Thread by @Helenreflects

This is utterly fascinating. Why did the UK react so slowly, in spite of seeing the pandemic unfold in other countries?
"British scientists assumed that such drastic actions would never be acceptable in a democracy like the UK." 1/
reuters.com/article/us-hea…

Yet here we are now. It's April, and democracies like the UK and US which highly prize individual freedom are in stringent lockdown. The presumption that somehow effective but stringent actions from SE Asia would not work there bc of cultural differences is dangerous. 2/

So take for instance S Korea (a democracy, btw), which used extensive data mining to, for the moment successfully it seems, track spreaders and test extensively. We should be indeed wary of use of data in this way, but... 3/

nature.com/articles/d4158…

But I find it a bit strange, if that's the word, that people were saying S Korea measures would never fly in a western democracy which prizes individual privacy, given the UK's passing of the snooper charter publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/lbill… 4/

This was passed as law in UK in 2016 "The new surveillance law requires web and phone companies to store everyone’s web browsing histories for 12 months and give the police, security services and official agencies unprecedented access to the data." 5/
theguardian.com/world/2016/nov…

More info on the S Korean strategy here (a nice, nuanced take I think) : theconversation.com/coronavirus-so…
I am not denying that all of this raises significant concerns about privacy, and one should remain vigilant about the use of data by governments. 6/

But... I also think people in Western democracies have no idea how much snooping power they have already ceded to their governments! "Following the Sept 11th attacks of 2001, domestic and international mass surveillance capabilities grew immensely" 7/ en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surv…

And I'm not even saying anything here of the uncontrolled mass surveillance powers of private tech giants (e.g., Zuckerberg, Facebook) which are uncontrolled, it seems. So in light of all this the western concern for S Korea's strategies to contain the virus are hypocritical 8/

One thing that philosophers might contribute to these discussions is: what's the right way forward in governmental use of our data and mass surveillance? Those powers exist, in the west, let's not kid ourselves, post 9/11. 9/

Rather than put our heads in the sand about the kinds of powers government de facto have over us, we need to think more about how those powers can be used in a transparent, accountable fashion, balancing various needs such as privacy and public health 10/

In sum, we need more discussion of the nature of political power in democracies. Essentialist notions of "this is the west and [East Asian] measures would never fly here" is lazy and complacent. That's the sort of thinking that cost Russia back in 1905 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Jap… 11/

There are lots of philosophers, including among many others John Dewey, José Medina, Jane Addams, James Bohman, who have argued that western democracy is not some fossilized entity, but that democratic institutions live & breathe and need to be constantly re-evaluated 12/

If we are unreflective about our institutions and just make essentializing assumptions about the west and what measures would and would not work here, without a thorough consideration of all options on the table, we're potentially sleepwalking into bad territory. 13/

I'm going to give one example of how philosophy can be relevant helping us become more reflective about our democratic institutions--American pragmatist philosopher's John Dewey's Public and its problems (1927) in the light of western governmental responses to #COVID19 14/

(I am sorry to be turning this into a rather long thread it seems. Take from it what you will...). So John Dewey examines the viability of a genuine democratic society in the face of the major technological and social changes of the 20th century (writing in 1927). 15/

John Dewey argues that a lot of what we do are private actions that don't impact other people. But some stuff we do *has* effects on others. When private actions have an effect on others, including a negative effect, to a large enough group, that group becomes a "public" 16/

The public has a stake in how private actions are regulated, because of potential adverse effects on them. So they delegate the powers to enforce such regulation to officials, whose job it is to intervene in undesirable actions w public effects 17/

But then, as political philosophers since basically ever since political philosophy was invented have noted, you get problems. Officials might use their powers to enrich themselves. See: despotic governments. There's another problem too... 18/

It's not always easy for the public to realize adverse effects of private actions to them, the public might also fail to understand which sorts of actions are to their interest. Dewey had these concerns bc science was expanding at a fast rate, but public was not keeping up 19/

Dewey responded to Lippmann's 1922 book “Public Opinion”, which argued that people don't know the world directly. They live in a pseudo-environment as the real environment is altogether too big, too complex, and too fleeting for direct acquaintance" 20/
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Op…

In the face of this Lippmann was pessimistic about the prospects of democracy, which requires the public to recognize its interests, recognize solutions to problems affecting them, and to vote in ways that further those public interests 21/

By contrast, Dewey believed in and offered a robust defense of democracy, even in the light of the increasingly difficult specialized knowledge that is required for governments to safeguard collective interests. He thought democracy was effective, but there's one big obstacle /22

That problem is an illusion called "individualism", "a theory which endowed singular persons in isolation from any associations which they deliberately formed for their own ends" (Dewey 1927, pp. 86-87). /23

Dewey thinks we have (for various complex reasons I won't go into here) a mistaken belief that we are independent from each other. If we are independent, it would seem government is just an infringement on our liberties, not something that safeguards our public interests /24

"The foe to be dreaded is interference of government. Political regulation is needed only because individuals accidentally and purposely...encroach upon one another’s activities and
properties." (Dewey 1927, 92). /25

Such reasoning leads to laissez-faire capitalism, which can have disastrous consequences (note, Dewey wrote 2 years before the big 1929 crash of Wall Street). It is disastrous because it neglects the importance of human communities in which we develop skills, work etc. 26/

Reflecting on the industrial revolution, Dewey asks "was a movement, which involved so much submerging of personal action in the overflowing consequences of remote and inaccessible collective actions, reflected in a philosophy of individualism?" (Dewey 1927, 98) /27

Not recognizing how we are interdependent, and how private actions can have bad public consequences has another problem for Dewey... the presumption that laissez faire capitalism, individuals acting purely in their self-interest can somehow serve the public good 28/

Josh Braun summarizes "capitalism has run amok & while the government itself has carefully avoided laying hands on its citizen-consumers, industry has risen to become the new organizing force in society." wideaperture.net/blog/?p=199
This is super-helpful summary of Dewey 1927 29/

Now let's look at Amazon. Amazon's response to #Covid19 has been flexible, nimble, and of course entirely in their own interest, a stunning contrast with sluggish governmental responses. John Dewey foresaw this back in 1927. Is this what we want? /30

theguardian.com/technology/com…

This is a pretty bleak picture so far. What's the solution? One solution is well the public just can't understand anything that's scientifically specialized (e.g., pandemics) so we need rule by elites and technocrats. Walter Lippmann advocated for this solution /31

Dewey is not unrealistic about democracy, he realizes it has problems "The new age of human relationships’ has no political agencies worthy of it. The democratic public is still largely inchoate and unorganized." (Dewey 1927). Yet he provides a robust defense of democracy /32

One key argument Dewey is making is that democracy is not some sort of really rare, peculiar, Greek institution but that it's more robust. Democratic decision making emerges all the time in America in townships, school districts, etc. /33

The problem is that, as science and technology advanced, the public is ignorant, and people often have little idea about what effects policy changes might have, they're asked to vote on the basis of superficial criteria /34

Lack of scientific literacy is thus a serious obstacle to democracy. It also allows big businesses to fill the vacuum left by government unwilling/unable to take responsibility. The quote below is remarkably prescient about FB and Amazon (Dewey 1927, p. 120) /35

So what Dewey is saying here is: if the people are not able to (because of lack of scientific literacy) vote in an informed way, then we are at the mercy of unaccountable companies who just work for their own interests. Scientific literacy is vital! /36

Specialization and abstraction in all aspects of daily life (in 1927, but even more so today) thus serve to help the wealthy few at the expense of the public and its interests. We need better science education and communication. /37

Okay, I'm going to this long thread here - I just want to conclude that Dewey's 1927 book is very relevant today, that philosophy can help us be more reflective about what we want our democratic governments to do in light of the pandemic. /38

Essentializing claims about how westerners do things differently, how they value individual freedom (because they're westerners) are not helpful and leave us at the mercy of poor public policies and the action of unaccountable private companies like Amazon /ends