Have you considered the possibility that people do not list first-order effects to individuals because huge swaths of the political establishment do not actually care about people they don’t know?
The water they swim, the air they breathe: Bringing up how something affects the outgroup’s feefees is not “obvious” or “direct”, it’s bringing up Nth-order civil breakdown effects in the most vague and indirect way possible, with figuring out all the critical details left as an exercise for the listener.
We live in a society; aka we have a tenuous contract to be copacetic and trade resources with others. They give the smallest amount of fucks about the outgroup’s happiness because an unhappy outgroup may have second-order effects in breaking down civil society with associated third-order effects on them and theirs.
Have you considered the possibility that people do not list first-order effects to individuals because huge swaths of the political establishment do not actually care about people they don’t know?
I think this fails to explain why even when the people talking are directly affected (such as with the UBI example, which would affect everyone) we don’t see as much focus on the direct effects of the policy.
This leads me to believe it could somewhat be the opposite of what you suggested. If I say that UBI would give people money, and so it’s good, people may suspect me of only advocating for a UBI because I selfishly wanted money, rather than for more pro-social reasons. However if I say UBI is good because it allows for young couples to start families, increasing the birth rate & population, then because I am not in a young couple there is no chance I could be arguing for such a policy for purely selfish reasons, so must be arguing for it because I genuinely believe it will help others.
So people may argue using nth order effects because those effects will explicitly disclude the affects of the policy on the arguer.
This is a good point. Could also be that discussing only points that might impact oneself seems more credible and less dependent on empathy, even if one really does care about others directly.
Have you considered the possibility that people do not list first-order effects to individuals because huge swaths of the political establishment do not actually care about people they don’t know?
The water they swim, the air they breathe: Bringing up how something affects the outgroup’s feefees is not “obvious” or “direct”, it’s bringing up Nth-order civil breakdown effects in the most vague and indirect way possible, with figuring out all the critical details left as an exercise for the listener.
We live in a society; aka we have a tenuous contract to be copacetic and trade resources with others. They give the smallest amount of fucks about the outgroup’s happiness because an unhappy outgroup may have second-order effects in breaking down civil society with associated third-order effects on them and theirs.
I think this fails to explain why even when the people talking are directly affected (such as with the UBI example, which would affect everyone) we don’t see as much focus on the direct effects of the policy.
This leads me to believe it could somewhat be the opposite of what you suggested. If I say that UBI would give people money, and so it’s good, people may suspect me of only advocating for a UBI because I selfishly wanted money, rather than for more pro-social reasons. However if I say UBI is good because it allows for young couples to start families, increasing the birth rate & population, then because I am not in a young couple there is no chance I could be arguing for such a policy for purely selfish reasons, so must be arguing for it because I genuinely believe it will help others.
So people may argue using nth order effects because those effects will explicitly disclude the affects of the policy on the arguer.
This is a good point. Could also be that discussing only points that might impact oneself seems more credible and less dependent on empathy, even if one really does care about others directly.