t have jobs that they’re passionate about anyways. They claim (I think correctly) that for the median woman with very young children, motherhood is her main focus and she probably prefers economic support to allow her more time to care for her children over additional work time outside of the home. 

And for those concerned with the average… it depends! We certainly want the most productive and ambitious women to realize those ambitions and contribute to society. On the other hand, we also want ambitious women to have their ambitious babies. So the norms you think are optimal will depend on the balance of these two prosocial goals and the degree to which you think motherhood is compatible with a high-powered career. I tend to think these women can more or less have it all, especially if they have means, even if they take a step back for a few years mid career.

It’s probably obvious that I tend to slot into the “focus on long term average welfare” camp, but not to the total exclusion of how that welfare is distributed. I think we ought to be concerned with the suffering of minorities and certainly of majorities even when it’s balanced by extreme benefits to a few, now or in the future. 

I’ve found this way of framing disagreement helpful when discussing various issues. And I’d love to get your thoughts, criticisms or other examples in the comments!