I remember when Dr. Deborah Birx was called out after hosting a holiday gathering of her family. It was the kind of gathering that she had urged her fellow Americans not to have.
What I didn’t know was the excuse she gave. Here’s an excerpt from the BBC report at the time:
Explaining her decision to gather with her husband, daughter, son-in-law and two grandchildren, she told Newsy: “My daughter hasn’t left that house in 10 months, my parents have been isolated for 10 months.
“They’ve become deeply depressed as I’m sure many elderly have as they’ve not been able to see their sons, their granddaughters.
“My parents have not been able to see their surviving son for over a year. These are all very difficult things.”
Those are all good reasons for getting together and ignoring the advice of people like Deborah Birx. What’s really striking, though, is that Birx seemed to see those reasons as being good enough reasons for her but was unable to see similar reasons as being good enough for the tens of millions of strangers whom she urged not to do what she did.
So I think there are two main possibilities about what makes Dr. Birx tick.
The first is that she can’t think about anyone’s family but her own.
The second is that she can think about the situations of other families but doesn’t care about them.
The middle paragraph of the quote above does suggest that she can put herself in other people’s shoes. So my guess is that it’s the second reason that applies. Either way, it doesn’t speak well of her.
The title of this post is from a scene in one of my favorite movies, Harold and Maude. Maude tells the cop who pulled her over:
Don’t get officious. You’re not yourself when you’re officious. That’s the curse of a government job.
HT2 Jeffrey Tucker.
READER COMMENTS
Jon Murphy
Oct 31 2021 at 7:14pm
If I may offer a soft defense of Dr. Deborah Brix, I don’t think the fact that she doesn’t care about other families is what speaks poorly of her. Rather, I think the fact that she doesn’t realize that she doesn’t care about other families speaks poorly.
None of us care about other families or people who are not our own. We simply cannot. For example, I just spent a long weekend with friends in an AirBnB. I care very much about them. But their families, not nearly as much as my own. I would do a lot of things to save my brothers and parents from any misfortune. A total stranger, not so much. Thus, I think the fact that the other families do not matter to her isn’t what speaks poorly; it’s natural.
However, one should realize that the other families do not matter as much. Consequently, that person is in a much weakened position (information-wise) to tell them what is best for them. Deborah Brix can provide guidance, yes. But she cannot tell whether or not other families face the same problem her family did. If she were to recognize that small fact, I think she’d be far more humble.
To conclude, let me invoke Adam Smith’s famous example of the Chinese earthquake in the Theory of Moral Sentiments (go to paragraph 193 here). The man is not blameworthy if he is not as sad about the massive loss of life in China from the earthquake as he is about the loss of a pinky. Rather, the man is blameworthy if he were able to stave off the earthquake by cutting off his pinky. Brix is blameworthy because she refuses to “cut off her pinky” to stave off an earthquake. And she doesn;t even understand that is what she is doing
David Henderson
Oct 31 2021 at 9:38pm
I’m not persuaded. The big difference between the earthquake guy and Birx is that the earthquake guy isn’t in a position of authority telling people how to behave.
Mark Bahner
Nov 1 2021 at 11:42am
She and I both don’t understand that is what she is doing. 🙂
How could Deborah Birx “stave off an earthquake” by “cutting off her pinky.” Are you saying that if she and her family hadn’t met, many people would not have gotten COVID-19? And since they did meet, many people ending up getting COVID-19?
Everett
Nov 1 2021 at 3:40pm
I can see this. Part of humanity sees hypocrisy as a reason to not worry about doing what Donnie Don’t Do That does, or even a positive reason to Do what Donnie Don’t Do That does. Especially if Donnie turns around and justifies his reasons for doing it.
It wouldn’t surprise me at all that there are many people who thought refraining from gathering was a good idea, but then said screw it, it’s a small enough risk, and Birx’s justification applies to my group as well.
This is one more reason why we need some of the non-socially inclined in positions of social power. Because the socially inclined act stupid and anti-social at times.
AMT
Nov 1 2021 at 12:16am
The hypocrisy does look pretty bad, but I’ll offer a possible explanation. I think authority figures are a lot more likely to give explanations that skew a lot more black and white and eschew the nuance to avoid misinterpretation, and/or deliberately lead people towards better decisions. I’m reminded of Emily Oster’s book Expecting Better. She explains that doctors would pretty much universally give blanket bans on foods to avoid and never explain any actual statistics for people to make individual decisions based on their own preferences and cost benefit analysis. E.g. zero alcohol, no deli meat, limit caffeine to 1 cup of coffee a day, etc. This could be partly ignorance of the doctors, but I think it’s also because they are (rightfully) worried patients are terrible at statistics analyzing risks and something like the phrase “if you give them an inch, they’ll take a mile” will happen. If you tell pregnant women to limit alcohol intake to x amount, many will just get the general idea some alcohol is fine, but end up far exceeding that amount. But if you tell them absolutely none, they’ll end up a lot closer to what their limit should be. Many people are overconfident, and suffer from willpower failures and making good decisions in the first place. At least stereotypically, many parents will also give their children very similar exaggerated advice or warnings.
So perhaps if you tell the public “just try to limit your family gatherings,” many people will only marginally reduce them. You might have to exaggerate somewhat to get the point across, and you do so because you care about them.
suddyan
Nov 1 2021 at 7:54am
[You might have to exaggerate somewhat to get the point across, and you do so because you care about them.]
I am not persuaded.
Especially by any argument that purports it is fine to essentially tell untruths for the “right” reasons. (Yes, at times I tend to deontology rather than consequentialism.)
Furthermore, I sustpect it is more faux showing that “you care about them” than actual real care. If you really cared you would put in all the effort to educate “them” as to all the relevant details. Much easier to chuck out a cheap “virtue signal” and insist on zero of the alleged “bad / unhealthy things.”
Mark Z
Nov 1 2021 at 12:35am
Two other possibilities:
3) Birx believes she is better able to ascertain when deviating from the rules is reasonable or harmless, but thinks most other people are not able to do so, and need hard rules to guide them. She might see herself as in a position similar to an adult telling children not to jaywalk, period, even though she, being an adult, knows she herself is capable of telling when it’s safe to jaywalk.
4) Birx is actually being reckless and irrational, by her own standards, in her personal life. The rules she imposes on others may be rational and conscientious, but she has let her emotions lead her astray in her personal life. Note that this belief need not be true for it to be relevant to her state of mind. She may be a hypocrite either way, but it could be that the rules she imposes on everyone else are altruistic and based on sincere moral belief, while in her personal decisions, her judgment is clouded by emotion and leads her to make the wrong decision (sort of the opposite of your second reason).
Thomas Lee Hutcheson
Nov 1 2021 at 6:24am
The decision to travel during a pandemic is a cost benefit problem like any decision. There is a benefit to the decision (the social interaction that will result that is different for each circumstance. The costs are that the traveler will expose himself to additional risks and will expose others to additional risk. If everyone did these calculations correctly, especially taking accurate account of the risk they were imposing on others, there would be a lot less travel during a pandemic and less spread (vaccines are coming, so a case postponed may be a case prevented entirely) of the disease than if the calculation are performed incorrectly.
Problem: What to should public officials say to communicate to people to help them to perform these cost benefit calculations correctly. The simplest message is just “don’t travel,” figuring that people without the message will already have taken account of the risk to themselves, but may under estimate the costs to others and the recommendation will tip some people into not traveling, but that others will still, correctly, still travel.
If that is the public policy calculation how should the officials involved in making the policy behave? IF it were certain that their own behavior would not itself become part of the message they should behave like any other member of the public weighting the private costs and benefits and the public costs to come to a decision. This is apparently what Brix did. (I believe that people in the Administration were being tested frequently, so she had better reason than most people to believe that she would expose others to additional risk was minimal.) But she should have taken account of the possibility that her behavior would in fact become public knowledge and implicitly lead people to underestimate the costs to themselves and others of travel, and so her behavior was deeply unethical. In its way it was just as bad as the President failing to wear a mask in appropriate places.
Brix’s behavior highlighted the problem with public health messaging. It did not contain all the information that people needed to make a correct decision, especially given that — as a result of earlier public health policy mistakes — people were not able to get tested easily to know how great the risks their travel would impose on others was. Indeed the whole public messaging had almost completely ignored (and still mainly ignores) urging people and making available the information (e.g. easy testing) to take account of the costs that their decisions — masking, social distancing, working from home or not, and now vaccination — have on the health of others.
suddyan
Nov 1 2021 at 7:57am
[The decision to travel during a pandemic is a cost benefit problem like any decision. There is a benefit to the decision (the social interaction that will result that is different for each circumstance. The costs are that the traveler will expose himself to additional risks and will expose others to additional risk. If everyone did these calculations correctly, especially taking accurate account of the risk they were imposing on others, there would be a lot less travel during a pandemic and less spread…]
The survival rate is practically 99.85%. Kindly get some objectivity and get over your “pandemic.”
Everett
Nov 1 2021 at 3:46pm
Deaths attributable in part to being infected with SARS-CoV-2 in the US already exceed 2 per thousand, which demonstrates an absolutely upper bound on survival rate of slightly less than 99.8%, assuming absolutely everyone in the US has caught SARS-CoV-2 and will never catch it again.
Everett
Nov 1 2021 at 3:47pm
And that survival rate does not include long term health issues attributable to COVID.
David Seltzer
Nov 1 2021 at 9:46am
Re Harold and Maude, I love the reference. Maude lived her life to the fullest. Taught Harold how to live. Ruth Gordon is a treasure playing the role. Of course the shocker is how their relationship was consummated.
nobody.really
Nov 3 2021 at 1:18am
But was Maude a manic pixie dream girl?
Billy Kaubashine
Nov 1 2021 at 10:05am
The opportunity to display hypocrisy goes hand-in-hand with one’s propensity to control other people. That’s why Leftists fall into the trap more often.
Everett
Nov 1 2021 at 3:50pm
You misspelled “authoritarian” as “leftist”. But even if you didn’t, some on the right have a problem that those on the left tend not to have with respect to blame throwing and minimization of the rights of others to have control over their own lives if they happen to not be rich or otherwise independent.
Alan Goldhammer
Nov 1 2021 at 10:21am
I think David is way to harsh here. Dr. Birx is better able to do a benefit/risk calculation than 90% of Americans. Here advice to Americans not to gather during the holiday season was predicated on this. She knew how well her family members had been isolating and likely came to the conclusion that they were not infected and hence a gathering would be a very low risk event and that it would be beneficial to the family members involved as she notes.
nobody.really
Nov 1 2021 at 1:36pm
Loved Harold and Maude (especially the Cat Stevens soundtrack), but …
1: I’m not sure what it has to do with this topic. How is garden-variety hypocrisy a “curse of a government job”? All those priests who had sex with children were burdened with government jobs? All those athletes who cheat are cursed with government jobs?
Milton Friedman, lecture, “The Suicidal Impulse of the Business Community” (1983). Guess those businessmen were too busy with their government jobs?
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and hypocrisy is just hypocrisy.
2: Maude’s encounter with the traffic cop was fine, but I think I preferred Miss Victoria Woodworth’s encounter with the traffic cop in Fitzwilly (1967).
KevinDC
Nov 2 2021 at 1:04pm
I’m not sure where you’re going with this? The general claim “a government job has negative result X” (X can be a tendency to hypocrisy, or officious behavior, or a lack of compassion – take your pick) does not entail the claim “X is solely caused by government jobs.” If someone suggests that government work makes people more hypocritical, that claim may or may not be true, but to respond to it by pointing out hypocritical behavior from people who weren’t in government jobs is completely beside the point.
As a parallel, Lord Acton famously said that “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” To respond to this by pointing out corrupt behavior from powerless people would be to miss the point. It would only be relevant as a response to claim more like “Power alone is the sole source of corruption” – but that’s obviously not what Acton is actually saying.
nobody.really
Nov 2 2021 at 4:48pm
1: Uh … we disagree.
More to the point, Henderson never explicitly suggests that government work makes people more hypocritical. Rather, he cites one government official acting hypocritically. And rather than suggesting that government work caused/contributed to this behavior, he identifies two possible explanations:
I find nothing in either rationale that suggests any relationship to government work. Indeed, I find nothing in the entire post about government work–except the tacked-on quote from Harold and Maude. To me, this merely suggests a (thus far unexplained) animus toward government workers.
Imagine I was discussing the O.J. Simpson case, and concluded with, “… so it seems likely that he murdered his ex and her boyfriend–but hey, what would you expect? He’s black.” These remarks might lead to you to suspect that I have animus toward black people. Would it then be appropriate for you to point out that people of all races commit murders? Or would such a response be “completely beside the point”?
2: I suspect that Henderson meant to argue that government workers are as prone to hypocrisy as anyone else, but their hypocrisy can be more consequential because they wield governmental powers. Alas, this was not the argument Henderson made.
KevinDC
Nov 2 2021 at 6:19pm
Apparently, but I’m left unsure about what, since you did little to explain what was wrong with my explanation. To repeat, pointing out the existence of corrupt but powerless people does not rebut the claim that power corrupts – it would only rebut the claim that “power is the sole source of corruption.” Similarly, pointing out hypocritical behavior of non-government people does not rebut the claim that government work promotes hypocrisy – it would only rebut the claim that government work is the sole cause of hypocrisy. Or so it seems to me – if I’m wrong about that analysis, you haven’t said anything to help me see how.
It would depend on what proposition your hypothetical comment was attempting to assert – it’s not entirely clear what it’s meant to say, as you stated it. Is that meant to express the proposition “all black people murder”? The rebuttal to that claim is pointing out that the vast majority of black people don’t commit murder – not pointing out that there are also murderers who aren’t black. Or is your hypothetical self trying to express the proposition “only black people murder”? That proposition would be rebutted by pointing out that people of all races commit murder. Or would it be trying to say “The fact that OJ is black, in and of itself, constitutes evidence that he’s guilty of this specific act of murder”? That would be a faulty inference on your part, but it’s not faulty on the grounds that “all races murder.” Even if only one race (or religion, or hair color, or whatever) ever committed murder, that does not constitute evidence in a particular case that a specific member of that group was responsible for a specific act.
I do agree with Acton that power corrupts (though is not the sole source of corruption!), and among the corrupting effects of power are both hypocrisy and a lack of empathy for your “lessers.” And if power does indeed corrupt, it is likely that Dr. Birx, being a person in a position of power, would have been able to have a little more empathy to everyone else’s situation, not just her own, and been a little less prone to hypocrisy, were she not in such a position of power. It’s possible that’s not true – maybe she’s a rare soul who’s immune to the corrupting influences of power, and she’s just naturally hypocritical and lacking in empathy, but to take that line is almost a harsher condemnation, I think.
nobody.really
Nov 3 2021 at 10:37am
Ok, let’s try to make something constructive of this.
And I agree with freedom of religion.
But imagine we were not satisfied with simple faith: How would we go about proving that power corrupts? Merely pointing out that people in power demonstrate corruption would not suffice; Bayesian probability tells us that, at a minimum, we’d need to measure the underlying level of corruption in society before we could determine whether the level of corruption among the powerful was greater. But at best, this would merely demonstrate a correlation between power and corruption. To demonstrate that power corrupts–that is, that having power causes corruption–we’d need time series data.
Here are some rival hypotheses we would need to disprove: Powerful people attract attention, and thus observers notice their corruption more than the corruption of less-powerful people; see availability bias/sampling error. Or perhaps corrupt people are simply more likely to seek and obtain power (as, allegedly, psychopaths are).
(In fairness, I have often quoted Acton’s pithy adage myself–but always for the idea that we should not presume virtue on the part of the powerful. I had never seriously considered that Acton intended to describe cause and effect. Has anyone undertaken a serious effort to demonstrate that power corrupts? The Stanford Prison Experiment has been largely discredited. Still, we might set up an experiment in a school or camp where kids would rotate the task of delivering one snack to each of their peers and returning any excess snacks to a central office. This might provide data on the baseline levels of corruption. Later the adults tell the kids that they must elect their own leaders to distribute the snacks…. This could be an interesting field of research for some deep-pocketed libertarian foundation. Not sure how you’d get consent for the human trials, however.)
ALL THAT BEING SAID, if we could demonstrate that having power causes corruption in general, we might vindicate Acton. But we still would not have demonstrated that it caused corruption in any specific case–such as the case of Birx. Even if you could demonstrate that Italians are more likely to be part of organized crime than members of other ethnic groups, we would still not be justified in claiming that any given individual joined organized crime because of her Italian heritage. In short, Henderson’s argument is just indefensible. If this is a hill you’re willing to die on, let me extend my regrets.
KevinDC
Nov 3 2021 at 3:14pm
I’m always in favor of that approach.
This is odd, because that’s the plain meaning of his words. He’s says “Power tends to corrupt,” not “Power tends to attract those who are already corrupt.” He’s straightforwardly describing a causal relationship – I don’t see how you can read his words otherwise.
I’m assuming you mean this as a serious question, in which case the answer is…well yes, of course. There’s been a lot of research on this topic, and the evidence is pretty overwhelming. And the research does account for the elementary issues regarding availability bias and sampling error you helpfully point out, as well as consider the rather obvious alternate hypothesis you mention. This is just one example. Short, short version – when people are put in positions of authority or power, they begin to reliably and measurably behave more hypocritically and with less empathy than people who were not assigned positions of power, even though power was assigned at random. A Dutch researcher named Joris Lammers sums up here five different experiments he did to this effect, which all had the same findings. It’s a little bizarre that you seem inclined to describe something so widely known and well established as “religious faith,” but you do seem fond making frequent use of that particular rhetorical flourish, so maybe it’s just a favorite phrase of yours.
Right, and I acknowledged that in my last comment when I said:
So while I appreciate the effort, you’re trying to bash your shoulder against a wide open door there.
nobody.really
Nov 4 2021 at 9:30am
WOW–that’s some great research! (Though I could only read the abstracts.) I note that there are mixed result about the effects of power on corruption, but I’m encouraged to see that people have actually done rigorous research on the question.
Could the same be said of Lord Acton? Could anyone claim that he had taken the necessary measures that would allow him to distinguish causation from other explanations for why he observed corruption among the powerful? Here’s his famous quote:
John Emerich Edward Dalberg, Lord Acton, Letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton, April 5, 1887 published in Historical Essays and Studies, edited by J. N. Figgis and R. V. Laurence (London: Macmillan, 1907).
The thesis of the paragraph is “There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it.” I agree that the italicized line–the pithiest part of the quote–suggests he believed in causation. But nothing in the paragraph explains why he embraces causation rather than some other explanation. I had assumed that he phrased things as he did to be pithy, not to be scientific.
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