Comparative Advantages and Moral Diversity
Diversity is Good for Society, But Up to Which Point?
I’ve recently reread Ryan Muldoon’s book Social Contract Theory for a Diverse World (Routledge, 2016). This is a short book contributing to a burgeoning literature in (mostly American) political philosophy looking to revise the way the social contract approach deals with the increasing level of moral diversity and pluralism that characterizes contemporary societies. Muldoon’s book is more specifically part of what some call the New Diversity Theory, which aims at developing a political philosophy more relevant to morally diverse societies.
As is often the case in political philosophy, we have to go back to Rawls to understand where this new theory comes from. In developing his theory of justice, Rawls was concerned with the possibility that just principles of justice would not be actually followed because actual members of the society – not their representatives behind the veil of ignorance – may either not be incentivized to abide by them or may not have the assurance that others will. This is what is generally identified as the stability problem. Rawls worked out a solution in the third part of A Theory of Justice in terms of congruence between the right and the good but was quickly dissatisfied with it. His writings in the 1980s have been mostly dedicated to elaborating a different, “political” solution, this time in terms of overlapping consensus and public reason. In a nutshell, Rawls was concerned that the diversity of “comprehensive moral doctrines” held by individuals, which directly results from the nature of liberal institutions, could make impossible the identification of a consensus based on which moral disagreements could be settled. Rawls’s political solution consists in arguing that reasonable citizens should be able to identify political principles of justice grounded in public reasons that can be articulated within their diverse comprehensive doctrines.[1]
The bottom line is that from a Rawlsian perspective, moral diversity is the cause of the stability problem. The very fact that there is a problem to be solved indicates that diversity is a potential threat to liberal democracies. This is this postulate that new diversity theorists dispute. It forces Rawls and Rawlsian philosophers to find a way to go beyond diversity to demonstrate that ultimately, everyone is the same and equal. As it makes it clear, Muldoon is not impressed by the way Rawlsian political philosophy tries to escape the threat of diversity and connects it with the widespread political view – that can be associated with some forms of populism – that increasing diversity is at the roots of the problems faced by contemporary diverse societies. This view leads to a dead end because, whatever we can think about diversity, there is no way back:
“Economic logic dictates that globalization will continue apace, leading to more and more cultural mixing. Fertility rates strongly suggest that even absent more immigration, the demographics of Western countries will change substantially in the next 30 years. But current political thinking has dictated that the resultant diversity creates political tension and eventually social unrest. And so, with the status quo, we reach an impasse: either wealthy countries drastically change their social contracts to contend with an aging, increasingly poor population, or they face civil unrest. I want to resist this false choice.” (p. 3)
Besides and beyond the Rawlsian treatment of diversity, Muldoon identifies the roots of the difficulty in the standard liberal account of tolerance. Simply put, the main issue with the tolerance account is that it only views diversity as something negative which can and should nonetheless be accommodated. Muldoon argues on the contrary that a case must be made for viewing diversity as an opportunity and a resource we can build on to improve how society is working and contribute to human flourishing. Having a diverse population has many positive cognitive and social effects that must be understood to help us acknowledge that diversity is the solution, not the problem.
There are many interesting aspects in Muldoon’s book. Whether we agree or not with the general argument, it displays a range of innovative ideas and concepts that participate in the development of what I have characterized as post-Rawlsian political philosophy. Among those aspects, one I find particularly noteworthy is the use made of reasoning, concepts, and models from economics. In particular, Muldoon largely relies on the standard economic concept of comparative advantages to make his case in favor of moral diversity. In the economic domain, increased diversity, for instance through immigration, favors increased levels of specialization and gains from trade. Provided that the social contract satisfies minimal conditions of fairness (Muldoon defends a proportionality principle), everyone is to gain from increased diversity:
“diverse perspectives create more specialization, which in turn creates greater returns to trade. In fact, the more diverse the society, the more social surplus we can create. And insofar as diversity creates opportunities for new innovations, it fosters even more diversity. In production, there are only incentives for encouraging more diversity. This is true from a social perspective, but it is also true from an individual perspective: each individual can only be made better off as production is made more diverse.” (p. 102).
As far as the economic argument is concerned, there is nothing to be disputed. The reasoning in terms of comparative advantages indeed applies better to individuals than to national economies (where we need to make tacit assumptions that may not be verified). Two remarks to end this post, however. The logic of comparative advantages in the economic domain of private goods does not guarantee that everyone’s material situation is improving, except in simple two-person models. One of the reasons for that is that specialization may generate pecuniary externalities. An increase in the degree of specialization will affect relative prices, and while the overall effect is an increase in the social surplus, there is absolutely no guarantee that the new allocation will be a Pareto-improvement over the initial one. Some persons may see their material situation deteriorates because their skills have been made less valuable due to the fact that some other persons have established a more specialized activity. More diversity will – in general – imply more economic efficiency but not more economic justice. This is however precisely what is at stake in the rise of populism. If there is no public policy aiming at redistributing the gains from trade based on fairness considerations, increased diversity may not (and will not) work for the economic advantage of everyone.
Second, as Muldoon notes, there are limits to the degree of diversity that society can manage. One particular issue of interest is the production of public goods. The logic of comparative advantage can again be used here. More specialization means that we become better at producing public goods because some people can specialize in coordinating functions that help to solve collective action problems. However, while in the case of private goods, the logic of comparative advantages implies that specialization is a positive-sum game (though not everyone necessarily effectively gains), this is not the case with public goods. The latter have externalities which, depending on one’s preferences, may be either positive or negative (and then we can talk of “public bads”). More diversity means an increased level of public goods furniture, but it also means that it is more likely that these public goods will generate negative externalities for some members of the population. It becomes then crucial that the resulting harms are distributed equally across the population, at the risk otherwise that some individuals feel that they are treated unfairly.
The stability problem thus makes its reappearance. There are two fairness principles that must be simultaneously satisfied: a fairness principle about the distribution of gains from trade resulting from the specialization in the production of private goods and a fairness principle in the distribution of harms generated by the externalities attached to the provision of public goods that are only demanded by a subset of the population. As Muldoon recognizes, it may happen that these two requirements cannot be fulfilled at the same time:
“it is important to realize that, absent extensive social-cultural bonds, we must expect that not every collection of people can successfully form and maintain a political union. Though there are many incentives for promoting diversity in society, there are also limits on how far those incentives can take us.” (p. 109)
So, maybe Rawlsians are right after all: there must be “right” and publicly agreed reasons grounding a consensus about what just institutions are, a consensus without which a society cannot remain stable. Diversity is good for society, but only up to the point where people start to disagree too extensively about what it is good for.
[1] For those interested, I have a forthcoming paper in the Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy about Rawls’s treatment of the stability problem in terms of public reason and the criticisms leveled at it, mostly by proponents of the New Diversity Theory. The preprint can be accessed here.
I think we should segregate moral diversty from political diversity. I argue that the former doesn't truly exist, that there are principles that free people would reasonably agree to, not subject to personal value's or a conception of the good. However, political diveristy exists as a prioritization of these principles, where moral principles are applied to national facts and circumstances. These principles would still be respected, but placed in a certain lexical ordering to meet the demands of a political society.
And these moral principles would not be based on any subjective private reasons. If people's conception of the good or values feel threatened by these foundational moral principles. then too bad for their values. But the moral principles remain legitimate. This is why I don't believe there are true externalities as you say from pluralism. There may be damages (say a person is truly offended by the fact that a woman is in high political office) but there is no breach of a duty where we give that harm any regard.
I discuss this here if you are interested: https://neonomos.substack.com/p/there-are-no-natural-rights-without
I believe there is a good argumentation for diversity in the "real world" like in trades, finance, insurance, biology probably because diversity reduces risk.
However is diversity good in morality in the "world of ideas" ? Does it make sense to have a diversity in law systems, or police system ?