The whole "free rider problem" probably motivates all the New Testament parables, with all their little moral paradoxes.
Wednesday, February 11, 2015
The "Free Rider Problem" goes way beyond vaccines (and 60s movies)
We’ve heard the term “free rider” in public debate in
the last few weeks, particularly with respect to vaccines. It’s a concept that
seemed much more central to moral thinking when I was growing up than it does
now. “Easy Rider”, like the 60s movie, might
have changed things. Other derogatory
words, like “mooch”, used to be more common. It was particularly difficult for
those less able to compete according to gender norms, in a time when there was
less value for diversity, less that could be done for people with medicine, and
more sensitivity about family reputations.
The concept is important because there are many other areas in which the
idea becomes meaningful, and I have had to deal with them personally.
The term “free rider” usually refers to someone who
belongs to a community from which he or she benefits, and where the welfare of
the community depends on the willingness of every member to perform certain
duties which aren’t compensated in the normal economic sense, and involve some
cost or risk to the individual, which cannot be completely eliminated or
predicted.
Libertarianism, and the hyper-individualism associated
with it, would tend to disavow the concept, and believe that the market should
handle everything. So let’s look again
at vaccines. Based on modern medicine, a
libertarian would probably say, don’t depend on herd immunity, but take care of
yourself. Get vaccinated. In rare cases, there could be a medical reason
for someone not to be vaccinated or hot to vaccine his children. No, religious reasons don’t count. The idea really matters more with diseases
other than measles and influenza. For
example, college students should get both vaccines for meningitis. Parents
should encourage them to. Yes, herd
immunity will exist if a college insists on it for dormitory living. But the
emerging adult ought to protect himself from the unnecessary risk of bizarre
infection and amputations. The
overwhelming evidence is that self-interest says, get vaccinated.
The idea that a vaccine “refusinik” is a free rider
(an idea suggested by many, such as Vox Media) depends on a few
assumptions. One is that, in the usual
context, the issue usually refers to parents getting vaccines to young
children. That assumes the parent is
socialized enough to want and have a family – a big assumption these days. It
also assumes that there is some real risk or cost in the vaccine. Medicine insists that modern vaccines are
safe and don’t cause autism. (Older
vaccines may be another matter.) Personally, I buy that. But I’ll respect the fact that a parent may
believe there is a very small risk, but catastrophic for the victim. There may
be a cost, nominal monetarily and in time and effort. So in that sense, a parent who refuses
vaccination for his child is a “free rider” if the parent depends on the rest
of the community (or “herd”) to take on the job and “risk” or remaining
uninfected.
I think you could develop the idea in other areas of
public health. If most adults (gay and
straight) use condoms when they don’t intend to have babies, then there would
be few STD’s (HIV or anything else, especially anything new or “alien”, like in
my novel). So condoms, if used
consistently, could approach producing a “herd protection”. But, again, the libertarian idea of taking
care of self first applies. Use the
condom.
A more challenging example could come from the gun
debate and the Second Amendment. If, in
a neighborhood, everyone owns a gun and is able to use it responsibly and
criminals know it, the neighborhood might be safer from home invasions and
burglaries. Some horrific tragedies
(like that in Connecticut in 2007) might not have happened. But the gun issue, as a policy matter, is
very tricky in practice, to say the least.
On paper, the right wing has insisted that the theater in Colorado would
have been safer if the patrons had been armed.
Hardly anyone in the mainstream believes that is workable. The practical responsibilities of gun ownership
(as when kids are around) are significant. But countries ranging from Switzerland to the U.K. and Australia have their own solutions.
The gun issue leads back to another problem familiar
in my own history, the military draft of the Vietnam era and before. The student deferment system for many years
allowed the educated to reduce the personal risk of combat, at the expense of
the less well off. I certainly took advantage
of this, and that comes across in
Chapter 7 of my DADT-III book, with the disturbing tone of my interactions with
other soldiers in Basic Combat Training at Fort Jackson, SC in 1968, with my
being better educated and older but less physically combative. Part of the debate would track back to the
Domino Theory and the “necessity” of the ground war in Vietnam. I don’t think it can be dismissed out of
hand, given this was less than six years after the Cuban Missile Crisis, and
the idea of ground deterrence could make another nuclear showdown less
likely. Communism was a serious threat,
and still is. Of course, the "fairness" of the volunteer Army today (with the "stop-loss" policies) extends into the debate over national service, and the capacity to work in humanitarian missions in conflict areas or in areas with dangerous disease (like Ebola), a great personal risk. We ride on people who do.
But that leads to a broader concern, that is common
with radical Left Wing rhetoric (like in the Peoples Party in the 1970s, as I have reported before), that the “well off” live as parasites off the
labor of workers, which often involves regimented or high-risk physical
work. It used to be connected to gender
roles (and even is today in Communist countries and in post-Communist Russia),
and the whole idea that the “sissy” is a burden on the group. Maybe the endpoint was Maoism and the "Cultural Revolution" in Red China in the 1960s. But I got a taste of this with some of the
job interviews I had after my main “IT” career ended in 2001. I saw a taste of how others really live. Could I have really dealt with the rigor of a
job as a TSA screener, with the odd hours, uniforms, precision, and ability
exert authority? I had indeed grown up
with the elitist idea that I would be in a better “class” than that. That’s what “good clothes” at work meant. But resistance to this "exploitation" drives a lot of radicalism.
Of course, that leads next to my self-publishing and
self-distribution of my “free speech”, which pivots around the “gays in the
military” debate and refers back to the “draft and deferment” controversy. I don’t need to make a living from my
writing, and that generates tension with certain interests who pressure me to
become more proactive in “selling” (whether ads or retail copies). I guess I am the “mooch” off their business
model, although I have paid for the publication services for their own
sake. But it has become harder for a lot
of people to make a living in “sales” in a number of contexts, for a variety of
reasons that combine: people do more for
themselves on the Internet and don’t want to be disrupted or approached, and
are concerned about security problems.
This is not good culture for a lot of people who are more wired to be “interdependent”
with others. And, as a whole, society
needs “interdependence” for its own sustainability.
Another aspect of my speech is the stance of “objectivity”
and not joining any one side too much.
No, I’m past the point where I can be “recruited” for someone else’s
goals. I am like the alien observer at a
distance, who, according to Einstein, can affect what he observes by staring at
it and then recording and broadcasting what he sees. I can see how to some people this isn’t “fair”. So no wonder, ever since I became
self-published, I have been repeatedly approached to get involved in personal
situations which in the past would not have been my business. There is an idea that everyone should have a “stake”
in others – and in future generations – before being heard. The whole permissive environment for
user-generated content could have gone another way. I have also been approached, sometimes without solicitation, that I should give up "journalism" and learn hucksterism like all other real people with real responsibilities, so it's fair for them. Why should I ride on an estate and Social Security when I could really could do this if I had to? At least, that was the tone of some unwelcome phone calls a few years back.
This brings me to the whole question of
socialization. I know the model. You’re supposed to learn to take care of your
own first, and extend “your own” by forming your own family, and then your
suppoed to learn to care about “others” beyond family in concentric
circles. “Homophobia” became a surrogate
or proxy to pressure those who resist socialization and follow their own
expressive ends too much, whether others listen to them or not. For me, going solo is preferable to "inferiority" in someone else's social order, but then that implies I see things a certain way that exclude people. That gets into another area, quite disturbing, but beyond the scope of "easy riding". Yet, getting someone like me to "join" and then "welcome others" might indeed seem stabilizing.
In the Introduction to my 1997 DADT-I book, I wrote
that what I had perceived growing up as that “people like me” aka “gays” (or “sissy
boys” as understood a half-century ago) were perceived as “freeloaders”, as
avoiding the demands of structured love required by family life, including
responsibility for procreation. If this
was a moral problem, it was one more of omission than commission. I was not someone who would get a girl
pregnant or ever act like a jealous husband (or perform domestic abuse). I was the opposite. An only child, I would let my parents’ legacy
die. That was even more to be dreaded.
And then as I found with eldercare, family
responsibility isn’t something that only happens when you have heterosexual intercourse. In fact, my willingness to use mother’s money
to hire low-wage caregivers could be seen as another kind of “freeloading” or “free
riding” or worker “exploitation”.
The whole premise of the old Vatican model for sexual
morality is hidden in plain sight. If
everyone is required to withhold experience of sexuality (even masturbation)
until (straight) marriage where there is openness to procreation and new life,
then everyone will participate in raising the next generation. That seems to be how the agnostic Vladimir
Putin thinks now about mother Russia! The other forms of inequality,
essentially unavoidable, will be tolerated, even embraced, if every individual “knows
his place” in the most sensitive areas of family social hierarchy. That’s what gives marriage its meaning and
makes sexual satisfaction over decades of marriage (with kids), through
physical adversities, worth it for people.
In western countries, people don’t believe that today. But the less well-off feel cheated and lash
out. It doesn’t take too much to see how
radical Islam exploits this idea.
Of course, such an idea confronts people of different
temperaments with different problems and demands varying personal sacrifices,
which religious moral leadership says is inevitable. I might give up emotional satisfaction, but
others make sacrifices on the battlefield that I am shelter from, or maybe even
as volunteer firemen. Somehow, that’s
supposed to be “fair” and solve the freeloading.
All this presumes that adults are likely
not to want the “responsibility” and “cost” of having children, if they don’t
have to. They could still get stuck
caring for their parents or siblings’ children.
But even back in 2000, Elinor Burkett, in her book “The Baby Boon”
(Books blog, March 28, 2006) admitted that some see the childless as “cheating
the system.” Now it’s evident that many
women want to be mothers. With men, it’s
more ambiguous, based on what straight men told me during college and young
adult years. Future (in a space-time
sense) parenthood was already part of an identity that seemed to make current
sexual attraction possible and even revelatory.
But I did not experience that. Later,
as a working adult, there was a real concern from some others with kids that I
would lowball them out of their jobs, since I could work for less and still
live well with less debt.
All of this concern about procreation and population
demographics, and social cohesion becomes a lot more critical is smaller,
poorer, tribal (often religious) cultures that have to deal with real enemies. Rich cultures worry about these things less
until coercion from the outside world forces them to. Then there’s a mentality of “watching your
back.”
David Boaz has a totally different take on “The
Parasite Economy” in this piece about his book “The Libertarian Mind”, here. And I'll throw in a Vox article on "stay at home" moms, by Lisa Endlich Hefferdan here; remember how authoritarian cultures (and our own in the past) were rigged so that men would find supporting women for life sexually interesting (and that says something about indecency laws even in a modern democracy). That was a map of the moral world for me: "upward affiliation" makes me tick, and I don't find personal contact with need or dependency rewarding.
There is a mirror image to this whole free rider
problem (and getting beyond the “income tax evasion” model). Sometimes things people do in combination
really do matter, to the larger group, and to future generations. Use of fossil fuel energy (especially when
alone) and climate change obviously come up.
So would public health. For
example, agricultural practices in southeast Asia, where people live close to
livestock, increases the likelihood of global pandemics of “bird flu” (particularly in a jet-age world). Overuse of antibiotics for minor infections (or mistakenly for viruses) leads to the development of superbugs that resist all antibiotics. In the 1980s, the religious right (particularly
in Texas, where was living then) claimed that the “chain letter” property of
gay male sex amplified disease (AIDS) in such a way that it would endanger
everyone else if it mutated. That, for
reasons too subtle to get into right here, fortunately did not turn out to be
even close to correct. But an increase in STD's in general can lead to overuse of antibiotics and eventually compound the superbug problem, from a public health perspective.
The whole "free rider problem" probably motivates all the New Testament parables, with all their little moral paradoxes.
The whole "free rider problem" probably motivates all the New Testament parables, with all their little moral paradoxes.
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