 He has attracted an enormous following around the world for the best Socratic dialogues since Socrates. He's a philosopher with the global profile of a rock star. He's a Harvard professor who doesn't just lecture in halls but in stadiums. One thing the world needs is a better way of conducting our political debates. We need to rediscover the lost art of democratic argument. Tonight we have begun that debate. Even where we had strong disagreements, people were listening to one another. This gives me hope that we can elevate the terms of public discourse. Too often, political parties and politicians it seems don't really address the questions that matter most about justice and the common good, the role of markets and what it means to be a citizen. Tonight you have offered an impressive example of what reasoned, challenging public discourse can be. If that's true, then we here together will have made a beginning toward renewing democratic citizenship itself. Good afternoon and welcome to the Scottish Parliament. I'd like to welcome you to the 11th Festival of Politics where our programme of debate, film, music, photography is all about looking outwards with an international theme. I'm delighted to be chairing this event this afternoon and I would like to take this opportunity to thank our supporters that enabled this event to take place. The John Smith Centre for Public Service at the University of Glasgow and the Carnegie UK Trust whose on-going support makes this festival possible. In particular, I'd like to welcome Baroness Elizabeth Smith and her daughters and Angus Hogg, chair of the Carnegie UK Trust. We're very pleased that you've been able to join us today and I will be inviting you to get involved in the debate and put questions later. If you wish to continue to put your thoughts out there, you can do so using the hashtag FOP 2015. Today we will be looking at public service and the future of democracy. We will begin with a keynote speech from the man who has been variously described as the most popular political philosopher of his generation, Professor Michael J. Sundell. Professor Sundell is the anti- and Robert M. Bass Professor of Government at Harvard University where he has taught political philosophy since 1980. He's been described as the most relevant living philosopher, a rockstar moralist and currently the most popular professor in the world. That's a lot to live up to Professor Sundell. Described by the guardian as the man who is currently the most effective communicator of ideas in English, Professor Sundell's recent lecture tours have taken him across five continents and packed such venues as St Paul's Cathedral in London, the Sydney Opera House in Australia and an outdoor stadium in Seoul and South Korea where 14,000 people came to hear him speak. Now, we can't compete with those numbers but in all of the iconic buildings that have been mentioned, ours is surely one of the most iconic buildings of all. So it's a small, intimate gathering. Professor Sundell, you're very welcome. Thank you. Thank you so much, Presiding Officer for welcoming me and all of us in the debating chamber of the Scottish Parliament. It's a real privilege to be here and it's also an honor to help launch the John Smith Center for Public Service at University of Glasgow and I want to thank Elizabeth Smith for her part in making that possible. We're gathered here in this magnificent chamber of the Scottish Parliament to discuss public service and the future of democracy. Now, if public service means only being a politician, some may think it's not something to celebrate. I'd like to do an experiment here. How many here are under the age of 30? All right, in fact, stand up. Those of you who are under the age of 30, just for the moment so we can see you. Now, stay standing if, if you hope to be a politician when you grow up. About five people. And why? Those of you who are still standing, six, seven people, who will tell us why? Go ahead, tell us your name and why. Well, I'm Joshua Gray. I'm 13 years old. I really want to be a politician to make a difference at the local level and at the national level. Very good. All right. Who else? Who else? Someone, the woman standing up in the balcony. You just sat down. Well, tell us why. We'll get you a microphone. My name is Kelly and I'm in love with politics. It's pretty much the gist of it. I'm really passionate about politics and especially social justice concerned issues and I'd love to make a difference. Okay, well, thank you for that. All right. You can sit down now. You can sit down. Thank you. Only a small number and this may be a politically more interested audience than the population as a whole. Even here, only a relatively small number of young people seem interested today in public service if that means becoming a politician. Polls have found that politicians these days are held in low esteem. Pollsters ask the public, do you trust your family doctor to tell you the truth and 83% say yes? Do you trust school teachers to tell the truth and 73% say yes? And then they ask, do you trust politicians to tell the truth? Not 83, not 73%, but only 20% say yes. They seem to be had only, only politicians of real estate agents. Now, I think the reason people are wary and suspicious of politicians and political parties goes beyond the question of trust. It goes to something deeper. If you look at democracies around the world today, what's striking is the widespread frustration with politicians, with politics and with political parties. And the frustration, I think, is with the terms of public discourse, the way we argue about politics today. Think about it. What passes for public discourse for the most part? Perhaps until recently here in Scotland. But for the most part, what passes for political discourse consists of narrow managerial technocratic talk, which inspires no one. Or, when passion does enter, too often it enters in the form of shouting matches, ideological food fights, where politicians shout at and past one another. And what this misses, both the narrow technocratic talk and the shouting matches. What they miss is taking up big questions that matter and that people care about, including questions about ethics and about values and about the common good. Now, why is it, it's worth thinking about why it is that there is this emptiness, this hollowness for the most part in public discourse today. We see the protest against it. We see the politics of protest cropping up in many places. People searching for alternatives to established, programmed politicians. We see it in the debate right now going on in the Labour Party about the leadership. And we also see it in protest parties of the right, like UKIP. Throughout Europe, there are protest parties of the right and of the left who are searching for alternatives to the stale, hollow, empty terms of mainstream party discourse. In the US, in the Republican presidential primary campaign, the leading figure right now in the polls, there are some 16 candidates. The leading figure is none of the politicians, but a real estate mogul given to rather inflammatory public statements. He's leading in the polls. So we see this in democracies around the world, a search for a different kind of politics. And I think this is a symptom. It's a symptom of failure of mainstream political parties to address big questions that matter, including questions of values, of justice, of equality and inequality, including questions about the good life, what it means to be a citizen. Now, why is this the case? Why in the last few decades has democratic politics been hollowed out in this way? I think it's connected to a second trend in politics over the last few decades. And that's the tendency, the growing role of money and markets in social life. It's as if we've allowed economics to crowd out politics. Market thinking has crowded out or displaced public deliberation about the common good. Since the 1980s, it's as if we've been in the grip of a market faith. You might call it a market triumphalist faith. And by this I mean we've been in the grip of the assumption that market mechanisms are the primary instruments for achieving the public good. When there's a problem to be solved, including a public problem, more often than not our impulse in recent decades has been to reach for market mechanisms or monetary incentives to solve the problem. Take a couple of examples. Last year the NHS was trying to address a persisting problem of two few cases of dementia were actually being diagnosed by GPs. And so the NHS reached for a market mechanism to solve the problem, a cash incentive. The NHS began offering, you remember this, GPs 55 pounds for each new diagnosis of dementia they produced. This led to much controversy not only among patients but also by GPs. And earlier this year the program was withdrawn but it's an example of the reach for a market mechanism, a cash incentive to solve an important problem. Take another example. From the US, did you know that in Iraq and Afghanistan there were more private military contractors on the ground than there were US military troops? Now this isn't because we had a public debate about whether we wanted to outsource war to private companies, but this is what has happened over the past three decades. We've drifted in democratic societies. We've drifted almost without realizing it and now having market economies to becoming market societies. The difference is this. A market economy is a tool, a valuable and effective tool for organizing productive activity. But a market society is a place where almost everything is up for sale. It's a way of life in which market thinking and market values begin to reach into almost every sphere of life, including family life and personal relations, health, education, civic life. Now, should we worry, and if so why, about the tendency to become market societies? Well it seems to me there are two reasons to worry. One is about inequality. The more things money can buy, especially important essential things, the harder it is to be poor and the greater tendency for the affluent and those of modest means to separate, to become segregated, to live increasingly separate lives. That's one reason to worry. There's also a second reason that's the tendency of market thinking and market values to crowd out non-market values, including civic values, worth caring about. Now, I would like to put to you one or two questions, controversies about whether markets help or hurt in certain aspects of social life or civic life and see what you think because these are admittedly controversial questions. Let's take voting, voter turnout. Now, in the Scottish referendum there was a remarkable turnout, 85% nearly. And even in the last general election here in Scotland the turnout was 71%. Quite striking. Certainly by comparison with voter turnout in the US, in my country, which even in presidential elections in recent years has been just slightly over 50%. And it's well below 50% in off-year congressional elections. In the UK as a whole, one in three eligible voters did not vote in the last general election. Different countries have different ways of trying to encourage greater voter turnout. In Australia, voting is compulsory. People can be fined, I think it's about 11 pounds if they don't turn out to vote. That's a stick. But what about a carrot? What about the idea of using cash incentives to encourage people to vote? Paying people to vote is a way of increasing the voter turnout. Let's just take a survey here by a show of hands. How many would be in favour of offering a cash incentive to encourage people to vote? How many would be in favour? Raise your hand. I don't see very many hands. I see one. Who else? Anyone else? Two. No one in the gallery. How many would be opposed? All right, let's... The overwhelming majority here are opposed. Why are you opposed? What's wrong? What would be wrong with paying people to vote? Who will begin our discussion? Yes, the woman in the gallery. Yes. Stand up and we'll get you a microphone. Yeah, turn the back of the gallery. Yes. Well, I think people would turn out to vote, but they would just scribble on their paper and take the money. They wouldn't actually vote for a cause, a politician. Why not? They would just scribble on the ballot paper. Yes, and take the money. They wouldn't actually vote. How do you know? Because so many people say, well, I'm not going to bother turning out, because who am I going to vote for anyway? I don't like any of them. So if they're given a cash incentive to vote, then they will go to the polls, but they still won't vote for a cause or a politician or... Because they're not well enough informed. Is that why? I think it's possibly just disinterest or what has a politician ever done for me? Yeah. I think there is quite a lot of that at the moment. Right. And what's your name? Christine McGregor. Christine? McGregor. Thank you. All right, thanks. And the woman in the back of the gallery also is against. What's your reason? I think my reason is really quite simple, that it just is a confusing element. It's not a necessary... I don't think it is really an incentive. All right. I think most people see it as part of being a citizen. And if you don't want to vote, there are other ways of being a citizen. And do you think if people get paid to vote and vote for that reason, are they less... Are they not really acting as citizens? Is that what you're suggesting? No, I don't. I just think it's a confusing element. I don't think it adds anything to the motivation of going to the polls. I don't think their vote will be any less credible or any less likely to be serious. Okay. Now there were a couple of brave souls who voted in favor of this proposal. Remind me who you are. Okay. Tell us. Okay. Yeah. Okay. I think from my perspective, I don't think our electoral institutions are perfect. I don't think they're particularly good. And as someone on the left of politics, I know it's disenfranchised groups who don't vote. And actually, I think in a broken electoral system, I think that would be a compromise I would be willing to take from my own personal political gains, I guess. Because you think it would turn out more people who would vote on the left. Yeah. Yeah. And that would be a good thing. Yeah, I don't think, I don't idealize the institutions we have in this country in terms of power electorally fair they are. I think they're about justifying the system we have about those power relations we have in society. And I'd be happy to change that. I'd be happy to do a way which, you know, skews that debate the other way. Right. If that was the end result, I'd be able to live with that. And what's your name? Tom. Tom. And Tom, what would you say to the argument that if you pay people to vote, you cheapen the civic responsibility or the civic duty involved in voting? What would you say to that? So I think that's a fair perspective. And I think it's one that the institution is undermined already. And I think actually it's not one which I don't particularly see the need to idealize in that way. And I understand the perspective that it removes that kind of civic identity and the legitimacy from that process. But, you know, I don't have that idealism in the institution itself, I suppose. So you think that the current system has already eroded the legitimacy of the civic duty involved in voting? Why? Because the alternatives are not meaningful to those who are at the bottom? I wouldn't see it. So I don't see what we have at the moment in electoral politics as a neutral institution. I don't think it's something which you can just, you know, vote one way or the other. I think it's something which is, you know, more divisive than that. And I think it works in a certain way in a certain set of interests as it stands at the moment. Okay, thank you for that. Would you like to add a reason why you would be in favor? And tell us your name. Matthew Collier, I think a good example of this is jury duty. Many people would see that as a civic duty, but you still compensate people for the time they lose, for some of the earnings they lose, for taking part in that. It used to be the case that we didn't pay our MPs, we didn't pay councillors and so on. But now we accept that although, yes, it is your civic duty to participate in the process, receiving some compensation for the inconvenience is perfectly fair. In the case of voting, probably the reason why many people don't vote is simply that you have to take an hour out of your day, you have to go to a polling station, it's inconvenient. So having some small monetary compensation for that is a good way of dealing with that slight inconvenience and is that we see the precedence in other areas of public life where people participate. So tell me your name again. Matthew Collier. Matthew, so Matthew says, look, jury duty is a civic duty and yet we pay people, not lavishly, but we pay people to serve on juries. Matthew also gives the example of elected representatives who, there was a time when they weren't paid, but now they are paid for coming and performing public service. So do we think that paying, Matthew says, do we think that paying members of parliament is a corruption of public service? We could ask the presiding officer whether she would be in favour of removing the stipends for elected representatives. I feel very uncomfortable as being the only active politician. I feel a bit under threat. But I think if we, in the days where we could not pay particularly MPs, and I think we don't go back very far, I think if you look in the 1960s when the stipend, the reward was very, very small, it made it difficult for people of a certain background without any money of their own to actually stand for election in the first place. Not only do people stand for election in the first place, their office expenses and staff are also covered. And that's only, frankly, been in the last 40 years that we've got to that stage. And I think if you look at generally the makeup of Westminster and you look at the makeup of the Scottish Parliament, I think generally there is a wide spectrum of people who are represented there. And I think that we were wrong to think that the only one who could give public service are those who are already well enough to be able to do it for nothing. Okay, that's a powerful argument. I wonder if that argument might apply to compensating people, especially working people who have to take time off to vote in a general election, let's say. Is there someone who would like to address that argument? Matthew's analogy. We pay people for jury duty. We pay elected representatives. Why not pay citizens to vote? The Act of Voting does not take an awful lot of time in itself. You can go and it probably takes 10 minutes if there's no queue or less, in fact. Whereas jury duty can involve numerous days where you cannot work. The compensation for being around jury or being elected representative is because you can't work at the same time. That doesn't apply when you can vote in 20 minutes and you have from 7 a.m. till 10 p.m. to do it. What's your name? Katrina. Katrina, suppose that experiments showed that paying people to vote did increase voter turnout. Wouldn't that be a good thing? I think the goal of trying to increase turnout is good, but I think that doing it with money cheapens the process and devalues what you do when you vote. And I think that there are better ways to encourage and incentivise people to vote which is to make their votes feel meaningful rather than trying to do it just for the process of getting money. You used an interesting word. You said it cheapens the act of voting. Almost as if it corrupts the act. Why or how does money cheapen the meaning of voting? Because people have died for the ability to vote and to require an incentive through cash to do it. I think it cheapens that legacy in that history that we have in terms of being able to have the ability to vote for those that represent us. You think it's a civic duty to vote? Absolutely. And so to pay people to perform a civic duty cheapens it. Changes the meaning of it. In this particular context where it's not about compensation for losses in other forms. Right, thank you. You had a reply. Go ahead, please. Yeah, my name's Hugh Miller. I think there's a principle here. In a democracy we're all equal but in a financial transaction we're on different sides. So is somebody going to decide for me that it's a good thing that I should be incentivised to come out and vote? It impacts on my status as an equal member of one society. Sorry, it's Hugh. Hugh, why would paying people to vote given the different means that different citizens have why would paying people to vote be a kind of insult to the equality of citizens? Well, somebody is to decide whether to pay folk to vote and the folk who decide are taking a different status are claiming a different status from the folk who are going to vote. Oh, I see. But suppose everyone got the money. Equally. Yeah, but who's to take the decision? The Scottish Parliament. Well, we elect Parliament to carry out an executive function and the act of electing Parliament is different from the on-going business of running the country. Okay, thank you for that. I want to thank everyone who's joined in this discussion about paying people to vote. Thank you for that. Now, I want to take another example of a pressing civic challenge but also human need that some suggest could be addressed through the use of the market mechanism. The refugee crisis. Europe is struggling, and not only Europe with the question of refugees, how to allocate responsibilities for taking in and providing asylum for refugees. The numbers are increasing by the day. The European Union was trying to work out a system of quotas to determine how many refugees each country would be responsible for taking in. It's very difficult to get agreement on how to allocate refugee quotas and many countries are reluctant to accept at least a very high quota of refugees. Some have proposed using a market mechanism with refugee quotas analogous to the mechanism that is used in emissions trading, where countries can meet their assigned targets, their agreed upon targets, either by reducing their own emissions or by paying other countries to reduce theirs buying excess emission carbon credits. Some say if that system can be used buying and selling the right to pollute, why not use a tradable refugee quota system? Countries might be willing to accept and let's assume for the sake of argument they would accept higher quotas if it was understood that they could meet those quotas either by taking in that number of refugees or by paying other countries to take in all or some of their assigned refugees. Credible refugee quotas how many would be now for the sake of argument assume that would increase the total number of refugees to which countries would agree. Credible refugee quotas how many would be in favor at least of giving it a try? Raise your hand. How many would be against? So a handful of people think it's worth trying. The majority are opposed. Let's first hear from those who are opposed. Someone who objects in principle to tradable refugee quotas what would be your reason? Yes. Stand up and we'll get you a microphone. I think it implies that there's no other value to the refugees and it seems to not just morally weird but economically weird because it implies that there are no skills amongst those refugees that it wouldn't be an economic benefit to have in your country which it could be in terms of their skills and their contribution to society so it makes them seem like a liability and something you want to get rid of because it is like the carbon trade example. That seems like the wrong kind of incentives and the wrong way to think of people. It's the wrong way to think about people about refugees because the trading scheme makes refugees seem like people to be gotten rid of, you said. People to be gotten rid of or kind of think of them as product in some way to not think of them in a... Yeah, it's a dehumanizing thing and it also it belittles any kind of value that those people may bring to your own country or your own economy, I think. It devalues the human beings. And what's your name? Nicola. Nicola. Okay, thank you for that. Who else? Nicola thinks it's dehumanizing that it's demeaning to the refugees to put a price on their head, so to speak. What do you say? I think maybe it's not an ethical problem at all and that what the problem is what's often called unintended consequences. I think they're not unintended consequences. I think they're entirely predictable because what you're doing is incentivizing people to make money and they make the most money by gaming the system. I think you're incentivizing people to game the system. You're incentivizing people to go lay waste to other people's countries to produce refugees, to ship and trade refugees. People will find all sorts of ways of maximizing their earnings. Well, it is true that if countries faced with this incentive thought they could make even more money by fomenting civil strife in countries to increase the number, that would be deplorable. But let's assume for the sake of argument that that rather extreme scenario wouldn't come into play and that the incentive would simply be the more refugees one takes in being offered through the central system, the more refugees one takes in, the more the country makes. Now, Nicola said she thinks this changes our view of the refugees, dehumanizes them, turns them into products or commodities. That's a powerful moral objection. Those of you, a handful of you who think it might be worth a try, who has a reply to Nicola's moral objection, the objection about dehumanization? Yes? I agree that it dehumanizes the refugees, but our government and our media in the UK have already dehumanized the refugees. That moral evil has already occurred and the quota system might lead to the UK doing something to help these people rather than standing by and saying it's not our business. Uh-huh. And what's your name? David. David. So you think that refugees have already, sadly, been dehumanized and so maybe this cash incentive would at least find more of them places. I think it's a less bad option than where we are just now, but it's bad. Interesting. All right. So there's one argument in favor. Is there anyone else among those who are in favor who would like to address Nicola's argument that this would dehumanize and instrumentalize, commodify the refugees? What would you say? Yes, in the back, in the gallery. Stand up and tell us your name. My name's Lisa. I think there may be countries that really need labor who need young people to come into their countries and help them help rebuild their countries, go into industry. They might need teachers. They might need nurses. There may be countries that really need skills that refugees can bring and there may be countries that are actually full and don't need anymore and it might be a way of encouraging countries who want young people to go in and welcome them rather than turn them away. And what's your name? Lisa. Lisa, what do you say to the argument that this commodifies or dehumanizes or demeans the refugees? Well, I think if you enable refugees to go to a country that wants them, it doesn't dehumanize them because people will welcome them. Right. What about that? Someone who disagrees if countries can buy and sell refugees? The ones doing the buying will be welcoming them. Lisa says, who has a reply? Yes. I think that's quite a flawed approach to look at it because it's kind of applying a very superficial currency to something that should be looked at in a human more understanding way that it's just like you were saying, it's applying market forces to try and address a very human issue and it's not an appropriate means, I suppose. It's an inappropriate means, it's a superficial currency but suppose it worked. And tell us your name. Oh, Sophia. Sophia. Suppose it did lead to more countries accepting more refugees. Then would you say, as was suggested earlier, maybe it's demeaning, but haven't we already by neglect demeaned refugees and maybe at least this is a way of persuading, inducing more countries to take in more? What would you say to that argument? I'd just say it's not sustainable and I think there's too many loopholes that can go wrong in that and there'd be too many places where things can go wrong and it wouldn't be a practical approach to that, I suppose. Yes. Hi. I think my name is Giuseppe Faronia. I think we're missing a point. We're not talking about immigrant here and I'm one of them. I came from Rome and I'm a nurse and I've been here for 18 years and I married a Scots lady. So Alpha Scottish there. But we're talking about refugees, people that are fleeing somewhere, people that needs our help. And so how did you vote? Are you for or against this refugee trading? Definitely against it. You're against it because? Because it's no human. Because one day hopefully never, Scotland is a beautiful place, I love this country, but one day we may be the refugees. But the argument in favor that we've heard is that this will give countries an incentive to accept more refugees, not fewer. Isn't that an advantage? Why do country needs... Why do they need this? Why do they just have to think of people and ask people, people that need our help? Yes. So my name is Sophie and I agree with Sophia. I think that it's missing, it really is missing the point because it's not about accepting a number. It's not a product that will sit somewhere in a storage hall. It's about integration. And I think that's the argument that comes forward. So there's a potential for abuse by allowing countries to trade off. Even if you try to secure a standard of integration work that then kicks in, I can't see how that would be an even economic sufficiently suitable solution to the problem. Wouldn't it not incentivize poorer countries to take in people without any solutions or integration work that would actually allow refugees to become part of society? So we're setting ourselves up for failure and that would be an unintended consequence of the sports system. Yes. I agree with colleagues who've said that dehumanizes the refugees. I think a fundamental point that's been missed though is that we debase the societies themselves. So if rich societies can get away with taking out refugees by paying money to other less-worthy societies, then I think that fundamentally corrupts those societies and us as a community of nation states. So a society that buys or sells refugees is corrupted. I think indeed, very much so. And why, and what's your name? Michael. Michael, and it's corrupting even to the society why exactly, because every society has a duty to take in refugees consistent with its capacity. Absolutely it does and this would allow the richer societies to get away with that duty and I think that's what's fundamentally wrong about it. It would allow rich countries to outsource that duty to other countries and that in itself would be a corruption. It's interesting, we've heard among those who object, we've heard some practical objections but we've also heard some moral objections and moral objections have to do with corrupting or cheapening the way we regard and treat refugees, the dehumanizing argument. And now we've heard from Michael another version of the argument from corruption which worries not only about the refugees being demeaned, but also about the countries themselves being corrupted by outsourcing moral responsibilities. What this discussion highlights as did our discussion about paying people to vote is one important possible objection to the use of market mechanisms in various areas of social and civic life. The objection is, the worry is that at least sometimes money cheapens or corrupts or changes the meaning of a good or of a social practice. And we see this happen all the time. Some years ago in Switzerland they were trying to decide where to locate a nuclear waste site. No one wants one in his or her backyard. They identified a small town in the mountains of Switzerland it's likely to be the safest place but under the law they had to get the approval of the residents of the town. So before the decision was made a survey was taken and they asked the residents of the town if parliament chooses your town for the nuclear waste site will you vote to approve? Despite the risk 51% said yes then they asked a second question. They said, now supposing that parliament votes to compensate each resident of the town every year a sum of some and get with some four or five thousand pounds then would you vote to approve now how many said yes do you suppose? What would you guess? 80? 85? Other guesses? 40? 25% said yes when offered the money the figure fell in half from 51 to 25% now from the standpoint of standard economic analysis this is a puzzle normally if you offer to pay people to do things more people not fewer people will be willing to do that thing so what happened in the Swiss town? How do you explain this? Well you might say when they were offered the money they might have thought gee this must be riskier than I thought but they tested for that and they found that the estimate of the risk was about the same before and after the monetary offer was made they asked the people who changed their minds they offered the money why did you change their answer? We didn't want to be bribed it was the argument from corruption from cheapening a civic duty it seems that without the money the 51% were prepared to make the sacrifice for the sake of the common good out of civic virtue but when money was offered the meaning of the question changed although it was no longer a civic question it was a deal it was a pecuniary question and people were not willing to sell out the safety of their families or themselves for money this is a second example of how market mechanisms can crowd out non-market values in Israel every year they have what they call donation day where high school students door to door raising funds for charitable causes one year with the help of some economists an experiment was done they divided the school children into three groups the first group was given a short motivational speech about the moral importance of the causes for which they were raising money and sent on their way the second group was given the same speech but offered a 1% commission on all the funds they raised the third group same speech but they were offered a 10% commission on all the money they raised which group do you think raised the most money for charity what do you think the 1% what do you think 10% anyone else just shout out the zero the ones offered none those those who were offered no money no commission raised the most now market principles did were vindicated to this extent those who were offered 10% did raise more than those who were offered 1% but those who were offered no commission raised more money even those offered 10% here again we find that standard economic reasoning is confounded if you're offering people money and incentive normally you would expect those people to work harder to raise more money so what happened well it seems that here as in the swiss town and as some of you worry would be the case with paying people to vote offering the money changed the meaning of the activity what had been a purely civic charitable activity was now changed with the offer of commissions into a kind of a job for pay but the money instead of just adding one incentive on another actually eroded or corrupted the civic spirit the charitable altruistic spirit that motivated the kids who were doing it for love of the cause well what do these examples in our discussion suggest one of the things we can learn from these examples I think is that an assumption commonly made by mainstream economists may need to be rethought economists often assume that markets are inert they're neutral they're inert in the sense that they do not touch or taint or change the goods the value of the goods they exchange and this may be true enough if we're talking about buying and selling material goods if you sell me a flat screen television or give me one as a gift it will work the same either way the value of the good will not be affected but the same may not be true where market thinking and cash incentives reach into non-material spheres of life personal relations social life civic life in those domains as in the examples we've been discussing it may be that money or market mechanisms change the value of the social practices in question if this is true then it's a mistake to think as many economists teach and claim it's a mistake to think that economics is a value free science of human behavior and social choice changes the meaning of goods drives out moral and civic values worth caring about then in order to decide where markets serve the public good and where they don't belong we have to deliberate and argue about how properly to value the goods in question and those debates, those arguments are not scientific arguments they raise moral questions how to value goods whether it's the relation of the GP with his or her patient whether it's the voter on election day whether it's the proper way of treating and regarding refugees why then to go back to where we began why is it that the market triumphalist faith and markets as the primary instruments for achieving the public good why does that faith run so deep why has it held us many of us in democratic societies around the world in its grip more or less for the past three decades any critique of the role of markets has to take seriously the appeal of market thinking and that appeal I think runs deep it isn't just that markets deliver the goods and that's why we love them I think that market mechanisms and market thinking seem to offer a way for pluralist societies to avoid engaging directly with hard ethical questions and political parties and politicians they sense this they have an incentive almost or a desire to reach let me put it this way politicians and political parties often want to avoid engaging with hard ethical questions because we live in pluralist societies where people disagree about ethical questions about the meaning of justice about the nature of the good life about how to value goods people disagree these are hard moral questions and so it's almost as if we've persuaded ourselves that the way to respect our disagreements is to try to avoid them to try to leave moral argument in public square to avoid the conflict and possibly even the coercion that imposing the values of some on others might involve and this I think is the deep appeal of markets they seem to provide a neutral way of deciding hard questions without engaging in the messy, difficult sometimes contentious activity of arguing about how to value goods but this strategy of avoidance is a mistake it seems to me it's a mistake for two reasons first it's not possible to decide these questions without engaging in moral argument about how to value goods be they the doctor patient relation or the meaning of refugees and the responsibility to take them in these ethical arguments are unavoidable for democratic society so it's not possible to be neutral but the second reason it's a mistake is that it leads to an empty politics to the hollowed out public discourse that afflicts so many democracies I think one of the reasons to go back to the frustration with which we began the reason for the frustration with the terms of public discourse is that people want politics to be about big things we know that you know that in Scotland 85% of people turning out when big things were at stake and regardless of which side of that debate you were on the civic energy and activism and participation and argument contentious though it was that was something to behold that was a great and important civic moment of a kind that's become quite rare in democratic societies and so I think what we need to rejuvenate public life and democratic discourse is not to avoid not to flee debate about big issues including big ethical issues issues about values but to engage with those questions not because this kind of engagement will lead to agreement these are hard questions but because real respect for fellow citizens with whom we disagree does not come from ignoring the disagreements sweeping them under the rug real respect comes from engaging with listening to arguing with views we may not share because even where those disagreements even where those debates don't lead to agreement we need to a better kind of politics and to a deeper kind of civic respect so I think we need to try to recover the lost art of democratic argument we need to cultivate the art of listening to one another and engaging with moral views ethical arguments with which we disagree one final argument that some economists may make in favor of the market is that these civic virtues the civic virtues I'm describing are in short supply and we shouldn't use them up let me give you a concrete example of how this argument arises some years ago a British sociologist Richard Titmuss wrote a book he studied systems of blood donation in the UK and in the US in the UK you couldn't buy and sell blood you could only give it in the US you could either donate blood or you could sell it he compared these two systems and found that empirically the British system worked better with a reliable supply less tainted blood and so on but he also made a moral argument he said once blood is bought and sold it corrupts it erodes the sense of responsibility to give it and his book was debated including by economists and one of the leading economists of his time a man named Kenneth Errol wrote a critical review of the book saying it's a mistake it's a mistake to rely on altruism if the market will do the job and the reason it's a mistake is that altruism is a scarce good and we should not use it up where we can rely on self-interest instead here's what this economist wrote like many economists I do not want to rely too heavily on substituting ethics for self-interest I think it is best that the requirement of ethical behavior be confined to those circumstances where the price system breaks down we do not wish to use up the scarce resources of altruistic motivation so the idea is this if the supply of altruism and generosity and civic virtue is fixed as if by nature like the supply of fossil fuels then we should try to conserve it the more we use the less we have and this goes back to the idea of a British economist who in the 1950s gave a famous speech where he said you know really what the economist economizes above all when it comes right down to it if we economists do our business well by promoting policies that rely on self-interest we can I believe this economist said contribute mightily to the economizing of that scarce resource of the most precious thing in the world now to those not steeped in economics this way of thinking about the generous virtues is strange it ignores the possibility that our capacity for love and benevolence is not depleted with use but enlarged with practice think of a loving couple if over a lifetime they asked little of one another hoping to hoard their love how well would they do wouldn't their love deepen rather than diminish the more they called upon it would they really do better to treat one another in more calculating fashion to conserve their love for the time they really needed it similar question can be asked about solidarity and civic virtue in our societies on a mystic view of virtue as scarce fuels the faith in markets it propels their reach into places where they don't belong but the metaphor it seems to me the metaphor is misleading altruism generosity solidarity and civic spirit these are not like commodities that are depleted with use they are more like muscles that develop and grow stronger with exercise one of the defects of our market driven societies is that we are letting these virtues languish to renew our public life to renew democratic life we need to exercise them more strenuously thank you very much that was stimulating and thought provoking I'm sure that the audience will have questions for you if you are in the well of the chamber if you've got a question put up your hand and if I spot you I will try to indicate where you are to the microphone comes up you don't have to manhandle the microphone you don't have to lean over it all you need to do is stand up for the people who are in the galleries along the top there is roving microphones if I indicate that I'm going to call you will you keep your hand up to the microphone gets there and it would help I think if you were to stand up when you do so okay are we all clear right let's go who wants to ask a professor a question a future First Minister right in the front okay young man thank you Presiding Officer something I hope to say that a bit more in the future but anyway on to the question something that was agreed to in this Parliament quite recently was votes at 16 and 17 in next year's parliamentary election I think this is something that we would all agree is a big step forward how would you say it would be a good way of engaging them in the whole election process and really reach out to them more to encourage them to turn out and vote rather than just say nothing to do with me thank you I love the question Josh thank you for that question though I thought you were going to say shouldn't this house come out in favour of 13 year olds voting you're ready we're looking good okay well I think the experiment with allowing 16 and 17 year olds to vote was a very good one because it provided a kind of civic education the kind of civic education that can only come from real life from actually engaging in politics now there are those who are like Josh and who come by their love of politics at a much earlier age and I can remember growing up I was always a political junkie and I followed elections and drew great charts and kept track of every constituency and I think from about Josh's age maybe maybe he does the same and and I was also when I was in school involved in debate have you participated in debate Josh unfortunately not but something hoops being built I think you'd be good at it so these are ways of encouraging an interest in politics introducing debate in schools is a great way of promoting not only an awareness of public affairs but also the ability to argue which is what we really discussing today as a kind of lost art and considering counter arguments and how to respond to counter arguments or whether maybe sometimes in the counter arguments so this habit of reasoned public reflection arguing in public about questions that matter whether it's done in debate through school or later in a chamber like this is one of the best forms of civic education it provides an incentive to read the newspapers to learn about public affairs because if you have to make and defend an argument you have a pretty strong reason to follow public life and to learn about it but I think enabling 16 year olds to vote especially when we see the numbers who turned out in the referendum I think that's an impressive evidence that young people can become engaged in politics but only I think if the questions matter and if the questions don't matter it doesn't matter whether you're 16 or 86 it's hard to summon the motivation to care so I think that's our responsibility Okay, anybody else? Right, the gentleman with the check shirt and the second row stand up and the microphone will get you Thank you, my name's Leslie Can I just go back to your discussion on refugees forgive me for saying this but I think it's the long end of the telescope you're looking at is to find out why people become refugees and from my point of view there's two things one is climate change because the world one half of the world is getting warmer and people are moving away from the warmer climates to the colder climates yes I know for that but the main reason is wars now, going into a little discussion regarding this we went into the war with various countries and created a tremendous amount of refugees and because of that I think we have a responsibility to address that problem how you address it, I don't know but you also asked two questions but you never gave what your thoughts were on paying for people to vote how we address that I'd love to know what your argument is I'm against I'm against paying in both cases and for reasons of the kind that emerged in the discussion I think in both cases introducing the cash incentive corrupts or undermines the proper way of valuing or regarding the duty to vote in the one case and the moral duty to take in refugees on the other I certainly agree that we need to concern ourselves with the reasons that are creating these waves of refugees including in some cases what may be our complicity in the circumstances that led to the wars and civil strife that are producing the refugees though I would say that we do have independent of that historic reason which may add to our duty we have even independent of historic involvement in the circumstances of civil wars we have I think a human responsibility to help where we can Young gentlemen in the green shirt, that's it echoing on from what the young gentlemen at the front also said 16 and 17 year olds having the vote really did engage a lot of people even with the Scottish youth parliament he did have 14 year olds even as politicians within the MSYPs and it really was a great success of having people engaging in causes that really mattered to them and another question I've got for you is when it comes to politicians themselves if they've got inventives you reckon that corrupts the system of politicians and their civic duties and having high expenses claims even within the European parliament of millions and high wages right, thank you for that question I think that the way money corrupts politics and politicians is not paying them a stipend for their service we were discussing that earlier to the contrary the pay is at a reasonably high level that enables people from all walks of life not only the wealthy to serve I agree with the presiding officer on that the way money corrupts politics and politicians is when campaigns political campaigns have to rely heavily on contributions from either companies or wealthy persons we have a terrible problem far worse than you have in that regard in the US we have a terrible problem with this because our supreme court has struck down laws that were meant to restrict the unlimited campaign contributions by companies and wealthy people and so now enormous amounts of money often by a relatively small number of companies and people are dominating politics so I think that's the deepest corruption that money works in politics expenses scandals are deplorable but they are small potatoes by comparison I would just add while we're on this subject of young people in politics when I was in high school in California it was I invited Ronald Reagan to come speak and Ronald Reagan was then it was before he was president he was governor of California and he lived in the district of my school in west Los Angeles and I sent a letter to his office inviting him the school all the students in my school were to the left and so no one there to speak agreed with Ronald Reagan who was the leading voice of the conservative wing of the Republican party I thought it would be interesting to have a debate I sent a letter of invitation to his office in the capital and got no reply and then my mother read a magazine article about jelly beans so I went out and I bought six pounds of jelly beans and put them in a package with a red ribbon and an invitation and I took it to his house and at the time there were a lot of protests it was during the time of the Vietnam war so he had a lot of security guards and there were also German shepherd dogs outside his driveway and I'm afraid of dogs in the house and they wanted to know what's in the box the guards did and I said jelly beans they looked skeptically and started feeling the bag and it looked like it was just jelly beans and so they let me take it to the door and I left it with someone and a few days later he said he would come provided we didn't announce it to the press because he didn't want demonstrators to come so the day came there were about 2400 students in my high school and they all packed into the auditorium on the day and remember I told Josh I had been a debater and I had great confidence as a high school debater in my debating skills and I didn't think it would be very difficult at all to take on Ronald Reagan because he held views that were antithetical to the views of everyone in my school he was for the Vietnam War and we were against it he was against the United Nations and we were for it and he was against there was then never mind the 16 year old old vote there was a constitutional amendment pending to allow 18 year olds the right to vote instead of then it was 21 we were for that and he was against it it wouldn't be difficult at all and so I prepared the hardest toughest questions I could think of and I sat with him on the stage and I had then as everyone in my class did long hair and I took him on issue by issue, point by point question by question and each one he managed to deflect with humor, charm great respect and I realized at the end of the first half hour I hadn't really laid a glove on him and then it came time for open questions from the student body and they did the same and each time he he didn't change his views but somehow he managed to charm everyone and then the hour ended and he left and we applauded and we didn't really quite understand what had happened about what we had witnessed though we hadn't changed our minds on any of these issues what we had witnessed was a kind of political skill and appeal and personal charm that well nine years later led to his being elected president of the United States so this is just a small anecdote how about my own experience as a relatively young person engaging with the politics and political argument and what one of the things I learned is having what you may consider to be the most powerful arguments on your side but that's not everything I think what that anecdote tells us Joss is that you're not the only precocious person that ever lived the lady second row at the back with the nice sorry second row for the front excellent reflecting on the age differential perhaps between Joss and myself it occurs to me to ask if you ask that question about paying people to vote or treating refugees as kind of fodder and a commodity which I find very unattractive if you have asked that question in other audiences with a different age range or only students or only geriatrics only fossils or only Josh's have you found a different answer at merging and the same question if you have asked them in different cultures well there are and I've had the chance in recent years to do a great deal of travel engage with audiences young and old and mixed around the world on some of these questions and there are clearly different attitudes toward markets and toward the use of market mechanisms in the recourse to market thinking not so much between young and old though I think the younger generation is more open actually to the use of market generally speaking the more pronounced differences come one country to the next and here I find that skepticism about markets is well certainly strong throughout Europe and it's least strong actually in two countries two countries I've found just based on purely unscientific survey of these sessions like this one there are two countries where the faith in markets runs deepest do you want to guess which ones well yes China and the US which in some ways may seem surprising because of the radically different political systems in the US there is a very strong individualist tradition that gives strong support to what I've here been describing as the market faith in China there's been the recent experience with market liberalization and reform that's led to tremendous economic growth and so among audiences including of younger people in China there is a striking readiness to embrace the market side of these kinds of arguments and whereas in other Asian countries including India including Japan and also in Latin America and in most of Europe there is much more market skepticism with one exception in Europe Poland which may not be surprising if you think about it because Poland is another example of a country that has recently embraced market reforms and has had rising prosperity and looks to the US in some ways but those are some of the patterns that I've noticed though I emphasize it's purely impressionistic the gentleman in the gallery the case for reasoned argument and charm the internet ought to be an opportunity for such debates to occur unfortunately far too much reasoned argument is driven out by vicious abuse there'd be any advice on how that might be changed I agree that the internet though it seems to offer great hope for a more accessible universally accessible kind of public discourse has often failed precisely because it seems to prize and encourage epithets very short and sometimes vicious kinds of expression rather than reasoned argument I think the internet can be an instrument for moral and civic education and for richer kind of public discourse but only if a structure is put in place and some websites have tried to do this that encourage not just one line responses not thumbs up or thumbs down not liking or disliking but offering and exchanging reasons we tried to do this with my justice course which we put online as an experiment made it freely available online and created a discussion blog that puts questions like the ones we've been discussing and invites people to reply and also invites people to reply to views with which they disagree we haven't gotten it exactly right and I think we need more experiments of that kind of online public discussion and civic education I think it can be done we've had what we never imagined tens of millions of people watching these lectures which are after all lectures about philosophy I never imagined there would be that kind of interest but I think we need to experiment more with ways of making the internet a vehicle for genuine discussion reasoned discussion rather than liking and disliking voting up and voting down and tossing about insults thank you I've got my hands up we're very very short of time so if you could keep it brief I'll try and get through as many as possible and I'm going to announce a few in advance the lady with the white jacket on if you just stand here a wee minute I'm going to take this gentleman at the front next with the blue check shirt there is somebody up in the gallery who's waving to me has been for some time if you could go along to that lady so that'll be one two three and then I'll try and get some more in right on you go Professor Sandell I was wondering whether you could share your thoughts on the citizen side so we unintentionally not have been talking quite a lot about the system the system evolved responding to a need saying we have jobs we have lives maybe some questions are so complex we don't have adequate time that may be true or not but how do you think citizens need to change to actually live up to this idea that any questions can be put out thank you you want to take this group together I'm just indicating where the microphones are so we can move a bit quickly to them citizens need to change by resisting the temptation to think of ourselves primarily as consumers there's a tension between consumer identities and civic identities and so many of the pressures and limitations of contemporary life and market societies invite us to think of ourselves as consumers seeking the best deal and that way of thinking can in fact infiltrate and corrupt politics and it can crowd out our identity as citizens consumers ask what do I want and citizens ask what's worth wanting and how can we together aim at the common good those are two very different identities two very different questions and we need to try to find ways of recalling ourselves to our civic identities rather than to the more consumerist self-understandings in which we are steeped marinated, embroiled in most aspects of contemporary life Gordon Conway I agree very much with your arguments you seem to have left out the argument about the slippery slope if you start paying for blood eventually you start paying for other bits of people if you go on the streets of Mumbai you will find street children who've sold a kidney here in Britain we have privatised our social care system that is where professionals go out into the community and provide care to the National Health Service companies bid for that and the lowest bid wins the care workers get paid very little often barely the minimum wage and you get horror stories just one a care worker went to a house the lady she was meant to be looking after she found her at the bottom of the stairs she rang her office the office says you don't have time you've got to get to the next person leave her where she is phone 999 and leave the front door open now that seems to me where the slippery slope really gets to be damaging in society okay well there are these debates about privatisation that are going on all around us and you've given one chilling example very often when we argue about whether to privatise this or that service the debate is cast in terms of efficiency arguments now those arguments are important but they need to be supplemented with arguments of the kind we've been engaging here today which are whether privatising a service or a social practice will possibly change the motivations of those who in this case deliver the care or provide the security or for that matter fight wars when we're talking about privatised military service so in a way the argument I've been trying to suggest or propose in different ways throughout this discussion is that efficiency arguments important though they are are not enough we have to engage in the broader ethical arguments and recognise that commodifying goods privatising social practices may sometimes change the meaning and the motivations that inform those goods and practices I can only take another two so the person I've already indicated in the gallery followed by the lady right in the front here thank you stand up I completely agree with what you're saying about money corrupting civic duties and I'd argue also public services as well however at the moment public bodies have an increasingly smaller budget and have to make difficult decisions about how they spend that so one response that I think that everybody would welcome has been a tendency towards participatory budgeting and slightly more controversially personalised budgets for care services there was a really successful exercise in Edinburgh called Leith Decides whereby citizens were given a list of public services and small projects that had a monetary value next to them and they could decide which of those services were expected to continue or to ditch I think that that's positive and I think that opening out and lifting the lid on public funds is positive and no one would really disagree with that so how do you reconcile the two arguments I suppose between the corrupting effect of monetisation of services with public accountability well thank you for that and what it brings out is that in addition to bringing to bear arguments about corruption and about how to value goods you rightly emphasise the importance of participation in these questions participation as you mentioned participatory budgeting finding ways to enable citizens to have a meaningful say on services that govern our lives and this goes right to the starting point of our discussion about the sense that politics today doesn't really afford meaningful opportunities for citizens to have a say putting aside the case of Scotland over the last year and a half The Lady in the Front Have you had much luck trying to get leading politicians to listen a little less to economists and a little more to philosophers Only very modestly It's true that politicians if they don't worship economists economists have become almost the secular high priests of politics and policymaking and it's interesting how religious language is what we fall into religious language to describe the grip of the market faith I think that politicians have made economists the high priests of policy in part because they think wrongly that economics is a value free science can give them the answers that they seek and moreover answers that can avoid the messy stuff of moral argument in democratic politics I think we would do well to disabuse politicians of that I think unreasoned faith in economists and more than that I think to recast the way economics is taught in schools and in universities to reconnect economics with moral and political philosophy which is where it began with Adam Smith Adam Smith conceived economics to be a branch of philosophy not as a separate value neutral science and what better place in Edinburgh to remind ourselves of that lesson and also I can think of no better place than Scotland which has given the world a rich display of what civic energy and participation and argument and activism can look like at least on those occasions when we can bring ourselves to debate big questions that matter thank you all very much today I have found it absolutely fascinating I think when we look back on some of the clips of this we will see a lot more that the speech contains I think there are lessons there for politicians I think there is lessons there for how we engage in politics themselves Professor Sandell will be signing copies of his books what money can't buy and justice what's the right thing to do in the festival cafe bar immediately after this event so you'll get a chance to have a chat with them where you buy the book and you get it signed hopefully you can stay on for some of the events tonight in the festival cafe but can I thank you all very much indeed for coming today you like me I've found it absolutely fascinating and thank you once again