Gay marriage

Libertarian Jane Galt makes an interesting argument about gay marriage that largely parallels my own thinking. She makes a point that I have made myself, but she uses economic thinking. She argues that saying, "Letting gay people marry is not going to change my decision about getting married," is wrong because "you" might not be the marginal case. Just as in many situations in economics where an incentive might not change the behavior of the typical person but might have an effect at someone at one extreme or another of the distribution the same may be true of Gay marriage. A change in the minimum wage might not make you fire anyone but then your business might not, indeed probably is not, the marginal case.

She brings in the examples of welfare benefits and its effect on marriage in poor communities. The argument is more or less the same one that a lot of neo-conservatives made in the '90s about changing social rules on the basis of thier effect on the upper-middle-class while failing to take into account that an arrangment that might work well for the group making the rules could have disasterous effects on those farther down in the distribution of income, intellegence and education. This is really the argument at the center of Murray's book, Losing Ground. The framing in terms of economics and marginal effects is a real contribution, I think.

The other really nice thing about the post (and it is a very long one) is her citing of an argument made by G. K. Chesterton. He argues that those who see no need whatever for a social institution are precisely the people who have no business getting rid of it. Her setup and the quote itself are both worth reproducing at lenght:

"But as G.K. Chesterton points out, people who don't see the use of a social institution are the last people who should be allowed to reform it:

'In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, "I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it."
This paradox rests on the most elementary common sense. The gate or fence did not grow there. It was not set up by somnambulists who built it in their sleep. It is highly improbable that it was put there by escaped lunatics who were for some reason loose in the street. Some person had some reason for thinking it would be a good thing for somebody. And until we know what the reason was, we really cannot judge whether the reason was reasonable. It is extremely probable that we have overlooked some whole aspect of the question, if something set up by human beings like ourselves seems to be entirely meaningless and mysterious. There are reformers who get over this difficulty by assuming that all their fathers were fools; but if that be so, we can only say that folly appears to be a hereditary disease. But the truth is that nobody has any business to destroy a social institution until he has really seen it as an historical institution. If he knows how it arose, and what purposes it was supposed to serve, he may really be able to say that they were bad purposes, that they have since become bad purposes, or that they are purposes which are no longer served. But if he simply stares at the thing as a senseless monstrosity that has somehow sprung up in his path, it is he and not the traditionalist who is suffering from an illusion.'

Now, of course, this can turn into a sort of precautionary principle that prevents reform from ever happening. That would be bad; all sorts of things need changing all the time, because society and our environment change. But as a matter of principle, it is probably a bad idea to let someone go mucking around with social arrangements, such as the way we treat unwed parenthood, if their idea about that institution is that "it just growed". You don't have to be a rock-ribbed conservative to recognise that there is something of an evolutionary process in society: institutional features are not necessarily the best possible arrangement, but they have been selected for a certain amount of fitness.

It might also be, of course, that the feature is what evolutionary biologists call a spandrel. It's a term taken from architecture; spandrels are the pretty little spaces between vaulted arches. They are not designed for; they are a useless, but pretty, side effect of the physical properties of arches. In evolutionary biology, spandrel is some feature which is not selected for, but appears as a byproduct of other traits that are selected for. Belly buttons are a neat place to put piercings, but they're not there because of that; they're a byproduct of mammalian reproduction.

However, and architect will be happy to tell you that if you try to rip out the spandrel, you might easily bring down the building."

That whole way of thinking should be kept in mind when thinking about social reform. The fact that you can't imagine what purpose is served by such and such a rule is precisely why you should be careful about doing away with it. It is evidence not that the arrangment is useless (though it well might be) but that you don't understand the process that brought it about.

Of course the problem with social arrangements like marriage is precisely that people do think they understand the process that brought them about--religion. In former times people had these strange ideas about the Bible and Preists having some sort of supernatural insight into God's laws and people adopted them in much the same way that people earlier adopted practices like animal sacrifice. If the process that enforces practices like hetrosexual marriage are the products of the same process that inspecting lamb entrails before battle then we understand and reject the process that brought it about and feel perfectly free to discard the social arrangement.

That is why I think the evolutionary analogy is so useful in her argument (again one I have made many times). The very thing that makes ancient social arrangments suspect on process grounds--their association with ancient reasoning systems which no have credibility (at least among an influential subsection of the population)--ends up being what should make us reluctant to discard them willy-nilly on evolutionary grounds. Old arrangments are ones that have been selected for. Ultimately, she is saying that the religious arguments butressing social arrangements like marriage are artifactual.

I think the "spandrel" terminology is quite useful here. It focuses on a body of knowledge and a bit of experience that we all find accessible. The interesting thing is that it also cuts both ways. The arguments of environmentalists also have the spandrel idea in them. The argument against allowing species to go extinct because we can see no apparent use for them is precisely what should make us nervous about allowing them to go extinct.