I feel like by far the most common problem with systemic critiques is that people are bad at identifying the problems in a system.
Eg it's very unlikely that the current level of theory vs empiricism in academic econ is optimal. So the academic econ system is likely "systemically flawed"
However it's very difficult to identify the optimal level of theory in an academic field, and mildly difficult to identify the current level of theory in an academic field.
Many critics of economics completely fail to do even do the second, much easier, problem[1]. Nor do they even attempt to articulate a precise definition of the first. So their critiques (of perfect competition or rationality or whatever) are useless but somehow manage to sound wise to other unthinking critics.
This problem is unusually sharp in academic econ imo because it's an unusually good example of the critique being inverted from reality: the field is arguably being too empirical these days, yet "everybody" complains about it being too theoretical. But you also see eg people blaming AI companies for water usage, capitalism for housing shortages, academic intersectionality for anti-white racism, FPTP for political polarization, etc. In these cases these are systems that have genuinely major problems, but the most popular critiques are entirely off-mark, for reasons that shouldn't be too difficult to understand, and yet people somehow fail to do so.
I’m not sure about how far you should take that first response. Sometimes there are bad apples, yes. But there are systems that do work well even without individual good motivations. This is the way that a market economy aims to work, and many of the traditional systems that Elinor Ostrom describes in her survey of common pool resource management practices. If the complaint is that *most* of the voters are vicious narrow minded fools, then you probably do need a new system, and not just an attempt to “throw the bums out” - throwing out a majority of the electorate is itself a revolution, and probably a bigger one than constitutional reform.
Yeah but why are there bad apples / why are the bad apples bad in the particular ways they are? and why are the costs of switching systems so high? Even deeper systemic critiques incoming...
Your third point about switching costs is a large part of why I'm anti-republicanism (in the UK) and anti-abolishing the House of Lords. For all its flaws and need for reform, our system has worked pretty well for us for centuries, and any large change we make would almost certainly upset the homeostasis. People seem to imagine having an elected head of state or second chamber would make no difference because they don't do that much in practice, but they don't do all that much in large part because they recognise their lack of democratic legitimacy. An elected head of state or House of Lords is much more likely to try to wield their power more forcefully, and bring conflict with the House of Commons.
I agree that this post is good! And further, that many of the systemic critiques done out there are less than useful. Where I might differ is in the selection of three reasons why systemic critique fails. First of all, I generally think that systemic critique or even just systems thinking needs one to find and acknowledge a boundary. Why? Because to be useful, a systemic look is going to have to set the stage with relevant actors and scenery (who is doing what with what resources?). All of which must be observable, by some means. If one can't observe something, one can't observe how that something has moved, is moving and might move at some point in the future, when one is looking for movement and checking whether the action taken needs to adapt. I find this a problem with much that passes for 'national' discussions of so-called 'national' problems. Using a national boundary, the stage is populated with concepts so vague (far up the abstraction ladder, per Hayakawa) that one could not observe them even if one wanted to. Obscured by the abstractions are actors and actions that differ depending on what scenery exists where they are; i.e., who 'they' are, and what 'they' are doing with what 'resources'! Systemic critiques must be actionable to have action ensue. Abstractions are neither actionable nor observable. I also disagree somewhat that replacing a bad actor will ever produce some lasting change in a system. From intense study of one fairly large system, I concluded that all participants in the system had expectations of the other participants and that one could not 'change' those expectations or any particular behavior on one's own. Finally, although you don't say it, working with systems (which are all we really have these days in the very-developed United States), means that change must be incremental and constantly adjusted because unintended consequences are a certainty and at least some of those will be what we currently consider 'bad.' Trade-offs abound. Changing the movement of one actor or resource will definitely result in unanticipated movements of other actors and scenery.
I think the thing that is so irritating about blaming “the system” is that it’s just a way to absolve oneself of trying to fix anything, while (yes) sounding very sophisticated and worldly to those who are anything but. In fact (bc I have the capability to remain indefinitely cranky about definitions and such), I would say that this actually qualifies as a real “luxury belief”. It’s seriously just, “Things are so messed up that they can’t be fixed [or we can try to burn the whole thing down and whatever happens, happens]; tell me how smart I am for realizing this.”
Your points about alternatives and the problems that will (still) pervade them, as well as the inertia of already having a system in place, may be “obvious” in the way that common sense is common: one would not think so based on how many talk. So they’re certainly valuable reminders. I have pretty strong feelings about bad apples, which I’ll get to later (and perhaps elsewhere). Agency obviously matters, for one thing….
This is why some people come to what Karl Popper dubbed "piecemeal social engineering" – the idea of improving a democratic society through small, gradual, and step-by-step adjustments rather than revolutionary reform.
Essentially, we apply the scientific method of trial and error to social and political problems.
And it works pretty well!
Even though "piecemeal social engineering" sounds completely underwhelming!
As soon as I read the title I wanted to come down to the comment section and leave a Lonely Island reference, but I get here only to realise you beat me to it
Also complicating one's analysis is that there are interactions between the three basic models presented. For example, some systems are better at neutralizing the effects of bad apples and filters.
Problem #3 is the most important, in my opinion. There's this ironic detachment that Etsy doormat people have between the thing they say—which is inherently revolutionary—and their willingness to actually carry out the change they want. Russians are very averse to changing their political system because historical experience has innoculated them against the possibility of change. It turns out that trying a revolutionary new way of organizing human society can end up in bloody civil wars and economic collapse and immeasurable pain. It hurt modern Russian society because the system *should* change and we're avoiding improving the system because of this fear, but the activists in the West don't really think about second and third order consequences like that.
You could even make an argument that “blaming the game” without (in some cases) “blaming the player” is actually indicative of a lack of understanding of systems.
Climate change action is an example of this. Government policy is important to enact structural, systemic change. But people who “blame the system” without taking individual responsibility ignore their role in said system, e.g. continuing to eat beef whilst calling for climate change action fails to acknowledge your signalling power as a consumer to beef producers.
Great article. (Taylor Swift taught us "haters gonna hate"; and she seems more a philosopher with each passing day.)
I think people tend to click, like, and follow things that sound deep and revolutionary. But I also think (and hope) they'll pull back from the brink before the actual revolution comes. We're a world better off than we were 200 years ago, and there is good reason to be hopeful for the future. If we even know how to do that.
But the problem is that any criticism of the “bad apples” can be reformulated as a criticism of the system that allowed them to flourish. You could blame the apples or you could blame the system that didn’t properly contain them, harness them, or disincentivize their behavior. It’s the classic Gen-X inversion: your problem with me is my problem with society (more generally: any internal deficit can be externalized and vice versa). But I think that, based on your other arguments, we agree that the issue is basically pragmatic: who is it more *useful* to blame? And I wholeheartedly agree that it isn’t necessarily more useful to blame the system.
But it’s worth asking counterfactually: would changing the system have resulted in better apples? Sometimes the answer is yes, but it’s not always so. As I put it in the article, sometimes the apples are bad despite the system’s best efforts.
But you seem to think that there are intrinsically bad apples — people who are bad apples regardless of the system in which they’re operating — whereas I see bad apples as system-relative. A bad apple in one system, I think, could be a golden apple in another. Even with the most destructive people — you just have to find a way to harness their destructive tendencies for the greater good. Capitalism actually does that quite well. Of course, that’s separate from the pragmatic point you’re making, with which I thoroughly agree.
Great point—on reflection, you’re absolutely right. There are probably some qualities (like indiscriminate aggression) that are bad in almost any system, but a lot of “bad apples” will just be lacking the particular qualities needed in a given system.
This post is such a banger!
This captures my thoughts entirely. I really appreciate this post.
I feel like by far the most common problem with systemic critiques is that people are bad at identifying the problems in a system.
Eg it's very unlikely that the current level of theory vs empiricism in academic econ is optimal. So the academic econ system is likely "systemically flawed"
However it's very difficult to identify the optimal level of theory in an academic field, and mildly difficult to identify the current level of theory in an academic field.
Many critics of economics completely fail to do even do the second, much easier, problem[1]. Nor do they even attempt to articulate a precise definition of the first. So their critiques (of perfect competition or rationality or whatever) are useless but somehow manage to sound wise to other unthinking critics.
This problem is unusually sharp in academic econ imo because it's an unusually good example of the critique being inverted from reality: the field is arguably being too empirical these days, yet "everybody" complains about it being too theoretical. But you also see eg people blaming AI companies for water usage, capitalism for housing shortages, academic intersectionality for anti-white racism, FPTP for political polarization, etc. In these cases these are systems that have genuinely major problems, but the most popular critiques are entirely off-mark, for reasons that shouldn't be too difficult to understand, and yet people somehow fail to do so.
[1] eg when I confront popular critics of academic econ, most of them haven't even do the single most obvious search possible relevant to this question: https://www.google.com/search?q=graph+of+theory+vs+empirical+studies+in+academic+econ+papers
I’m not sure about how far you should take that first response. Sometimes there are bad apples, yes. But there are systems that do work well even without individual good motivations. This is the way that a market economy aims to work, and many of the traditional systems that Elinor Ostrom describes in her survey of common pool resource management practices. If the complaint is that *most* of the voters are vicious narrow minded fools, then you probably do need a new system, and not just an attempt to “throw the bums out” - throwing out a majority of the electorate is itself a revolution, and probably a bigger one than constitutional reform.
Yeah but why are there bad apples / why are the bad apples bad in the particular ways they are? and why are the costs of switching systems so high? Even deeper systemic critiques incoming...
That’s a pair of legitimate questions!
Good post (and love the thumbnail)
Your third point about switching costs is a large part of why I'm anti-republicanism (in the UK) and anti-abolishing the House of Lords. For all its flaws and need for reform, our system has worked pretty well for us for centuries, and any large change we make would almost certainly upset the homeostasis. People seem to imagine having an elected head of state or second chamber would make no difference because they don't do that much in practice, but they don't do all that much in large part because they recognise their lack of democratic legitimacy. An elected head of state or House of Lords is much more likely to try to wield their power more forcefully, and bring conflict with the House of Commons.
I agree that this post is good! And further, that many of the systemic critiques done out there are less than useful. Where I might differ is in the selection of three reasons why systemic critique fails. First of all, I generally think that systemic critique or even just systems thinking needs one to find and acknowledge a boundary. Why? Because to be useful, a systemic look is going to have to set the stage with relevant actors and scenery (who is doing what with what resources?). All of which must be observable, by some means. If one can't observe something, one can't observe how that something has moved, is moving and might move at some point in the future, when one is looking for movement and checking whether the action taken needs to adapt. I find this a problem with much that passes for 'national' discussions of so-called 'national' problems. Using a national boundary, the stage is populated with concepts so vague (far up the abstraction ladder, per Hayakawa) that one could not observe them even if one wanted to. Obscured by the abstractions are actors and actions that differ depending on what scenery exists where they are; i.e., who 'they' are, and what 'they' are doing with what 'resources'! Systemic critiques must be actionable to have action ensue. Abstractions are neither actionable nor observable. I also disagree somewhat that replacing a bad actor will ever produce some lasting change in a system. From intense study of one fairly large system, I concluded that all participants in the system had expectations of the other participants and that one could not 'change' those expectations or any particular behavior on one's own. Finally, although you don't say it, working with systems (which are all we really have these days in the very-developed United States), means that change must be incremental and constantly adjusted because unintended consequences are a certainty and at least some of those will be what we currently consider 'bad.' Trade-offs abound. Changing the movement of one actor or resource will definitely result in unanticipated movements of other actors and scenery.
Lol the Etsy mat + caption! (And only $55.00!)
I think the thing that is so irritating about blaming “the system” is that it’s just a way to absolve oneself of trying to fix anything, while (yes) sounding very sophisticated and worldly to those who are anything but. In fact (bc I have the capability to remain indefinitely cranky about definitions and such), I would say that this actually qualifies as a real “luxury belief”. It’s seriously just, “Things are so messed up that they can’t be fixed [or we can try to burn the whole thing down and whatever happens, happens]; tell me how smart I am for realizing this.”
Your points about alternatives and the problems that will (still) pervade them, as well as the inertia of already having a system in place, may be “obvious” in the way that common sense is common: one would not think so based on how many talk. So they’re certainly valuable reminders. I have pretty strong feelings about bad apples, which I’ll get to later (and perhaps elsewhere). Agency obviously matters, for one thing….
Coincidentally, I saw something about bad apples yesterday that made me extremely angry. Yeah, they’re real, and they contaminate the image of all the good ones. And sure, they can be disincentivized to an extent, but we’ll always have them and always need to deal w/them, whatever the system. https://substack.com/@felicemish/note/c-166014178?r=63xy3f&utm_source=notes-share-action&utm_medium=web
This is why some people come to what Karl Popper dubbed "piecemeal social engineering" – the idea of improving a democratic society through small, gradual, and step-by-step adjustments rather than revolutionary reform.
Essentially, we apply the scientific method of trial and error to social and political problems.
And it works pretty well!
Even though "piecemeal social engineering" sounds completely underwhelming!
As soon as I read the title I wanted to come down to the comment section and leave a Lonely Island reference, but I get here only to realise you beat me to it
The moral of this story is…
You can’t trust the system!!!
Man!!!!
Also complicating one's analysis is that there are interactions between the three basic models presented. For example, some systems are better at neutralizing the effects of bad apples and filters.
Problem #3 is the most important, in my opinion. There's this ironic detachment that Etsy doormat people have between the thing they say—which is inherently revolutionary—and their willingness to actually carry out the change they want. Russians are very averse to changing their political system because historical experience has innoculated them against the possibility of change. It turns out that trying a revolutionary new way of organizing human society can end up in bloody civil wars and economic collapse and immeasurable pain. It hurt modern Russian society because the system *should* change and we're avoiding improving the system because of this fear, but the activists in the West don't really think about second and third order consequences like that.
You could even make an argument that “blaming the game” without (in some cases) “blaming the player” is actually indicative of a lack of understanding of systems.
Climate change action is an example of this. Government policy is important to enact structural, systemic change. But people who “blame the system” without taking individual responsibility ignore their role in said system, e.g. continuing to eat beef whilst calling for climate change action fails to acknowledge your signalling power as a consumer to beef producers.
Okay, but just remember that the king stay the king (and the King is Joseph Heath)
Great article. (Taylor Swift taught us "haters gonna hate"; and she seems more a philosopher with each passing day.)
I think people tend to click, like, and follow things that sound deep and revolutionary. But I also think (and hope) they'll pull back from the brink before the actual revolution comes. We're a world better off than we were 200 years ago, and there is good reason to be hopeful for the future. If we even know how to do that.
But the problem is that any criticism of the “bad apples” can be reformulated as a criticism of the system that allowed them to flourish. You could blame the apples or you could blame the system that didn’t properly contain them, harness them, or disincentivize their behavior. It’s the classic Gen-X inversion: your problem with me is my problem with society (more generally: any internal deficit can be externalized and vice versa). But I think that, based on your other arguments, we agree that the issue is basically pragmatic: who is it more *useful* to blame? And I wholeheartedly agree that it isn’t necessarily more useful to blame the system.
But it’s worth asking counterfactually: would changing the system have resulted in better apples? Sometimes the answer is yes, but it’s not always so. As I put it in the article, sometimes the apples are bad despite the system’s best efforts.
But you seem to think that there are intrinsically bad apples — people who are bad apples regardless of the system in which they’re operating — whereas I see bad apples as system-relative. A bad apple in one system, I think, could be a golden apple in another. Even with the most destructive people — you just have to find a way to harness their destructive tendencies for the greater good. Capitalism actually does that quite well. Of course, that’s separate from the pragmatic point you’re making, with which I thoroughly agree.
Great point—on reflection, you’re absolutely right. There are probably some qualities (like indiscriminate aggression) that are bad in almost any system, but a lot of “bad apples” will just be lacking the particular qualities needed in a given system.
No amount of “system redesign” fixes human trash.