Reclaiming Moral Capital
I was very interested to listen to Ezra Klein’s interview with Will MacAskill, a prominent thinker in the effective altruism movement. The focus of the discussion was on ‘long termism,’ referring to the long term future of humanity and what interventions today can ensure we are still around in the future, which is a subject usually separated from present day ‘social issue’ concerns. However, MacAskill argued that setting the conditions now to ensure a type of future we want to have requires that we really pay attention to these social arrangements. I very much appreciated that a leading thinker on the question of how to ensure the long term survival of humanity spent so much time discussing present moral concerns.
To make these points, MacAskill focused on the movement to abolish slavery, which he emphasized was not a foregone conclusion. People had to fight for it, and it was an uphill battle.
So the reason values become so important is twofold. One is that — and this is a way in which I differ somewhat from some other longtermist thinkers — when I look to the long-term future, I see — I think there could be a dramatic amount of contingency in what moral values guide the future. And I talk a lot about the abolition of slavery as a historical example of something that, at least arguably, was significantly contingent.
MacAskill noted that the abolition of slavery in the United Kingdom was a very surprising outcome, given how central the practice had been to the British economy and how costly it was to abolish it. He described how it was a truly moral campaign that pressured the British government to take action. In the 18th century, 75% of the world population was living in a condition of slavery, whereas today the figure is less than 1%. That is a stunning drop, and would have been extremely difficult to imagine at the time. Making this change required tremendous vision and persistence to see it through, against very significant obstacles. It required a growing contingent of people who said that slavery was wrong and could not be allowed to continue. And their hard work paid off - the near total collapse of what was once an extremely common and prominent institution is striking. It opens up our imagination for what massive social changes we can aspire to make today.
Against that backdrop, I found this exchange to be quite remarkable:
[Klein]: What are some ideas that come to mind to you that are not only accepted today socially, but defended by prominent moral thinkers, but you suspect may come to be seen as abhorrent in 300 or 3,000 years?
[MacAskill]: the treatment of prisoners. So think of the abhorrence with which we think about corporal punishment. So if in the U.S., there was someone who was beaten as a punishment, there would be absolute outrage.
But now ask yourself, supposing that you were rightly or wrongly convicted of a crime, and you had the choice — you could spend four years in jail, separated from your partner, from your kids, from everything you know, from your work, or you could be whipped 20 times. Which would you choose? I think probably you would choose to be whipped. I mean, I’m not sure — I certainly would.
But then that suggests that the harm that we would be doing to you by putting you behind bars for four years is greater than the harm of being whipped.
But what’s the difference? Well, it’s much less salient. It’s much less visceral. And so, yeah, I think it’s very plausible that the way we will regard the prison system today is with utter abhorrence.
The prison system, like slavery, is deeply embedded in our political economy. It’s difficult to imagine America without it. Many who would agree that mass incarceration is excessive, and the treatment of prisoners is too harsh, still have a hard time imagining abolishing this system. In a similar way, previous generations would have found it hard to conceive of the global collapse of the institution of slavery. Yet it was a moral imperative to bring about that collapse.
Note: if you haven’t yet been to the Legacy Museum in Montgomery, Alabama, founded by Bryan Stevenson, which documents the history of the transformation from slavery to mass incarceration, I highly recommend it.