Writing Goals for the weekend of April 1 and 2

151 days until the start of classes.

PANIC!

Writing on "Bigotry and the Immorality of Moral Sentimentalism" has been a struggle. However, the struggle has not been in the area of philosophical argumentation. It has been in the area of writing something that can please a professor of moral philosophy (and impress her in such a way that she will support my further education).

Consequently, I have not had that much that I wanted to report on here.

I have 4 weekends left to work on this paper. (I actually have another 2 weeks after that, but I have conflicting commitments for one of those weeks and I want an opportunity to revise and amend my remarks - to rewrite parts of my paper that I discover that I don't like. Consequently, Wednesday, April 26, is my unofficial self-imposed deadline.)

Other writings that I am adding to my to-do list.

(1) A desirism blog posting on the philosophical and moral principles that provide the foundation to a paper I have written on the minimum wage. This paper will not look at the data - and will take the Congressional Budget Office document written in 2014 concerning a minimum wage increase to $10.10 as sound. It will focus instead on the discussion that the government should not interfere with a voluntary contract between two individuals and that the financial burden for a policy for protecting certain jobs should be placed on the poorest workers and their households.

(2) A paper on freedom of speech that will serve both as a position paper for the Party of Reason and Progress and a blog posting on the Desirism blog site. The right to freedom of speech is an immunity from violence or threats of violence for words and other communicative acts. This analysis will include something I have ignored in previous discussions - fraud, libel, and slander. There is also the issue of "clear and present danger". These are words and communicative acts that are legitimately met with violence. Concept of "group libel" which are false claims.

(3) A Party of Reason and Progress position paper on the carbon tax. They have a position statement on climate change, but nothing specific on the use of a carbon tax as a way of bringing about change. Important ideas that I want to bring in here is the income effect - that a tax hits poorer households harder than wealthier households, and there is an effect of wealthy households "buying the food off of the table of the very poor". Consequently, a carbon tax should include energy assistance for the very poor.

(4) For my own interests - a Party of Reason and Progress paper on property in space and the mining of asteroids - that it not be the case that 100% of the property in space be simply handed to the very rich on the grounds that they are the only ones who can afford to get there.

All of this, in addition to working on the paper assignment for my class.

This is starting to be like holding down a second job.