To a great extent, "Weberism" would probably lead to a regulated market economy as we know it... but I'm not sure that it would be very much like OTL. Much less emphasis on ideological values, for instance, and much more on utilitatarian arguments. We often talk about what's right, whereas Weberism wants to talk about what works. To some extent, this does underline the criticism of his ideas, that his doctrines lend themselves very well for a "might makes right" attitude.
Sure, but... couldn't that subscribed idea of "let's focus on what works" devolve into another fixed ideology focused on defining what's right? All ideologies can be corrupted, after all, and i'm interested in discussing how people will distort Weber.

Thing could get creepy, if the wrong persons take charge. On the other hand, you could also just get a somewhat more bureacratic government, a somewhat more free market-oriented economy, and some very strong anti-corruption laws. I still think the general attitude of a Weberian country would make it very alien to most OTL Westerners.
Aside from the purposefully strong anti-corruption laws, i still can't discern between this new idea and the government that, say, the US currently has.
 
I mean, I can see it having some more technocratic aspects-stronger emphasis on civil service qualifications, maybe a more "culture warrior" bent but one that's unmoored from religion as a factor in culture explicitly. Perhaps a bit Moyihan Report-ish, or rather the Moyihan Report as popularly understood.

@Skallagrim with respect to your point about cartels, the issue is that healthcare already is a cartel or set of cartels-oftentimes there's not a lot of localized competition in the US, and it's a industry that tends to the monopoly or cartel due to increasing mergers and integration of companies. Also, what country are you from? The two examples of countries I know of with a set list of acceptable healthcare insurers have stringent regulations on things like costs and letting people sign up and to some extent subsidize basic plans.
 

Skallagrim

Banned
Sure, but... couldn't that subscribed idea of "let's focus on what works" devolve into another fixed ideology focused on defining what's right? All ideologies can be corrupted, after all, and i'm interested in discussing how people will distort Weber.

It's possible that such a whole meta-study would arise, although "the fact that it's efficient makes it right" is in itself a distortion/radicalisation. To me, that is a very strange idea (because that is my actual field: ethics -- and a world that distorts ethics away into a mere corollary or a utilitarian process is really alien to me.)


Aside from the anti-corruption laws, i still can't discern between this new idea and the government that, say, the US currently has.

Consider, for instance, populist politics. The USA is currently rather.... saturated with those. A Weberian system would in all likelihood leave far more power in the hands of unelected experts. He was writing in the German Empire, and his suggestions for the Weimar Constitution were somewhat limited, but he argued for:

-- A well-ordered bureaucracy that can function "in spite of politicians", essentially. The way he describes it is just about militaristic, with strong hierarchy and a mindset of efficient operation.

-- Experienced politicians, and measures to keep unexperienced ones out. (Voting threshold, perhaps? That's where my mind goes. He was vague.)

-- Parliamentary supremacy: head of government appointed and dismissed at parliamentary discretion. So, no directly elected windbags, and no meteoric rise of unpredictable firebrands. Also: no strongmen.

All this already goes against what we see in the USA, where there is a general tendency to attack "useless bureacrats" (coupled with the fact that bureacracy in many cases is less than optimally efficient), where presidents can re-order the governmental departments if they wish, where there are no limits on who can run for office, and where zero experience populists can rise to very high office indeed.

Regarding the free market, he was evidently more in favour of it than most in the West today. His defence of them resembled that of Ludwig von Mises, of all people, more than anything else. While not a libertarian out of principle, Weber would no doubt suggest something more "market-oriented" than we are actually used to in the OTL West (likely combined with his ideas about markets being efficient). I'm spitballing here, since he never got into detail, but the way I read his ideas, you see things like:

-- As few and as simple taxes as possible, kept efficient and without loopholes. Expect stuff like a flat tax, or a universal sales tax, or even a universal land value tax (cross-pollenation with Georgism? It's not impossible!)

-- A way more hands off approach to social security than even the USA has. Nothing like medicare or medicaid. Instead, what Reagan suggested when he was shilling for Goldwater back in the '60s: social security reduced to a simple legal obligation to insure yourself for old age, disability etc. with any free market provider of your choice.

-- On the other hand, his ideas about the Protestant ethic and its inherent superiority could lead to an attempt to steer people away from "laziness and indulgence" by taxing certain products extra. (A sort of thing that is, ironically, always controversial in TL's USA, but ought to be considered utterly normal in a Weberian society.)

Then there is, fundamentally, the place and role of government itself, both domestically and internationally. consider that the OTL USA (even if you consider it a smoke-screen) relies on its attitude of bringing "freedom and democracy" to justify foreign intervention. Weber would never condone such excuses. To start with: a national government exists only to serve its own people, and must do so without compromise. He'd never "hide" that behind talk about lofty ideals. He was all for Realpolitik towards other countries. No softness there. Domestically, the image has onbiously emerged of government as a rather modest apparatus. But do keep in mind that unlike libertarians or classical liberals, Weber did unhestitatingly support the fundamental legitimacy of government. He wants it small and unobtrusive, and he wants it neat and efficient, but he doesn't want it questioned. That's why something like high taxes on liquor ought to be peacefully accepted by the populace. It's a hallmark of the Weberian attitude that decisions made by the proper authorities are the right decisions, and not to be questioned by some schmuck in the street. This, too, is quite different from the attitude of the USA, where "vocally attack your government" is apparently the patriotic duty of the supporters of whichever party doesn't currently control the White House. (As Jefferson once said about that: "[The calls for my execution in the Federalist newspapers] remind me I still live in a free country".)

I think the resulting system can turn out to be a noble-minded meritocracy or a thinly veiled system of ruthless authoritarianism, or anything in between. It's not going to be as drastically different from OTL as full communism or complete libertarianism or some other intrinsically different system will be, because at its core it's going to be a mixed system (which is also the norm in OTL). But I'm fairly sure you'd notice some major differences between the OTL USA and a Weberian USA.


I mean, I can see it having some more technocratic aspects-stronger emphasis on civil service qualifications, maybe a more "culture warrior" bent but one that's unmoored from religion as a factor in culture explicitly. Perhaps a bit Moyihan Report-ish, or rather the Moyihan Report as popularly understood.

Active policies to support a certain cultural mind-set seem likely, although one has to wonder to what extent this is possible without clashing with Weber's own liberalism. I don't see him advocating for censorship laws, for instance, but a radical (mis)interpretation of his ideas might go that way, with certain books, films, works of art etc. being outlawed because they are "contrary to the national character". Critics of Weber have pointed to that potential in his beliefs, although we must keep in mind that they wrote primarily in England, during and relatively shortly after World War II. They were out to "prove" a direct link between Bismarckian Realpolitik and Hitlerianism, and Weber (who advocated for Realpolitik) was cast as a villain - a bridge between those two things - in that narrative. You get such weasel words as "Weber's ideas could easily be co-opted by authoritarians..." with the implication that authoritarianism was inherent to his ideas (which I don't think is the case at all).


@Skallagrim with respect to your point about cartels, the issue is that healthcare already is a cartel or set of cartels-oftentimes there's not a lot of localized competition in the US, and it's a industry that tends to the monopoly or cartel due to increasing mergers and integration of companies. Also, what country are you from? The two examples of countries I know of with a set list of acceptable healthcare insurers have stringent regulations on things like costs and letting people sign up and to some extent subsidize basic plans.

If you don't mind, I'll put this answer below a spoiler cut, so as not to derail the thread further. At the end, I'll bring it back to Weber.

It's funny you should mention the USA, since what I'm about to write should be more familiar to both of us, if I'm correct in thinking we're both from a certain North-West European country of which substantial parts are below sea level?

I'm not sure how the USA does these things now, what with successive presidents have very different plans, but as I suspect you know as well as I do, pensions and healthcare are semi-nationalised in the Netherlands. Quality is excellent, and there are a lot of rules and subsidies to keep care affordable for all, but actual costs are very high-- and getting higher every year. No such thing as a free lunch, after all: even if costs are deliberately kept down for the patient, true costs are still just as high, and just result in a correspondingly higher tax burden. Now, I'm not here to debate whether that's good or bad or how much a government should do. My main point is that costs are driven up more than is needed. It hardly matters for the purpose of this discussion if the raised costs are paid by the client or by the taxpayer. The same amount is gobbled up. As far as my analysis goes, the problems are as follows:

-- The insurance providers are market parties and want as much profit as possible.

-- What's capped is not how much a service actually costs, but how much a patient is charged. The government must cough up the (often substantial) difference, which means the taxpayer gets the bill, and the bill is equally substantial.

-- Politicians have very little incentive to change that, because the vast majority of successful politicians will have multiple nevenfuncties, serving on the boards of... well, insurance companies, pension funds, banks... You'll be hard-pressed to find a Dutch health insurance firm without a bunch of Senators on the payroll. Most retired (successful) politicians also hold such functions. As board members, they typically enjoy profit-sharing, so cutting the ability to make those profits would be detrimental to their own (current or future) semi-private sector income.

-- To ensure that the prices aren't actually undercut by cheaper competitors, foreign insurance providers are kept off-market (as you may know, that's in violation of EU regulations, but some unclear backroom dealing has long avoided any sanctions). Domestic providers are not somehow barred, but they do need to be accredited / fit to certain standards, and those standards are set up in such a way that small firms cannot effectively compete. This effectively keeps the "big boys" in power.

-- To get around EU anti-competition regulations, there are officially 49 approved health insurance providers in the Netherlands. But they are all owned by just ten mother companies. Some of those mother companies are formally independent, but have the same actual owners. There are actually just seven real consortia that control the health insurance market, and of those seven, just four control a market share that fluctuates around 90%. Their prices are all miraculously quite similar. Any small fry seeking to enter the market can only compete by joining such a larger consortium, precisely due to deliberately (over-)stringent government standards for health insurance providers, which will then negate its ability to compete against said consortium.

-- Insurance is mandatory, so you can't say "no thanks".

-- All the same applies, in essence, for pension funds.

Thus, we have a system that is very firmly entrenched, appeals to the interests of both the corporate and the political elites, and is quietly designed to make undercutting it nigh-impossible. To be clear, and I cannot stress this enough: I'm fully aware that quality of care in the Netherlands is great. But there's a mountain of hidden costs, most of which are a huge drag on public finances, which is slowly suffocating the whole system by making it less and less affordable. We get new cuts and cost increases with every new government, primarily because the aforementioned costs cannot be cut under the current system-- there is no incentive to cut them, and most of the public barely has any idea of how all this even works. I only know how this really works because I was involved in a whole medical ethics study regarding this subject a few years back.

Anyway, there are of course several ways to address such problems as I have described. One would be to take out the profit motive altogether and fully nationalise the whole shebang, socialist-style. By the way, I have not at any point argued that this is not a valid suggestion-- although I personally think that would cause its own set of problems. Another would be to take government out altogether, leaving eveything to free choice and free markets, libertarian-style. That, too, is valid but would also cause its own serious issues, I think. A third way (ha ha, literally "third way economics"!) to handle the above problems would be to work within the mixed system we know, and try to fix that. This, too, is valid, and of course countless anti-corruption propoals are possible. Some may be better than others, and many will - again - cause deficiencies of their own. I firmly believe there will never be a "perfect system", and that we can only choose what works best for us. I will not, in the context of this discussion, express my own preferences. This is not the place for that. I merely aimed to sketch out the problem that I perceive as currently existing.

If I'm right in my assumption that you are also Dutch, and if you happen to have a very vehement opinion on this subject, I ask that we take any discussion of the topic elsewhere, to avoid derailing the thread. That said, I don't think any heated is really needed, as I have merely sketched a problem, and not argued for or against any particular solution. As far as this thread is concerned, we'll leave that to Herr Weber! ;)

In the context of this thread, I suggested some things that Weber might have proposed, if he'd gotten around to it. His solutions would certainly be of the "third way" variety. We know he was aware of the danger of perverse incentives, and that he tended towards systemic solutions. That is: ways to prevent corruption that are pre-emptively baked into the system. This is because he explicitly admired political systems that were so well set-up that they could survived "bad" politicians, and in would fact be designed to prevent such politicians from gaining power. As such, I expect from him such policies as forbidding politicians from having side jobs (which could cause divided/conflicting loyalties). Because he was an advocate of free markets and healthy competition, I also expect his kind of solution would tend towards rules preventing politicians from limiting which parties could enter the health insurance market. He never literally suggested these, of course, but such proposals fit with his known beliefs.
 
Am i right in assuming that Max Weber was a conformist? Let's assume he was. How would he try to maintain or enforce conformity? How would he allow for dissent inside a conformist society?
 
It's funny you should mention the USA, since what I'm about to write should be more familiar to both of us, if I'm correct in thinking we're both from a certain North-West European country of which substantial parts are below sea level?

I'm not sure how the USA does these things now, what with successive presidents have very different plans, but as I suspect you know as well as I do, pensions and healthcare are semi-nationalised in the Netherlands. Quality is excellent, and there are a lot of rules and subsidies to keep care affordable for all, but actual costs are very high-- and getting higher every year. No such thing as a free lunch, after all: even if costs are deliberately kept down for the patient, true costs are still just as high, and just result in a correspondingly higher tax burden. Now, I'm not here to debate whether that's good or bad or how much a government should do. My main point is that costs are driven up more than is needed. It hardly matters for the purpose of this discussion if the raised costs are paid by the client or by the taxpayer. The same amount is gobbled up. As far as my analysis goes, the problems are as follows:

-- The insurance providers are market parties and want as much profit as possible.

-- What's capped is not how much a service actually costs, but how much a patient is charged. The government must cough up the (often substantial) difference, which means the taxpayer gets the bill, and the bill is equally substantial.

-- Politicians have very little incentive to change that, because the vast majority of successful politicians will have multiple nevenfuncties, serving on the boards of... well, insurance companies, pension funds, banks... You'll be hard-pressed to find a Dutch health insurance firm without a bunch of Senators on the payroll. Most retired (successful) politicians also hold such functions. As board members, they typically enjoy profit-sharing, so cutting the ability to make those profits would be detrimental to their own (current or future) semi-private sector income.

-- To ensure that the prices aren't actually undercut by cheaper competitors, foreign insurance providers are kept off-market (as you may know, that's in violation of EU regulations, but some unclear backroom dealing has long avoided any sanctions). Domestic providers are not somehow barred, but they do need to be accredited / fit to certain standards, and those standards are set up in such a way that small firms cannot effectively compete. This effectively keeps the "big boys" in power.

-- To get around EU anti-competition regulations, there are officially 49 approved health insurance providers in the Netherlands. But they are all owned by just ten mother companies. Some of those mother companies are formally independent, but have the same actual owners. There are actually just seven real consortia that control the health insurance market, and of those seven, just four control a market share that fluctuates around 90%. Their prices are all miraculously quite similar. Any small fry seeking to enter the market can only compete by joining such a larger consortium, precisely due to deliberately (over-)stringent government standards for health insurance providers, which will then negate its ability to compete against said consortium.

-- Insurance is mandatory, so you can't say "no thanks".

-- All the same applies, in essence, for pension funds.

Thus, we have a system that is very firmly entrenched, appeals to the interests of both the corporate and the political elites, and is quietly designed to make undercutting it nigh-impossible. To be clear, and I cannot stress this enough: I'm fully aware that quality of care in the Netherlands is great. But there's a mountain of hidden costs, most of which are a huge drag on public finances, which is slowly suffocating the whole system by making it less and less affordable. We get new cuts and cost increases with every new government, primarily because the aforementioned costs cannot be cut under the current system-- there is no incentive to cut them, and most of the public barely has any idea of how all this even works. I only know how this really works because I was involved in a whole medical ethics study regarding this subject a few years back.

Anyway, there are of course several ways to address such problems as I have described. One would be to take out the profit motive altogether and fully nationalise the whole shebang, socialist-style. By the way, I have not at any point argued that this is not a valid suggestion-- although I personally think that would cause its own set of problems. Another would be to take government out altogether, leaving eveything to free choice and free markets, libertarian-style. That, too, is valid but would also cause its own serious issues, I think. A third way (ha ha, literally "third way economics"!) to handle the above problems would be to work within the mixed system we know, and try to fix that. This, too, is valid, and of course countless anti-corruption propoals are possible. Some may be better than others, and many will - again - cause deficiencies of their own. I firmly believe there will never be a "perfect system", and that we can only choose what works best for us. I will not, in the context of this discussion, express my own preferences. This is not the place for that. I merely aimed to sketch out the problem that I perceive as currently existing.

If I'm right in my assumption that you are also Dutch, and if you happen to have a very vehement opinion on this subject, I ask that we take any discussion of the topic elsewhere, to avoid derailing the thread. That said, I don't think any heated is really needed, as I have merely sketched a problem, and not argued for or against any particular solution. As far as this thread is concerned, we'll leave that to Herr Weber! ;)

I...what? Not angry, but A) I am actually USAnian and B) this is the first time I can think of where someone's thought I was Dutch. I was thinking of Israel where IIRC the system is a little different with effectively state-sponsored HMOs to my understanding. I have my own rants about the American system, although suffice to say the whole issue is mucked up because of (pace Weber) partisan politics and a nasty tendency to the worst of both worlds.[/QUOTE][/QUOTE]
 

Skallagrim

Banned
@Skallagrim
So, basically, from a "plebeian" perspective, Weber's ideology was anti-populism, mixed with some kind of oligarchism?

He'd call it "professionalism" or something like that, of course, but a certain elitism/anti-populism naturally follows from that, yes. I'm not sure oligrachism as it's conventiobally used is the most accurate term. The biggest risk (which he himself identified as such!) was that the bureaucrats would turn into all-powerful Mandarins. He explicitly made this comparison, having made a study of Chinese cultural-religious history, and understanding what might happen when a bureacratic elite assumes true power.

That's why he was so keen on not just pushing 'bureaucratism'. He reasoned that there was nothing so powerful as a well-oiled bureaucracy ("The decisive reason for the advance of the bureaucratic organisation has always been its purely technical superiority over any other form of organisation"), but he feared the way that an over-rationalised bureacracy could contribute to the mechanisation and dehumanisation of society (which he called "the disenchantment of the world", proving he was an heir to the Romantics after all). That's why he called for counterweights to the bureaucratic power, which he saw in a) entrepeneurs (free markets and individualism) and b) an explicit promotion of cultural identity to avoid becoming an uprooted, soul-less society.

Of course, if I was part of a wealthy elite, and I wanted to co-opt a Weberian system, I'd do it as follows: to circumvent a (probable) Weberian attempt at separating politics from big business, I'd have certain family members follow business careers, and others political careers-- neither having any of the forbidden 'side jobs' anymore. Simple division of tasks, same way one son would go to the military, another to the church etc. back in the old days. And then, instead of trying to get politicians on my side by offering them nice jobs in my corporation, I'd offer those things to ranking (or just ambitious) bureaucrats instead. No doubt this would happen soon enough, thus proving that any system can be corrupted without much trouble. So, yes. Although the mechanism would be different, and the outward mindset would be different, the same basis mechanisms we know would prevail. The iron law of oligarchy at work.

(Yes, I'm now referencing Michels in a Weber thread. H E R E S Y !)


I...what? Not angry, but A) I am actually USAnian and B) this is the first time I can think of where someone's thought I was Dutch.

My bad, I really thought I'd seen you commenting in a thread a while back that you were Dutch, but I must've either totally misunderstood what you meant or have read it wrong (attributing someone else's post to you). My apologies!
 
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