I found this very interesting.

https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20191001-the-bias-behind-the-worlds-greatest-catastrophes

The outcome bias erodes your sense of risk and makes you blind to error, explaining everything from fatal plane crashes to the Columbia crash and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

By David Robson
2nd October 2019
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Imagine a pilot is taking a familiar flight along a known route, during which the weather takes a turn for the worst. She knows that flying through the storm comes with some serious risks – and according to her training, she should take a detour or return. But she has flown the same route before, in similar weather – and she hadn’t experienced any problems then. Should she continue? Or should she turn back?

If you believe that she is safe to fly on, then you have fallen for a cognitive quirk known as the “outcome bias”. Studies have shown that we often judge the quality of a decision or behaviour by its endpoint, while ignoring the many mitigating factors that might have contributed to success or failure – and that this can render us oblivious to potentially catastrophic errors in our thinking.

In this example, the decision to take the previous flight was itself very risky – and the pilot may have only avoided an accident through a combination of lucky circumstances. But thanks to the outcome bias, she might ignore this possibility and assume that either the dangers had been overrated, or that it was her extraordinary skill that got her through, leading her to feel even happier taking the risk again in the future. And the more she does it, the less concerned about the danger she becomes.

Besides leading us to become increasingly risky in our decision-making, the outcome bias can lead us to ignore incompetence and unethical behaviour in our colleagues. And the consequences can be truly terrifying, with studies suggesting that it has contributed to many famous catastrophes, including the crash of Nasa’s Columbia shuttle and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

The end, not the means

Like much of our understanding of human irrationality, the outcome bias was first observed in the 1980s, with a seminal study of medical decision-making.

Participants were given descriptions of various scenarios, including the risks and benefits of the different procedures, and then asked to rate the quality of the doctors’ judgement.

The participants were told about a doctor’s choice to offer a patient a heart bypass, for instance – potentially adding many more years of good health, but with a small chance of death during the operation. Perhaps predictably, the participants judged the doctor’s decision far more harshly if they were told the patient subsequently died than when they were told that the patient lived – even though the benefits and risks were exactly the same in each case.

The outcome bias is so deeply ingrained in our brains that it’s easy to understand why they would feel that the doctor should be punished for the patient’s death. Yet the participants’ reasoning is not logical, since there would have been no better way for the doctor to have weighed up that evidence – at the time of making the decision there was every chance the operation would have been a success. Once you know about the tragedy, however, it’s hard to escape that nagging feeling that the doctor was nevertheless at fault – leading the participants to question his competence.

Negative results lead us to blame someone for events that were clearly beyond their control, even when we know all the facts that excuse their decision-making

“We just have a hard time dissociating the random events that, along with the quality of the decision, jointly contribute to the outcome,” explains Krishna Savani at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

The finding, published in 1988, has been replicated many times, showing that negative results lead us to blame someone for events that were clearly beyond their control, even when we know all the facts that excuse their decision-making. And we now know that the opposite is also true: thanks to the outcome bias, a positive result can lead us to ignore flawed decision-making that should be kept in check, giving people a free pass for unacceptable behaviour.

In one experiment by Francesca Gino at Harvard Business School, participants were told a story about a scientist who fudged their results to prove the efficacy of a drug they were testing. Gino found that the participants were less critical of the scientist’s behaviour if the drug turned out to be safe and effective than if it turned out to have dangerous side effects. Ideally, of course, you would judge both situations equally harshly – since an employee who behaves so irresponsibly could be a serious liability in the future.

Such flawed thinking is a serious issue when considering things like promotion. It means that an investor, say, could be rewarded for a lucky streak in their performance even if there is clear evidence of incompetent or unethical behaviour, since their boss is unable to disconnect their decision-making from their results. Conversely, it shows how a failure can subtly harm your reputation even if there is clear evidence that you had acted appropriately based on the information at hand.

“It’s a big problem that people are either being praised, or being blamed, for events that were largely determined by chance,” says Savani. “And this is relevant for government policy makers, for business managers – for anyone who’s making a decision.”

The outcome bias may even affect our understand of sport. Arturo Rodriguez at the University of Chile recently examined pundits’ ratings of footballers on Goal.com. In games that had to be decided by penalty shootouts, he found that the results of those few short minutes at the end of the game swayed the experts’ judgements of the players’ performance throughout the whole match. Crucially, that was even true for the players who hadn’t scored any goals. “The result of the shoot-out had a significant impact on the individual evaluation of the players – even if they didn’t participate in it,” Rodriguez says. They could simply bask in the victory of others.

Near misses

The outcome bias’s most serious consequences, however, concern our perceptions of risk.

One study of general aviation, for instance, examined pilots’ evaluations of flying under perilous weather conditions with poor visibility. It found that pilots were more likely to underestimate the dangers of the flight if they had just heard that another pilot had successfully made it through the same route. In reality, there is no guarantee that their success would mean a safe passage for the second flight – they may have only made it through by luck – but the outcome bias means that the pilots overlooked this fact.

Catherine Tinsley, at Georgetown University, has found a similar pattern in people’s responses to natural disasters like hurricanes. If someone weathers one storm unscathed, they become less likely to purchase flood insurance before the next disaster, for instance.

Tinsley’s later research suggests that this phenomenon may explain many organisational failings and catastrophes too. The crash of Nasa’s Columbia shuttle was caused by foam insulation breaking off an external tank during the launch, creating debris that struck a hole through the wing of the orbiter. The foam had broken from the insulation on many previous flights, however – but due to lucky circumstance it had never before created enough damage to cause a crash.

Inspired by these findings, Tinsley’s team asked participants to consider a hypothetical mission with a near miss and to rate the project leader’s competence. She found that emphasising factors like safety, and the organisation’s visibility, meant that people were more likely to spot the event as a warning sign of a potential danger. The participants were also more conscious of the latent danger if they were told they would have to explain their judgement to a senior manager. Given these findings, organisations should emphasise everyone’s responsibility for spotting latent risks and reward people for reporting them.

Savani agrees that we can protect ourselves from the outcome bias. He has found, for instance, that priming people to think more carefully about the context surrounding a decision or behaviour can render them less susceptible to the outcome effect. The aim should be to think about the particular circumstances in which it was made and to recognise the factors, including chance, that might have contributed to the end result.

One way to do this is to engage in counter-factual thinking when assessing your or someone else’s performance, he says. What factors might have caused that different outcome? And would you still rate the decision or process the same way, if that had occurred?

Consider that case of the scientist who was fudging their drug results. Even if the drug was safe in the end, imagining the worst-case scenario – with patient deaths – would make you more conscious of the risks he was taking. Similarly, if you were that pilot who chose to fly in unsuitable conditions, you might look at each flight to examine any risks you were taking and to think through how that might have played out in different circumstances.

Whether you are an investor, a pilot or a Nasa scientist, these strategies to avoid the outcome bias will help prevent a chance success from blinding you to dangers in front of your eyes. Life is a gamble, but you can at least stack the odds in your favour, rather than allowing your mind to lull you into a false sense of security.

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David Robson is a writer based in London and Barcelona. His first book, The Intelligence Trap: Why Smart People Do Dumb Things, is out now. He is d_a_robson on Twitter.

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Los Angeles Rams Head Coach Sean McVay Conference Call – Wednesday, September 11, 2019

The last time you guys played (it was a) pretty high stakes, high emotion type of ending. Does that matter at all in your mind this week with the Saints coming back to L.A.?
“No. I think if anything, what it does is it continues to give you a great amount of respect for the caliber of football team that they are. Well coached, great players all over the place. I think really more than anything, just having played them twice last year, just makes you realize what a great football team it is coming in at our place and what a high level of game we’re going to need to play to compete with them.”

The Saints and Rams have played three times now in the past two years – four if you include a preseason game. Does that familiarity, I mean, is it almost like a division game at this point, just with the amount of times you guys have played each other lately?
“Well, we’ve seen each other a lot, but I think this is a great football team. They’ve done an excellent job. They’ve had some consistency and continuity on both sides of the ball in terms of obviously with Sean (Payton) running the offense and then coach (Dennis) Allen running the defense, transition with coach (Darren) Rizzi on the special teams. But one of the things that you see that’s consistent in all three phases, (they are) very sound, fundamentals, techniques, good schemes, great coaching and great players. You see why they’re the reigning No. 1 seed in the NFC and why they were one of the best teams in football and why they still are this year.”

The Saints are getting David Onyemata back from a suspension. You guys saw a lot of him last year. Do you have to account for that this week when you’re preparing for a team that Week 1 you didn’t see any of that guy in there?
“Absolutely. Yeah. He’s a really productive player. I think when you just look at their front across the board, you see why they were one of the top rush defenses in the league. And really when you look at the latter half of the year starting when we played them and then going on until the end of the season, they were one of the best defenses in the NFL. I thought they played at a really high level. They’re physical. Coach Allen does a great job mixing it up and then when you got great players to match it, it’s a great challenge and getting David back will definitely give them a boost on the interior for sure.”

We haven’t really necessarily been following it too closely with Todd (Gurley) and the whole knee thing, but it looked like he played pretty well last week. How would you kind of assess that performance for him?
“He played well. It was good to get him in the flow. I thought he did a great job closing out the game right under a hundred yards. He was productive, but there’s always some things we can improve on. It was great to be able to have Todd out there looking like the Todd that we all know and love.”

When you’re watching Alvin Kamara either from afar or up-close, what’s kind of the one thing, if there is one thing, that really kind of separates him from other people? What makes him special in your eyes?
“The versatility and the elite balance. You talk about a guy that’s got an unbelievable forward body lean. He’s always breaking tackles going forward. I’ve heard somebody refer to him that he’s like a kickstand guy. It’s like he’s got an extra leg. He’s able to just stay so balanced and so grounded. He’s got incredible hands. He’s got a great feel for space. And when he’s running the football, he’s one of the best in the league for a reason and one of the most versatile and he’s one of the best players in this league. And it shows up week in and week out.”

Have you ever had a chance to sit down and talk football with Drew Brees and just kind of pick a brain that’s been around the game for 20 years now?
“You know what? I really haven’t and I’ve heard so many great things about him from guys like Aaron Kromer and obviously when I talked to coach Payton about him and you can just see from afar, he is somebody that I have an unbelievable amount of respect for the way he handles himself, the way he leads and obviously the way he plays his game. I am a coach but I’m also a fan of this game and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a huge fan of Drew Brees.”

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Los Angeles Rams HC Sean McVay, September 11 press conference

(On if he has an update on S Eric Weddle’s injury)

“He (S Eric Weddle) is feeling good. I think he was asymptomatic, so he’s on track. He has to go through everything as far as passing everything that we need. I anticipate him being ready to go (on Sunday).”

(On if Weddle will practice on Wednesday)

“I haven’t had a chance to talk to (Senior Director, Sports Medicine and Performance) Reggie (Scott) about that yet.”

(On if Weddle has to change his helmet following the injury)

“That would be something, really as much as anything, for the laceration. Just to make sure because he got some stitches in his head. Those are things we’ll make sure we get squared away, so hopefully that’s not an issue that comes up in the future.”

(On if he sat down and spoke with CB Nickell Robey-Coleman about the controversial play in the 2018 NFC Championship game)

“Not really. We kind of talked about it as a team. It was something that, we all know what it looked like. Obviously, nobody’s going to sit here and say that wasn’t a pass interference and that’s why it led to some rules being changed. I think everybody, even though that play benefitted our team, nobody wants anything but a fair game. Those clear and obvious plays that we can avoid, we want to be able to do that and that’s exactly how we feel as a team, too.”

(On him saying the team wouldn’t complain when a missed call benefits his team)

“We’re not going to complain either way. That happened to end up working to our advantage. We talked about it all the time, ‘It’s got to be that next play mindset mentality.’ That was one that definitely benefitted us. But, there’s a lot of plays in a game and I think it’s good that the competition committee made the effort to be able to try to avoid some of those things happening in the future, and that’s exactly what we all want.”

(On the emotions surrounding Sunday’s game against New Orleans and if he has experience with more emotionally-filled games)

“It’s game two. It’s a great team coming in. For us, we play each game as its own entity. This is a great football team – they were the one-seed in the NFC for a reason, had a great win against a really good football team on Monday night where you can see they’re a resilient football team. They’re very well coached, they’ve got great players. It’s going to be a great challenge and we’re excited about it.”

(On if coaches and players view Sunday’s game differently than fans)

“I’m not sure. It’s hard to say. I think our players, our coaches know the level of urgency that’s going to be needed for us to be at our best in order to give ourselves a chance to compete and hopefully come out of this thing 2-0.”

(On if he watched the end of New Orleans’ Week 1 game and if he was surprised with how Saints QB Drew Brees played at the end of the game)

“I thought it was a really impressive operation. Whether it be (Saints Head) Coach (Sean) Payton managing the clock, (Saints QB) Drew’s (Brees) command, his ability to recognize the structure where No. 2 (Saints receiver) is kind of off and outside and bang it to (Saints WR Ted) Ginn (Jr.) in the slot and be able to get down and be able to use that timeout. It was a really sharp team executing at a high level in a crunch time moment. All you can do is really tip your hat to them and say, ‘That was an impressive operation right there.’”

(On if he will change the approach during practice this week for RB Todd Gurley II)

“It’ll be kind of that every other day. We’ll keep a similar deal. He (RB Todd Gurley II) is going to go – he just went in the walk-thru and he’s feeling good. A lot of it is predicated on – if it’s a normal three-day work week, he’ll work two out of those three days. That was kind of the plan that we had going in. Most importantly is how he’s feeling. He’s feeling good, I thought that he got stronger as the game progressed. It’s like anything else – and it’s not exclusive to Todd – really, our team just getting in football shape. Especially when you look at the approach that we took, playing the amount of snaps that we did in the kind of weather. I thought that was a great first opportunity for us to kind of get ourselves in game shape. You can’t ever really recreate those types of situations that occur when you’re playing live football and the guys that we’re counting on playing 65 to 70 snaps. This week’s going to be a great challenge as well.”

(On what he believes happened with Gurley in the 2018 NFC Championship game)

“What I remember the most is how much respect I had for the way that he (RB Todd Gurley II) handled it. I think that’s what separates really elite people, is being able to handle adversity and take ownership for it. Know that there’s some things that I could have done better for him, he could have done better overall. I thought he made a key touchdown run in the two-minute situation at the end of the first half. He had some unbelievably timely pick-ups at the end of the game when we’re driving to get into field goal range. What is as impressive as anything is you’re talking about a guy that’s a first team All-Pro, the reigning Offensive Player of the Year the year before, and just says, ‘Hey, I didn’t play up to the level that I expect to. My teammates lifted me up.’ You can’t say anything but, ‘Man, I respect Todd Gurley for the way he handled that.’”

(On what kind of mindset rookie S Taylor Rapp has brought to the team)

“I would say he (S Taylor Rapp) is a rookie mature beyond his years, and that was one of the things that we liked so much about him coming out. You could just see the versatility, the instincts, the short-spaced quickness, just the feel for the game that he had with the way that they utilized him at (the University of) Washington. He’s gotten more and more comfortable. He’s a guy that we consistently talked about because he deserved to be talked about based on just getting better every single day. The best way that you could articulate what he is, he’s a rookie that’s not playing like a rookie. He’s a mature player and he’s just a good football player that has a great feel for the game and that you trust in those situations and he delivered in a big way.”

(On what he sees from Saints RB Alvin Kamara and if previously facing Panthers RB Christian McCaffrey prepares them for facing Kamara)

“You’re talking about two of the most complete backs in the league (Saints RB Alvin Kamara and Panthers RB Christian McCaffrey). The versatility, what a great job McCaffrey did. You can see – and really, Kamara is the same type of deal. You look at some of the runs that he’s making, you look at the way that he’s able to be a threat out of the backfield. These are, arguably, two of the most complete backs in the NFL. Unbelievable challenge again for us and they (New Orleans) do a great job utilizing him (Kamara) getting him in space. (Saints QB) Drew’s (Brees) is going to find him, they’ve got creative run schemes to get him involved and then they’ll move him all over the formation. It’s like finding ‘Where’s Waldo?’ (Saints Head) Coach (Sean) Payton does an excellent job with that.”

(On how he defines success against players like Kamara and McCaffrey)

“That’s a good question. I would answer that differently, based on each play and the situation. I think, ultimately, we want to protect them from scoring points and try to limit the explosives. This is a great football team, a great offense coming in. First-ballot Hall of Fame quarterback – it’s a great system that they run and they’ve elite playmakers. It’s going to be a great challenge. Their operation is as impressive as what you’ll see, too, in terms of the different personnel groupings, the way that they stress you. They understand exactly what they’re doing and that’s why they’ve been at the top of the league, really, since (Saints Head Coach) Sean (Payton) and (Saints QB) Drew (Brees) have been there for the last handful of years.”

(On how DT Aaron Donald opens up opportunities for other players on the Rams’ defense)

“Really, you kind of just mentioned it. When somebody’s going to influence and affect that much attention, it’s going to create some solo opportunities. Some of the movements – one of (OLB) Dante’s (Fowler Jr.) sacks came on a two-man game between those two, where (DT) Aaron (Donald) basically occupied the guard and the tackle and did a great job of accelerating underneath and being able to finish that play. Aaron is a special player and I think a lot of his affect on the game might not even be determined based on him getting the sacks and the production, but what he does to make other people’s job a little bit easier and that’s what makes him great.”

(On Donald being frustrated following the game and if he has to talk to Donald to help him understand his impact on the game)

“I think he (DT Aaron Donald) is one of the best in the world at what he does. He’s always looking to get better. I think he was pleased with the win. He’s the ultimate team player, he was pleased with the win, but he has a high level of expectation for himself and what he demands of himself snap in and snap out. I think what’s so special about Aaron, is I don’t think anybody has higher expectations for Aaron than Aaron does. I’m never going to pull back on what he’s been doing, especially when it’s always with the right intentions and the right approach, and I think that’s one of the elite traits that he does have.”

(On what stood out about the offensive drive at the end of the last year’s game against the Saints)

“It was a bunch of big-time, crunch-time throws. You look at a big-time play by (TE) Gerald Everett, (WR) Josh Reynolds had a couple big catches. I thought (QB) Jared (Goff) did a great job being able to move in the pocket. Had a big third down-and-three conversion to (WR) Robert Woods breaking over the middle. Then, a situation where at the end, they kind of zeroed us. Fortunately, it went incomplete and then (K) Greg’s (Zuerlein) able to come in and knock it through and send it into overtime. It was blur, I remember just from watching the tape. The fans were going crazy, it was an unbelievable atmosphere. It was a great job by our players demonstrating poise in a crunch time moment.”

(On how hard it is to execute in game situations like last year’s offensive drive at the end of the NFC Championship game)

“I think it’s really hard. Especially when you’re in the absence of your verbal communication. Everything’s visual right there. All 11 being on the same page, that’s a stressful environment that our players handled really well right there.”

(On when he talked to the team about the controversy)

“Right after. You address it. You could ask (CB) Nickell Robey(-Coleman). He knows that was a pass interference. In the moment that was kind of what was officiated and you’ve got to just kind of play those next snaps and there was a lot of snaps after that as well.”

(On what the point of talking to the players was)

“It was, ‘Hey, we know exactly what occurred. Fortunately, that worked out for us, but let’s not make any bigger deal than what it is. All we can do is control what we can control and those things are out of our control.’ You don’t run away from the fact that that was a call that did benefit us. You address it and then you keep it moving.”

(On if he has seen Robey-Coleman improve)

“He’s always been a good player. That was one of those situations that they quick snapped the rail from the…the backs running a rail or the receivers running a rail route out of the backfield and he was just kind of urgently reacting to the play and kind of collided with him right there. I don’t think he intentionally ran into him before. He’s been a really competitive nickel all along. We want to try to avoid those clear and obvious and the egregious penalties.”

(On if he thought that Goff’s performance in overtime with directing those drives got a little lost)

“I do. I agree. I think so. It can’t be understated what a tough atmosphere, what elements that he was dealing with to be able to even be able to get some yards. They’re a really good defense too. For him to make some of the plays, I definitely think was a big-time representation of him and the ability to handle some of those tough moments. All games don’t always go our way, but that was a great example and reflection of a guy that’s mentally tough and did a great job. Without a lot of the plays he makes, we don’t end up winning that game for sure.”

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Los Angeles Rams QB Jared Goff, September 11 press conference

(On what he took away from the season opener against Carolina and which aspects of his game he thinks he need to improve moving forward)

“I’d like to be a little bit better in a lot of different places. I think it was a good start for our team and a good win for us to start off the year. Personally, I could knock some rust off and be a little better than that.”

(On what he wants to work on when ‘knocking the rust off’)

“Everything. I think it’s never one thing in particular, it’s always just trying to get better, trying to continue to put the ball in my receivers’ hands and just continue to get better.”

(On how he has grown since his first meeting against Saints QB Drew Brees)

“I think I’ve talked about this, but, the first time we played them, you’re kind of in awe of playing (Saints QB) Drew Brees and everything that goes along with it when I was a rookie – how great he is, how great his career has been. I think at this point now, I feel like we’re more peers. I think at the Pro Bowl with him we were able to experience that with him. Me and him have become friends and I’m a big fan of his.”

(On if he saw the end of the Saints game on Monday)

“It was great.”

(If he expected Brees to bring the Saints back down the field to win the game)

“Yeah. It was a tough situation, but he did it and that’s why he’s so great. They’re never out of it and I think we know that. With him behind center, they’re never out of it. Have to try to score a lot of points to beat them.”

(On what was going through his head when he took the field before leading the Rams to a game-tying drive in the NFC Championship game)

“I really wanted to score a touchdown, honestly. I wanted to go down there and punch one in and finish the game down there with less than 30 seconds and not give them much of a chance to get anything back. But, we had to settle with a field goal and (K Greg Zuerlein) hit a long one and the rest is history. Just tried to go out there and execute.”

(On if he remembers where he was on the sideline when S John Johnson III recorded an interception in the fourth quarter of the NFC Championship game)

“Yeah, I remember being on the sideline and you feel pretty helpless that you’re kind of at the mercy of whatever they do offensively. But, (I was) so confident in our defense. At that time they had been playing so well in the second half and were kind of so close to a turnover for so long. You kind of felt like, ‘Okay, we might have a chance to get one here.’ Sure enough, the ball went up in the air – and that was a chance – and ‘John-John’ (S John Johnson III) made a play. Again, (K) Greg (Zuerlein) knocks in the field goal and the rest of history.”

(On what it was like seeing OLB Dante Fowler Jr. hit the quarterback before the interception)

“It’s great. (OLB) Dante (Fowler Jr.) is a great player for us, was able to get in there and is someone we were happy to add halfway through the year and has made a lot of great plays since he’s been here.”

(On how the Rams approach the game with the Saints on Sunday)

“We’re trying to go 2-0. I think that would be their mindset as well. They’re trying to win the game just like we are. There’s nothing that we’re taking from last year as motivation, if they are, great. It’s just another game for us and it’s our home opener after not being at home in a long time. Excited to see our fans, it’ll be a big one and it’ll be a lot of fun.”

(On if he feels the Rams benefitted from facing Carolina’s zone defense approach in Week 1)

“I think it was a game that was testing our patience for sure. It was something where they were getting a lot of depth in the secondary and for whatever reason we had a hard time getting over the top. Just had to continue to take the completions underneath. If that’s what is helping us move the offense forward and win the game, I’m all for it and last week it was. Just continue to stay patient and I thought for myself, me and (Rams Head Coach) Sean (McVay) joked about it earlier in the week, but it was a mature game for both him and myself, just taking what they gave us and not getting impatient.”

(On what makes his receiving core quiet achievers)

“They are all just extremely hard workers and understand a bigger goal. I think I’m very lucky to have all three, really all four of them and everything that they do. I think it’s a very unique situation where all three of them are unselfish. I’ve never been on a team where is like that. Where one guy goes for 150 (yards) and one guy has one catch, and the one guy with one catch couldn’t care. If we win the game, he doesn’t care at all about the numbers. It’s a very unique situation where I think, all three of them individually, on their own, growing up through football have always been that way and we happened to get them all on the same team. They feed off each other, they work each other, and I think on the practice field you see it every day. I’ve experienced a few different receiver groups, but I can’t imagine another receiver group that works as hard as they do every day.”

(On if it takes a load off his shoulders as a quarterback when he has receivers that work as hard as they do)

“I don’t have to push them. I don’t have to say ‘Hey I need you to run harder here. I need you to work harder here.’ There’s never been any of that. It definitely takes a big weight off my shoulders and off the team’s shoulders. I think when you look out and you see them working hard, it brings everyone along. Those guys are three of the silent leaders of the team, I think.”

(On if he appreciates not having drama with his wide receiver group)

“Yeah, again, I think I’m just very lucky to be in a unique situation with those three. I try to show my gratefulness every day. I do realize it is rare, very rare to have three guys that, not only work that hard, but are of their talent level and are as selfless as they are. They want to block. They want to win and don’t care about their numbers and they want to other person to succeed. It’s very rare, I’m very lucky.”

(On what it’s like having WR Cooper Kupp back)

“He looked great, I thought he did a great job. For me personally, he’s always been a guy I’ve enjoyed throwing to. He looked great and I’m glad he’s back out there.”

(On if he had anything to say to RB Todd Gurley after last season’s NFC Championship game)

“Not anything that I wouldn’t normally. It was just very normal. I think I’ve stressed it before, but he’s such a great teammate and great person. He handles everything with such class and the way that you’re supposed to. I couldn’t be more proud of him for the way he’s handled everything over the last year. I’m glad he came out and did his thing the other day. I expect the same moving forward, I know he does too. I think he feels pretty good.”

McVay, Shanahan, LaFleur on QBs, playbooks, learning in D.C.

John Keim
ESPN

https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/27447121/mcvay-shanahan-lafleur-qbs-playbooks-learning-dc

When Kyle Shanahan became the Washington Redskins’ offensive coordinator in 2010 under his father, Mike, he brought in young offensive minds Sean McVay and Matt LaFleur. Now that all three are NFL head coaches, the former Redskins assistants will have a big say in who wins the NFC.

Shanahan, now the San Francisco 49ers coach, might have provided key breaks for his former colleagues, but it’s McVay who has accomplished the most thus far. The Los Angeles Rams coach has 24 regular-season wins, two postseason appearances and a Super Bowl trip in two seasons. LaFleur got his big break this offseason when he was named coach of the Green Bay Packers.

Intrigue surrounds all three this season: McVay, 33, is coming off a Super Bowl appearance; Shanahan, 39, hopes to get a full season with quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo; and LaFleur, 39, will be working with 35-year-old quarterback Aaron Rodgers.

Here’s what they had to say on a variety of topics, including their start in Washington:

Together in Washington

Could you tell you had a special group in Washington?

Shanahan: Definitely. We were all young, but we kept up with each other. We were all eager. We weren’t just studying what we were doing — our own plays — we were always trying to push the envelope and do different things and challenge each other. I would get so frustrated when everyone acted like I brought my friends here. It drove me crazy. These are all guys who got jobs and were really good. That’s why my dad and I needed them.

McVay: The biggest thing I knew right away is that you could see coach [Mike] Shanahan had so much experience, and his record and what he had done spoke for itself. Then you’re around Kyle and realize the next-level knowledge, the way he’s looking at the game in a very sophisticated way. He’s not seeing 11 pieces move, he’s seeing all 22 and understanding the intricacies of what they’re all doing. In a good way it pushes you. I was pretty green at the time and had a long way to go to be at their level.

Did you ever envision all three of you being head coaches?

LaFleur: No. I was just trying to be the best quarterback coach I could be. We had some really good coaches on the staff, not only Kyle but his dad taught me so much in terms of defensive football. In order to be the best coach, you have to learn both sides of the ball.

McVay: I don’t know if you ever look at it like that. I was a quality control coach. If you said, “Would you ever want to be a head coach?” I’d say sure. But you try to produce in the present. But if you said, “Would it shock you if Kyle and Matt are head coaches?” No. Kyle was always on a fast track and the more you’re around Matt, you realize what a great coach he was.

Working with the Redskins taught me _____ .

Shanahan: This league is very tough. It doesn’t matter how good you think you are, you have to go through these situations. Things don’t always work out. You need to realize all you can do is do as good as you can. You can’t have your self-worth built in with this. People will judge you left and right. You have to be confident in yourself. Things were so easy for me in Houston. Then I went to Washington and was thinking it would be the same way and you have to do things totally different and fight some extreme uphill battles. [The Redskins went 24-40 and 0-1 in the playoffs during Shanahan’s four seasons.] It was all very hard and at times you don’t think it’s worth it. But man, Washington helped me become who I am.

McVay: There are so many different things you learn; it’s really a way of doing things weekly — how you study tape, how you put together a game plan, how you have philosophies and have flexibility knowing it’s about your players. I’m so lucky in a short amount of time to be around great coaches you can emulate. I don’t think you realize you’re picking it up until you see how you game plan and see what they’re looking at and what are their core beliefs that show up Sundays when you’re in crunch situations.

Dealing with QBs

With QBs, what is your deal-breaker — the trait you can’t tolerate?

Shanahan: If a guy is scared to get hit, he has no chance to play in this league. You have to use your brain, and there’s so much going on in the heat of battle, your mind has to be so clear when the ball is snapped, to understand coverages and throw the ball in tight windows to get the ball to the right spots.

LaFleur: I look for natural throwers, just smooth, fluid deliveries. The greatest throwers of all time all do it in their own way. There’s a natural throwing ability among most of the greatest ever to play the position — the [Tom] Bradys, the Rodgerses. That’s one thing when I start evaluating college quarterbacks coming out, I look and see if they have a natural throwing motion. If they don’t, I lose interest pretty quickly.

McVay: The biggest thing is consistent accuracy. I’m looking for accuracy, timing and location and give guys a chance to run after the catch and being able to change arm angles. That’s No. 1.

The most difficult thing to get rookie QBs to learn is _____ .

Shanahan: How to play in the pocket, especially for guys now. A lot of guys don’t hold on to the ball long in college. You don’t do as much play-action, especially in the spread systems, and the defensive lines don’t even rush except at a few of these big schools because they’re so tired and there are so many plays.

McVay: The intricacies of what a defense could present and how it affects decision-making based on situations. The game has so many. A game usually has 65 to 75 snaps and the amount of different things based on the situation and the defensive coordinator is a lot of information.

LaFleur: You get in this league and now you have to step in the huddle and depending on the system, the playcalls can get verbose. That challenge of trying to teach them the command that needs to happen within the huddle and being a master of cadence. A lot now use silent counts or claps when they want the football. We always talk about this, that the cadence for an offense is a weapon. It’s an art and it’s an art you learn over time. How do you become a master of a cadence?

The most important aspect of a QB/coach relationship is _____ .

LaFleur: Communication. What do you like? What do you feel comfortable with and what don’t you like? This is the toughest position in sports so the guy better be comfortable pulling the trigger. If you’re not comfortable, you won’t be confident, and if you’re not confident, the play will die.

Trends, screwups and adding plays…What trends are coming on offense?

McVay: Motion has always been a core part of the offense. There have been increases in the use of jet-fly motion. The biggest thing we saw a change in was the increase and utilization of the fake jet or jet sweep motion.

Shanahan: The jet sweep and fake jet is what changed so much the last couple years to where people are doing a ridiculous amount of that in particular. That’s making it hard on defenses. If you’re in a 3 [WR] by 1 [RB] set and you do jet and now it’s really a 2 by 2. So it’s the amount of different calls on a defense … it really messes up a lot of rules. That, to me, makes the defense have to simplify more, which [they] don’t want to do because then an offense knows too much of what they’re doing.

Five years from now, NFL offenses will all have ____ in common

McVay: The league goes in trends and I don’t think five years ago I would have been able to tell you fly motion would be a big part of the league and the zone-read in 2012. … But fundamentally in this league it’s about running the ball well, being able to protect up front and spacing and timing and rhythm in the pass game.

What’s your process for adding to your playbook?

Shanahan: It’s funny how guys look at that because everyone pictures it’s like “Waterboy,” like we’re carrying around this yellow notebook with all our secret plays drawn up on it. There are only so many ways you can move five eligibles and there are only so many coverages, whether it’s zone or man. How many ways do you want to disperse the field? I rarely think there’s some new thing. You don’t want to just be that person that wakes up on Monday and watches everyone else’s offense and then comes in to the players and says, “I have these 80 plays that are awesome. Let’s run them!” It’s how does it fit into your team and what are you trying to do? Does this play set up another play? That to me is everything I do.

McVay: A lot of plays we run are the product of what someone else did and we maybe put our own flavor on it. We see a lot of the same stuff show up week in, week out. We’ll watch a lot of other teams that are having success. If they’re doing something that works, you’re not afraid to steal a good idea. Off the top of my head, the teams that consistently operate at a high level the last couple years you look at are the Chiefs, the Saints, the Patriots.

The time I screwed up the most calling plays, I learned _____ .

Shanahan: The first playcall I made for Rex Grossman when we benched Donovan [McNabb] in Detroit [in 2010]. We were getting frustrated not moving the ball and Rex’s first play I called a seven-step drop. We made an aggressive decision and the first play I called is such an aggressive play. I forgot who it was, but the defensive end beat our tackle and stripped him and they got a fumble for a touchdown and it was like, “Holy crap, did that end fast.” I should have called a screen to start. I should have been more patient.

LaFleur: Last year [at] Buffalo we went into that game … with almost a play-not-to-lose mentality. The Bills’ defense doesn’t get enough recognition; they’re much better than I thought. Extremely sound. My mindset is: How do we win as a team. Sometimes you know you have to score a bunch of points. Sometimes it’s, “Hey, if we take care of the ball, I like our chances.” That was one of those games for me. They had a rookie quarterback [Josh Allen]. We went in with the mindset of, “Let’s not turn it over.” We turned it over three times. [But] you don’t get explosive plays unless you call shot plays. If you don’t call them, you probably won’t get them. You’ve still got to be aggressive.

McVay: I remember the first year calling the plays when we played the Jets and we fell behind and I didn’t have a great plan for a lot of the known passing situations, mixing up concepts. I felt I was calling the same thing and you become predictable.

The craziest place/time where I thought of a play

McVay: Sometimes the best ideas come to you when you’re driving, when you’re not pressing as hard. Sometimes you’re reaching so hard for an idea that it doesn’t come organically. Or sometimes you get these crazy ideas when you’re delirious, too. I’ve had some really dumb ideas late at night throwing s— off the wall and seeing what sticks. This past year we came up with the crazy reverse action that Josh Reynolds had a 19-yard run [on] in the NFC Championship Game. We used it at a big moment. That came late at night when you’re throwing s— off the wall. That’s one idea that actually [worked].

Adversaries, mentors and peers

Which coach’s defense is the toughest to read and attack?

LaFleur: There are so many guys and every system is different, but I look at Vic Fangio. Just the fronts and the multiple looks you get from him. That’s incredibly difficult. Shoot, Indianapolis last year we knew exactly what they were going to do to us and we didn’t have a lot of success because they were so sound. They stuffed the run out of a two-safety defense and played extremely fast.

Shanahan: My hardest has probably always been Vic Fangio. He does so many things with his personnel groupings that he puts you in a bind with protections. He ties a lot of stuff together. Playing against him, I feel he packages stuff very similar to how I would think. [Bill] Belichick is very similar. They do it in a different style. You know they don’t just run their defenses. They figure out what you’re doing and then they think about how to stop what you’re doing and that’s very similar to how I am. I don’t just run my offense. I have no idea what I’m going to call until I know what defense I’m visualizing and trying to attack. It’s fun.

McVay: For us, I think Fangio and the Bears did an outstanding job of a sound scheme with versatility mixed with great players. And clearly what New England did down the stretch was impressive. Those are the two defenses that gave us the most trouble. I thought the Saints were excellent as well.

The person I go to for advice or use as a sounding board is ____ .

Shanahan: My dad. He’s the guy I talk to for advice, but it’s also the people I work with. Those are the guys I bounce everything off of all the time. Matt LaFleur for the longest time. Sean McVay when we were in Washington. Mike McDaniel has been with me the longest and the guy I probably bounce the most stuff off. The line coaches you work with. Chris Foerster is a guy I always respected for his football knowledge. But it’s always my dad.

LaFleur: I still use the guys I’m closest with — Sean and Kyle, Zac Taylor. I’m always talking to guys on my staff, Nathaniel Hackett and Mike Pettine, who sat in this seat. But there’s really no former coach. I will say it was great this summer because I worked a camp in California and I ran into Mike Shanahan and I was peppering him with questions all night long.

McVay: Usually it’s relevant who the opponent is. I’d share more with Kyle if we didn’t play them twice a year. Dick Vermeil has been a great mentor and resource for me. The coolest thing about being a head coach is the platform it provides to meet unique people. I’ve gotten to know Doc Rivers a little bit. Being in L.A., you meet guys like Al Michaels; he’s so impressive. You get a chance to meet people who can help you in a leadership role. With Doc, we naturally crossed paths because we’d be at the same restaurants and we connected a little. He’s an impressive guy. I’ve had a chance to connect to a few NBA coaches. What I learned is the same things I learn from any great coach: It’s always about relationships and how you manage personalities and how you handle adversity and what are your core principles.

What a Pediatrician Saw Inside a Border Patrol Warehouse
Dolly Lucio Sevier evaluated dozens of sick children at a facility in South Texas. She found evidence of infection, malnutrition, and psychological trauma.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/07/border-patrols-oversight-sick-migrant-children/593224/?utm_content=edit-promo&utm_medium=social&utm_term=2019-07-03T16%3A52%3A36&utm_campaign=the-atlantic&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwAR0Zp9fYbMKIzVdSX9r8jJz92WDnj1AiTohHYzZQML-9bhD8pqTXiITgd4k

MCALLEN, Texas—Inside the Border Patrol warehouse on Ursula Avenue, Dolly Lucio Sevier saw a baby who’d been fed from the same unwashed bottle for days; children showing signs of malnutrition and dehydration; and several kids who, in her medical opinion, were exhibiting clear evidence of psychological trauma. More than 1,000 migrant children sat in the detention facility here, and Sevier, a local pediatrician, had been examining as many as she could, one at a time. But she wasn’t permitted to enter the area where they were being held, many of them in cages, and find the sickest kids to examine. Instead, in a nearby room, she manually reviewed a 50-page printout of that day’s detainees, and highlighted the names of children with a 2019 birth date—the babies—before moving on to the toddlers.

When it was almost time to leave, Sevier asked to see a 3-year-old girl, and then two other children. But by that point, the friendly and accommodating Border Patrol agent assisting her earlier in the day had been replaced by a dour guard, wearing a surgical mask, who claimed that he couldn’t find the toddler. “We can wait,” Sevier said, as she recalled to me in an interview. Her tone was polite but firm; she knew that she had the right under a federal court settlement to examine whomever she liked.

“She’s having a bath,” Sevier recalled the guard as saying, a luxury one official told her is available only to babies removed from their guardians. In the facility’s standard cages, there is no soap or showering for the kids. Though 72 hours is the longest a minor can be legally confined in such a facility, some had been there almost a month. Sevier waited.

Finally, the guard returned with news. He had found the girls after all. “We located the bodies,” he said, in paramilitary slang. “I’ll bring them right in.”

Ivisited sevier’s medical practice last week in the border town of Brownsville, Texas, 60 miles from the Ursula facility, where she’d been a few days before. In mid-June, a team of immigration attorneys had asked Sevier to come with them to their next appointment in Ursula, after they’d had an alarming visit there earlier in the month. They wanted a doctor to evaluate the children and then use the findings to force the government to improve conditions in Texas immigration facilities. It wasn’t the kind of work Sevier usually does.

Sevier grew up in Brownsville, and to Rio Grande Valley kids like her, then as now, the border was not a crisis but a culture. Sevier went to nearby Matamoros, Mexico, for dinner, dentist appointments, weddings, and baptisms. Each year on All Saints’ Day, she scrubbed relatives’ tombstones in Matamoros with soap and water, then shot BB guns with her cousins at the cemetery. She had American classmates who lived in Mexico and commuted to school over the international bridge.

She left the area for college and medical school. From afar, she told me, she began to understand that she had grown up in one of the poorest places in the United States, where low-quality, high-calorie food leaves kids both hungry and obese. Diabetes is widespread, and because access to health care is so limited, diabetic amputations are far more common than in the rest of the country. She thought that here was a place in need of a doctor like the one she was becoming. So after she completed her pediatric residency at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, in Dallas, five years ago, she returned home.

The morning I visited, Sevier’s pediatric clinic was bustling. A mural with characters from the Disney movie Inside Out, about the emotional lives of children, brightened the hallway. For Sevier, the role of a pediatrician includes “being the voice for the kid, the advocate.” In some families, she explained, children’s experiences “are just not valued.” A child who is overweight or has a preteen crush may be the subject of ridicule, not attention and understanding. “I get to chip away at that in my office,” Sevier told me.

She tried to take this same approach in Ursula. Neighboring the immigration facility are cold-storage warehouses that keep produce fresh despite the oppressive Texas sun and triple-digit temperatures outside. Opened under former President Barack Obama, the Border Patrol warehouse is chilly too; migrants have long referred to it as the hielera, or ice box. Even its official name sounds agricultural: the Centralized Processing Center. But while the crisp produce moves swiftly across the border, a reminder of the close ties between Mexico and the United States that Sevier knows so well, the migrants inside Ursula spend their first nights in America stuck beneath lights that never turn off, shivering under sheets of Mylar.

Sevier set up a makeshift clinic—stethoscope, thermometer, blood-pressure cuffs—in a room, lined with computer stations, that agents use for paperwork. Each of the agent stations had its own bottle of hand sanitizer and disinfectant wipes. But when Sevier asked the 38 children she examined that day about sanitation, they all said they weren’t allowed to wash their hands or brush their teeth. This was “tantamount to intentionally causing the spread of disease,” she later wrote in a medical declaration about the visit, the document that the lawyers filed in federal court and also shared with me. (Asked for comment on this story, a Customs and Border Protection official wrote in an email that the agency aims to “provide the best care possible to those in our custody, especially children.” The agency’s “short-term holding facilities were not designed to hold vulnerable populations,” the official added, “and we urgently need additional humanitarian funding to manage this crisis.”)

As agents brought in the children she requested, Sevier said, the smell of sweat and soiled clothing filled the room. They had not been allowed to bathe or change since crossing the Rio Grande and turning themselves over to officials. Sevier found that about two-thirds of the kids she examined had symptoms of respiratory infection. The guards wore surgical masks, but the detainees breathed the air unfiltered. As the children filed in, Sevier said she found evidence of sleep deprivation, dehydration, and malnutrition too.

Beyond the children’s physical ailments, Sevier also began to worry about their mental health. She asked to see a 2-year-old from Honduras along with his teenage brother, who she hoped could provide the baby’s medical history. The older boy was excited because officials had kept them separate for more than two weeks. But when the guards brought the toddler over from the “day care” where the littlest detainees are held, he stared with wide eyes, Sevier recalled, and began panting heavily, hoarsely, and persistently for the rest of the encounter.

During the exam, she noticed that the toddler behaved differently from the kids his age she sees every day. In an exam room at her clinic decorated with a Lion King mural, I watched her do a routine checkup on a slightly younger boy. This toddler pulled back when Sevier touched him, but was easily soothed by his mother. The reaction was normal—“a small oscillation between worried and okay,” Sevier explained. A little shyness is typical, she said, but toddlers “shouldn’t be fearful of a stranger.” When they are afraid—when the memory of their last shots is fresh in their mind, for instance—they resist Sevier by crying, clinging to their caregiver, or squirming beneath her stethoscope.

At Ursula, however, the children Sevier examined—like the panting 2-year-old—were “totally fearful, but then entirely subdued,” she told me. She could read the fear in their faces, but they were perfectly submissive to her authority. “I can only explain it by trauma, because that is such an unusual behavior,” she said. Sevier had brought along Mickey Mouse toys to break the ice, and the kids seem to enjoy playing with them. Yet none resisted, she said, when she took them away at the end of the exam. “At some point,” Sevier mused, “you’re broken and you stop fighting.”

Sevier made her way down the list of names. A 15-month-old baby with a fever had been in detention for three weeks. His uncle had fed him from the same dirty formula bottle for days on end, until a guard replaced it with a new one. Because “all parents want the best health for their infant,” Sevier later wrote in the medical declaration, denying them “the ability to wash their infant’s bottles is unconscionable and could be considered intentional mental and emotional abuse.” Before her visit, the uncle had asked for medical attention because the baby was wheezing. In response, a guard had touched the baby’s head with his hand and concluded, “He’s not hot,” the uncle told Sevier.

“Denied access,” Sevier wrote. “Status: ACUTE.”

At her workstation, Sevier saw some quiet displays of resilience. A 17-year-old girl, with long black hair and a flat affect, entered the room carrying a green plastic bundle—her four-month-old son, wrapped in the kind of bed pad used for incontinent patients in a hospital. The mother explained that the boy had had diarrhea for several days and had soiled his clothes. Guards declined to provide clean baby clothes, she told Sevier, so she managed to obtain two extra diapers and flatten them out into rectangles—one for the baby’s back, one for his chest. She had connected them like a disposable tunic, then wrapped him in the plastic pad. Inside the package, the baby was dirty and sticky, Sevier said. Diaper fluff clung to his hands, his armpits, and the folds of his neck. He wore no socks.

“I carry my baby super close to me to keep his little body warm,” the mother told Jodi Goodwin, one of the attorneys with Sevier, who interviewed her the same day. Goodwin included her testimony in the court filing, which was a request for a temporary restraining order against the government on the migrants’ behalf. On Friday, a federal judge read her testimony, among others, in court and ordered the government to work with a mediator to improve Border Patrol holding facilities “post haste.”

These aren’t even the sickest children in the government’s care—those kids are quarantined at a different station, in Weslaco, Texas. When the team of lawyers visited Ursula without Sevier, “every single kid was sick,” Goodwin told me. When they returned three days later with the doctor, Goodwin asked to see four kids whom another attorney had previously flagged to the guards as especially sick. But they were already gone. The guards told Goodwin that their illnesses were severe enough that they had been admitted to the intensive-care unit at a local hospital.

The source of illness in a facility like Ursula is largely the facility itself, though the idea that immigrants carry infectious diseases is a durable conspiracy theory that even the American president has perpetuated. It is the filth, sleep deprivation, cold, and “toxic stress” of these human warehouses that diminish the body’s capacity to fight illness, Julie Linton, a co-chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics Immigrant Health Special Interest Group, told me. Linton, a South Carolina–based pediatrician, visited Ursula last June and later testified before Congress to urge better access for health-care providers to children in detention.

Border Patrol has long maintained that it is not equipped to handle children, who are supposed to be transferred into the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement within three days. After that, many kids are housed in licensed child-care facilities that look more like the average public school than a jail. The federal government has attributed slow transfers to the sharp uptick in the number of migrants at the southern border; in May, 144,200 migrants were taken into custody—the highest monthly total in 13 years.

Days before Sevier’s visit, reports of poor conditions at a similar facility in Clint, Texas, drew outrage around the country. Kevin McAleenan, the acting head of the Department of Homeland Security, told reporters the outcry was based on “unsubstantiated allegations regarding a single Border Patrol facility.”

But his own agency’s watchdogs soon contradicted him—the problems are not restricted to Clint. Ahead of Sevier’s visit, government inspectors toured Border Patrol camps in South Texas, including Ursula. Their report, released Monday, described “dangerous overcrowding and prolonged detention of children and adults in the Rio Grande Valley.” One Border Patrol supervisor, according to the report, called his holding facility “a ticking time bomb.” Congress last week authorized an additional $4.6 billion for Border Patrol and other agencies, despite the objections of progressive lawmakers, who said the bill did not go far enough to protect children in government custody.

Sevier spent years cultivating a physician’s empathetic-but-detached habits of mind. During her medical residency, an 8-year-old rescued from near-drowning arrived at the hospital. For the first time, Sevier had to insert a breathing tube down a child’s throat. Vomit began filling his esophagus and lungs. “Suction,” she commanded without missing a beat, surprising even herself, she told me. It’s what she was supposed to do—how she was supposed to act.

At Ursula, traumatized children with untreated illnesses sat before her. She probed, pressed, and listened. She took notes; she entered their data into a spreadsheet; she compartmentalized. She thought about a social event she’d promised to attend at 6 o’clock.

At 5:53, the guard with the surgical mask brought in the 3-year-old Sevier had requested to see, holding her by the armpits, like a puppy. Thin and subdued, the girl was crying but didn’t turn away. “Underweight, fearful child in no acute distress,” Sevier wrote. “Only concern is severe trauma being suffered from being removed from primary caregiver.”

After the exam, the child lingered, and Sevier offered to hold her. She climbed into the doctor’s lap and fell asleep in less than a minute. The squalor, the lighting, the agents, and the event that evening fell away from Sevier’s consciousness. As if in rebellion against her careful training, her mind shut down, she told me. And for what seemed like an eternity, she sat in vacant silence with the child.

Nathan J. Robinson continues to grow on me.

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2019/06/the-best-theyve-got?fbclid=IwAR3REhvuJkNyUs8rocp8Iya_7mdLJQwMok8u054a-qy5q4BPjRPRP0-PUL4

JUNE 09, 2019
THE BEST THEY’VE GOT

Examining the National Review’s “Against Socialism” issue…

by NATHAN J. ROBINSON

The resurgence of socialism is going well. So well, in fact, that the nation’s premier conservative magazine has just published a special “Against Socialism” issue, in a frantic attempt to stop the virus from spreading. The edition includes 13 different brief articles on why socialism is bad. In each, a different National Review contributor goes after socialism from a slightly different angle. (The phrase “throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks” comes to mind.)

As a socialist, I was grateful and flattered to see my fringe opinions dealt with so substantively. It is always helpful to see the counterargument to one’s position stated in the strongest possible terms. If the conservative intellectuals bring their heaviest hitters to produce the most thorough possible demolition of socialism, we will be able to evaluate once and for all whether the case holds up. If it does, it will be bad news indeed for the socialists.

Let us go through the issue, then, look at the arguments, and see if we’re convinced that socialism is bad and we should all take up National Review subscriptions.

1. Charles C.W. Cooke — Socialism Is Not Democratic (Nor Is It Compatible With The Constitution)
Cooke begins not by citing a socialist writer or academic, but a man he met at Occupy Wall Street who wore a cardboard box around his torso with the word “democracy” on it. The box-wearer called Cooke “man” and told Cooke that “it’s up to us.” Cooke scoffs at this man’s naive faith in democracy, explaining that democracy is not an absolute. After all, democracy does not mean we put everything up to a majority vote. Cook says that the free market should be a sphere that democracy cannot abridge, and we should think of “democratic socialism” the way we would think of “democratic speech restrictions” or “democratic warrantless searches.” The fact that something is sanctioned by popular plebiscite does not confer legitimacy on it. As he writes:

Just as the individual right to free speech is widely comprehended as part of what we mean by “democracy” rather than as an unacceptable abridgment of majority rule, so the individual rights protected in property and by markets are necessary to the maintenance of a democratic order—in this, deeper, sense of the word. In the West, choosing to trade with a person in another country is, itself, a democratic act. Electing to start a company in your garage, with no need for another’s imprimatur, is, itself, a democratic act. Banding together to establish a cooperative is, itself, a democratic act. Selecting the vendor from which you source your goods and services—and choosing what to buy from it—is, itself, a democratic act. Keeping the lion’s share of the fruits of your labor is, itself, a democratic act. When governments step in with their bayonets and say “No!” they are, in effect, keeping your choices off the ballot.

This sort of “sounds good until you think about it for more than a second” reasoning underpins most libertarian thinking. (Cooke calls himself a “conservatarian” actually, which he insists is different.) A shopping mall is a democracy: You are given the choice of a range of shops and products, and you may “vote” for the ones you desire. The free market economy is one big shopping mall where people get to make whatever contracts they please, with complete control over their lives. Restrictions on this free exchange, even if sanctioned by a majority vote, are undemocratic. Taxes on the fruits of labor, even if passed through a democratically-elected legislature, reduce an individual’s control over her life and therefore inhibit democracy.

I am not sure whether Cooke has ever heard the socialist critique of this idea before, because he certainly doesn’t deal with it. Socialists point out that, if the market is a democracy with money as its votes, it is a strange kind of “democracy” indeed—one in which some people get zero votes or negative votes and some people get 152,000,000,000 votes. Socialists point out that in a laissez-faire economy, people do not seem to get what they want, nor do they get the full fruits of their labor. After all, Amazon’s warehouse workers presumably do not want to have to skip their bathroom breaks to keep their jobs. They do it because they need their jobs to pay rent to their landlords so that they can have a place to live. The libertarian says “Ah, but you made the free choice to take this miserable job, therefore you wanted it!” The socialist replies “Come the fuck on. Clearly people do not want to work bad jobs, they work bad jobs because they need jobs.”

Socialists realize that while “freedom of contract” is very “democratic” for extremely wealthy people, for people without wealth, it doesn’t provide much choice at all. Take the guy who died when his insulin GoFundMe fell short. Under Cooke’s “market-as-democracy” idea, this was democracy at work. The market simply turned out not to value his life as much as he did. For socialists, this is horrifying. At a time when “wealthy people and corporations have so much money they literally don’t know what to do with it,” we think “the government with its bayonets” should have given the guy his insulin, and taxed some rich lawyer to pay for it. Perhaps “undemocratic” for the lawyer, who wants “the lion’s share of the fruits of his labor” (i.e., the millions he got defending corporate malfeasance and getting favorable settlements for wealthy rapists). We socialists beg to differ. (I recommend my friend Rob Larson’s book Capitalism vs. Freedom for an excellent primer on the difference between the socialist and libertarian conceptions of freedom.)

It is difficult to have arguments about what “democracy” is, because there is no definitive answer. Certainly it involves popular participation in governance, but to what degree and in what form? Cooke may think that a law requiring companies to give employees seats on corporate boards, even if it has been passed by a legislature, is “undemocratic” in that it restricts the absolute freedom of corporations and their owners. We socialists, on the other hand, think having a say in decisions at your workplace is a crucial part of democracy, and that since corporations are created by the state to begin with (they are legal constructions, not metaphysical entities) it’s perfectly fine to set some requirements that ensure workers’ interests are represented.

Cooke seems to believe he is breaking news to the socialists by pointing out that in any authentic democracy, minority rights have to be protected, and that simply majority rule is not a satisfactory definition of the term. That’s certainly true—it also explains why many leftists like variations on consensus decision-making processes that try to incorporate minority objections. Pointing out that it will never be easy to balance everybody’s rights and interests does not refute the socialists who say that the interests of workers are poorly represented when so much of what happens to them is determined by unaccountable people far, far wealthier than themselves.

Cooke then gives us the three objections to socialism that he believes are absolutely inescapable and irrefutable:

History has shown us that socialism exhibits three core defects from which it cannot escape and which its champions cannot avoid. The first is what Hayek termed “the knowledge problem.” This holds that all economic actors make errors based on imperfect knowledge but that a decentralized economy will suffer less from this, partly because the decision-makers are closer to the information they need, and partly because each actor does not wield total control over everything but is only one part of a larger puzzle. The second problem is that, because socialism eliminates both private property and supply and demand, it eliminates rational incentives and, thereby, rational calculation. The third problem is that socialism, following Marx’s dialectical theory of history, lends itself to a theory of inevitability or preordination that leaves no room for dissent, and that leads in consequence to the elevation of a political class that responds to failure by searching for wreckers and dissenters to punish. Worse still, because socialists view all questions, including moral questions, through a class lens, these searches tend to be deemed morally positive—bound, one day, to be regarded by History as Necessary. Together, these defects lead to misery, poverty, corruption, ignorance, authoritarianism, desperation, exodus, and death.

First, we can immediately dismiss point three as a critique of socialism. It may be a critique of Marx’s theory of history, albeit a lazy one.* But to those socialists who already know that it’s important not to believe in “inevitability,” and who value dissent and debate, this is not news. Conservatives always have to ignore the existence of the libertarian socialist tradition, and stick to attacking orthodox Marxism-Leninism. But there are plenty of socialists who do not hold the opinions that Cooke says we hold. Perhaps if he had picked up a book instead of talking to a lone man wearing a cardboard box, he would know that.

Points one and two are variations on the same theme: The total elimination of markets and private property creates economic havoc. Note that this objection would only apply to those socialists who are advocating the elimination of markets and private property. How about those who are advocating the equitable distribution of that property, say through the establishment of a social wealth fund? Seth Ackerman has written a long and fascinating discussion of the “knowledge” and “calculation” problems in Jacobin, explaining how one can socialize a firm without eliminating important incentives. (By the way, even libertarian economist Bryan Caplan has admitted that “economic history as well as pure economic theory fails to establish that the economic calculation problem was a severe challenge for socialism,” but Cooke still states the problem as insurmountable without further explanation.) Leigh Phillips and Michal Rozworski, in The People’s Republic of Walmart argue that these objections have been answered by corporations themselves. Does Cooke engage with any of the counterarguments made by Jacobin and the People’s Policy Project? He does not.

Already we see a tendency that recurs throughout the “Against Socialism” issue. The National Review does not just wish to disagree with socialists, but to portray them as childish idiots incapable of grasping even the basic dilemmas of political theory and economics. Since this picture of socialists is false, it requires the writers to avoid the ideas and proposals of today’s real-world U.S. socialists and instead talk about Lenin.

*He doesn’t show, for example, that defenders of the theory are wrong, but says that it “lends itself” to a thing that “leads to” another thing. The same could be said about the concept of “reason,” which lends itself to people taking their instincts for rational deductions and leads to them thinking other people should just shut up and listen. But the concept of reason is still valuable.

2. Joshua Muravchik — Socialism As Epic Tragedy
Muravchik presents the history of socialism as a tragic cautionary tale about idealism: Millions of people came to believe in the possibility of a world where people were equal, only to have the whole thing end in a bloody catastrophe. He claims there are two kinds of socialists: those who never learned the lesson, and those who learned it, and therefore stopped being socialists. He cites the example of German leftist Eduard Bernstein, who questioned Marxist orthodoxy:

Bernstein drew the logical conclusion. He abandoned socialism. He determined to continue struggling to wrest better conditions for the workers, but he said, “The ‘final goal of socialism’ is nothing to me.” Others, however, were not ready to abandon the “final goal.” […] Not all socialists followed the bloody trail Lenin blazed. Some, usually under the banner of parties calling themselves “labor” or “social democratic,” insisted on pursuing only democratic and peaceful paths to the promised land of collective ownership and equal distribution. Over many decades they discovered, as Bernstein had foreseen, that these routes led no farther than the welfare state undergirded by a capitalist economy. The “socialism” that so many thought they could see over the horizon, that millions killed and died for, turned out to be a mirage. Its pursuit spelled one of history’s saddest chapters.

So, be like Eduard Bernstein: Give up on the goals of socialism and accept that a capitalist economy is inevitable. Except… Bernstein didn’t give up on socialism. In a truly stunning act of intellectual dishonesty, Muravchik deliberately leaves off the second half of Bernstein’s quote, which is actually: “The final goal of socialism is nothing, the movement is everything.” Bernstein did not abandon socialism, and as explained in an introduction to Bernstein’s The Principles of Socialism, he was frustrated when people misinterpreted his statement:

Dismayed by the outcry which his declaration provoked, Bernstein made several attempts to explain himself… [H]e said that he saw the final goal of socialism not as a future state of affairs but as the set of principles that governed the day-to-day political activity of the party. What he had really meant, he said, was therefore that “the movement is everything to me because it bears its goal within itself.”

Bernstein himself said that his statement meant:

What is normally called the final goal of socialism was nothing; and in this spirit I still endorse it today… t was quite obvious that it could not express indifference towards the ultimate implementation of socialist principles, but only indifference—or more correctly, lack of anxiety—to “how” things would ultimately take shape. At no time has my interest in the future gone beyond general principles, and detailed depictions of the future were never something I could read through to the end.

I don’t mean to dwell on a minor historical fabrication, but I think it’s actually quite important, because it’s necessary for the National Review’s project. They can’t admit that there were reasonable socialists who retained their belief in the principles of socialism while questioning Marxist orthodoxy. That would open up the possibility that one could be both sensible and a socialist, which of course one could not. So it has to be either-or: Either you subscribe to Marxist orthodoxy, or you are not a socialist and believe in “capitalism with a welfare state.” Bernstein’s thoughtful reformist socialism does not fit into the framework, thus his quotes must be trimmed and his actual beliefs ignored.

Bernstein’s formulation of socialism as “principles” rather than a hypothetical future end state is one I’ve endorsed myself. I think it’s something that many socialists subscribe to today. They don’t see socialism as a particular clearly-defined economic blueprint, but as a set of criteria by which institutions and policies are to be evaluated. Because today’s capitalist economies fall radically short of satisfying those criteria, a socialist believes that large-scale changes are necessary. But we have internal debates as to what changes would work best. This “pragmatic utopianism” is discomforting to National Review types, because it is insufficiently ridiculous to dismiss. If we do not in fact believe in a rigid totalizing ideology that would break any number of eggs to get its omelet, then Muravchik is providing a useful historical cautionary tale, but not a critique of contemporary socialist politics.

3. Jeffrey Tucker – If You Want To Want (How Socialism Causes Shortages)
4. Kevin D. Williamson – The Ignorance That Kills
Both Tucker and Williamson put the “calculation debate” at the center of their critique of socialism. This is a little bit strange, because the calculation debate is about whether one can have a functional economy in the absence of money and prices, and I searched the text of Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party manifesto in vain to find the part where it proposes the abolition of money. I see proposals for a more progressive tax system, a national investment bank, public ownership of major utilities, free school meals for children, funding the NHS sufficiently. I don’t even find the abolition of money advocated for in the pages of Jacobin, where, as I say, you can find Ackerman’s sophisticated discussion of market socialism.

Elsewhere, Williamson has implied that all public provision of goods and services should be called “socialism.” (In fact, anything the government does is socialism. He says ObamaCare is “an obvious exercise in socialistic central planning” because, while it may simply regulate a market of private insurers, the product they are selling is “designed in Washington, D.C.” Public schools, too, are socialism. In his Politically Incorrect Guide To Socialism, Williamson says that “primary-secondary education is conducted under an almost exclusively socialist model” and is indeed “more deeply socialized than Soviet agriculture was under Stalin,” since “about 90 percent of U.S. students attend government schools.”

Williamson’s use of the word socialism is idiosyncratic and extreme. But it also means the case against socialism collapses utterly. Williamson’s proof that “socialism” is a disaster is that U.S. public schools aren’t doing a very good job, which he blames on their being government schools rather than private schools. But if socialism gets the blame for the poor performance of U.S. students, why doesn’t socialism get the credit for the superior performance of students in other countries’ public schools? Why aren’t the Chinese public school system and the Finnish public school system and the Canadian public school system taken as evidence of socialism’s potential? Even accepting that all public institutions are socialism, the U.S. public school system cannot possibly demonstrate an “inherent” defect of socialism, because we know that there are public school systems that do very well around the world. The argumentation here is just pitiful: take a U.S. government program that has failed and use it to draw absolute conclusions about government itself, without looking at other governments where the program has succeeded.

I don’t want to get too much into the technical stuff about the calculation debate, except to point out even more interesting left thinkers who are posing challenges to the central assumptions. See, for example, Evgeny Morozov’s detailed new article “Digital Socialism? The Calculation Debate in the Age of Big Data” in the latest New Left Review.

(I have previously critiqued Tucker for his defense of child labor and insistence that Taco Bell is a place of beauty and splendor.)

5. John O’Sullivan — Of Socialism and Human Nature
John O’Sullivan believe socialists are in denial about the facts of human nature, beginning his article with Margaret Thatcher’s quote that the “facts of life are conservative.” He also wishes to explore the aspects of human nature that lead people to embrace socialist thinking:

[M]any different sides of human nature conspired to support the socialist transformation of society. Some were transparently objectionable vices— for instance, envy. If greed is supposedly the characteristic capitalist vice, envy is the typical socialist one. Envy, indeed, has most of the unpleasant consequences of capitalism—it is socially divisive, productive of conflict, encouraging of hostility towards those envied, and discouraging of everyone else’s improving their lives and status— without the saving grace of greed, which leads to work, saving, and investment. Compare the relative damage to society caused by the crimes of socialism and capitalism. Both impoverish their victims, but crimes of envy can kill them too and spread a disabling fear throughout society. As Madsen Pirie of the Adam Smith Institute in London once asked: “When was the last time you were afraid to go out at night in case you were embezzled?”

This, as you will see, makes no sense. The distinction between socialist “envy” and capitalist “greed” doesn’t hold up well. Embezzlement is theft, robbery is theft, both can be said to be the product of greed or envy. If we take greed to simply mean “maximizing what one has” and envy to mean “specifically desiring a thing that another presently has” both can kill, and it’s not clear to me that greed automatically “leads to” work rather than, say, fraud.

I always get annoyed at the charge that socialists “envy” the rich. It’s hurled at us without any regard for whether it’s actually true. Personally, the socialists I know do not want to be rich. (As for myself, I don’t really want much more money than my tiny magazine-editor salary, though I rather wish I didn’t have $140,000 in student debt.) Many socialists do dislike the rich, but if they do it’s because they find it grotesque to hoard wealth when people are suffering terribly and that suffering could easily be alleviated with a small fraction of that wealth. You can define that position as “envy,” but it’s more properly called “elementary moral reasoning.”

Here is another passage in which O’Sullivan diagnoses the psychological problems of socialists:

When [the existence of corruption and atrocities in “socialist” states] becomes undeniable, most comfortably-off foreign admirers of socialist regimes condemn them only formally and then carry on as before. Their admiration for leftist despotisms is really a roundabout neurotic rejection of their own societies and as such not to be taken seriously. It’s the political equivalent of a society hostess’s dressing like a dominatrix: It’s intended to show contempt for dull middle-class virtues. Hard-core progressives are a different matter. They are serious revolutionaries and either invent contorted justifications for socialist scandals—virtues are transformed by theory into vices and vices into virtues— or simply deny the plain evidence of their own senses: As each socialist paradise is shown to be a kleptocratic hellhole, the caravan of Sandalistas simply moves on to the next one without apology. They make a trivial and contemptible contrast to those who in the late 19th and early 20th centuries sensed and predicted the paths of genocide, tyranny, and impoverishment down which their societies were trending. Before a single socialist regime had established itself, writers including Dostoevsky, W. H. Mallock, and, of course, Kipling glimpsed the horrors that lay concealed within socialism’s humanitarian promise. Surely their glimpses into its future in country after country refute the fraying excuse that socialism has never been tried. For if indeed socialism has never been tried, how could they predict its consequences with such eerie accuracy?

The first part of this is speculative and difficult to even discuss. I am not sure who They are, because they are not named. Are They the members of the DSA? I’m interviewing members of the DSA right now for a series of articles, and the thing I’m consistently struck by is how totally unlike the stereotypes about socialists they are. They do not dogmatically defend authoritarian regimes. If you shout “Venezuela” at them, they might point out to you—as economist Jeffrey Sachs would—that U.S. actions are exacerbating the humanitarian crisis. But they do not justify bad actions by nominally socialist governments. They are not partisan toward particular governments, but toward egalitarian principles, and if governments violate those principles, then the socialists will condemn them. (Honestly, I strongly recommend that all of these authors get to know a few young socialists, and go to some meetings, before they write another word on this subject. As we will see in article #10, the one National Review writer who did give socialists a fair hearing ended up agreeing with them on major points.)

I have pointed out before that predictions about authoritarian “socialist” governments were not just made by people like Rudyard Kipling. They were also made by socialists like Mikhail Bakunin. The argument they made, and it is persuasive to me, is that the problem with authoritarian “socialist” governments is the authoritarianism rather than the socialism. Authoritarianism leads to horrible results when it is instituted in the name of any ideology. And while you may argue that socialism is “inherently” authoritarian, you’ll be arguing against those socialists who have always stood up for free speech and respect for civil liberties. It is peculiar, if the socialism of Emma Goldman was inherently authoritarian, that she spent so much time denouncing the Soviet government for its restrictions on liberty. The only way to argue that all socialists are authoritarians is to ignore all the ones who aren’t.

6. Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry – All The Benefits You’ll Never See: French statism has been anything but progressive
Gobry, a Frenchman, begins with a story about Charles de Gaulle:

One of Charles de Gaulle’s most notorious moments of public wit came when he was asked at a press conference whether “Europe” wasn’t the solution to France’s problems. After a long defense of his policies, he exclaimed “Of course, people can jump up and down on their chairs like mountain goats and shout ‘Europe! Europe! Europe!’ but it means nothing and leads nowhere.” It seems that when it comes to health-care reform in the U.S., progressives often think it’s enough to jump up and down like mountain goats and shout “France! France! France!” But it is not.

Is this what we do? I did not realize this was what we did. (To the extent that we actually shout countries’ names we also shout: Sweden! Canada! The U.K.! Spain! Italy! Iceland! Every other country that has universal healthcare!) Gobry then makes his case against the imaginary person whose entire political argument boils down to shouting the word “France” over and over.

Gobry tries to show us that the French healthcare system is overpraised. He begins with quite an admission: “Yes, the French health-care system is, at the moment, almost amazing as they say.” He recounts a recent experience:

Taking my frighteningly sick daughter to Necker, the main children’s hospital in Paris, made me proud to be a French taxpayer. Not only was the building gleaming and everything in it high-tech, but the staff was first-class, efficient, and, above all, kind, a world away from bureaucratic cliché. When, on my way out, after my daughter had recovered, I asked whether I had to pay for anything, the staff looked at me as if I’d just flown in from Mars.

Ah, but there are problems! For example:

While progressives are rightly enthralled with the idea of “evidence-based medicine” (while failing to realize that mandating it is sure to bring dysfunction), the French government has found a, let’s say, ingenious way to get French people to ingest fewer drugs: It promotes the notorious fraud of homeopathy and, in some cases, even pays for it. The French are also inexplicably obsessed with psychoanalysis, to the point that French mental-health care is essentially stuck in the 1930s.

Okay, well, there are absolutely good reasons not to promote homeopathy and 1930s Freudianism, but I don’t see a reason why a universal healthcare system has to promote homeopathy and 1930s Freudianism. I don’t think anyone who proposes borrowing from the French model thinks it’s an “all or nothing” deal. (There’s a weird related tendency in conservative arguments where the arguer will pick one arbitrary difference between country X and country Y to show that the system in country Y could never work in country X. For instance: Ah yes, Sweden has paid family leave, but it is ethnically homogeneous.)

I am unfairly singing out one of Gobry’s worse points. He also points out a series of real defects in French healthcare, from budget troubles to dissatisfaction among practitioners. A hospital in Toulouse was found to be seriously dysfunctional. But as I will emphasize in #9, the fair way to judge global health care systems is not by stringing together worst-case anecdotes and pointing out shortfalls, but by holistically and systematically assessing them using data. This Gobry does not do.

He does point out other ways in which France is imperfect. For instance, there are not enough spots in French public daycares, and many staff are not as qualified as they ought to be. It sounds like a problem France ought to work on! The French school system is unequal and elitist. You will find no argument here, for we socialists do not argue that France is a workers’ utopia in which divisions of class and race have disappeared. Gobry says that while France does have free public universities, they are not always particularly good:

My top-ranked law school’s library, for instance, on top of being crumbling and having Wi-Fi that didn’t work most days and only a handful of computer terminals, had a glass wall oriented so that sunlight hit it directly. That wall, combined with a lack of air conditioning and ventilation, turned the library into a locker-room-scented sauna—especially in the spring, which is exam season…

I do not envy Gobry his law school experience. My own top-ranked law school in the United States had a very attractive library, and the sunlight caused no trouble. There was good air conditioning and the Wi-Fi worked. Unfortunately, as I say, the place also left me with $140,000 in debt. I think I might have taken the free law school with the bad ventilation!

7. Andrew Stuttaford — Before There Was Thatcher
Stuttaford’s attack on socialism is, well, not really an attack on socialism so much as a brief discussion of the British economy in the 1970s. Much of the Western world entered a recession in the mid-70s. Under the British Conservative government of 1970-1974, the economy was weak and labor relations deteriorated. The Labour Party came to power, and things further deteriorated, with giant public-sector strikes in 1978 that the Labour government proved unable to deal with. Before Margaret Thatcher came to power in 1979, the economy had recovered somewhat, but the Labour government had lost popular support.

Drawing timeless lessons from the experience of one country during a period of global economic turmoil is something that should be done very carefully. Stuttaford implies that particular Keynesian economic policies pushed by Labour to try to boost the economy can be blamed for the party’s failure. The reality is more complicated. A summary of the consensus among historians:

[The Labour Party] was unable to control inflation, unable to control the unions, unable to solve the Irish problem, unable to solve the Rhodesian question, unable to secure its proposals for Welsh and Scottish devolution, unable to reach a popular modus vivendi with the Common Market… It was little wonder, therefore, that Mrs. Thatcher resoundingly defeated it in 1979.

Much of this seems particular to a time and place, rather than able to be blamed on “socialism.” The Labour government may well have stayed in power were it not for the fallout from the public sector strikes. I am not sure what Stuttaford believes he has proven about socialism.

8. Shawn Regan — Price Not, Conserve Not: Why Markets Are Better For The Environment
Regan argues that capitalism is better for the environment than socialism. He returns to the “calculation debate,” arguing that if resources do not have prices, they will be squandered, and a non-market economy will have no incentive to protect the environment. He shows that the Soviet Union had a dismal environmental record and recites a series of disturbing facts about the way the natural world was despoiled by Soviet industry. He also points to pollution problems in Cuba and Venezuela, and concludes:

As socialist ideas capture the American imagination—and are often portrayed, as with the Green New Deal, as necessary to avoid environmental catastrophe—it’s important to remember socialism’s dismal environmental legacy. Capitalism may be a dirty word these days, but when it comes to producing the prosperity and creativity necessary to sustain a clean environment, it’s still the best system we’ve got.

But what on earth does Soviet pollution have to say about whether the Green New Deal is a good idea? Notably, while Regan says that “a capitalist firm has ample incentive to act on such information to economize on the use of natural resources,” he does not respond to the argument made by today’s socialists, which is that capitalist firms have inadequate incentive to avoid actions that cause climate change, and in fact profit from actions that contribute to climate change. Fossil fuel companies misled the public for years about climate change in order to protect their business. “We pollute less than Soviet industry” is not an argument for how we can reverse the damage caused by our own actions. The United States has emitted more CO2 than any other country, and the U.S. and Europe are together responsible for the majority of cumulative emissions. Climate change is a problem that has been dumped on the Global South by the actions of multinational corporations. (This may be why Regan focuses on air pollution rather than climate change, though even then, U.S. environmental regulation doesn’t figure into his story of how the U.S. managed to reduce certain kinds of pollution.)

These days, the democratic socialists are making an argument. The argument is that, looking at the data from both the U.S. government and the IPCC, it is clear that laissez-faire capitalism is not going to prevent catastrophic climate change. They have argued that a drastic national mobilization is necessary. The people making this argument are not economic illiterates. Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz has said that a Green New Deal is affordable and necessary. Instead of debating Stiglitz, however, Regan prefers to point out that Soviet factories were wasteful and dirty.

9. Avik Roy — Socialized Medicine Is Bad For Your Health
Avik Roy, to his credit, has a clear definition of what socialism is, at least in the sphere he is talking about. He says that universal health coverage schemes in which people are required to buy private health insurance, a la Switzerland, are not socialism. (Roy presumably disagrees with Kevin Williamson, who has argued that ObamaCare is socialism, raising the question: Wouldn’t it be helpful if the National Review’s writers had a consistent definition of the thing they’re dedicating an entire issue to arguing against?) Roy says that “single-payer” healthcare, like Canada’s system or Medicare For All, is socialized insurance, while medical services directly provided by the government, like the British NHS, are full socialized medicine.

Roy first attacks the NHS. He says that while one might be impressed by the fact that Britain has far lower healthcare spending (with better results, though he doesn’t mention this), if you “open a random edition of a British daily newspaper and you will likely encounter an article about some egregious problem the NHS has failed to solve.” He gives examples: doctors not telling patients about innovative new therapies that the NHS doesn’t pay for, terminally ill patients being classified as “close to death” when they are not in order to avoid paying for expensive life support, failure to revise guidelines on the management of cholesterol, and more. Plus, of course, the infamous wait times.

All of these are very bad. But Roy does not mention that one can open a U.S. newspaper and find plenty of healthcare horror stories—badly injured people begging people not to call an ambulance because of the expense, teenagers being denied cancer treatment by their insurance companies, drug treatments that cost $375,000 a year, hospitals recommending people crowdfund their heart transplants, an $18,000 bill to treat a baby with a nap and a bottle of formula, a woman being sent to jail over an unpaid ambulance bill, a person going blind in one eye because Medicaid didn’t cover reattaching their retina, and people dying because they can’t afford insulin.

Now, look, we can swap horror stories all day. There are plenty you can tell about the NHS, but you are not having an honest discussion if you list a series of anecdotes found in the newspaper, but decline to examine the system’s overall performance or look at the downsides found in both the British and American systems. The U.K. system outperforms the U.S. on a number of metrics including overall efficiency. There are, of course, tradeoffs to a socialized healthcare system: When you treat everybody, people have to wait longer. (Though American critics of the British system usually fail to note that there are private hospitals in the U.K., and just as in this country rich people can skip the line. This goes unmentioned because it destroys Roy’s argument that the British system “tramples on individuals’ rights to seek the care and coverage they want.”)

Roy does not mention the performance of public health services around the world. We have lots of different models for providing care, with greater and lesser roles for private sector providers. A sensible approach, one guided by facts rather than fanaticism, would look at how different countries achieve success in their health system and advocate a model that had been tried and tested. Instead, Roy simply mentions U.K. and Canadian wait times.

Roy concludes with an obnoxious passage on the way in which health care is a “right”:

Health care is indeed a right, in the same way that any use of liberty is a right. And that liberty—to freely seek the care we need, to pay for it in a way that is mutually convenient for us and our doctors, in a system that is sustainable for the generations to come—is one that we must not merely defend, but expand.

Answer me this, Roy: When you talk about “paying for care in a way that is mutually convenient,” are you including the people who crowdfund their cancer treatment? How about this woman in Georgia, urgently trying to get $50,000 to treat her sister for pancreatic cancer? How about this man in Alabama, who has spent a year trying to get $1,000 toward his insulin? The case socialists have always made is that being “free to die” is a bad definition of “liberty,” and that freedom should instead be defined as your meaningful capacity to act. What have you to offer these people? Is this really a system we must “not merely defend, but expand”? Expand toward what more dystopian end?

10. Timothy P. Carney — Community of All, Community of None
Carney’s article is the most interesting in the issue. He argues that socialism has experienced a resurgence because there is “something missing in people’s lives,” citing spikes in opioid deaths and suicides. “The root cause” of millennial socialism, he says, “is something like loneliness. To borrow a term from Marx himself, you could blame alienation.” Carney says we are suffering from a lack of community, and because of that, people seek the community-spiritedness they find in socialist movements and ideas. Carney visited Occupy Wall Street in 2011 and noticed that what its participants seemed to care about the most were the feelings of participation, solidarity, and direct democracy. He concludes:

The root cause of both Occupy Wall Street and Bernie 2016 was a prevailing sense of political alienation. Young people felt that they had lost the ability to make a difference in the world… People need other people. The American Right sometimes neglects this basic fact and ends up deifying the individual or the nuclear family. When Hillary Clinton said “it takes a village to raise a child,” conservatives replied, “It takes a family.” Being pro- family is one thing. Denying that child- rearing is in part a community undertaking is another.

By this point Carney has come on board with large parts of what the left is saying. He has agreed with Marx about alienation, he sees that people have been shut out of the political system and feel powerless, he sees that venerating the individual and saying things like “there is no such thing as society” produces loneliness and isolation. But up until this point, he has implied that while the sources of socialist sentiment are understandable, the political reaction is not.

Yet when Carney, being the most thoughtful participant in the National Review’s symposium, comes to actually assess a part of the socialist agenda, he finds it very difficult to disagree. Carney takes the time to actually read Matt Bruenig’s set of policy proposals designed to help make raising children affordable:

The People’s Policy Project, a socialist think tank, recently released its “Family Fun Pack,” a proposal for a raft of federal programs designed to help poor and working-class people raise families. The policy paper explains that the capitalist system is not oriented to helping families. “Because income is paid out to the factors of production without any regard for its final family-level distribution,” it states, “families with children wind up in dramatically worse financial circumstances than families without children.” The paper then calls for 36 weeks of federally funded paid parental leave, federally funded child care, a federal benefit for stay-at-home mothers, federally funded (and even federally operated) pre-K, and plenty more expansions of the state into the lives of parents and kids. Two of the ideas undergirding these efforts are correct: The market itself doesn’t account for the costs and difficulties of being a parent; and raising a child without help is very difficult, even for married parents with income. If you read “Family Fun Pack,” you come away asking, “How does anyone manage to raise a family without already being rich?” Then you remember: community. Extended family, neighbors, parishes, shuls, civic associations, dinner clubs, swim clubs, and so on. These institutions help families keep their stuff together, help mothers and fathers stay sane, help new parents navigate the daunting path of parenthood.

Carney finishes up by lamenting that “more and more of us live in an alienated landscape” and “when the choice appears to be between getting screwed over and getting socialism, it’s not a hard call… The less we’re connected to one another via community institutions, and the more isolated we are, the more we grasp for something big to protect us. For young Americans, that’s often the state.”

It would seem then, that in the absence of strong supportive communities that can make it possible to raise children if you’re not rich, the proposals of the Family Fun Pack are necessary. And since Carney says that many young people don’t have these communities, it’s perfectly rational for them to become socialists. He doesn’t offer an alternative, just laments that things have come to this.

Carney’s essay shouldn’t really have been included in the issue, because it’s not really a case against socialism. I like it, because it’s quite honest in admitting the shortcomings of individualist free-market ideology, acknowledging that Marxist concepts are useful, and declining to argue against Matt Bruenig’s sound and rational proposals for improving the social safety net. Socialism is a fair response to existing conditions, and a decent attempt to fill the void left by individualism. I’m sold.

11. Deirdre McCloskey — Socialism For The Young At Heart
McCloskey’s is the most patronizing essay in the bunch, beginning with the old cliche about how if you’re not a socialist when you’re young you’re heartless and if you’re not a conservative when you’re old you’re brainless. McCloskey cites the well-known stories of those who have abandoned youthful socialism. George Orwell inconveniently never renounced it, so McCloskey concludes that “had he survived tuberculosis and seen more of the animal farm of the USSR” he probably would have stopped being a socialist. Personally, I don’t think Orwell needed any more education on the realities of Soviet life. He didn’t shed his socialist faith because he was intelligent enough to understand that you can criticize both capitalism and authoritarian communism simultaneously, that we do not face a binary choice between the miseries of our system and the horrors of theirs, because we can hold out hope for a world that does not have preventable misery and horror in it at all.

McCloskey repeats the same fallacious argument that others do:

The parts of a “mixed” economy that work are the free parts, the Chinese shops and factories as against the state enterprises and the glorious vanity projects of the same state. In the U.S., the private clinics for cosmetic procedures work pretty well. The VA hospitals, one of many socialized parts of U.S. medicine, do not.

Again, you cannot reach this kind of conclusion on the basis of this kind of evidence. If you’re going to argue that public hospitals are worse than private hospitals, you need data. If you’re going to argue that public universities, and state enterprises, and social wealth funds, cannot succeed, then you need to actually look at whether that’s true, not just cite “a thing that works in the private sector” and “a thing that doesn’t work in the public sector” and treat the case as closed. “Look at Amtrak!” they’ll say. “Public rail is slow and creaky. That’s what bureaucracy gets you.” But hang on, what about France’s state-owned TGV? What about China’s high-speed rail network? “Oh, well, [insert anecdote about a problem that one of these systems has, use it to conclude that the public sector is unsalvageable.]”

Like O’Sullivan, McCloskey spends less time arguing against socialists’ policy proposals than declaiming on the cause of their ideological illness. She offers two reasons why socialism is “so very often [a young person’s] first love.” Number one:

When an adolescent in a free society discovers that there are poor people, her generous impulse is to bring everyone into a family of 330 million members. She would not have this impulse if raised in an unfree society, whether aristocratic or totalitarian, in which hierarchy has been naturalized. Aristotle, the tutor of aristocrats, said that some people are slaves by nature. And Napoleon the commissar/pig said, All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others. The literary critic Tzvetan Todorov reports that Margarete Buber-Neumann (Martin Buber’s daughter-in-law), “a sharp-eyed observer of Soviet realities in the 1930s, was astonished to discover that the holiday resorts for ministry employees were divided into no less than five different levels of ‘luxury’ for the different ranks of the [Communist] bureaucratic hierarchy. A few years later she found such social stratification reproduced in her prison camp.”

And Number Two:

[A]s the economist Laurence Iannaccone argues, the more complex an economy becomes, and the further people are, down astonishingly long supply chains, from working with direct fruits, the less obvious are the rewards of their labor. To a person embedded in a large company, and still more to someone in a government office, nothing seems really to matter. Consult the comic strip Dilbert. By contrast, a person, even an 18-year-old person, who works on a subsistence farm has no trouble seeing the connection between effort and reward. Saint Paul of Tarsus had no trouble seeing it in the little economy of Thessalonian Christians: “If any would not work, neither should he eat.” Such rules are the only way in anything but a highly disciplined or greatly loving small group to get a large pizza made.

Not sure I understand any of this, but I’m an unsophisticated thinker. I prefer explanations like “because they look around at the world and see how so many people work hard all their lives and end up with nothing, while other people inherit fortunes.” But maybe it’s to do with supply chains.

12. Theodore Dalrymple — Preserved In Their Poverty: Socialism Destroys The Human Character
Dalrymple, to his credit, has read a thing by a socialist: Oscar Wilde’s 1891 essay “The Soul of Man Under Socialism.” He quotes some of Wilde’s more ridiculous passages about how well a human being will flourish in a socialist society, such as:

It will be a marvellous thing—the true personality of man—when we see it. It will grow naturally and simply, flower-like, or as a tree grows. It will not be at discord. It will never argue or dispute. It will not prove things. It will know everything.

Dalrymple scoffs: “It seems to me astonishing that anyone could believe such drivel, let alone a man as intellectually gifted as Wilde.”Alright, yes, it’s silly. But Oscar Wilde wrote literature, not economics, and his essay is best thought of as a challenge to think about what it would really mean for people to reach their full potential, and the conditions it would require for that to happen. “The Soul of Man” contains a lot that is zany and I doubt anyone will find themselves agreeing with all points, but it’s the sort of brilliantly wrong essay that is worth reading and arguing about. Orwell himself said as much, arguing that while some of the more outlandish passages “make for painful reading” “sometimes seem ‘dated’ and ridiculous,” utopian dreamers like Wilde can “remind the Socialist movement of its original, half-forgotten objective of human brotherhood.”

Dalrymple argues that when he worked as a doctor among London’s poor, he saw a kind of unrestrained libertinism that Wilde would have endorsed, and it was socially corrosive. The welfare state and an erosion of traditional morals produced a population trapped in a cycle of poverty. I am not going to attempt to refute this part, because there is nothing to refute. Dalrymple says he saw jealousy, violence, and dependency among the underclass, and environment in which “man was not so much a wolf as a sexual predator to man.” I do not doubt that Dalrymple saw what he saw, but causal claims in social science require some evidence. While Dalrymple speculates on a link between socialist values and what he sees as behavioral dysfunction among the poor, he backs it up with nothing except assertion plus sneers.

There is one more passage in his article worth quoting, though:

Socialism is not only, or even principally, an economic doctrine: It is a revolt against human nature. It refuses to believe that man is a fallen creature and seeks to improve him by making all equal one to another. It is not surprising that the development of the New Man was the ultimate goal of Communist tyrannies, the older version of man being so imperfect and even despicable. But such futile and reprehensible dreams, notwithstanding the disastrous results when they were taken seriously by ruthless men in power, are far from alien to current generations of intellectuals. Man, knowing himself to be imperfect, will continue to dream of, and believe in, schemes not merely of improvement here and there but of perfection, of a life so perfectly organized that everyone will be happy, kind, decent, and selfless without any effort at all. Illusion springs eternal, especially among intellectuals.

Now, this part has a bit of truth to it. Socialism is not principally an economic doctrine, and I’ve suggested that the best way to understand it is as the set of principles that arise from feelings of solidarity. But it is not a “revolt against human nature.” We simply have a difference of opinion on what “human nature” means and what it allows to be possible. We believe human beings can be a cooperative species and do not see our fellow creatures as helplessly “fallen” (or rather, if they’ve fallen, it’s our job to extend a hand and get them back up.) It’s true, we like to daydream about everyone being happy, kind, and decent, perhaps because we know so many people who fit the description and we find it easy to imagine the ethos spreading further. But we’re also realistic: We are not focused on mashing our fellow people into a vision of the New Human Being, but on achieving concrete goals that will materially improve people’s lives. I’m a utopian by twilight, but during the day I’m a practical sort, and so are the other lefties I know. Their goals are actually so modest that it’s remarkable they’re so controversial: a good standard of living for all, freedom from exploitation and abuse, democracy in the workplace, a culture of mutual aid and compassion. Can we not manage these things? We can’t really be that fallen.

13. Kyle Smith — The First Socialist
Smith’s brief article is a broadside against “the first socialist,” who turns out to be Plato. Plato believed in rule by a “class of the professionally wise” and “wanted a communal feeling to be society’s permanent mode of thinking.” Smith points out that the ideal society depicted in Plato’s Republic would be undesirable in many ways. I cannot disagree, though I always rather liked the part about exiling poets.

Smith also peppers his writing with jokes and cheekiness. For example:

Try imagining everything [Bernie] Sanders says in Grandpa Simpson’s voice, especially when he’s railing against the variety of deodorants or shouting that there were banks in post offices half a century ago. It works.

How to respond? Fine, Bernie Sanders is old, and Platonist literalism is a poor political philosophy. I see nothing more to say in response to Smith.

We have reached the end of the “Against Socialism” issue. Has there been close engagement with the writings of the contemporary socialists it is supposedly criticizing? There has not. Have we seen why the manifesto of Corbyn’s Labour and domestic proposals for single-payer healthcare, free college, and a Green New Deal are bad ideas? We have not. In fact, while the National Review has not defined what it means by “socialism,” most of its writers seem to mean “the abolition of money” and proceed to argue that abolishing money would be unwise. Charles Cooke told us that democracy does not mean putting everything up to a vote, and then asserted that the free market is democracy, and closed his case. Shawn Regan showed us that the Soviet Union polluted, while Andrew Stuttaford showed us that the British economy of the ’70s was doing somewhat worse than other economies, many of which were not doing well. We learned that Oscar Wilde and Plato should not be formulating U.S. macroeconomic policy. We were told that we are envious and childish.

But we were not proved wrong. In fact, the sole writer who spent time engaging with 21st century socialists found them downright reasonable, and couldn’t really come up with a good alternative except to hope for more “community,” which we do too. I hope that when the other writers stop slinging pejoratives and shouting “Venezuela,” they too will shed their youthful free market naïveté and join the international proletarian movement. I am not optimistic. More open-minded individuals, however, will surely read the “Against Socialism” issue and be convinced once and for all that the left is right.

• This topic was modified 6 years, 11 months ago by Zooey.

from NFL’S BEST GMS 2019

Patrick Daugherty

https://www.rotoworld.com/article/goal-line-stand/nfls-best-gms-2019?page=0&sf213030458=1

The dam has broken. The most analytically-minded front offices are not only winning, they are putting distance between themselves and the rest of the league. It’s how a team like the Eagles can win playoff games with a No. 2 quarterback in back-to-back years. It’s how Bill Belichick keeps hoisting Lombardis even though he’s let his left tackle walk each of the past two springs. They are adapting. The others will die if they don’t follow suit.

For the purposes of this article, I consider the “general manager” to be whomever is believed to have the biggest role in shaping the roster, irrespective of who has the official title. The criteria is the same as always. All front office activity — from players and coaches to draft picks and contracts — is taken into consideration. Past achievements are not written off, but recent history is given greater emphasis. Even in a results-based business, the process is vital. Last year’s list can be found here. 2017’s is here.

1. Bill Belichick, Patriots

How did Bill Belichick celebrate his sixth Super Bowl victory as head coach? By letting his left tackle and top pass rusher walk in free agency. Neither time nor winning have softened Belichick’s heart. He continues to do the things no other coach or general manager will do. Belichick found Trey Flowers in the fourth round, but he does not overpay for sacks. He pulled Trent Brown off the scrap heap, but he refuses to let bargains become boondoggles. He lets someone else spend the money. If it proves worth it — like Chandler Jones in Arizona — then so be it. There is always another find to be made. Whether it is the restricted free agent market or compensatory pick process, Belichick scours all available avenues for talent, playing the longest, most patient game. He is completely unbeholden to sentiment. This may not be a recommended personality trait in a normal human being, but Belichick has never pretended to be normal. The only game he plays is on the field. The rest is unrelenting logic. Perhaps that leaves you cold. It also keeps the trophy case warm.

2. Howie Roseman, Eagles

One of the league’s youngest general managers is also one of its most impressive survivors — and winners. Still only 43, Roseman was barely two years removed from outlasting Chip Kelly when he assembled the Eagles’ first championship squad. Roseman has built such a deep roster that it managed to win at least one playoff game each of the past two seasons with its backup quarterback. He has stockpiled so much talent in the trenches that elite skill players have not been necessary. 2018 was arguably as impressive as the Eagles’ Lombardi-lifting 2017 considering the team’s injury issues. A forward thinker who is both willing to trade draft picks and stockpile them via the compensatory process, Roseman has taken on a Belichick-ian air as a team builder. Market inefficiencies — expiring contracts — will be identified. Edges — like a rookie quarterback deal — will be ruthlessly exploited. No one, either as a coach or executive, is in Belichick’s tier. Roseman leads the “best of the rest.”

3. Kevin Colbert, Steelers

Kevin Colbert has been the Steelers’ general manager since 2000. His rosters have won 65.2 percent of their games, second to only Bill Belichick’s Patriots Death Star. The last time Pittsburgh finished below .500 was 2003. Impressive, unassailable. Keeping it going will require overcoming some heady issues. Head coach Mike Tomlin finally lost control of an ever-volatile locker room in 2018, with Antonio Brown going rogue after one Ben Roethlisberger slight too many. Which brings us to Big Ben. If Tomlin failed to put out the fire, it was Roethlisberger who started it. Colbert responded by extending his quarterback through 2021. Roethlisberger’s blank check complicates Colbert’s most pressing question — is Tomlin still the right man to lead this group of players? Never regarded as an in-game maestro, Tomlin is paid for what he does in the locker room. In 2018, it wasn’t enough. For his part, Colbert must do a better job on the defensive side of the ball. The team was caught flat-footed at linebacker following Ryan Shazier’s injury, while cornerback is a recurring trouble spot. Colbert showed some urgency in the draft with his uncharacteristic trade up for Devin Bush. Colbert has lasted this long by answering the big questions and getting the little details right. Both are currently threatening to derail what has been an underappreciated front office run.

4. Les Snead, Rams

Apparently a general manager takes on the character of his head coach. When Jeff Fisher running the Rams, Les Snead was busy doing things like extending Tavon Austin. On Sean McVay’s watch, it has been one excellent move after another, with an unusual focus on the non-draft avenues of team building. After signing LT Andrew Whitworth in 2017, McVay and Snead added Nickell Robey-Coleman and Ndamukong Suh in 2018. They then went on an unprecedented trading spree, acquiring each of Brandin Cooks, Marcus Peters and Aqib Talib. Although Suh is now gone, all six players were core members of last season’s Super Bowl squad. The M.O. remained the same this spring, with mid-season acquisition Dante Fowler being re-signed and Eric Weddle and Clay Matthews coming aboard in free agency. There is a reason teams do not usually build through the veteran market: It is expensive as sin. For now, the Rams can afford it with Jared Goff on his rookie deal. Although Goff’s extension is a looming conundrum — just how good is Goff, really? — Snead and McVay have two more years to figure it out. Despite all the moves, the Rams do not yet have a future salary cap crisis on their hands. Goff could change that, but it stands to reason Snead and McVay would then adjust their approach. Through three offseasons, it has been nearly flawless.