Knowledge And Decisions

To “solve” some social “problem” is (1) to move the locus of social decision making from systemic processes of reciprocal interaction to intentional processes of unilateral or hierarchical directives, (2) to change the mode of communication and control from fungible and therefore incrementally variable media (emotional ties, money, etc.) to categorical priorities selected by a subset of a population for the whole population, and (3) because of the diversity of human values, which make any given set of tangible results highly disparate in value terms (financial or moral), pervasive uncompensated changes through force are likely to elicit pervasive resistance and evasion, which can only be overcome by more force — which is to say, less freedom. Moreover, the very concept of a “solution” involves some given standard by which one situation will be regarded as a “solution” of another. These standards may be moral or material, or anywhere in between, but there must be a standard for there to be a “solution.” With diverse people making diverse trade-offs, however satisfying the results they reach may be for them respectively, it can only be “chaos” or a “problem” requiring “solution” to anyone applying a single standard.

The undemocratic implications of applying the academic paradigm in politics are exacerbated by the tendency of many intellectuals to favor — or indirectly insist upon — decision making processes cast solely in the mold of explicit articulation. In this view, social decisions must require articulation before government commissions, administrative agencies, courts, parole boards, school committees, advisory groups to corporations, police departments, and all other social decision makers. Unarticulated decision making is equated with “irrationality.” “Why do we need four gas stations at a single intersection?” asks an intellectual painting a picture of “wasteful” decision making in America by “a thousand little kings” motivated by “greed.”⁹⁴ The more fundamental question is why articulated justification to third parties must be the mode of determining business location or any other decisions by any other segment of the population? To the extent that decision makers are motivated by “greed” rather than an a priori preference pattern, their decisions are constrained by the decisions of competing bidders who are in turn surrogates for alternative sets of particular resources, including locations.

That a set of decisions is not articulated is not evidence that they are either irrational or undemocratic. On the contrary, the need to articulate to a tribunal of third parties applying their own standards is a reduction in both democracy and freedom, and often involves a loss of effective knowledge transmission in decision making. Moreover, it is socially biased in favor of those more skilled in articulation, even if their skills in other respects are lacking. Given the advantages of specialization, there is no reason to expect that those skilled in articulation will be more skilled in particular fields than those specialized in those fields. Systematic location patterns — gas stations and doctors offices being near each other and liquor stores and stationery shops often being dispersed from one another — suggests that there is nothing as random as “irrationality” behind it, nor anything as widespread as the desire for an improved economic condition responsible for one particular pattern. That a decision is called “greed” when it is found in some groups but “aspirations” or “need” in others is an incidental characteristic of fashions among intellectuals.

The virtues of the intellectual process are virtues within the intellectual process, and not necessarily virtues when universalized as paramount in other social processes. Articulation, formalized rationality, and fact-supported conclusions are central features of the intellectual process when determined by its own inner incentives and constraints. To what extent such considerations characterize the behavior of intellectuals as a social class in the political arena is another question. So too is the extent to which these intellectual virtues survive even in intellectual matters when the personal or political rewards available to intellectuals as a social class provide incentives to do otherwise.

INTELLECTUALS AS A SOCIAL CLASS