The Case For a Common Good Liberalism | TaraElla Report Lab

Why there is no reason to choose 'common good conservatism' over liberalism.

Welcome back to TaraElla Report Lab. Today, I want to talk about the idea of the 'common good' from a liberal perspective. It's an important discussion to have, because I fear the West is about to see a wave of anti-liberal sentiment. For many years, people on both the Left and the Right have criticized liberalism for supposedly promoting selfishness and ignoring the common good because of its individualist orientation. With the recent rise of 'common good conservatism' as a focus of the illiberal Right, this debate is likely to heat up again soon. Here, I will offer a defense of liberalism, and explain why I believe liberalism is actually the best model for advancing the common good.

Firstly, there is nothing in liberal values and principles that inherently promotes selfishness or opposes notions of the common good. As I first pointed out several years ago, liberalism is not inherently against communitarianism, indeed, I argued that a fusion of liberalism and communitarianism could be the best way forward. Liberalism, especially the Moral Libertarian model, guarantees individual autonomy and moral agency. But that doesn't mean individuals can't or won't use that moral agency to advance what they believe to be the common good.

The key to advancing the common good is to have a culture that stresses the importance of morality, and our duty towards each other. It is these cultural values that will prevent selfishness from prevailing in the general population. Contrary to what the illiberal Right claims, widespread selfishness and lack of regard for the common good is a product of cultural dysfunction, not a product of liberal individualism. Indeed, the Moral Libertarian model of liberalism places morality at its heart, and I believe the promotion of this model will greatly help to advance the common good in the long run.

The actual difference between liberalism and more authoritarian forms of politics like what the illiberal Right is advocating, is that liberalism stresses individual autonomy. Looking at it from another angle, decision making in liberalism is non-hierarchical, whilst decision making in authoritarian conservatism is done in a hierarchical way. Hence, what constitutes the common good in 'common good liberalism' will ultimately be determined by the marketplace of ideas, especially in the long run, while the common good in 'common good conservatism' will be determined by those at the top of the hierarchy.

Hence, the choice between 'common good liberalism' vs 'common good conservatism' would essentially be a choice between decisions being made by the marketplace of ideas, vs decisions being made by those at the top of the hierarchy. And there is good reason to choose the marketplace of ideas. Firstly, the marketplace of ideas represents the thinking of many minds, the experiences of many lives, and the combined knowledge of a lot of information that a small group of elites simply can't match. Secondly, the marketplace of ideas allows for trial and error, and ideas which are objectively found to be successful can be adopted and further developed by other people. Most importantly, the marketplace of ideas allows for negotiation, where the best parts of each package of ideas can be remixed into new proposals, to create even better solutions moving forward. This is a level of complexity and efficiency top-down decision making simply can't match.

In conclusion, I believe that liberalism is, in fact, the best model to advance the common good, as long as it is practiced in a pro-common good culture. Pro-morality models of liberalism like Moral Libertarianism can also help bring about this culture. Hence, there is no reason to choose 'common good conservatism' over liberalism at all.

From Woke to Intersectional: How Words Obscure Ideology | TaraElla Report Lab

Today, I want to talk about how the use of certain words can obscure important differences in worldview, and effectively hide an ideological framing of the issues, which is why I don't tend to use such words anymore.

Woke is Whatever One Disagrees With Nowadays

Let's start with the word 'woke', and its opposite, 'anti woke'. There was once a time, a few years ago, when I used these terms quite a bit myself. Back then, 'woke', in its current form, had just entered our everyday vocabulary, and I saw that it was generally attached to views and movements inspired by critical theory. To me, therefore, 'woke' meant pro-criticalism, and 'anti woke' meant being against criticalism. The 'woke' were not old-school liberals, they instead subscribed to another ideology that aims to supplant liberalism. Hence old-school liberals were not 'woke', and this was a useful distinction. And I'm sure that many people did, and still do, use the terms roughly this way.

However, over the years, I saw more and more people throwing the 'woke' word around to mean something else. For example, opponents of Florida's 'Don't Say Gay' bill have been called 'woke'. Trans rights supporters in the UK have also been called 'woke'. This has happened even where arguments from critical theory were clearly not involved, and people were arguing from traditional liberal grounds. Hence, at least for some people, the usage of 'woke' appears to extend to old-school liberals too!

You see, the reason why I don't use the descriptions 'woke' and 'anti woke' anymore is because they are clearly being used by different people to mean different things, usually to frame the debate in a particular way. Hence, for example, while old-school liberals can say that proponents of critical race theory are 'woke', conservatives can also say that the old-school liberals themselves are 'woke'. Indeed, one can argue that nowadays, 'woke' is basically whatever you don't agree with. This clearly obscures and confuses important ideological distinctions, and is bad if what we want is clear communication. Hence, I have stopped using the word 'woke', for the sake of maintaining clear communication. I guess it's like how many people decided to stop using the term 'SJW' several years ago, again for similar reasons.

Intersectionality is More than Meets The Eye

Now, let's talk about another way in which fancy labels and descriptions can obscure ideological thinking. There was a brief period (in around 2016-17) when I sort of embraced the then-popular idea of intersectionality. Basically, intersectionality is about emphasizing how one can be discriminated or disadvantaged by multiple intersecting identity characteristics, such as gender, race, sexual orientation and so on. It was used to critique how mainstream feminism was dominated by the views of white middle-class women with a certain kind of background, for example. Back then, I thought that this concept could be useful in other ways. For example, LGBT activists clearly don't represent the diversity of LGBT people very well, especially those from more conservative or non-Western backgrounds. Also, in general, so-called progressive circles often don't live up to their ideal of being equally inclusive to all, because there are often long-standing dominant views on certain issues, and other perspectives are often effectively silenced. I thought intersectionality could be used to solve these problems.

However, I soon found that, in pro-intersectionality circles, there are unspoken rules about what counts as an 'intersectional' issue. For example, if a non-white person talked about how they experienced racism even in supposedly progressive circles, their views are very welcome. However, if the same person then started talking about feeling excluded because of their cultural views and values, which might not always align well with the mainstream views of the Western left, they could be made to feel unwelcome. In other words, what is considered 'intersectional' is guarded by gatekeepers, and the theoretical ideal picture of intersectionality is thus prevented from being achieved.

For about a year, I still thought that I could use reason to challenge the gatekeeping of intersectionality, so that its true ideal could be fully realized. But the more I argued, the more I read, and the more I reflected on all of it, the more I came to my final realization: that the concept of 'intersectionality' has a deeper component that is not included in the definition given by its proponents. Intersectionality is basically rooted in the ideology of critical theory, which sees society as being divided into oppressor and oppressed groups, and sees cultural ideas and institutions as a product of these oppressive relations. Therefore, intersectionality is effectively limited and biased in its application, because of the assumptions of the critical theory ideology. That intersectionality cannot live up to its ideals is therefore a birth defect that cannot be cured. This is why I ultimately left intersectionality behind.

I mean, I still like what intersectionality theoretically stands for. But I can't support a movement that is rooted in the critical theory worldview, with all its divisiveness and its problematic assumptions about the world.

Why Popularity Based Social Media is Bad for Democracy | TaraElla Report Lab

And how to fix the problem.

Welcome back to TaraElla Report Lab. Today, I want to start talking about how we can fix the broken marketplace of ideas we have right now. As I said before, the key to a healthy liberal democracy is a truly fuctional marketplace of ideas, where every voice gets a fair hearing, and where the people get to make a truly informed choice. And right now, the reality is that we are far from this ideal. Clearly, there is a lot of work that needs to be done.

In recent years, there has been a lot of attention on the role of the internet and social media in the propagation of echo chambers, polarization and division. Some people have painted the role of the internet and social media in an almost wholly negative way, as if the pre-internet age was actually better. I think that is a mistaken view, because a media landscape dominated by corporate media clearly ain't a fair marketplace of ideas either. The internet and social media have at least partially democratized our media landscape, and that is a very good thing indeed. The problem is that it just hasn't gone far enough. Therefore, we should look to the possible future of a truly level playing field, rather than look back to the past of a highly restricted media, to resolve our current problems with social media.

There are a lot of problems with the way the internet and social media exist today, but I am going to focus on what I believe is the most important problem: the obsession with 'popularity'. Almost every big social media platform that exists today has a strong focus on the 'popularity' of both creators and content. We see it in the way the number of followers and likes are prominently displayed. More importantly, these metrics of 'popularity' are heavily used in the algorithms of these platforms, so that only content deemed 'popular' is visible to many people. 'Unpopular' content is quickly buried, as if it never existed at all.

The trouble with this model is, what is 'popular' can be manipulated in multiple ways. At the most basic level, content creators are incentivized to create content that cater to the narratives and emotions of particular echo chambers, so as to maximize the number of likes received, because that is the only way the algorithm will pick up that piece of content and spread it to new audiences. As a creator who refuses to play that game, I know very well how frustrating taking a principled stance can be, in the world of popularity-obsessed algorithms. Content creators who have built a following based on pandering to certain narratives generally can't walk away from those narratives either, because of the very well known phenomenon known as 'audience capture'. They are scared that their audiences will turn on them, potentially leading to a massive loss of followers overnight. This constant need to pander to certain narratives means that almost every popular creator stays in line with their chosen narrative, which creates an echo chamber effect on their audiences.

Even more sinister is the potential for money to be able to distort this whole 'popularity' thing. On the internet, one thing that we all hate is 'bots', i.e. automated accounts designed to inflate the numbers of particular accounts and spread particular messages. All the major platforms are constantly on the look out for bots, which are promptly banned when detected, but this has clearly not been able to eliminate the problem. However, all the focus on bots is perhaps distracting us from an even bigger problem: that people or organizations with an agenda, armed with adequate money, probably don't even need to use bots to achieve what they want. They can instead target their content to real people who they know will be receptive to their messaging, through advertisements, events, and even cross-promotion on mainstream media outlets. This is why the platforms can ban all the bots, and still not solve the problem of the 'popularity' model. Indeed, banning the bots likely only shifts the advantage to those who can afford even more expensive means of manipulating the metrics of popularity, thus favoring ideas and agendas backed by major financial power, effectively making the problem even worse. This shows us that the 'popularity' model can't be credibly reformed, and must be abolished or at least radically altered, if we are to have a free and fair marketplace of ideas that is good for democracy.

The pitfalls of the 'popularity' model also extend beyond the world of what we usually consider social media, even to relatively credible platforms like Wikipedia. In particular, Wikipedia's notability criteria is something that I have been campaigning for years to reform. Basically, for something to be on Wikipedia, it needs to be featured on at least a certain number of what is considered 'credible sources', which is most often mainstream media or mainstream media adjacent outlets. Hence, ideas not picked up by mainstream media are effectively excluded from Wikipedia, which in turn could affect the way they are displayed or ranked on Google and other search engines. Just in the past few years, I have seen many cases of Wikipedia deletion wars, in which pages of borderline-notable people are proposed for deletion. If the subject happens to have a dedicated following, or certain media connections, then they might be able to salvage their page by effectively generating a new article or two that can be used to prove that they meet the Notability criteria. Thus, the Notability criteria effectively makes Wikipedia a popularity-based platform, just like social media. And it can obviously be affected by financially backed interests too. Let's be honest: we all know that it ain't too difficult for rich and well-connected people to get their ideas published in so-called 'credible sources'. Wikipedia's Notability criteria thus ultimately pose the same problem as the likes-driven algorithms of social media platforms.

Now that we've identified the problem, we need to do something about it. The cynical among you might say that, internet companies are ultimately businesses, and they will do whatever necessary to promote their business interests, which would include spreading content deemed to be 'popular'. However, it is not like that their business interests don't include the need to respond to widespread demands for change. And it is clear that demands for change do work on internet companies: for example, just in the past few months, YouTube stopped displaying the dislike count for videos, a change which is quite small indeed, but clearly in the right direction. Ultimately, the key to pushing companies to reform their practices is popular demand from its customers. This is why we need to keep this discussion going, keep the ideas for reform coming, and effectively elevate the cause of social media reform to social movement status. Imagine that, if the social media reform movement were to grow to become as big as the climate action movement one day, the companies simply wouldn't be able to ignore our demands.

In recent years, there have been growing calls for getting money out of politics. But as I have demonstrated, there really is no way to get money out of politics without also getting the obsession with popularity metrics out of social media and the internet more generally. Thus fundamentally changing the popularity metric-based internet landscape should be taken seriously as a core pillar of making our societies more democratic.