Peace, Progress, and Internal Criticism

Today, the news tells of between 50 and 150 people from Iraq's Higher Education Ministry were rounded up and hauled off into the unknown.

The universities have now been closed until the security situation improves.

I am puzzled (as I suppose many people are) at how a society can fall into such a state as Baghdad. It would seem to be the case that somebody would get tired of all of the death and violence and try to put an end to it. Furthermore, it would seem rational for the people to put their support behind whomever seems best able to deal with the violence.

But this is not what happens.

Divisiveness and Violence

At times, I think of the sectarian strife in Iraq and compare it to the political battles in this country. Iraq is divided into Shiite and Sunni. They are at war with each other - killing each other. America is divided between Democrat and Republican. The war of words gets pretty strong from time to time. A few extremists get to the point there they are making physical threats against those who belong to the other side. Yet, we seem to have made the decision that, no matter how much Americans hate each other, we will fight our battles in the polls, rather than on the streets.

Part of this is because we insist on condemning - even to those who would otherwise be our allies - who step out of bounds and suggest unreasonable harm or violence against groups who disagree with us. Certainly, there are fringe elements who cheer eco-terrorists, abortion-clinic bombers, and people who mail threats and mysterious white powder to political rivals. However, the vast majority of those even in the Party whose members stepped out of line quickly turn against those who go too far.

Indeed, I would suggest, this is where most of our peace comes from. It does not come from Democrats criticizing Republicans who step out of line, and Republicans criticizing Democrats who step out of line. It comes from Democrats (and Independents) condemning other Democrats who go too far, and Republicans (and Independents) condemning Republicans who go too far.

I do have worries that the barrier against violence is not as high as it should be. Ann Coulter's call to kill judges she does not approve of should have caused her to be roundly condemned for her words - even among other Republicans. The cry should have been that such Coulter is advocating a situation much like that in Iraq, with a round of assassinations and counter-assassinations. A defense could be made that, in this country, nobody would take her seriously. Yet, we have had judges assassinated - and the families of judges killed, just like in Iraq. The best way to keep this from becoming common is to condemn any who advocate it - to make it known that it is not tolerated here.

I do not believe that Democrats and Republicans in this country carry this prohibition far enough. They are far too willing to turn a blind eye to the lies and political distortions of political allies when used against political rivals. Slanderous attack ads should attract the ire of members even of the party of the candidate making the ad - for denigrating the Party's core values of truth and honest (if the Party has such values). However, it is at least a good thing that they draw the line on violence.

Yet, in Iraq, the situation is worse. It does little good for a Shiite to condemn Sunni murderers, or Sunni to condemn Shiite murderers. This is widely perceived as just another part of the conflict - something to be expected. Real change will come when Shiites condemn Shiite murderers and Sunni condemn Sunni murderers. Furthermore, the more closely linked the person who does the condemning, and the person condemned, the more potent the condemnation becomes.

We need to learn a lesson from the people of Iraq. We need to learn the importance of quickly standing up to members of whatever groups we belong to when they carry their dislike of some other group too far - to the point that they are engaging in immoral actions such as murder, theft, vandalism, or even lies and deception.

On this measure, there is at least the appearance that the Democratic Party as a group is healthier than the Republican Party. The Democrats allow disputes within the party. They squabble among themselves. This is often criticized, particularly when they are compared to Republican unity and discipline. However, Republican unity and discipline allows the party to unite behind and create a uniform and disciplined force in favor of some very stupid, sometimes very wrong ideas. Rather than advocate that the Democrats should be more like the Republicans, I think that the Republicans could benefit from some internal debate - from the freedom of its members to stand up and criticize the Party leaders.

Indeed, it may be a wise policy, for people who are interested in keeping one's society from moving towards the type of decay we find in Iraq, to keep the doctrine of internal criticism healthy, and never be shy to criticize those in one's own group who have taken their dislike for others into the realm of lies, deceipt, vandalism, or violence, or any threat to do the same.

The Sanctity of the University

I have a second comment that I would like to make - related to the first - regarding the decision to shut down the universities.

I suppose that, as an atheist and a worshipper of knowledge and truth, I view the University the way some theists might view a church. We cannot imagine people closing down the temples at a time of civil strife. They should be even less inclined to close down the universities. Yes, there is a danger that those who go to the university may be subject to more violence such as these kidnappings. Yet, there is a danger that people going to the mosque are at risk of some sort of violence as well. Again, that does not argue for closing down the churches.

(There may be an argument for going after a church-centered terrorist organization who is going out and murdering others in the name of God, but that is a different argument. The universities, so far as I know, are not guilty of gathering gangs of students together into an army to go out and slaughter the uneducated.)

More importantly, educated people are better at solving problems than ignorant people. President Bush created much of the mess he created because he did not care to listen to educated people. He thought that he alone - using his private pipeline to God - could come up with all of the answers and that his plans, built as they were on faith, could not fail. God would not let them fail.

If he had listened to experts in the field - allowing them to teach him rather than using his 'certain' knowledge to judge the quality of their advice - we would have been far better off as a country.

The same is true in Iraq. They, too, need to learn to respect the university and the professors who teach there as they would respect their own religious leaders. This does not mean giving them blind obedience (scholarship does not lend itself well to blind obedience, but enlightened direction), but at least respecting them and their position enough to condemn those who attack such people.

This raid, and the decision to close the universities, is going to do significant long-term damage to the country.

Never stop the learning.

The Next Campaign

For those people who are interested in making the world better than it would otherwise have been, it is time to start thinking about the next election.

There are people out there whose primary objective over the next two years will be political manipulation to make sure that the Democrats win, or that the Republicans win, the next election. I tend to think that such partisans do more harm than good. They tend to be more interested in 'perception management' (a.k.a. lying and 'bearing false witness' as a way of manipulating the voter) and too arrogant to actually research the policies that they will defend. When they do research, it tends to be research into how a particular policy plays into their program of perception management, rather than whether a particular program will actually help people.

However, both parties are made up of a different types of people - including some who are actually concerned to make the world a better place, as opposed to making themselves a more powerful person within that place. This blog entry is directed to such people.

Republicans

My advice to the Republicans is to recognize that people who believe that the earth is less than 10,000 years old and that there is no such thing as evolution are not making the world a better place. People who are so caught up in fantasy and myth simply cannot be trusted to make wise decisions in the real world.

The real world is governed by the laws of physics. There is no way to violate those laws and hope to get away with it. There is no way to violate those laws, period. People who think that they can ignore the laws of physics - people who look for magical solutions to real-world problems - are going to select solutions that fail. They are going to think, for example, that it is possible to invade a country like Iraq and that a God will make sure that everything works out for the best, if only he has enough faith.

People who cannot competently link premises to conclusions are a danger to everybody when they get their hands on decision-making power.

There are rational and reasonable people in the Republican Party. There are people who do an excellent job linking premises to conclusions - particularly on economic matters.

Yet, even here, there is a danger. Among those who competently link evidence to policies on economic matters, there are others - saboteurs bought and paid for by corporate special interests - armed with bogus arguments that assert false conclusions on the basis of bogus elements. There are people trying to muddy the waters, to obscure what is known, because they profit from our ignorance and our mistakes.

They come with a huge supply of money - and political campaigns require a huge amount of money. This puts the good Republican in a bit of a dilemma - to take the money, to accept this as payment to help muddy the economic waters and obscure the truth, in order to win the elections - or to refuse the money and refuse to muddy the waters. It is entirely likely that those who agree to muddy the waters and accept the campaign contributions for doing so will become the masters of the party, unless there are people in the party willing to stand up to this abuse.

Democrats

My warning against the Democrats is against throwing out the baby with the bath water. Yes, there are corporate corruptors who are muddying the economic waters to gain political advantage. However, the solution is not to abolish trade or markets. There is a lot to be angry about with special-interests buying political influence, making the rest of us worse off in the process.

However, these special interests are going to try to buy their way into the Democratic party as well. Political success requires money, and it is always worth while to ask how the more powerful and influential Democratic politicians are coming up with their money. Are they, too, muddying the waters for the sake of certain special interest groups, collecting contributions in the process?

Republicans have their anti-global-warming denialists to protect the special interest groups who have money to contribute to their campaign. Democrats have their anti-trade propagandists arguing for special protections for segments of the economy that contribute to their campaigns. The anti-trade, anti-globalization crowd are advancing a program that promotes poverty that is every bit as destructive of the livelihoods of innocent people worldwide as global warming threatens to be.

Democrats, no less than Republicans, need to ask, "Will these policies really work? Or are we just saying they will work because somebody out there with a fat wallet will give lots of money to those who say that they will work?"

Primaries

The place to influence either of the two parties is in the primaries. If one truly wants to make the Republican party or the Democratic party into a better party, voting in the general election has a small fraction of the effect of participating in the primaries. This means joining the party, going to the meetings, helping them to draft their platforms (and arguing for this as good as possible), meet potential candidates, and help the other party members to determine which are the idiots and which make sense.

If you live in a one-party region - a region where one party dominates and its candidates inevitably win the general election, then I would like to suggest considering joining that party. After all, the fact of the matter is that, in such a district, you have no power to influence your candidate outside of the party selection process.

Independents

I have tried working within the political parties and I have not been able to tolerate the experience for long. Both sides have a large number of policies that I find objectionable. Worse, both parties seem to be more interested in 'winning' than in 'deserving to win'. Too much of the conversation centers around the question, "Will this policy earn us votes?" as opposed to, "Will this policy help those who deserve help, and hurt those who deserve to be harmed?"

Besides, it is independents who determine which side is going to win the election. In the last election, over 90% of registered Republicans voted Republican, and over 90% of registered Democrats voted for Democrats. Independents decide the winner.

Independents need to make sure that they are rewarding the parties that go to the effort to submit the best candidates for the job, and not reward the propagandist and mud-slinger whose primary political skill is obscuring the facts while promoting hate and unwarranted fear.

On this score, the Republicans have got a lot to work to do. Recently, they have sent us candidates that can't tell the difference between truth and fiction, sell their political power to the highest bidder in a wave of congressional corruption, get 3,000 of us killed, 20,000 wounded with more on the way in a war that we did not have to fight, waste hundreds of billions of dollars that could have truly hurt Islamic fundamentalists AND fought global warming through a program of energy independence, defend a special interest group whose policies risk the destruction of every coastal city on the planet, tax our children through debt to fatten the bank accounts of their campaign contributors, replace the constitutionally provided 'veto' with the entirely unconstitutional 'signing statement', torture, arrest people without charges and hold them without trial, spy on Americans without a warrant, and attempt to dismantle the system of checks and balances.

I’ll be working with the independent project. I wish those who are involved in the other projects the best of luck, and we’ll see what we’ve accomplished in two years.

Democrat Call for Iraq Troop Reduction

According to the headlines today, leading Senate Democrats are planning to use their new power to “press for troop reductions in Iraq within a matter of months.”

Based on what?

Apparently, based on the voters. Senator Levin said,

’The people have spoken in a very, very strong way that they don't buy the administration policy,’ Mr. Levin said on ABC. Mr. Reid, in a separate appearance on CBS, said troop redeployment ‘should start within the next two months.’

So, the reason that Senator Levin is pressing for troop reductions in Iraq is because the person who sits across from me on the bus, whose sole topic of conversation has never ventured outside of (1) the weather, and (2) recent events on whatever ‘reality’ show was on the night before, says that we should pull our troops out of Iraq.

To a large degree, I do not blame the Senator as much as I blame the person sitting across from me on the bus – the person making a totally ignorant claim about what we should do in Iraq – the person pretending to know that she can solve the world’s problems without ever cracking a book on history, psychology, or economics.

What is wrong with a voter simply saying, “I do not know?”

Yet, I still blame Senator Levin and those like him to some extent. I blame them for not having the courage to stand before the voter and say, “I am going to act in whatever way will make America best off. I am going to base my decision on the best evidence I can find gathered from experts in the field. I would like you, the voter, to give me the flexibility to take whatever action the experts recommend.”

This is what worries me most about the current situation – the potential suffering that can be brought about by ignorant people pressing the government into doing something that an intelligent expert in the field could easily see was a foolish idea.

I want the Senator to come before me and say, “I got this plan from the best minds on the planet.” I am not talking about some ideologically blind ‘think tank’ that simply dismisses anything that brings their favorite theories into question. I am talking about people who make a living out of learning the relevant subjects.

They might still make mistakes. However, it is foolish to blame a person for a mistake recommended by the best minds on the planet.

This method of approaching problems leads to a different sort of problem. Imagine a Senator or a President stepping before the people and saying, “Do as I say. Do not question me, because you are ignorant, and I have access to the wisest people on the planet. Therefore, you should support my plans no matter what.”

This is dangerous. The President or Senator who demands our trust in this way probably seldom deserves it.

However, it is far easier for a voter to know whether a political figure is getting good advice than it is to know what that advice is. It is easier to determine if a President is listening to the best minds on the planet regarding climate change than it is to learn enough about climatology to actually give sound (and specific) policy recommendations.

This is why I want Senator Lavin and other leading Democrats to tell me where they are getting their expert advice from. When they tell me that they are getting their advice from the voters, I get nervous. The voters know nothing about Iraq, the middle east, or (perhaps most importantly) the psychological effects of our withdrawal on the minds of would-be terrorists.

I truly do fear that an American withdraw could result in cries of “God is Great” from the other side, seen as proof that God favors the terrorists, and that with enough faith and enough determination the jihadists can win this war against America. It could fill them with a new fighting spirit – a new determination to charge forward to the next victory.

Where is Senator Levin getting his information – his assurances – that this will NOT happen? From the average voter? That is not particularly wise.

This means that I also want my fellow voters to send a clear message to Washington. This is not a message that we should stay in Iraq, or that we should leave Iraq. It is a message to our representatives that their duty is to find experts who can actually make reasonable and informed recommendations – and to follow the recommendations of the best minds on the planet. We should send them a clear message not to listen to idiots or people blinded by simple-minded ideology when deciding on a strategy. The Bush Administration has proved that doing so is a short recipe for a disaster. One thing we do not need is another disaster.

Economics and Morality

Today, I wish to discuss the difference between economic and moral value to show that economic efficiency (at least as people typically understand it) is not a moral good.

To do this, I am going to borrow a phrase that a commenter, mike h, made to an earlier posting.

Before I do this, I want to be fair to mike. Mike was speaking (or writing) in simple terms that are appropriate for a comment for an internet blog. He left out a lot of details. I am going to be responding to Mike’s quote by adding some of those details – I think they are important.

This does not, in any way, infer that Mike was not aware of those details. In other words, I am not criticizing Mike or saying that he was wrong. A physicist may try to simplify an explanation of a physical event by assuming massless strings and frictionless surfaces – in order to focus on a core subject (e.g., the effect of gravity). My comments here are akin to adding the mass of the string and friction back into the equations.

I want to use Mike’s statement because I think he provided an excellent description of the starting point.

The idea is that trade makes both parties better off, since individuals generally know what is best for themselves. Parties will continue to trade until supply equals demand, and up to that point they were making themselves better off without making anyone else worse off. If the market price is above or below the market clearing price, then the possibility to make some people better off without making anyone else worse off still exists. That situation is not optimal.

The first piece of economic friction that I want to add back into this equation has to do with false beliefs.

The phrase that people “generally know what is best for themselves” is false and, even when it is true, it is only generally true with a lot of exceptions. People are full of ignorance.

False Beliefs

In fact, it is almost never (and, probably, never) the case that a person knows what is best for himself. In every trade that a person participates in (and every trade that a person does not participate in), there is always some piece of information out there that the agent does not have that would have allowed the agent to make a better deal. People do the best they can and, though they can never do what is in their best interest, with some luck they can do well enough.

There is a particular ‘market clearing price’ for ion bracelets that depend substantially on the claim that it improves health and has other magical effects. Economics tells us a great deal about this price and how it fits into the market. There is another price that ion bracelets would have if people were not so irrational and gullible. That price is probably $0.00. Anything paid for an object above its honest and truthful price is a loss – an instance of people believing that particular desires (for health) are being fulfilled when, in fact, they are not.

One thing we can say is that, even though I do not know what is in my best interest, I know more than anybody else does. Furthermore, if another agent were to make my trades for me, the chances are good that he will sacrifice my interests (at least to some extent) for other interests that he may have. So, we still have reason to trust each agent to make their own trades – even if an agent does not, in fact, know what is best for himself.

One of the ways to correct for this problem is by putting a high value on truth (true beliefs) - of science and reason. Truth is expensive to acquire, and none of us can afford more than a very small sliver of it. However, the fact that it is expensive for me to learn the truth about a product does not imply its true ability to fulfill my desires is reflected in what I am willing to pay for it. The two can still be very much different.

Dishonest Trade

Not only are we forced to make trades in the face of our own substantial ignorance, we must also deal with the fact that others have an incentive to deceive us. By manipulating what we believe, others have the capacity to manipulate our actions – causing us to behave in ways (engage in trades) where they benefit – trades that we would otherwise refuse to participate in if we knew the truth.

One of the ways that we can reduce the inefficiencies caused by deception is to influence the values that other traders bring to the table. Assume that we had the power to alter the values of other traders, such that they desired honest trade. That is to say, they have an aversion to deception. Through this, the value of a good obtained through deception is worth less to the agent than the value of that same good obtained through honest trade. The degree to which we can make goods obtained dishonestly less valuable to others by giving them an aversion to acquiring these goods, to that degree we can increase the incidents of honest trade.

The stronger we make this aversion to dishonest trade, the less likely others will be to trade dishonestly – even when it would otherwise profit them to do so. The tools for promoting this aversion to deception are praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment.

The market clearing price is the price at which people will engage in trade given the beliefs and desires that they actually have. Actual trade is determined by actual beliefs and desires. However, there is another price – the price that people would trade at if they had perfect knowledge and ‘good’ desires – desires such as honesty. This, I would argue, is the moral price, and it is not always the same as the actual price.

The Income Effect on Trade

Now, I would like to turn to another example – an example that I used when discussing “price gouging” in the wake of hurricane Katrina. It concerns a case in which an agent has a bottle of water to sell and two customers to sell it to. One is a wealthy person who wants the water so she can shampoo her poodle. The other is a poor person with twenty dollars who wants the water to give to her sick child.

In order to get the bottle of water to shampoo her dog, the wealthy person offers $20.01, and she gets the water.

According to standard economic claims, the water went to its most highly valued use.

Only, this is not true. If the second person had as much money as the first, we may assume that she would have bid the price far above twenty dollars. In fact, it is not unreasonable to assume that she would have clearly outbid the woman who wants to shampoo her dog. The second woman values the welfare of her child. However, she is powerless to put express that value in the marketplace.

This is an extreme situation. However, it is a type of situation that works its way into the supply and demand curves of economics. One of the reasons that demand tends to go down as price goes up is because lower-income purchasers have to drop out. When they do, it is a mistake to say that the goods actually went to those who valued them the most. In many cases, those with money get to bid resources away from those who value them more, because the rich can afford to take them instead and use them for trivial purposes.

The rich do not have to bid the price above what the poor are capable of paying for this to be a problem. The fact is, a gallon of gas at $3.50 costs a poor person more (in terms of the value of alternatives for that $3.50) than a gallon of gas to a rich person at that same price. As the price of gasoline goes up, rich people can continue to buy their SUV’s and use them for trivial purposes. As they do so, they keep gasoline scarce, and they keep the price up. This forces the poor people to do without gasoline – even when the poor person would have valued the use of $3.50 in gasoline more than the rich person.

Another way of saying the same thing is this: It is true that the poor person who decides not to spend $3.50 on a gallon of gasoline values something else more than that $3.50 worth of gasoline. It is not necessarily the case that he values what he would have been able to do with the gasoline less than what the rich person is doing with that gasoline.

To determine whether this is the case, it is not enough to know that the rich person buys gasoline at a higher price than the poor person does. We have to look at whether the rich person would have bought that gasoline if he had the same access to income as the poor person. If the poor person would have paid more for the gasoline (bidding it away from the rich person) had their economic circumstances been equal, then their differences in income is causing gasoline to go to a lower-valued use.

The greater the income gap becomes – the larger the difference between the wealth of the top 10 percent and the bottom 10 percent – the more social loss occurs by rich people bidding resources away from poor people who would have valued their use of those resources more.

This is not an argument for socialism or any type of demand that society should give everybody exactly the same income. The information and incentive aspect of markets are extremely important, and it would be extremely costly to eliminate them and try to do without. I would (and have) argued against such a proposal. It is a case of the cure being worse than the disease.

However, the fact that we have other reasons to continue to use the market to allocate goods and services does not change the fact that the free market allows rich people to bid resources away from poor people who value them more in fact.

Correcting the Income Effect

It is unwise to force everybody to equal levels of income to ensure that goods and services are actually going to their most highly valued users. However, there is another way to influence trade to at least partially correct for this problem.

I mentioned above how we can get more honest trade by giving people (through praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment) an aversion to dishonestly acquired goods. If a good acquired dishonestly is worth less to a person than a good acquired honestly, then that person is less likely to try to obtain that good through lying.

In addition, if people are given a desire to help others, then we can reduce the problem of rich people bidding goods and services away from people who have more valued uses for that money but cannot afford it. Instead, rich people may be motivated to provide goods and services to the poor that the poor would not otherwise be able to afford.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, with Warren Buffett’s multi-billion dollar contribution, is an example of this. These people placed a high value in providing poor people with goods and services that they otherwise would not have been able to afford. This provides a small correction to the problem of rich people bidding goods and services away from poor people who value them more but could not afford them.

Other options to correct for the fact that rich people bid goods away from poor people who value them more are the income tax and the estate tax.

Conclusion

So, it is not always the case that, if the price is different from the market-clearing price that we can make at least one person better off without making anybody worse off.

That depends on whether people’s beliefs about the product are true – if they are buying what they think they are buying. Every dollar spent on ion bracelets for health reason is a dollar wasted – regardless of what the market clearing price for bracelets happens to be.

It also depends on whether people’s demand is fed by good desires. Is the value that people place on a good acquired dishonestly sufficiently below the value of that same good acquired honestly? If not, then the market clearing price includes the value of dishonestly acquired goods, which do not always benefit everybody.

Finally, is this a case of rich people bidding up the price of a good so that they can use it for trivial reasons (that they really do not care that much about), bidding those resources away from poor people who value the good or service more but are less capable of expressing their preferences in market terms?

Furthermore, in all three cases, we can use morality to at least partially correct for market failure. A love of true belief, an aversion to dishonest trade, and a desire to help those who are less fortunate, mitigate against, even if they do not solve, these problems.

There are other examples of market failure, such as externalities and free riders, that I have not discussed. For some reason, economists seem to spend a lot more time on those failures than they do on the failures I mentioned above. At least, that is my perception. The reason that I discussed these failures is precisely because they are so rarely mentioned. Yet, they are cases where market value and actual value are not necessarily the same, and markets fail to make everybody better off.

Why I Am Not a Libertarian

In this weekend’s theory posts, I am tackling two topics that came up in discussion during the week.

In a response to my “Comment on the Election,” Inquisitor suggested that I might be a libertarian. So, I am going to use one of my theory posts this weekend to explain why I am not a libertarian.

The second topic that I will write about concerns the relationship between moral and economic value.

Why I Am Not a Libertarian

I was, once, a libertarian. I believed that the libertarian ideology was so obviously true that no rational person could doubt it. However, against this, I had to deal with the fact that there were a lot of intelligent people out there at least as rational as me (I was not so arrogant as to assume otherwise) who rejected the libertarian ideology.

This created a paradox.

I should say a few words about libertarianism, for any readers who do not know.

Libertarianism is an ideology that argues for maximum individual freedom and minimum government involvement in the lives of the people. "Libertarianism" actually identifies a range of views that include such things as anarcho-libertarian (people do not need any government at all) and minimal governmentists (the government should run the courts and the military and that is all).

One of these libertarian subgroups follows the ideas of the 20th century writer Ayn Rand called Objectivists. Objectivists hold that moral truths are objective and that they can be deduced by reason, and that these moral truths yield a set of conclusions consistent with maximum individual freedom and minimum government.

I was a member of this sub-group of libertarians.

However, I had this puzzle that I described at the start of the article. I could not see how any rational person could question libertarianism. Yet, clearly, come rational people did.

I asked one of my libertarian friends one day if he knew of a scholarly work that suggested that there might be problems with libertarian theory. He handed me a magazine with an article (I cannot remember the magazine or the article today) that argued that there was a flaw in Ayn Rand’s argument.

His objection applied David Hume's 'is'/'ought' distinction. Hume argued, as I have written about in the past, that he found it an inconceivable leap of logic to go from a set of purely 'is' premises to an 'ought' conclusion. He wrote that a person who was aware of this problem could see that it defeated all 'vulgar' systems of morality.

When I looked at the Objectivist argument, I found this leap.

In abbreviated form, the Objectivists argued, "Man is a rational animal; therefore, man ought to always be rational."

This has about the same logical validity as, "Man is an animal without wings; therefore, man ought not to fly."

An Objectivist reading this will likely argue that I have constructed a straw man, and that he knows a way across this gap. I have seen a number of attempts. Yet, in every case, I have been able to trace the argument through a series of ‘is’ claims, then into a series of ‘ought’ claims, with no explanation as to how the arguer made this leap from ‘is’ to ‘ought.’ At the point that this leap is made, the Objectivist is begging the question – inserting, without justification or explanation, exactly those conclusions that he is trying to prove.

Still, those who used Hume to attack the Objectivists appeared to be making a mistake as well. If we look at Hume’s argument closely, Hume did not say that ‘ought’ cannot be derived from ‘is’. He only said that he cannot conceive of how it can be done – and that any who claim that it is possible must explain how. If we interpret Hume has having proved that ‘ought’ cannot be derived from ‘is’, then we must interpret Hume as committing a logical fallacy himself – an argument from ignorance. “I am ignorant of a way of deriving ‘ought’ from ‘is’; therefore, it is not possible to make such a derivation.”

In order to turn Hume’s objection into something stronger than an argument from ignorance, we must explain why it is impossible to derive ‘ought’ from ‘is’.

I think that I have come up with an answer to that question.

The reason that ‘ought’ cannot be derived from ‘is’ is that an ‘ought’ statement is a statement about reasons for action. The premises must contain a statement about reasons for action, or the conclusion can say nothing about reasons for action. You cannot derive a ‘reasons for action’ statement from premises that are about everything but reasons for action.

The libertarian argument, like other arguments of its type – the ‘vulgar systems of morality’ that Hume talked about – begin with a set of ‘is’ statements. However, sooner or later, to get an ‘ought’ conclusion, it needs to assert a reason for action in the premises. When the argument gets to that point, it simply asserts a reason for action – a reason for action that happens (by coincidence?) to support the Objectivist’s desired conclusions.

This is where the libertarian argument fails. The libertarian argument needs a theory of “reasons for action” to make its argument complete. Once it has a theory of “reasons for action,” it can put those reasons for action in the premises of its argument, and see what conclusions follow from it.

The way that libertarians smuggle reasons for action into their argument is through the use of the term ‘rationality.’ They say that man is a rational animal. But what does it mean to be rational?

One form of rationality is means-ends rationality. This is the form of rationality that says, “If one has a reason to bring about X (as an end), and doing Y will help bring about X, then one has a reason to do Y.” Libertarians recognize (though some seem to speak as if they are the only ones who recognize) that it is an objective matter of fact as to whether a particular means Y will actually bring about a desired end X. Somehow, they think that questioning libertarianism means questioning means-ends rationality; which, they argue, it makes no sense to criticize.

Actually, the type of reasons for action that one needs to write into the premises of an argument to get an ‘ought’ conclusion are reasons to bring about X as an end. This is the true sticking point to most ‘vulgar’ moral theories – their inability to explain how they have selected the particular ends that they put into the premises of their arguments.

It is just as much an invalid leap of logic to be speaking one moment about the rationality of Y as a means, and then leap to the value of X as an end, as it is to make a leap from ‘is’ to ‘ought’. Value as a means, and value as an end, simply are not the same thing; and the objectivity of value as a means does not prove or even infer the objectivity of value as an end.

The final part of my objection to libertarianism comes from the question of what is the best theory of “reasons for action” as ends, rather than means. On this issue, I hold that desires are the only “reasons for action” that actually exist. As a result, the value of states of affairs (and of means) depends entirely on their tendency to bring about the fulfillment of desires. Even the value of a desires themselves depends on their tendency to fulfill or to thwart (other) desires.

This means such things as property rights are great, to the degree that a system of property rights fulfills desires. However, the instant that it can be shown that some other institution better fulfills desires, at that moment we leave the libertarian ‘property rights’ system behind and enter into this better system.

To illustrate where this system takes us away from libertarianism, I typically invite my readers to imagine a case in which an airplane crashes in the desert, just outside of a gated private house in the desert. The airplane survivors will die of thirst unless they get some water. The owner of the building has water, but does not wish to share it with the survivors.

Libertarian theory says that he does not have to do so, because there exists a system of natural rights and duties that yield an absolute prohibition on using force (depriving another of life, health, liberty, or property) without their consent. The owner of the water has an absolute property right in that water, and the survivors of the airplane crash have no right to demand that the water-wealth be redistributed among those who crashed in the airplane.

I deny that a “reason for action” that prohibits redistributing the water wealth exists. Desires are the only reasons for action that exist – where good desires tend to fulfill the desires of others, and evil desires tend to thwart the desires of others. The property owner in this case has desires that tend to thwart the desires of others. He is evil. Good desires would seek to redistribute the water wealth from the rich property owner who does not need it, to the airplane survivors who will die without it.

Now, good desires may prefer to have the water redistributed by the owner of the water charging a fair price – a price that will compensate the owner for the loss. However, failing that, a forceful redistribution of the water wealth to save the lives of the crash survivors is not out of the question.

This “forceful redistribution of wealth to save lives” also works when the objective is to save others from grave discomfort. It is an argument that comes out in favor of government redistribution of wealth from those who have it to those who need it – a conclusion that libertarians tend to reject.

Because the only “reasons for action” that actually exist are not property rights or some intrinsic duty not to initiate force against another. The only reasons for action that actually exist are desires; and property rights or prohibitions on initiating force only have value to the degree that they can be a part of the set of institutions that best fulfills desires.

I have nothing against taxing the rich to help the poor. Because of this, I cannot be a libertarian.

Considerations on the Minimum Wage

My comments on the minimum wage yesterday drew the most (only) direct response. Probably not coincidentally, it was the largest and most detailed part of the post to respond to. I expected to encounter resistance on this part in particular.

I would like to respond specifically to Robert’s comments to my previous post.

So the ethical question is which is worse: raising minimum wage to improve the condition of people at the bottom of society at the expense of middle and upper class society? Or keeping minimum wage the same and keeping the same struggles of today? I think I have to side with the increased minimum wage, as I see it now as people struggling to keep roofs over their heads and their children fed versus someone being able to afford a new SUV.

This is a false dichotomy. It assumes that we have only these two options, and that assumption is false.

Whenever I have written about the minimum wage, I have presented a third option – an option of education subsidies for those who are earning less than a particular income level, so that they can acquire the skills necessary to get a higher-paying job. I would further argue (if given a chance) that these subsidies include health care, housing, child care, and even food if necessary, for those who need it, as long as they are in an educational program.

This option has a number of advantages over either the “increased minimum wage” option and the “do nothing” option – though I am particularly interested in its advantages over the “increased minimum wage” option.

(1) Education produces a number of positive externalities (benefits for people other than those who get the education). We are simply better off in a community of neighbors who are more highly educated than we are among neighbors who are more ignorant. This makes the expenditure more of an investment than an act of charity.

(2) The minimum wage option only allows a person’s wages to move up to the new minimum – say, $7.00 per hour. The educational subsidy option will give some graduates a chance at work significantly above this level. Why stick a person at $7.00 per hour when we can give them something better?

It is also worth mentioning that a higher minimum wage has an adverse affect on education, because it increases the opportunity costs of going to school. By increasing the opportunity costs, we will bring it about that some people will choose not to go to school, who would have otherwise gone to school. Given the positive externalities of education, this makes the nation as a whole worse off.

Back to the claim that it is either "increase the minimum wage" or "let these people starve", I not only think it is inaccurate – but I think it is maliciously wrong to assume that somebody who does not agree with one’s plan cannot have another, perhaps better, plan of his own to offer.

In fact, this type of argument has a lot in common with the slanderous political attack ads that I wrote about in an earlier post. There is little difference between saying, “If you are opposed to my wiretapping program, you must think that we should never listen in on any al-Queida calls into the United States” and saying, “If you are opposed to my higher minimum wage plan, you must believe that we should simply let poor people suffer in poverty.”

The purpose of a minimum wage is to force a more even distribution of profit throughout the business. And in most businesses the positions at the bottom are the ones that are actually indisposible (sic) to the business.

Actually, this is false. Lower-paying jobs are those that tend to require the less thought and, as such, tend to be the easiest to automate. They also tend to produce the least marginal return for the company, so they are the jobs that can be most easily cut. On the other hand – complex jobs (requiring an educated workforce) are the types that tend to demand higher wages and are the hardest for a company to eliminate.

By increasing the minimum wage, look for Wal-Mart as well as most grocery stores (to name one set of examples) to reduce the number of full-service checkout stands in their stores and replace them with self-service stands – the way that gas stations cut back on the number of full-service pumps and went more to self-service pumps.

Look for fast-food chains to move more towards automated equipment and to shift more of the work from employees to customers. Note that they moved the soda machines out from behind the counter to a self-service station on the floor – along with stations allowing customers to add their own condiments. Movie theaters also moved their popcorn buttering station from behind the counter to stations in front of the counter to cut down on the labor costs. These are the signs of companies who decided against paying a worker a wage and, instead, decided to harvest your free labor.

Look for fast-food places and other service-related industries to automate their order-taking procedure. The customer himself will punch his order into a menu screen at the table, which will show the order on a screen in the kitchen, rather than have an employee spend the time taking the order.

Some fast-food places already automate their drive-through orders. The person you talk to when you press on the speaker button may be a thousand miles away. This way, the employee can instant shift her attention from a store that is not busy to one that has gotten a burst of customers, allowing the company to have fewer employees taking drive-through orders.

At any rate it will take more evidence to convince me that any increase in minimum wage will immediately result in people having fewer jobs.

I never said that the losses would be immediate. Furthermore, I did not say that ‘fewer jobs’ was the only harmful effect of increasing the minimum wage.

Nor would I.

Yet, the hazards that I spoke of do not have to be immediate to be bad, and losing a job is not the only way to make a poor person’s life worse than it would have otherwise been.

It will take time for Wal-Mart or a similar store to install automated checkout stands. It will likely keep its staff levels at their original level until those stands are installed. However, after the stands are installed, it will need fewer workers. In the mean time, its most immediate response would likely be an increase in price. That will not likely have an adverse affect on those in the top 10 percent of household incomes. Those people do not shop at Wal-Mart. That will affect people who are shopping at Wal-Mart as a way of stretching an average paycheck.

As another example, a fast-food chain might also respond to the higher minimum wage by raising its prices. However, higher prices will mean fewer customers. Fewer customers will mean that the owner will not need to replace the next employee that quits.

Another company will likely wait until the next open enrollment period for its health benefits to announce that employees will have to pay a higher percentage of the premium.

One of the options will simply be a refusal to build or expand when they would otherwise have had an option to do so – keeping the workers they have, but refusing to hire more.

Or, when the company does expand, it’s new store will come with all of the labor-saving options that the higher minimum wage has now made possible.

None of these changes are immediate.

This does not imply that, when they happen, they will not be bad.

The problem I find with your analogy is that it presumes that companies are already trying to pay their workers as much as they can, and any forced increase will result in them having to let workers go. This is certainly not typical of any place of employment I have ever worked.

This is false.

First, I am not assuming that “letting employees go” is the only option they will pursue. They have the option of cutting back on benefits, withholding pay increases for other (non-minimum-wage) employees, raising prices, reducing pay rates for other (non-minimum-wage) employees.

Second, I do not need to presume that companies are paying workers as much as they can. I only need to assume that companies have a stack of options for how they will respond to increased labor cost. Yes, I agree that one of those options involves the Board of Directors gathering around the conference table and answering the problem of increased wage rates by saying, “I know what we can do! We can cut our own salaries!.”

This is certainly an option.

However, it is not the only option – and, I suggest, it will almost never be found at the top of the list. Companies will try a number of other options first. Those other options will make sure that those at the lower end of the income ladder will pay.

By the way, this brings up the question of how I would suggest paying for the education subsidies.

Answer: Tax the rich.

It is another rash assumption to believe that an individual opposed to increasing the minimum wage is somebody who secretly (or not so secretly) seeks to protect the rich by sticking it to the poor as much as possible. Please entertain the possibility that somebody can be against a higher minimum wage without wanting to protect the rich at all. In fact, his real concern is to make sure that the poor actually benefit, and he has no problem with making sure that the rich cover the costs of that benefit.

An Eye on the Democrats

Announcement: It appears that my bid to get an article into Issue 25 of Carnival of the Liberals was a success. I invite you to check it out.

Before going into today's posting, I would like to say that I have gone through the day with a great sense of relief. I had been truly concerned with the direction things were going, and welcomed the bulk of the results from the election.

News reports are just now reporting that the Democrats have taken control of the Senate. Now that they have some measure of power - and may still gain control of the Senate - I want to briefly outline some of the good and the bad that I see from this shift in power.

(1) Revenge.One fear that I have had is that the Democratic leadership will seek revenge on the Republicans for the exclusive way the Republicans have run Congress over the past four years. They largely shut the Democrats out and excluded them from anything. It may be tempting for the Democrats to respond in kind. However, I hope they seek to "do unto the Republicans" as they would have had the Republicans do under them.

(2) Judicial appointments. As I wrote before the election, I put the theocratization of the judiciary as my number one concern in this election. We do not need a judicial branch that decides cases by appeal to the Bible - we need a judicial branch that decides cases by appeal to the Constitution. To put it simply, scripture is a very poor source to appeal to when it comes to establishing standards of justice.

(3) Checks and Balances. The establishment of a Democratic majority in at least one of the houses of Congress means that the system of checks and balances have been restored. The next question is whether the Democrats will use this power to actually check and balance the Bush Administration's usurpation of power. I have sometimes worried that the Democrats have not effectively opposed Bush's power grab because too many Democratic leaders are secretly rubbing their hands and saying, "Imagine what I could do if I had all of that autocratic power!"

(4) Energy policy. Here, I have some reason for hope that the Democrats will bring us a better response to the problem of global warming - particularly with a push towards alternative energy. At the same time, I have worries that they might also pursue a couple of destructive policies. For example, Democrats might consider legislation to force energy (e.g., gasoline) prices artificially low through legislation. Artificially low prices mean artificially high consumption - and less of an incentive to invest in alternatives to fossil fuels. For example, artificially low gasoline prices means that people will have less of an incentive to switch to hybrid cars. If one is truly interested in attacking the profits of the oil companies, my recommendation is to have them pay for the harm (pollution, global warming, etc.) their products cause. Let them decide whether to take the costs out of their profits or pass them along to customers.

(5) Embryonic stem-cell research. A Democratic leadership will likely move this avenue of investigation forward, potentially providing a benefit for a great many people who will otherwise suffer from illness, injury, and death. The time that we have until death is the only time we have. It is a tragedy when people must spend it in needless suffering. I recognize that the counter to this is to say that the research kills innocent people. In act, it does not. There is no 'person' there to be killed. That which does not have a brain has no interests. That which has no interests cannot be harmed in any morally relevant sense.

(6) Prescription Drugs. It is possible that the Democrats will attack the Pharmaceutical industry just as it is possible for them to attack the energy industry. The worry is that they will do so in a way that will hinder research into new drugs and medical procedures - by simply making it less profitable to do this type of research. It would be a shame to open up embryonic stem-cell research by removing the Republicans' mis-guided barriers to that research, only to slam the doors shut again by taking away the profits of doing that research. If Democratic policies get in the way of the discovery and use of better medical techniques, then they will be promoting death and suffering in the same way that Republicans did with their legislative barriers.

(7) Minimum wage. The Democrats will almost certainly push for a higher minimum wage, which will do a great deal of harm to the poorest people in this country, even if it produces a higher average benefit.

For example, take a community with 10 people making $5 per hour, and turn it into a community where 8 people make $7 per hour and 2 people make nothing. This increases the amount of money for the group as a whole from $50 to $56 (a net increase). Still, the damage done to the two people who are forced out of the market is so utterly destructive we have to question the fairness.

And where are the companies going to get this extra $6? One of the options available include raising prices. Look for Wal-Mart in particular to raise prices to cover any cost increase. And it is not the "top 1%" who shop at Wal-Mart. Look, instead, for those people making more than minimum wage - whose average income has not gone up in over 30 years - to discover that they can now buy less with what they earn.

Also, look for businesses to cut benefits to the bulk of their employees. For example, I expect that fewer businesses will offer health insurance and those that do will increase the amounts that all employees pay for their share of such benefits.

Over time, expect more companies to move their businesses overseas to where labor rates are lower, companies to replace low-skilled employees with machines or alter their business model to require fewer people in this wage bracket, and to simply close their doors because it is no longer worthwhile for them to stay in business. Also, look for people who would have otherwise stayed in school to, instead, choose the job market over education.

To help the poor, and to help the rest of the country at the same time, the best thing to do is to help those below a particular income level go to school. See item (12).

(8) The war in Iraq. As I wrote yesterday, I think that Ted Lamont's defeat in Connecticut has purchased us an ability to have an intelligent debate on what to do in Iraq that includes the possibility of keeping troops there. Once again, I am not saying that this is 'the right move' - I am saying that a lot of people who claim to know the best option are basing their conclusions on pure ignorance. I want the decision to be made by those who know the situation and who know what they are doing - and I want to give them the freedom to pursue the option of staying in Iraq if this looks like the best option.

(9) Corruption. I have written in the past that a probable explanation for why all of the corruption scandals involved Republicans is that Democrats had no power. They had nothing to sell, so nobody was buying. Now that they have power again, they have something to sell. No doubt, in this election, a lot of special interest groups were at work buying special influence over Democratic congressmen, and I expect some of those special relationships to show up in the news some time in the future. In other words, I need to wait and see just how sincere the Democratic opposition to 'corruption' actually turns out to be.

(10) Terrorism. The Democrats have two years to prove that they are not the villains of national defense that the Republicans claimed them to be. They have an opportunity to rewrite some of the anti-terrorist law so that it is truly anti-terrorist and not anti-American. That is to say, the law needs to be rewritten to provide for judicial and legislative oversight with the clear intent to make sure that those gathering intelligence are actually spying on al-Queida and not abusing their power.

(11) Research. The Democrats need to unleash the scientists that the Bush Administration and the Republican Party have kept shackled for six years. We have six years of garbage wearing the label of government reports - 'research' substantially created for the purpose of claiming that the Republican agenda is right (rather than Republicans building an agenda that matched the research). It would be useful to give scientists an opportunity to go through that research and remove the partisan edits - allowing the reports to reflect the scientists' actual findings. In addition, the world could use a lot more research in the fields of medicine, climate change, agriculture, energy, ecology, space development, weather, tsunamis, and a host of other fields that are vital for the well-being of so many people. As a side-benefit, the smarter people are, the less the chance that they will fall for stupid and poorly considered ideas.

(12) Education. The Democrats can do a great service to the country and the world, as well as consolidate their base, by focusing their efforts on improving education. This means employing educational techniques that actually work. Educated people know how to think - how to draw reasoned conclusion from available evidence. We have had six years' experience seeing what happens when people are put into positions of power without having this skill. Unless the Democrats think that they need to keep people dumb to stay in power, they should put some effort into helping to make sure that the next generation of Americans have some intelligence.

So, this is a preliminary list of things to keep an eye on over the next couple of years with the Democrats in power.

I am more than pleased at the fact that they have won. Yet, I am disinclined to give Democratic leaders the type of blind worship that many Republican leaders have received over the past few years. We have all seen how dangerous this type of blind worship can be.

Comments on the Election

I am going to have to say that I am pleased with the results of the election.

Of course, I am pleased that the Democrats obtained control of the House of Representatives. Nobody is calling the Senate yet. However, even if the Republicans keep control, the Democrats will be more secure in their power to filibuster the worst of Bush's activities.

The Theocrats suffered a number of key defeats, including Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, former Ohio Secretary of State running for Governor J. Kenneth Blackwell, and Representative John Hostettler of Indiana. All three of these had significant ties to the religious right.

I am pleased that Joe Lieberman won the Senate race from Connecticut. It’s not that I like Joe Lieberman. His support for faith-based initiatives and his statement during the 2000 Presidential campaign that a person cannot be moral without religion are certainly contemptible positions. However, I have also been worried about the power of that portion of the Democratic party that seems to be as foolish about getting the United States out of Iraq as the Bush Administration was in getting us into Iraq. Lieberman’s victory tells me that much of America rejects this branch of the Democratic party.

I am not saying that those Democrats are wrong. As I have written in the past, my position is that there is not sufficient evidence from which the average voter to draw a conclusion as to the best course of action in this war. None of us who do not have access to the top-secret reports and assessments can know what is best for the country. Just as the Bush Administration drew the rash conclusion that invading Iraq was the right thing and ignored any evidence to the contrary, this branch of Democrats are drawing rash conclusions about the benefits of withdraw and ignoring any arguments to the contrary. I am pleased to see that the bulk of the country is learning to reject rash and uninformed opinion.

I want the debate over Iraq to be carried out by people who are NOT making promises based on blind ideology and promises to voters who could not possibly have an informed opinion on the matter. I think that this is the best way to select the best policy.

I am going to be pleased to have an opportunity to to write about Democratic actions and Democratic policies.

I have been thinking recently that I have I could be comfortable among the liberal Republicans. I would really like to see the Republicans throw the theocrats out of the party.

The Republicans also need to learn and begin practicing recognition of the difference between being pro-markets and being pro-business. Too many Republicans are elected (bought and paid for) by businesses who want anti-market legislation that makes them wealther and the rest of us poorer.

With this defeat, moderate Republicans with a spine now have reason to stand up to the fringe elements and make the party more moderate - more rational.

Particularly since, as I noted above, the sound political defeat of the Theocratic wing of the Republican party.

Of course, the anti-gay amendments and referendums passed whenever they were offered. I expected this. There is still need for some social education on this nation. It is not "good news" that these measures were defeated. However, it was expected - and expected wrongs are easier to accept.

Here in Colorado, the most important measure on the ballot in this state was an Amendment that would force judges to campaign for public office. The most obvious implication of this policy is to give special interest groups power to control judgeships through campaign contributions just as they do the legislative and executive branches. That is a very poor plan. In Colorado, that measure was defeated.

Tomorrow is a new day - and a better day.

The Duty to Vote

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, voting time is here – in the United States that is.

Shortly, I am going to argue that there is no moral obligation to vote. I have no doubt that we will be treated tomorrow to all sorts of pundits and commentators lamenting low voter turnout and declaring how shameful it is that so few Americans can be bothered to go to the polls (or use any of the alternative methods available for casting a vote). I am going to argue that their lament is misplaced – it is perfectly acceptable not to vote.

However, before I do that, I would like to encourage all of my American readers who are eligible to vote to do so. This election contains an issue that I think is of particular importance. This concerns the possibility of getting a Senate that is willing to block President Bush’s continuing efforts to theocratize the court system – particularly the Supreme Court. Readers in any state where there is a Senate election, or readers who know of anybody who can vote in such a state, are encouraged to take action to block this outcome.

Now, having said that, my next step is to argue that there is nothing particularly wrong with deciding not to vote.

I want to begin my argument with two points that I brought up during the weekend’s discussion on moral theory.

Rational Ignorance Applied

The first point to bring to bear on this issue is one of ‘rational ignorance’. None of us can know everything. In fact, given the huge amount of knowledge laying around to be had, each of us must pick an extremely small subset of that knowledge for himself. Every moment we spend learning one thing deprives us of the opportunity to learn something else.

Yesterday, I decided to pick up a new book to read. I had millions of titles to choose from. I looked at options on moral theory, on space travel, and on World War II history. I finally selected a book on economics. In picking up that one book, I decided that I was going to learn the small speck of knowledge contained within its covers, leaving millions of volumes of other potential knowledge untouched.

For all practical purposes, I can represent the set of information on political candidates or ballot issues as one more book in this virtually limitless stack of books that I have available to choose from. On this model, I suggest that it is absurd to think that the book, “local candidates and ballot initiatives” is always going to be the most rational choice for reading material for everybody in the country. Putting it beside all of the other sets of facts that are available to learn, it is seldom going to make it to the top of the list.

One of the things working against the value of learning this particular set of facts is that the information is practically worthless. It is extremely unlikely that the voter/student can do anything useful with the knowledge. In any given election, chances are that the outcome would be no different even if the voter did not vote.

In other words, pouring resources into learning campaign information is like buying a lottery ticket. Changes are, you will gain nothing for your efforts. There is a small chance that your vote can influence a minor election. The larger the election, the smaller the chance that your one vote will have any effect.

Also, much like playing the lottery, it may be far more rational investing your education resources in something that can provide long-term benefits. A computer programmer may be better off choosing to remain ignorant of campaign facts so that she can spend more time studying to get certification that can qualify her for a high-paying job. A basket ball player can better invest his time practicing to play basketball. A writer will be better off writing than he would looking at campaign material.

In addition, we must factor in the fact that a huge amount of campaign material is simply deceptive and dishonest. The person who studies this stuff is learning nothing about the real world – other than the fact that the real world contains these samples of deception.

Responsibility and Recklessness

The second principle that applies to the so-called obligation to vote is the idea of recklessness. If a person puts on a blindfold, gets behind the wheel of a car, and starts driving, he is unlikely to actually to do more than inflict some property damage. At worst, he may kill or maim a small number of people.

Put a reckless person in a ballot box and he can kill, maim, or destroy the lives of millions of people with one reckless vote.

The Bush Administration is evidence enough of this. Quite a few reckless voters managed to vote away the lives and health of their husbands, sons, nephews, best friends, and themselves.

To see these votes as reckless, all we have to do is to imagine the damage that would have been done to Islamic extremists if the United States had instead launched a war against oil imports – investing $100 billion per year in a campaign to convert the country to other forms of energy. In addition, this same $350 billion (so far) would have also likely gone to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, protecting the investments of those who own property threatened to be destroyed with sea-level rise.

The moral crime of reckless voting implies that there is no way to escape the costs of casting an informed vote. If there is an obligation to vote, then it must be interpreted as an obligation to invest the resources necessary to avoid being guilty of reckless voting. This must mean an obligation not to learn whatever the agent could have learned if he had not been obligated to invest those resources in learning about candidates and ballot issues.

If one insists on drinking, one has an obligation not to drive. If one insists on doing things other than learning about candidates and ballot issues, then one has an obligation not to vote.

Other Considerations

There are, of course, other reasons to learn about the issues that will show up on a ballot or about a candidate. However, there are other reasons to do a great many things – such as learn CPR or study marketing (to name a couple of examples). The idea that the sum of all reasons will always put informed voting at the top of every person’s list is improbable. There are only so many things that one can accomplish in the course of a day.

However . . . if I may offer one last factor to consider . . . many of the people who do have time to consider these things are those for whom it is profitable to consider these things – people who have cash value riding on the results of an election, or value in terms of power either to benefit themselves, or to do harm to those they wish to harm.

It is not as if casting an intelligent vote is expensive, but casting no vote is free.

Not voting comes with a price tag as well.

Misinterpreting Kerry

Another theory weekend is over and it is time to once again get back to the realm of practical application.

Only, this time, I want to start the week by applying the principles that I wrote about over the weekend. I wish to apply them to the incident in which Kerry said, Education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. And if you don't, you get stuck in Iraq.

Interpreting Kerry’s Statement

Apparently, Kerry meant to suggest that Bush did not study hard or do his homework before he made the decision to attack Iraq. However, the Bush Administration sought to interpret the comment as a claim that only uneducated people go to Iraq – and intelligent people have alternatives that will allow them to avoid service.

What we have is a case in which the Bush Administration was able to sell a misinterpretation of Kerry’s remarks, and to use this incident to make gains in its campaign to hold on to political power. Indeed, with this trick, they might have even succeeded. There are a number of close races that will determine whether the Republicans or the Democrats control the Senate. (A tie will go to the Republicans because Vice President Cheney has the power to cast any tie-breaking vote.)

So, for the most part, we have a case in which the ability to control trillions of dollars of government spending and to direct the flow of trillions of more dollars through regulation could well be handed to a group of people who managed to skillfully market a lie.

With the people of the United States willing to grant this type of power to liars, it would be foolish to have any reluctance to lying. It’s not the honest people who get control over all of that money and power – the money and power go to the best, most efficient liars.

In other words, in such a society, lying is not irrational. Whatever we have to say about the Bush Administration’s handling of Kerry’s comments – it would be hard to make the case that they acted irrationally.

Irrationality is not the evil that brought us to this state. It’s dishonesty. And, more importantly, it is the public’s willingness to grant such huge amounts of wealth and power – to offer the most valuable rewards in the country – to people who are not only willing to, but who actually engaged in the act, of mass deception.

Of course, we can go further and ask about the rationality of fostering no particular desire for truth or aversion to deception. It is because we live in a society in which our neighbors reward deception and punish honesty that we find ourselves surrounded by so much deception and so little honestly – particularly in political campaigns. If, instead, we rewarded honestly and punished deception, then we should expect campaigns to become more honest.

If we treated the discovery that a candidate’s contribution to a dishonest campaign add the way we treat the discovery of a candidate writing sexually explicit emails to underage pages, we would expect dishonest campaign ads to become as rare as sexually explicit emails to underage pages. They would still show up from time to time – but the discovery of such a candidate’s participation in a dishonest message would force the candidate to immediately withdraw in disgrace.

We could start now, with the Bush Administration’s actions regarding Kerry’s remarks. Their intentional misinterpretation of those remarks involves exploiting a deception for political purposes. To the degree that we reward liars, to that degree we can expect to bring more liars into politics. So, let us start now to condemn liars, rather than reward them.

On this issue, it is interesting to note how widespread this lack of concern for the truth – this absence of aversion to dishonesty – has come. There is such a huge body of influential people (people rewarded with money and power) who care nothing for the truth that the Bush Administration can saturate the media with this lie for over a day.

Try this in a society of people who love the truth and have an aversion to deception, the story might still dominate the media for a day. However, it would dominate the media from a different angle. It would be in the form of condemnation of the Bush Administration and their spokesmen in the press who repeated this lie for their lack of concern with the truth. It would be in the form of casting shame and blame on Bush, Cheney, Fox News, and the rest of the conservative clan until they were forced to apologize for attempting to hold on to political power through such an act of deception.

In seeking to oppose this culture of deception, it is not enough to condemn the deceivers themselves. It is also important to condemn those who support this deception – those who give it life, food, and energy in the form of financial reward and political power. Fighting this deception means cutting deceivers off from financial and political gain, and giving them instead to non-deceivers. It means shaming those who support deception and praising the friends of honesty and truth those who join us in fighting this type of practice.

The Place of Religion

On the idea that religion is to blame for society’s ills – and that the task at hand is to fight religion, I want to point out the fact that the dominant religions that these deceivers claim to support and follow is a religion that, itself, condemns “bearing false witness” against others. Yet, these people “bear false witness” without the least sign of guilt or reluctance that we can conclude that they have no aversion at all to this activity. They clearly are NOT getting their morals from their religion.

Their religion also condemns those who collect interest or who work on the Sabbath – saying that such people should be put to death. Yet, they not only refuse to call for the execution of those who violate these rules, they violate the rules themselves.

The only reasonable conclusion to draw is that something else - something other than religious teachings is giving them their moral rules.

All I am doing here is using simple observation to test a theory. Observation does not support the theory that these people are getting their morality from a religious source. Rather, they are getting their morality somewhere else and using religious sources to support it where convenient, and ignoring religion as a source of morality where it is not convenient.

If this were not the case then they would NOT be bearing false witness against others (and would be condemning those who did so as they condemn those who engage in homosexual acts). They would be condemning those who work on the Sabbath or who collect interest. Though there is, perhaps, a small number of who follow such practices – but not enough to justify the claim that these people draw their morality from religion.

Though they condemn homosexuality and justify their claims through religious references, there is no evidence to suggest that they would cease to abandon their condemnation of homosexuality in the absence of religion.

It is just as likely that they would find some other excuse. For example, they may draw upon some ‘Darwinian’ argument that procreative sex is evolutionarily unfit, or that it is intrinsically wrong.

They may seek to make a moral subjectivist argument. “A subjective feeling of disapproval is the only thing that makes murder wrong; and a subjective feeling of approval for killing murderers is sufficient to make capital punishment right. Well, I’ve got the same subjective feeling of disapproval for homosexuality and the same love of the idea of killing off all of the fags. Therefore, this is all it takes to make it right for me to support killing all the fags. Right?”

So, where are they getting their morality if not from a religious source?

My suggestion – they get their morality from the praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment of others. They have acquired their lack of aversion to deception from the fact that deceivers are rewarded with great wealth and power. They have little or no aversion to collecting interest on loans and working on the Sabbath because these actions are not condemned – and those who violate these rules collect the rewards in the form of interests or the furthering of goals that working on the Sabbath provides.

By using praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment it is possible to influence what others like and dislike, even to the point of getting them to ignore religious text. It has gotten them to ignore religious teachings on collecting interest and working on the Sabbath. It has also gotten them to ignore religious teachings on bearing false witness against others (though, in this case, those religious teachings are correct and the deviance found in the Bush Administration is harmful to society). It can influence their other attitudes as well.

Rational Irrationality

In comments to last weekend’s “theory weekend” posts, michael u wrote in defense of rationality as a moral virtue. Specifically, he said,

If theism is deeply influential and irrational, and the widespread influence of unreason is harmful (as it has . . . always proved to be) wouldn’t theism be an agent of harm and therefore something to be excised . . .

There are a couple of issues that I would like to discuss that are related to this question.

Rational Ignorance

The first issue that I would like to discuss is “rational ignorance.”

We only have so much time available to us. Learning takes time. With all of the information that exists out there, there is no way that any one of us can learn more than a very small portion of that knowledge. We have to remain substantially ignorant of the rest.

For example, I have spent my time becoming reasonably well informed about (1) moral theory, (2) the space program and astronomy, and (3) history. I am also have spent time acquiring a fair amount of knowledge about characters and events in the new Battlestar Galactica television show (as well as a few others). However, the time that it takes me to be informed about these things cost me elsewhere. I speak only one language. I know very little about sports, wines, electrical engineering, quantum mechanics, or the effects of illegal drugs.

In fact, the ratio of “things I know” to “things that I do not know” is extremely low – and getting lower every day.

It has to be that way. I do not have a choice in this matter – and neither does anybody else.

Of course, choosing what to be ignorant of is not a matter of looking over all of the possibilities, and then discarding knowledge that I do not think that I need. It requires using time-efficient rules to decide what issues I am going to study, how deeply I am going to study them, and what issues I am going to ignore.

Reason is NOT time-efficient rule. It is extremely time-consuming, and requires a huge amount of background knowledge.

Dawkins and Harris are very much involved in the education system. In fact, they have decided NOT to be ignorant about the philosophical and logical arguments concerning the existence of a God. However, in this they are, and they will always be members of a very small club.

The rest of the world is made up of secretaries, truck drivers, construction workers, football players, and the like. Most people will devote most of their learning to their job – particularly if they want to be particularly good at it. A computer programmer is not going to go home and ponder the existence of a God. He is going to spend some of his time with friends and family and some of it in simply entertainment. If he has spare time, and if he has an interest in being a good programmer, he is going to be spending far more time working on computer projects even in his spare time.

The demands of holding every one of our beliefs to the light of ‘reason’ and ‘rationality’ is simply too much to demand of people. There must be some way to make priorities.

Here, I argue that the first principle for determining which beliefs to hold up to the light of reason and double check are those that put others at risk of harm. The first question to ask is, “What is the risk of harm to others?” The question of whether the belief is rational or irrational is the second question. If we ask the question of rational or irrational first, we are going to end up asking it a lot of times when the answer simply does not matter – or matters very little.

The Nature of Rationality

A second set of concerns comes from the nature of rationality itself.

As I wrote yesterday – action is governed by beliefs and desires.

Reason belongs in the realm of beliefs. Reason (or rationality) also belongs in the realm of matching means to ends. However, reason has nothing to do with the selection of ends themselves. Reason does not determine if one likes vanilla more than chocolate (or vica versa), or a preference for red-heads, or a fondness for watching horror movies. These are desires that we acquire, and reason has nothing to do with it.

In saying this, I am following a model of reason laid down by the 18th-century Scottish philosopher David Hume. Hume argued that reason was the slave of the passions – meaning that reason told us how to act on our passions, but did not tell us what passions to have. According to Hume:

'Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger. 'Tis not contrary to reason for me to chuse my total ruin, to prevent the least uneasiness of an Indian or person wholly unknown to me. Treatise of Human Nature

If we teach rationality to a child rapist, we will end up with a very rational, efficient, and skilled child rapist.

If we teach rationality to a Nazi, we will end up with a Nazi who will know the best way to carry out his Nazi agenda.

Reason does not choose the ends – reason only chooses the means for fulfilling the ends that one happens to acquire. If those ends are good (tend to fulfill the desires of others), then rationality is useful. However, rationality, in the hands of somebody who is evil, will simply help him to find the most efficient ways to carry out his evil.

A Desire Utilitarian Caveat on Hume

Hume’s views of rationality were mostly correct. However, he seems to have overlooked a subtle but important distinction.

This is the idea that reason can tell us nothing about the choice of ends as ends. However, since reason is very much concerned with the choice of means, it is possible to apply reason to the choice of ends as means for the fulfillment of other ends.

As Hume says, it may not be contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world as an end to the scratching of my finger. However, if we look at this desire for the destruction of the world as a means to the fulfillment of other desires it is not very useful. Indeed, quite a few of us have reason to act so as to make it very unlikely that others have a desire for the destruction of the world. In other words, it is rational for us to choose to make this a world in which the desire to seek its destruction is extremely rare.

It is reasonable to argue that Hume did not miss this distinction – he simply did not realize what he had. Hume argued that ethics was mostly concerned with promoting character traits (desires). Character traits could be evaluated, in part, on their usefulness to self and others. This is simply one way of saying that, even though we have no way to evaluate the value of ends as ends, we can still evaluate their usefulness. We can still evaluate the value of ends as means.

Conclusion

Even recognizing our ability to rationally evaluate the usefulness of desires (passions, character traits, ends, whatever you want to call them), we still have two problems with putting too much stress on rationality.

(1) We simply do not have the time or the resources to be too rational. We have to use other means to fit all of our belief-selection into the limited amount of time that we have on this planet.

(2) Ends as ends is immune to rationality; and a rational evil person will simply be more efficient at doing evil.

It is better to focus one’s effort on promoting good desires, than to promoting value-free rationality.

One could say, perhaps, that reason recommends a stronger focus on good desires than on reason itself.

The Appropriate Use of Negative Political Statements

Richard Chappell, the founder of Philosophy et. cetera, is hosting the Carnival of the Liberals next week and has offered some guidelines for submissions.

One of his topics deals with an issue that I have been thinking about for quite some time. Furthermore, since this is "Theory Weekend" I have reason to discuss the topic on more theoretical terms. In short, I'm going to take advantage of the opportunity to write that article and see if I can get this accepted into that carnival.

The set of questions that I wish to address is:

Questions of rhetoric and framing: should liberals aim to persuade others through rational arguments or emotional appeals (or both)? Should we focus on dangers or opportunities? Is it important to improve the tone and quality of political discourse and public debate? If so, how might this be achieved?

My answer will seek to support the following claims:

1. It is important to improve the quality of political discourse. However, in order to "improve the quality" we will need to have some idea of what "quality" discourse is. It is difficult to hit a target if you do not know where it is at.

2. Reason is an important component to political debate. However, it is not the only component. To call the alternative "appeal to emotion" is misleading and begins by poisoning the well against the alternatives to reason. In fact, this is the name of a fallacy - a category of "forms of rhetoric not to be used." I am going to argue that something close to appeal to emotion is not only important, but necessary, in political debate.

I am going to present this in two parts. Part I will be a brief outline of theory. Part II will apply theory to the “attack ads” that seem to dominate contemporary politics (at least here in America).

Part I: The Limits of Rational Arguments In Politics and Morals

I am going to start with a basic formula for human action - one which sits at the foundation for this entire blog.

(belief + desire) -> intention -> intentional action.

Reason, I will argue, is the proper tool for working in the realm of belief. Reason is also the tool to use to match means to ends. If a person wants some chocolate cake for desert, then reason will tell him how to most efficiently get some chocolate cake while doing the least damage to other goals that the agent might have.

However, reason is not the tool for selecting ends. All of the reason in the world - all of the facts and logic in the world - will never imply a change in the agent's desire for chocolate cake.

A change in belief can cause a change in desire. After all, an agent's beliefs and desires are both encoded into the same brain. A change in brain structure in order to accommodate a different belief might also have an affect on the agent's desires. However, these are not matters of implication. No set of beliefs entail a change in desires.

Furthermore, in saying that desires are immune to facts and reason, I am not saying that desires are outside of the realm of facts and reason. It is also the case that no amount of facts and reason entails a change in another person's height. It can entail a change in beliefs about a person's height, but not his height itself. Yet, height is not something that exists outside of the realm of facts and reason. There is still an objective determination to be made as to how tall a person is.

The same is true of desires. Facts and reason do not entail a change in desires. However, the subject of desires is still within the realm of facts an reason. There is still an objective determination to be made as to what other people desire.

Desires are, at least to a certain extent, subject to change through social forces. There is some degree to which our aversion to pain, desire for sex, hunger, thirst, and the like are genetically hard-wired. Hundreds of millions of years of evolution have selected genes that will dispose people to desire those things that tend to cause acts that continue that genetic line through time. My family tree, passing through perhaps over a hundred million biological ancestors, does not contain a single member who died a virgin - at least since the point where sex became necessary for genetic replication.

Desires are not changed through reason (at least in any type of directed sense). They are changed through social conditioning. The major components of social conditioning that I have discussed in this blog are praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment.

We have reason to be concerned with the desires of others. To the degree that others have an aversion to killing us, to that degree our life is more secure. To the degree that they have an aversion to taking our property, or lying to us, to that degree we can trust that our property will be left alone and that the things people tell us are the truth. To the degree that they wish to help those in trouble, to that degree we can expect help if we should find ourselves in trouble.

Where our interest is in changing other peoples' beliefs, we can employ reason. However, where our interest is in molding a particular set of values (desires), our recourse is through tools such as praise and condemnation. We have the power to choose the types of people who share our society with us by choosing what to praise and what to condemn. Given the presumption that even inaction is a choice, we do, in fact, choose (at least to some degree) the nature of our society.

Clearly, a person does not have to be personally praised or condemned for social institutions to modify his behavior. His behavior can be affected by knowing of somebody else praised or condemned for their behavior. Even news of hypothetical praise or condemnation - news that society sees a certain type of behavior as blameworthy or praiseworthy - has an affect.

Refusing to use the tools of praise and condemnation, and limiting our discussion to ‘rational arguments’, means that we are going to concern ourselves only with beliefs, and not with desires. If we leave desires untouched, then even desires that are harmful to others – bigotry, hatred, violence, greed, selfishness, arrogance, dishonesty, rape, murder, theft – are left unaffected.

Refusing to affect (through the use of praise and condemnation) character traits such as these leaves the world worse than it would otherwise have been.

Part II: Praise, Condemnation, and the Political Attack Ad

In this part, I wish to apply what I said in Part I to the phenomenon of the “negative campaign ad” which seems to have dominated contemporary politics. I wish to argue that there is a fundamental problem with these types of campaigns. However, the problem is not that they are negative or that they contain elements of condemnation. The problem is that they are all (or, at best, almost all) fundamentally dishonest.

The average negative campaign ad is, in essence, 30 or 60 seconds of lies and distortions for the sake of obtaining a personal objective. They are deceptive oversimplifications of what another said or did - intentionally twisting what was actually said or done by removing its context in order to promote public belief in a proposition that is not true. In short, they are instances of “bearing false witness” against another – testifying that another person has said or done something that the other person has not and would not have said or done.

If the opposing candidate had actually done the deeds described in these advertisements, then condemnation would be completely appropriate. Yet, as any fair-minded person viewing the advertisement can readily see, these ads in fact distort what the victim of the ad was trying to accomplish – lifting it out of its context.

A clear example is the claim that Democrats do not wish to allow the Administration to listen to phone calls from Al-Queida into the United States. As I have said before, this is a flat-out lie. What Democrats want is for those who are picking telephone calls to listen to are actually listening to Al-Queida calls into the United States, and not using these tools to spy on personal or political enemies.

When a candidate uses or endorses these types of advertisements, we should immediately draw the conclusion that this candidate has no love of the truth. If your child or your spouse lies to you, the first thing you start asking yourself is, “What else are they lying about?” Once a person proves himself to be a liar, we immediately discount everything else that person has to say. When a candidate uses one of these slanderous attack ads, this too should immediately cause us to ask, “What else is this candidate willing to lie about?”

Is it at all wise to give the power to make laws to somebody who thinks that deceptive manipulation of others for the sake of personal power is a perfectly legitimate activity?

The reason these attack advertisements exist and are so common is because we, as a society, reward those who create these advertisements. Though we moan and complain about them, as a matter of fact people tend to reward those who produce these types of advertisements with volunteer campaign help, cash contributions, and votes. If we reward an activity, we promote a love for that activity, at which point we are fools to expect anything other than to be surrounded and flooded by examples of the behavior we are encouraging.

If we are going to encourage behavior, it would seem somewhat more practical to discourage dishonest manipulation of the public by those who will hold political power over that public.

If we wish to reduce the incidence of this type of behavior the best thing to do is to condemn those who practice it. If we reacted to deceptive attack ads the same way that we reacted to a sexually explicit email to an underage page, then we would likely find these attack ads degreasing in number in future years, instead of growing substantially more common.

In order to promote an adverse reaction to these politically deceptive ads, one useful tool is to turn our condemnation on those who reward those who engage in this type of behavior - those who are ultimately responsible for the fact that this is becoming more common. We need to turn our attention on those who work for, contribute to, or speak favorably of candidates using negative attack ads and say, “You are a part of the reason we have this problem – because you have decided that the most important thing that you can do with your time is to reward people in the midst of proving that they are manipulative liars.”

The important distinction to make here is the legitimacy of making accusations that are true and holding a person morally accountable for wrongs he actually performed, versus the lies and distortions in these slanderous campaign advertisements. Ultimately, the test is not whether the claims being made are ‘negative’ or ‘positive’ – but whether they are true or false.

There is no reason to refrain from speaking a negative truth simply because it is negative. In fact, there are important reasons to condemn any trait that is harmful to others – such as the deceptive manipulation that appears in these attack ads. If we do not condemn these activities – if we continue to reward those who engage in them – then we are fools if we expect anything other to have a government (and a society) in love with deceptive manipulation.

Conclusion

It is important to improve the quality of political discourse. However, what political discourse is not missing is more 'niceness'. It is missing honesty. Many candidates, through the types of advertisements that they run, are proving that they have no moral objection to maliciously deceiving others for the sake of personal gain. Yet, we live in a society that rewards this malicious deception with campaign help, contributions, and votes. It is no wonder that we find more and more people engaging in this type of behavior.

It is important to condemn those whose traits lead to actions that tend to harm our society. We should be condemning those who engage in malicious deception, not rewarding them. Importantly, we should be condemning those who support or contribute to malicious deception and its practitioners.

There is nothing wrong with condemnation - as long as it is honest condemnation that targets the wrongs that people actually perform.