Two book reviews

Jonathan: So when I went out for coffee with Jonathan Rauch, I brought my mug with me, because I despise single-use cups. Further, I hate that SBUX brags about people like me, with little throwaway pamphlets about how how many trees are saved because half a percent of their clientele don't use their cups. Jonathan, for his part, pointed out that washing the cup takes energy, what with the hot water and all. I just mumbled something about how I'm not sure whether I wash dishes with hot water, because I always hated that argument---aren't you comparing apples and electrons? But ever since then, I've really resented the non-disposable gold filter on the coffee maker here at my house.

So that's Jonathan in a nutshell: he's not at all satisfied to think just one step ahead, and is oddly persuasive. Which brings us to his new book, _Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America_ ( get a copy). The basic idea behind the book is that the people who claim to be defending marriage by excluding gays aren't thinking enough steps ahead.

Most of the book sells the concept of marriage, which was an interesting read for me, because my people are decidedly cohabitation people. So the first part, where Jonathan doesn't bother mentioning sexual orientation, was the more different and unique part for me. In his way, he sort of sold me on the concept of marriage in its most traditional form. [Others I've shown the book to weren't so impressed, and were in fact a little offended. So be it; at least they picked the thing up.]

The real threat to that traditional form, he continues, is not gay marriage, but cohabitation. If gay marriage is illegal, gay folk will still be cohabitating. Further, the gay folk will be lobbying for equal treatment, equal insurance, and the assorted privileges which married people have. Once such civil unions are encoded in the law books, the logical next step is that straight people will want them too. After all, what could be better than all the benefits of sharing rent and insurance without all that crap about being monogamous and taking care of each other in sickness and in health. Forcing gay folk to accept the social responsibilities of marriage with their insurance benefits will force everybody else to do the same, so in order to defend marriage, social conservatives should be pushing for gay marriage.

You can argue with the details (there are 200 pages to back them up), but measured on the potential persuasiveness scale, I like this argument because Jonathan knows the people who would disagree with him and what their most salient counterarguments are, and addresses them in their terms.

Jagdish: Now compare that with Jagdish Bhagwati, author of _In Defense of Globalization_ ( get a copy). Part one of his book is primarily about how dumb the people who protest globalization are. Now, this is a topic I myself have written about extensively, in full agreement, and yet reading Jagdish go on for many pages just makes me want to go out and find a machine to rage against. Chapter 4, "Non-Governmental Organizations", may as well have had the subtitle `why they're sucky'. Jonathan took the high road in his book, stating early on that many of his opponents are blatant homophobes but there's no point addressing that. This was the correct thing to do: a book entitled `Homophobes and the dumb things they say' would have been an easy sell to the pro-gay community and a fun read, but would not have had any persuasive power or relevance to serious debate. Jagdish should have had a single page early on which said, `many anti-globalization protesters are crackpots, but I will ignore them'; instead he devotes many chapters and many subsequent anecdotes criticizing globalization's opponents, instead of addressing the arguments of the saner and better-informed.

The actual economics boils down to this: trade is good. [I'm three essays behind, but will at some point get around to discussing comparative advantage in detail.] But that's an economic argument which doesn't address the issue which Jagdish hopes to address: whether globalization has a human face or not. Addressing that one requires writing a book that doesn't have any equations in it, which I fear was Jagdish's downfall; he was unable to fight with his sword tied behind his back.

It's an ambiguous world, and macroeconomic data reflects exactly that. In Chapter five, he reports on time series studies that agree with him and find less inequality and on others that find more inequality---and then he dismisses those the find more inequality. One cross-country study finds increasing inequality, but he calls comparing households in different parts of the world to be "just so much irrelevant data mongering" and "lunacy" (p 67). But then two other cross-country studies find decreasing inequality, and Jagdish says of these studies that "they raise a massive discordant note in the chorus singing from a libretto lamenting increasing inequality in the age of globalization." (still p 67) Jagdish gets points for reporting that there are studies which disagree with him, and I would love to hear what his technical reservations are regarding those studies he rejects. But since the rules of the popular press preclude him from doing that, his discussion of the quantitative literature just comes out looking arbitrary---this study is good, and this study whose method seems identical (based on the one-sentence summary) is bad.

The other tool in the arsenal of the non-quantitative author are anecdotes. Unsurprisingly, Jagdish selects only those snippets of the world that show good and progress---and if they don't, he finds a way to spin them until they do. He says that there's nothing to worry about with the culture of the U.S.A. taking over the world: yeah, there's a McDonald's presence in France, but the arches are mustard-colored instead of primary yellow. Then, in the chapter on women, he points out that America's egalitarian stance has had a positive effect on the more misogynistic cultures. So is the U.S.A.'s culture rubbing off, or it isn't? Jagdish's answer---it is, but only in those cases that advance my argument---very obviously dismisses a world of subtleties and human faces.

Besides, anecdotes aren't valid argumentation. Here's Jagdish responding to the story of a woman whose business was going under because of world tomato prices: "To put into this important debate the sorry fate of Honisberg and her staff is to lose all proportion; it is as if a dam had burst, flooding villages and cities and destroying human life, and yet the fate of just a few women concerned you!" (p 87) How are we to put a human face on development when we're not allowed to talk about the fate of individuals?

Most importantly, Jagdish, a laissez-faire neoliberal, is blind to the fact that the Bretton Woods institutions are interventionist. This means that all of the injustices of the world today, like slashes in social services, child labor, environmental degradation, et cetera, could be addressed by the WTO, IMF, and WB. But they choose not to: the WTO deals in trades like `allow our tariff on manure and we'll allow your tariff on fertilizer' instead of conditions like `enforce your child-labor laws and we'll allow you your tariff on fertilizer'; the IMF tells governments `slash your budget or we won't give you loans', but never `slash your defense budget or we won't give you loans.' Perhaps the first is justifiably interventionist and the second goes too far, but Jagdish doesn't consider it, and thus ignores most of the arguments made by the more serious critics of globalization. Over and over, he says that so many injustices are a domestic issue, so what's globalization got to do with it?, and over and over, he just ignores the idea that a less-than-neoliberal policy by the world governing bodies can have everything to do with making the situation better.

Topical books All told, the two books make me wonder about the concept of the topical book. Most people only read books or articles which they already agree with. So is it just a question of putting together a series of talking points and strengthening the resolve of those on the author's side? Is it just a chance to hang out with the author for a few hundred pages, assuming that since the reader agrees with the author on the main topic, the other topics will fall into place too?

In Defense of Globalization felt like just hanging out with Jagdish. His arguments have an arbitrary bent to them, and a large number of anecdotes are first-person recollection. There is something of a central theme---all boats rise in a rising tide---but Jagdish is happy to digress from it to anecdotes of interesting books he's read by international authors, his life in India, or conferences he's attended. The chapter headings do not delimit points in an overarching argument, but list categories of anecdotes.

Gay Marriage meanwhile, seems much more clearly focused on its agenda. Frankly, I don't think Jonathan had 200 pages to say on the subject, so there's a lot of repetition; but that made the thing into a book instead of a long article, which means that he's off on his book tour and articles and reviews are being written. The central argument of the book will therefore be propagated around, and may reach the ears of the people who were completely turned off by the subtitle.

Also, as a social conservative, Jonathan has a subagenda: he's somewhat disillusioned with the `party on!' school of urban living, and those conservative facets of the book will reach a large number of people who picked up the book thinking they'd agree with everything. That is, they'd be engaged, instead of just told pleasing stories.