A useful focus on potentially beneficial actions

The post just prior, The paradox of public discourse, was originally written a week or two ago and then put in the scheduled queue. It popped up today in an oddly serendipitous fashion.

Articles and research on three topics over the past few days led me to the train of thought that our ideology (in the sense of having a fixed vision) is crowding out from the public conversation what seem to be obvious alternate conclusions. Examples were forming in my mind when up popped the two week old The paradox of public discourse. My observation is not about the relative merits of a particular ideology (as I am using the term) but rather how a fixed view crowds out more empirical conclusions. I suspect that all parties hold their views with the very best of intentions, regardless of the relative benefit of the view.

Specifically, I am wondering if the fixation on gun control is obfuscating the issue of mental illness, whether the concern about disparate impact/diversity/discrimination is ignoring the consequences of individual choice and finally whether the fascination with income inequality is masking the real issue of low personal productivity.

I'll not dredge up the various reports and research that were the catalyst to the thought but simply try to summarize the case.

Gun Control versus Mental Health - The tragic mass shooting at the Washington Navy Yard occurred yesterday and the first background information is beginning to trickle in, Signs of Mental Illness Seen in Navy Gunman for Decade by Joseph Goldstein, Sarah Maslin Nir, and Timothy Williams. What have been the mass shootings of the past five years? I am recalling at least Newton, Connecticut; Aurora, Colorado; Seattle, Washington; Oakland, California (Oikos University); Tucson, Arizona (Rep. Gifford); Fort Hood, Texas; Huntsville, Alabama; Blacksburg, Virginia. While each and all of these have prompted calls for increased gun control (a logical argument independent of likely efficacy), there is another common thread that seems to be studiously unexamined. In all instances, the shooters had a documented history of mental illness and/or a pattern of unstable behavior. Mental health is far from my field of expertise but it seems logical to ask the question, how is it that so many unstable people are free to commit these acts? Is it that our mental health knowledge is so limited that we simply cannot predict who is at risk of uncontrolled violence? Is it that systemically we are so protective of mental health privacy that no one is in a position to connect the dots? Is it that the risk to a mental health practitioner of profiling someone as a danger is so high that we have precluded that action? I really don't know but I wonder if the chimera of gun control isn't masking a much larger and more serious issue of untreated mental health.

Disparate Impact/Diversity/Discrimination versus Individual Choice - This has shown up in a couple of articles. Again, I am willing to believe that at least some material portion of those concerned with the issue of disparate impact/diversity and discrimination are well intentioned seekers of greater fairness. I have no objection to the goal. It is the cognitive process that allows them to ignore alternate, more Ockhamesque explanations that might have a greater probability of being more accurate that concerns me. For example, today, I came across this effort to quantify diversity in children's literature, Diversity in ALA’s Best Fiction for Young Adults. They are looking at the degree of racial representation, LGBT representation and disabilities representation in children's books published 2011-2013. Fair enough. Depending on your particular focus of concern some are proportionately represented to the population and others are significantly underrepresented. But there is no logical reason that authors or characters should be proportionately representative of the population if, in a multicultural and diverse society, there are highly variable degrees of variance in book reading and book buying. There is actually a fair amount of evidence that representation distribution follows consumption distribution. In addition, it interesting to note that the common discrimination issue of gender is omitted here without comment despite the appearance that there is a very material underrepresentation of men as authors. In this example, the effort to focus on disparate impact tends to confuse the real issue. If different groups are consuming books at materially different rates, and if there is benefit to enthusiastic reading, then tackling the reading deficit is where you really want to focus your efforts, not so much on improving representation. Improve consumption and representation will likely follow.

The other example is that of the myth of unequal pay for identical work based on gender. There is a thicket of academic work in the US and the OECD that identifies that there is little gender compensation inequity, that macro averages are explained almost entirely by differences in hours worked, continuity of employment, and choice of profession/industry. A couple of recent articles from somewhat polemical pundits reference the academic studies; The Gender Wage Gap Lie by Hanna Rosin and Lessons from a feminist paradise on Equal Pay Day by Christina Hoff Sommers.

The issue here is not whether there aren't vestiges of individual discrimination here and there. Everyone is discriminated against in some fashion at some time by some people. The interesting issue, to me, is whether there is enough evidence of systemic discrimination with material consequences (it seems to me there is not) to warrant not examining whether there aren't some benefits to instead looking at why people make the choices they do.

Finally, there is Income Inequality versus personal productivity. Income inequality is rising in all OECD countries for reasons that are not fully comprehended. There is nothing in economic theory that indicates that income inequality within the ranges we are seeing have any systemic negative consequences. There is material disagreement as to what are even the best ways to measure income inequality, each measure having pros and cons. By focusing on the putative unfairness of income inequality (a subjective assessment based on values) we seem to be taking the focus away from what seems to me to be the real issue, what can we do to help those that are the least productive to become more productive and self-sustaining.

It seems to me that focusing on improving mental health care, improving breadth of personal career choices, and improving personal productivity are dramatically better issues to focus on and beneficial to both individuals and the community at large. Instead, we seem to reflexively fall into the jaded, reflexive ideological barking that prevents a useful focus on potentially beneficial actions.