I've Moved Back To My Original Site

Welcome friends!

I must apologize for any inconvenience but I’ve decided to discontinue posting new material on this site in favor of my original site, which has basically the same title but without the word “secular.”  (You may recall I tried adding “secular” to the title to clarify the meaning of “liberal humanist” but the clear winner in my little battle of the site names was the original so let’s just go with that one.  I guess sometimes one can be a little too careful.)  Still a liberal and a secular humanist but expressing it in the phrase “liberal humanist.”  Up to this point the same material has appeared on both sites but going forward the new stuff will only be posted to my original site.  Please join me there at The Modest Blog of a Liberal Humanist located at liberal-humanist.blogspot.com. 

A.L. Humanist

Bearing Arms and Dead Kids

Welcome friends!

Did you hear about the murder of those seventeen young people at a high school in the US State of Florida a few days ago?  Sad case.  Seems a troubled young teenager showed up at the school with a semi-automatic rifle, in this case something called an AR-15, which he had apparently legally obtained despite numerous brushes with the law and school expulsions and funny statements about wanting to shoot up schools and so on.  He gunned down a number of kids then apparently went for a little pick me up at the local McDonald’s hamburger restaurant and was apprehended without incident a short while later.  This type of thing is not particularly unusual here in the USA but there’s been a lot of talk this time around mostly because some of the youngsters who escaped being shot were not content to do the usual crying and graciously accepting the thoughts and prayers of ostensible well wishers routine but instead began agitating for tighter regulations on semi-automatic weapons, a move that infuriated many conservatives here in the USA.  Some right wing media pundits portrayed the kids as paid actors or unwitting stooges of “the left.”  The president of the main gun lobby group here in the USA, that would be the National Rifle Association (NRA) for my foreign readers, was in the papers arguing or perhaps raving might be the more descriptive term that people advocating for common sense gun control such as the kids presumably aren’t really concerned about gun violence at all as one might suppose but only about making people less free.  Oh my!  Can you imagine the scoundrels?  Thinking only about making people less free.  Taking advantage of the unfortunate tragedy to weave their devious designs.  Indeed, the NRA spokesman warned us about the dangers of the “socialism” he felt was being peddled by the liberal Democratic Party and urged his conservative followers to be “anxious” and “afraid” of any future political gains by the Democratic Party.  He suggested that if Democrats “seize power” I suppose by being voted into office for example then “American freedoms could be lost and our country will be changed forever.”  Oh my goodness!  Them thar are fightin’ words!  President Trump chimed in to tell us he thinks the NRA is composed of patriots who want to do the right thing.  With national hysteria and vaguely threatening claptrap at this level I thought maybe I should take a few moments from my busy schedule to take another look at this whole issue of guns.

But first perhaps a bit of history might not be amiss.  It seems the seeds of this particular social malady were sown in the early days of the USA when the so-called founding fathers thought to include in the US Constitution the famous right to bear arms apparently specifically as a bulwark against the development here in America of what they viewed as the tyrannical government of their home country of Britain from which they had just extricated themselves.  Whether there was in fact anything particularly tyrannical about Britain at that time or whether the colonists just didn’t like the political results they were seeing is neither here nor there.  They didn’t like what they were seeing and decided they would do better on their own.  It was a closely run affair and one can readily understand their concerns that all their fighting and philosophizing and speechifying might be undone before it could take root by the devious designs of wannabe kings and queens of humble domestic pedigree.  Unfortunately this concern led them to introduce a legally awkward element into the US Constitution establishing that Americans have a constitutional right at least to the sort of weaponry they would have needed to engage the fledgling US government in armed conflict.

What makes it awkward now of course is that weaponry has long been one of the main beneficiaries of human labor and ingenuity due to our unfortunate inability to coordinate with one another sensibly and has moved on quite a bit from the old muskets, flintlock pistols, and swords of the colonial period.  As a result the sort of weapons that would really provide a level playing field if one had the inclination to embark on a private war against the US Army would now be things like automatic rifles, machine guns, grenades, mortars, mines, missiles, bombs, biological weapons, jet planes, tanks, artillery, tactical nukes, ICBMs, and that sort of thing.  I’m talking about military devices specifically designed to kill a whole bunch of people really really quickly and with a minimum of fuss.  Not surprisingly no one here is really very interested in ensuring one’s fellow citizens have access to this kind of equipment because at any given moment a great many of one’s fellow citizens are likely to be high, drunk, insane, or just very angry and no one is really so deluded or optimistic as to want to take the risk of giving them control of something like let’s say a missile launcher.  But in that case what arms are we really talking about?  Which arms are the ones to which we have a constitutional right?  Hmm.  Yeah.  That’s an awkward one isn’t it?

To make a long story short some court somewhere apparently decided on what was assuredly a rather ad-hoc basis that semi-automatic rifles like the AR-15 should be included in the sort of weaponry we should be allowed to obtain or perhaps I should say have a constitutional right to obtain.  This has proven a bit controversial because like some of the other sorts of weapons I just mentioned one can actually kill quite a large number of school kids or gay people or I suppose anyone really with a semi-automatic rifle.  Some people understandably have begun to suspect semi-automatic rifles was possibly not the best place to draw the line.  It doesn’t help that I suspect most people don’t know the rationale for the current line if indeed there is one.  Are we still committed to ensuring people have the weapons that would allow them to effectively battle US law enforcement or the US military?  Or are we on to something else now?  Well, let’s talk that through a bit.  Not in legal or constitutional terms of course but in terms of common sense, a commodity perpetually in short supply here in the USA particularly now the Republican Party is in charge.

Well, first I would suggest if we’re not claiming US citizens have the right to any old weaponry and instead are attempting to distinguish what’s in and what’s out we might do well to think of a rationale for that distinction.  I suggest the most obvious rationale might take account of the variety of arms that are available, their uses, and their characteristics particularly with respect to facilitating mass murder.  I would argue we should probably give up the notion we’re talking about whatever weaponry we need to effectively fight the US Army because that’s just not very realistic.  To really fight the US Army we’d need access to advanced military weaponry and I suggested earlier I doubt many people would be interested in making that sort of weaponry available to the average Joe because of the risks involved.  Fortunately I’m not at all sure that would be the only source of weaponry were we ever to actually find ourselves in the position of fighting our own government.  The way these things usually play out in other failed sates around the world is that other countries are happy to supply the disaffected factions with the requisite weaponry for one reason or another.  We should know.  We’re in the habit of supplying all manner of people with military hardware for all manner of purposes.  In the case of another civil war or large scale popular uprising here in the USA I see quite a few friends who may be willing to fund and arm patriots fighting for democracy on principle and also quite a few enemies who wouldn’t particularly mind seeing Americans killing off one another no matter the pretext so it’s hard to imagine a scenario in which the necessary weaponry would not become available some old way.  In other words, I doubt we actually need to store tanks in our garages in the off chance we need them one day. This is to say nothing of the fact that events in Eastern Europe in the latter half of the last century suggest that without popular support it’s rather difficult for any government to do its own thing for too long no matter the imbalance in firepower between that nation’s army and police and its citizenry.

Another consideration is that unlike the early days of the nation we now have a rather robust, stable, mature system of democratic government with many checks and balances.  It’s frankly rather difficult to imagine anyone being able to effectively seize power and do away with democracy at least without the acquiescence of the vast majority of our people and frankly if that’s what most people come to believe it doesn’t really matter whether we have a democracy or not.  What’s the point if we’re going to turn around and elect someone like Herr Hitler to escort us all to hell?  Here in the USA conservatives have been attacking government in the abstract, including our democratic government, for many decades now and naturally President Trump and Republicans in Congress have been expressing these now traditional conservative themes by attacking many of our democratic institutions including the free press, the separation of church and state, our scientific and regulatory agencies, the intelligence community, our educational system, our justice system, and various others not to mention demonizing their liberal political opponents but as far as I can see they’re not going to be able to take the country very much farther down that road to nowhere without the majority of the American electorate coming to their senses and sending them packing.

So I find I can’t really take very seriously at all the rationale provided by the NRA and seconded by President Trump and the Republican Party that we need semi-automatic rifles to fend off socialists or really anyone but according to conservatives mostly socialists from seizing control of our government and enslaving us.  Indeed the entire scenario is so far fetched and implausible I have to wonder if anyone really buys it at all.  One has to remember that American conservatives are prone to a rhetorical and political style of expression in which they say all manner of funny things that happen to suit their purposes but don’t really correspond to anything they believe or expect others to believe.  I suppose it’s possible given the long tradition in Hollywood of there being no problem that can’t be solved at the end of a gun that some intellectually challenged people may envision themselves taking on the US army with their AR-15s but really I can’t imagine there could be too many people like that.  

I suppose rather more people may envision themselves taking on criminals with semi-automatic rifles but it’s difficult to imagine a scenario in which one would need a semi-automatic rifle to take on criminals.  Violent criminals usually either walk up and pull out a gun or possibly kick in the door of one’s house while brandishing a gun.  One doesn’t typically encounter hordes of hoodlums charging at one from over the barricades or what have you.

Nevertheless it’s clear that many rank and file conservatives are very interested in owning semi-automatic rifles.  Why?  What do they want them for?  Well setting aside the paranoid and unworkable fantasies I’ve just discussed I suspect most of the people who want these weapons want them for three primary purposes: 1) to commit crimes (not just the conventional sort but racial conflict, domestic terrorism, and that sort of thing; one must remember that some people’s notion of a “police state” is basically any state where they are not allowed to do whatever they want to do for example robbing banks or dealing drugs or what have you; for many people we’re already living in a “police state” as oppressive to them as Nazi Germany of Stalinist Russia might be to normal law abiding people), 2) to play army or cowboy in their backyards, 3) to “collect” them and stick them on the wall where they can ogle and fondle them from time to time.  In the grand scheme of things I have difficulty attaching too much importance to these objectives and I certainly would not think they justify the increased risk of mass shootings at schools or anywhere else for that matter.

If we’re not drawing the line rather arbitrarily at semi-automatic rifles then where should we draw the line?  This is just the sort of thing that drives simple minded conservatives crazy.  One can hear the wheels turning: if I can’t have a semi-automatic rifle soon I won’t be able to own a teaspoon!  Well I don’t know.  Just drawing the line anyplace other than at a weapon designed to facilitate mass murder would probably be a big leap forward.

How about handguns?  Well, like semi-automatic rifles the only real reason for handguns is to kill people.  In this case no reasonable person would suppose we’re talking about an ability to take on the police or US Army so we can set that argument aside.  No, handguns are all about a sort of arms race between criminals and people protecting themselves from criminals or trying to protect themselves from criminals or imaging they’re protecting themselves from criminals.  Like all arms races there is something indeterminate about any given equilibrium.  If no one had a handgun then one would likely be able to defend oneself adequately with whatever the criminals were using instead.  Like what?  I have no idea.  Spears, swords, knives, rocks, tree branches?  Of course wielding those types of hand to hand weapons requires a modicum of strength and physical dexterity while using a handgun requires little more than an ability to point one’s arm and move one’s finger.  I can’t really see grandma taking on a ne’er do well in a knife fight but I can imagine her shooting the stranger in her front parlor with a handgun, which one may hope is a ne’er do well and not the neighbor kid come to return one of her cats or what have you.  So maybe handguns are reasonable?  Of course ease of killing people is a two way street and I suppose it’s quite likely a lot more criminals are interested in committing violent crimes if they know all they’ll need to do is point their arms and move their fingers so maybe we’d be better off overall if no one but police had handguns.  Similar considerations apply to the issue of the portability of handguns.  It’s great that people can carry them around easily but of course that applies to both criminals and law abiding citizens.  Although there are most likely cases where law abiding people have stumbled across ongoing crimes and managed to intercede including some shooting sprees I suspect this isn’t as common as one might think because a good deal of handgun violence most likely involves someone getting the drop on someone else, shooting that person, and promptly running away.  Rather difficult for a third person to contrive to be in a position to do a lot about that.  So I suspect for every person saved by law abiding people carrying handguns a much larger number of people are likely murdered by criminals carrying handguns.  One I think must wonder if the ubiquity of handguns is on balance a good thing or a bad thing.  Anyway, I think we can at least agree that handguns seem a lot more reasonable than semi-automatic rifles.  They’re a lot less useful for deranged mass murderers wanting to go on shooting sprees because they don’t fire as fast, the magazines don’t hold as many rounds, and one has to be considerably closer to one’s target to hit anything.

Other ideas?  Well, I would suggest hunting rifles and shotguns may be in a different category altogether because unlike semi-automatic rifles and handguns they have a purpose beyond killing people: killing animals.  Supposing one has a right to bear these sorts of arms makes rather more sense to me than some of the other weapons we’ve been discussing.  They have a legitimate and real (as opposed to fantasy) purpose, they’re not very well suited to shooting sprees and mass murder, and as a bonus they’re a lot more awkward to use in the commission of a crime than say a handgun, a fact which would seem to tilt the arms race back in favor of homeowners and other people with adequate space to store them.  In the old gangster movies the bad guys would often pull a sawed off shotgun from out of their trench coats or in the case of westerns I guess the varmints would pull them from out of their dusters but honestly how many people really wear trench coats or dusters these days?  And of course you have to be pretty much next to your victim for pulling a shotgun out of whatever article of clothing one happens to be wearing to make sense.  Seems a lot more awkward to use in a criminal context than a handgun for example.

So let’s summarize and wrap up or discussion of where to draw the line.  Hunting rifles and shotguns seem to me likely to be in the generally acceptable range.  Handguns are in a sort of gray area.  Pros and cons.  Might need some additional research on those.  Semi-automatic and automatic rifles, sniper rifles, and other more advanced military style weaponry appear to me to just not be worth the risk to innocent people.  Just talking out loud right now.  Not saying I have all the answers.  Personally I think we’d be moving forward leaps and bounds by just managing to sit down and discuss the issue like reasonable adults rather than small children who’ve missed their nap times.  But we all know what’s likely to actually happen after this most recent tragedy is what seems to always happen after these sorts of tragedies here in the USA.  Nothing.  Or not exactly nothing.  We’ll send out our thoughts and prayers.  Who knows, I might even get off the couch and light a candle but that’s pushing it.  And of course assuredly many people will rush out to buy more semi-automatic rifles to guard themselves against all the gun violence thus insuring the next mass shooting of school kids won’t be far away.

Before I sign off this week I thought I’d mention one other funny component of the discussion of guns here in the USA, which is a notion shared by many conservatives, Republicans, and other nutty right wing sorts not to mention common criminals, that they have what they call a “god given” right to semi-automatic rifles or really I suppose whatever weaponry they desire.  Where does that come from you ask?  You don’t remember that bit in the bible?  Jesus waxing eloquent on the AR-15?  Well, again one has to remember that the original purpose of the old colonists coming up with this particular bit of the US Constitution was apparently to allow people to fight effectively against the US government should things not turn out as planned.  But of course the US Constitution is a political and legal document implemented by institutions of the US government, so there is obviously something not entirely logically consistent going on here.  The so-called founding fathers may have been clever in some ways but they did tend toward rhetorical extremes from time to time.  Unfortunate in retrospect they didn’t have a few founding mothers around to help keep their feet on the ground.  Anyway, many conservatives particularly of the virulently anti-government including I may say anti-democratic government sort such as anarchists and so-called libertarians and other wacky groups of that ilk have apparently decided they’re talking about rights that don’t derive from the Second Amendment of the US Constitution at all but are instead issued directly from mystical beings in the next world.  In my opinion these dangerous anti-social lunatics really belong in prison along with other criminals who believe they are above the law but of course the tendency now with President Trump and the GOP in charge is to coddle and carve out special exceptions for such people.  Conservatives have argued successfully in the courts for example that although the US Supreme Court has found that the US Constitution does not allow state governments to discriminate against homosexuals in the area of marriage state officials are perfectly within their rights to choose not to process those types of marriages as long as their disregard of the law and their official duties is based on bigotry with a religious pedigree.  I’m not sure any old religion will do of course because I would be surprised if conservatives are willing to extend similar special exemptions to Muslims or Hindus or Buddhists let alone to any of the other more esoteric sorts of religions one hears about these days such as Wicca or followers of Voodoo or what have you.  No, I suspect it’s only Christians and possibly only certain sects within that general area who can choose to not follow the law if they feel so inclined at least in this area of gay people getting married.  On a positive note I believe the courts did find that the states in question would need to import someone from somewhere else at taxpayer expense who would be able to follow the law and fulfill their official functions to fill in for any state officials who decide to take an extended coffee break of this sort so at least gay people in those states can still ostensibly get their marriage papers processed by someone other than the person who would normally process them.  My point is one can very well imagine the GOP trying to exempt certain Christians from gun laws if they claim to have received special permission from the heavens to own particular weapons. All I can say is I hope none of these otherworldly entities had anything to say about nuclear bombs because honestly I think that would be taking this sort of lunacy a little too far don’t you?

Want to help school kids get through their youth without being shot by a psycho killer with a semi-automatic rifle or some similar murder tool?  Want to maintain the integrity of our democratic policy system?  Want to bring some common sense and rationality to national gun policy?  Want to confront Christian exceptionalism and bullying and maintain our American tradition of freedom of religion?  Well you know what to do my brothers and sisters.  Join liberals in fighting the conservative menace to the American way of life!  Vote Democrat in the next election!

References

NRA chief accuses Democrats of pushing 'socialist' agenda in wake of Florida shooting.  Lauren Fox.  CNN.  February 22, 2018.  https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/22/politics/wayne-lapierre-cpac-speech-nra/index.html.

NRA goes on the offensive after Parkland shooting, assailing media and calling for more armed school security.  Mark Berman and David Weigel.  Washington Post.  February 22, 2018.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2018/02/22/after-silence-on-parkland-nra-pushes-back-against-law-enforcement-the-media-and-gun-control-advocates/?utm_term=.6dc33a0f848b.

Trump defends the NRA as a group of ‘patriots’ who want to ‘do the right thing.’  Kaitlan Collins.  CNN.  February 23, 2018.  https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/22/politics/donald-trump-nra/index.html

The Beautiful Dream II

Welcome friends!

Last time out I suggested the determination of American economic conservative to portray a rather overly simplistic and idealized mental construct they call “The Free Market” as a panacea for all of society’s ills may be related more to the world of dreams and fantasy than ethical or empirical theory.  In other words, I suggested those who would argue against this false and anti-social ideology on the basis of ethics, logic, or historical evidence may be barking up the wrong tree.  In some cases people live for their dreams and whether their dreams have any basis in reality or cohere in any rational or logical sense is really beside the point.  The narcotic effect of these sorts of life sustaining dreams has of course been noted before but more typically in the context of religious or spiritual beliefs as in Karl Marx’s famous description of religion as the opium of the masses.  However, I think a case can be made for essentially the same phenomenon playing out in terms of secular beliefs relating to economic issues.  I suggested it was likely not coincidental that here in the USA social conservatives attracted to religious modes of thinking tend to also be or at least make common cause with economic conservatives attracted to conservative economic ideology.  However, I didn’t really draw out what I consider the interesting ethical implications of this train of thought last week so I thought I do that now before I forget the whole thing entirely.

The ethical issue I wanted to take up this week is basically if one sees some junkies on the street corner and one is concerned for their welfare should one buy them some stuff or drag them struggling and screaming to rehab?  More to the point if one sees some people clinging to religion like drowning people clinging to a life raft should one bother explaining the rather obvious intellectual deficiencies and moral pitfalls of religious modes of thought or should one just light a bit of incense and sing a little song with them?  Even more to the point if one sees some poor economically struggling people working feverishly to shrink and minimize the influence of democratic government, outlaw unions, eliminate health and safety regulations, and do away with social safety net programs under the belief that doing so will usher in a golden age in which all their economic problems will evaporate should one bother trying to  explain why that is most likely not what will happen or should one just buy them a six pack and a funny cap and help them on their way?

It seems to me now the answer is not as obvious as I previously supposed.  Well, OK, I suppose the answer is still pretty obvious under some conditions.  If one is suffering oneself and unfortunately also educated enough to be immune to the mind numbing power of the conservatives’ pipe dream then of course I suppose one should speak up for oneself and try to talk sense to those in a similar situation.  Similarly if one isn’t really suffering oneself but notices signs of uncertainty or mental distress in the minds of those who are suffering then one might feel some urgency in helping them come quickly to their senses.  But I’m thinking about the case, all too common here in the USA because of the close relationship between liberalism, intelligence, and higher education, in which one is relatively well to do oneself but motivated in no small degree by one’s concern for economically struggling people who appear to be in the deep trance of conservative ideology.  That’s a tougher one right?  

One’s natural inclination may be to recoil at the sight of people essentially emasculating themselves (or whatever the equivalent would be for women) by endorsing the conservative mantra of shrinking and weakening the role of democratic government thus negating their own relatively equal voting power, of endorsing the fanciful conservative fairy stories that portray wealth as largely a function of individual merit and moral rectitude and poverty conversely as mostly a personal failing befalling only the morally compromised, and of supporting the elimination of government programs designed to address the inequities and imbalances and essentially instabilities of real market systems.  One may want to avert one’s eyes at the spectacle of these unfortunate people putting their own livelihoods and modest homes at risk and allowing their children to succumb to the social pathologies that inevitably accompany poverty and neglect.  

But I think to be realistic one must balance these sentiments with the knowledge that in many cases these people are benumbed and ensnared in the beautiful dream of conservatives.  They feel no pain or material hardship of any sort.  Indeed they live on a dream that if only we give The Free Market full rein we will attain a care free society in which all good people do well, activist government will become unnecessary and fall away (that is, any government beyond simply endorsing property rights and possibly a few other functions), and we need never think about the difficult and contentious issues associated with economic distributions again.  How happy life will be when we get to that promised land that never seems to quite arrive but is always just around the next bend.  Would one want to take this life sustaining dream from these people and replace it with the cold reality of empirical fact, the real variety of shifting market structures, the pros and cons of real market systems, the difficult trade-offs and complicated discussions that would really be required to reconcile conflicting notions of distributional fairness and ethically optimal results?  Many of these people simply don’t have the intellectual capacity or educational background to entertain such issues or deal with such a world.  Without their beautiful dream they may very well sink into the dark blue depths of reality never to emerge again.

Justice and fairness for the economically weak is always something worthwhile to fight for but I think we all need to keep things in perspective.  Fight the good fight of course but have a bit of a laugh and a song in one’s heart along the way.  Think of the wealthy conservative elite not simply as unscrupulous villains intent on preying on the intellectually and economically weak to further engorge themselves but more charitably as possibly more akin to greedy pushers selling their overpriced poison to desperate strung out junkies on the street corner.  Heroes to some, villains to others, but in a better world unnecessary to all.

The Beautiful Dream of Economic Conservatives

Welcome friends!

I was just reading yet another article about how the poorer salt of the earth variety of conservatives here in the USA are still very enthusiastic about the performance of our ongoing national embarrassment President Trump.  They are absolutely convinced he is on the right track.  This phenomenon has long been interesting to me because these are the people who have been losing out over the past several decades of conservative / neoliberal free market economic ideology and policies and there is really no reason to suppose they will not continue to lose out exacerbated now by any number of additional burdens such as the shredding of the social safety net, trade wars, elimination of worker health and safety rules, elimination of Obamacare and with it some of these people’s only realistic hope for affordable health care, elimination of Wall Street oversight, growth slowing restriction of legal immigration, destruction of the environment, and many other important conservative objectives and priorities.  I’ve generally considered that because these people tend to not be the most educated or informed they are simply prone to being easily deluded by fast talking con artists such as, well, President Trump and other leading figures in the Republican Party and the conservative hot air industry.  However, I must admit it’s always seemed a bit of a mystery to me why they don’t seem to ever catch on even after decades of getting the short end of the stick.  One would think a rock would have caught on by now.  Recently I’ve been thinking I may be the looking at the issue the wrong way round.  Perhaps what is important to these people is not their material conditions but something belonging more to the world of etherial fantasy: keeping their conservative dreams alive.  Perhaps it simply doesn’t matter to them how they actually make out in this world as long as they can continue to dream the happy dream of conservative economic ideology.

What is the happy dream of conservative economic ideology?  I think you must have come across it somewhere.  It’s basically the notion that we can set up a market system that captures all relevant ethical considerations relating to the thorny issue of distribution such that we will never need to bother discussing them again.  The people who should do well will automatically do well.  The people who shouldn’t do well will automatically get exactly what they deserve.  Democratic government and voting and policy making and so on will become irrelevant at least as far as economic issues.  Presumably private charity will likewise become irrelevant unless one has a personal  interest in undermining the ethically correct market distribution.  We can all look after our own selfish interests with nary a thought for our fellow humans or indeed nary a thought relating to any economic issue at all and the invisible hand of the market will ensure it all comes out right in the end.

What’s not to like right?  All our problems solved in one fell swoop.  We can all sit on our recliners drinking beer and watching fulminating conservative pundits excoriate their many enemies on the TV.  The problem of course with this particular pipe dream is that even a moment’s serious thought or attention to history will reveal it doesn’t really work.  It’s very difficult to set up a system that rewards that which we all agree on an ethical basis should be rewarded.  And once one loses that unanimity well it all becomes a matter of conflict between the haves and the have nots wouldn’t you say?  Not very magical nor necessarily all that happy.  And or course there are many well known conditions under which even perfectly competitive free markets can be shown to have problems even using the stripped down utility lite favored by the economics profession for its simplistic misleading baby social philosophy.  There are also many real world market structures other than the much discussed perfectly competitive market and without constant supervision or oversight there is not reason to suppose market structures will maintain constant over time.  In other words the pipe dream of the economic conservative is not something most reasonable educated thinking people can take very seriously.

However, I think one has to consider the issue from the perspective of people who just aren’t very educated and who really really don’t like complications or discussions.  It’s quite possible that for such people thinking and talking seriously about such matters is more burdensome than maintaining their simplistic dreams come what may and allowing their actual material conditions to deteriorate.  In that sense I suppose one might say free market ideology is for many of these people a sort of secular religion that like all religions must be shielded from the cold light of reason, evidence, and critical discussion.  Indeed I’ve long commented on the fact that the same people tend to be attracted to both economic conservatism and social conservatism involving religion.  It also fits in with the clear preferences for many of these conservatives to not subject themselves to real news or real information that might potentially challenge their beliefs and values and instead hew closely to the biased unreliable fake news of the conservative infotainment industry.  As reported in the papers surveys show many of these people consider a news source reliable and unbiased to the extent it protects and facilitates their dreams and not for any of the rather more prosaic considerations the rest of us tend to rely upon.  It also explains the anger and rudeness of many conservatives because of course if one is frustrated and trying to avoid serious discussion of an issue the best way to shut it down is to become angry and rude.

I find it an interesting idea because in my youth conservatives were typically portrayed as hard headed realists while liberals with their endless attempts to improve things were typically cast as starry eyed dreamers.  However, now that I’m older and have a seen a bit of the world I suspect that old saw had it exactly backwards.  Liberals with their willingness to confront evidence from the material world and take up the real world complications that make free market systems less than the panacea conservatives want them to be are the realists.  Economic conservatives at least of the salt of the earth variety are the starry eyed dreamers clinging confidently or perhaps desperately to the happy dream that would allow them to thrive without the hurly burly of debate and discussion or indeed education or even information of any sort.  Of course we must also recognized economic conservatives of another sort, the calculating schemers of the wealthy classes and their allies and cheerleaders and hangers on in the economics profession and conservative infotainment industry, who cynically use free market ideology as a rhetorical tool to amass more wealth for themselves with scant regard for the welfare of others.  Those elite economic conservatives are I suppose as much realists in their own way as liberals.  The difference is that liberals apply their realism to their sincere interest in the national welfare and honest intellectual exchange and discussion while elite economic conservatives apply their realism to making a buck for themselves any way possible and use words and arguments disingenuously and strategically in an attempt to keep other people in a sort of dream world with little or no sincere interest in the truth or national welfare. We should all resist the narcotic pipe dreams peddled by the economic conservative elite.  Fight for liberalism and the good of all humankind.

Liberty and Society

Welcome friends!

I don’t know how I got on the subject, probably the recent Christmas holiday and the annual rite of posing and gesturing for the good of all mankind, but I was just thinking how liberals tend to feel various social ills are best addressed through purposeful government action and conservatives (of the conscientious sort who actually think about such things) tend to feel these issues are more appropriately addressed through private charity.  A common argument one tends to hear on the conservative side is that the big advantage of their preferred approach is that it’s voluntary.  If one wants to help other people one is free to do so but no one is forced to part with their hard earned cash or let’s just say cash at the behest of some no good do-gooder.  In contrast the government policy approach favored by liberals generally involves the government’s power of taxation and hence ultimately its monopoly on the legal use of force and thus constitutes an affront to freedom and personal liberty.  Superficially it may seem they’re onto something.  Voluntary seems good.  Being forced to do anything seems bad.  But like much of the rest of conservative ideology upon deeper consideration the argument turns out to be a bit too simplistic.  Some other issues going on.  Big issues that get to the core of civilized society and democracy.  Not the sort of things people should really leave unsaid.  Let me explain what I’m talking about.

The first problem I have with the conservative take on this issue is that it seems a little lopsided or unbalanced in some way.  The private charity approach certainly seems consistent with the freedom of potential donors who can decide to give or not give as the mood suits them.  But this increase in freedom relative to the tax and spend approach seems to me counterbalanced by a commensurate decrease in freedom on the part of those on the receiving end.  Under a proper government program to address whatever social problems we’re talking about these people would be legally entitled to whatever it was and would be free to claim what would then be rightfully theirs.  Under a charitable regime they would of course not be entitled to anything in particular.  They would arrive hat in hand begging for alms.  Not really the same freedom-wise I wouldn’t think.  If we’re going to look at the net impact on freedom considering both groups of people I’d have to say I’m just not really sure.  One may think some people don’t really deserve more freedom so the calculation is really beside the point.  That’s fine with me.  We can discuss it.  But in that case let’s not present abstract freedom as an independent objective or consideration.  Let’s just say we’re interested in distributional systems.

Another problem with the private charity approach is that it appears to me a little sneaky or underhanded in some way.  We’ve set up together as a society through our political system our legal and economic institutions or if not set them up in the sense of bringing them into being then at least agreed together to modify them or not and to abide by them and so on.  However, if we’re talking about addressing some perceived social ills the way we’ve things up apparently has left a little something to be desired.  It’s not a big deal.  It’s not unexpected.  Hard to think of everything and to create a system that handles everything.  I suppose no society yet created is perfect and can carry on indefinitely without some remedial work now and then to keep it running more or less smoothly.  My point is simply that when I see people who make out very well indeed in our society accepting and supporting the system to the extent it works to their benefit but balking when it comes time to address the inevitable issues and imperfections associated with that system manifested typically in the suffering or relative want of their fellow citizens it looks to me like people shirking their duty to society.  It’s rather like eating a nice dinner and skipping out on the bill.  It’s fine to say I’ll only pay if I decide to volunteer a little something on the way out but in that case one shouldn’t be too surprised if the restaurant falls into disrepair or even ceases to exist one day.

And of course there is something inherently odd about setting up an economic system based primarily on monetary incentives and self interest and then trying to address social ills using a system that depends on people acting against those incentives at least in the short term.  Under a charitable system arguably good people who express their concern for others in a practical way by which I mean giving people money will lose out relative to those who choose to express a haughty disregard for the welfare of their fellows.  Sounds like a recipe to let problems go unsolved to me.  Sometimes people are willing to do things if we do them together and everyone pitches in but balk when they discover they’ll be doing all the hard lifting while their compatriots sit on the sidelines under very fancy canopies indeed cheering them on.  

A rather more fundamental issue is that I’m not at all convinced taxation really qualifies as any great assault on one’s liberty.  Goes with living in a human society.  Things need doing and it’s not really all going to be done through the magic of the marketplace.  But of course it depends on the form of government we’re talking about doesn’t it?  If we’re talking about monarchism or fascism or what have you then I suppose taxation might be rather arbitrary and arguable an assault on one’s liberty.  This is where the idea of democracy comes in.  We vote on things and then we abide by them whether that’s what we’ve personally voted for or not or in extreme cases we abide by them as much as we’re able within the bounds of our perceived moral duty because, well, that’s just the way society works.  One wouldn’t have a very effective society if everyone does only what they choose to do from one moment to the next.  Some places have tried that approach.  In practice it tends to lead to what I believe is known technically as a dysfunctional hellhole.  And in this context as well I’m struck by the distinctive imbalance inherent in much of conservative ideology.  Although often up in arms over the government’s use of force as it applies to enforcing the tax code conservatives rarely express concerns over the government’s use of force in other contexts such as for example enforcing our system of property rights.

Of course this imbalance really gets to the heart of the whole issue I suppose.  It has nothing to do with freedom or liberty and everything to do with haves and have nots.  Conservatives are enamored of the institutions surrounding the market and or current property arrangements.  They perceive no social ills under such a regime and nor do they care to receive the opinion of their fellow citizens delivered via the democratic political system.  In a sense they’ve become too cool for school.  It leads to that particular form of egotism by which conservatives imagine themselves a law unto themselves or in some cases the beneficiary of laws not made by their fellows but delivered from the cosmos by the forces of nature or helpful deities of one sort or another.  It’s the mindset that leads many conservatives to speak of government beyond that required to express and enforce the market institutions they find so attractive as a great evil with no apparent concern over what form that dark force may take be it democracy or fascism or communism.  Indeed many conservatives tend to use the terms interchangeably.  What they fail to appreciate is that the very system they excoriate as infringing upon their precious liberties is the system we used to set up and maintain the system of property rights and contracts they so adore but that others may find the source of suffering and want and injustice.  It’s a system of thought predicated on egotism and a defective and incomplete anti-social moral philosophy that results in selective perception expressed in peculiarly unbalanced reasoning in which government legitimacy and individual rights and duties appear and disappear like will-o’-the-wisps depending on one’s vantage point.  

We should all fight against conservatism and reaffirm our commitment to society, democracy, and the solving of social ills through purposeful co-ordinated collective action.  It’s time we gave up the ancient deist pipe dream of an invisible hand leading society to morally optimal results with no more effort on our part than assiduous attention to our own selfish wants and desires.  No mysterious providence guides markets to mutually desirable and salutary results.  Markets do what they do.  Some of it good for some.  Possibly even most of it good for most.  However,  under any reasonable system of moral ethics the market will be seen to allow some issues to remain unsolved.  We should recognize those issues and take steps to address them to make our system work for everyone.

New Year 2018

Welcome friends!

Happy New Year everyone!  Woo hoo!  2018!  Oh I’ve got a very good feeling about this year!  Well OK not really but hey let’s show a little optimism shall we?  My goodness we’re only a few days in.  Too early to get all mopey and depressed just yet.  Last year was …. well …. maybe not the best the old USA has ever seen.  And huge or as I suppose some might say yuge challenges for the country lie ahead.  The next three years are going to be tough that’s for sure but of course they will inevitably be a heck of a lot tougher for some than for others.  Indeed some Americans are making out very well indeed.  We’re not all in it together by any means.  I read an article recently that noted the richest one percent of Americans now hold forty percent of the nation’s total wealth, a greater share than at any time in the past fifty years and significantly more than the bottom ninety percent, which currently lay claim to about twenty percent of the nation’s total wealth.  And of course with President Trump and the Republican Party in charge the share going to the wealthy elite is set to rise dramatically in the short term due to their recent top heavy changes to the tax code and in the near future by the elimination or drastic reduction of the public programs and resources hitherto devoted to helping out the less fortunate that will be necessitated by their top heavy changes to the tax code. Well, either that or we’ll have a rather notable increase in our national debt.  Seems like an auspicious time to think about the future wouldn’t you say?

First let me just quickly review the article that got me going this week.  Lots of fun statistics.  I already gave the one about the richest one percent of Americans claiming forty percent of the total wealth.  Did I mention the top twenty percent hold a full ninety percent of the wealth?  Well they do.  Also fun to compare the USA to other developed countries.  Our closest competitor in the inequality game must be Germany where the top one percent own about twenty-five percent of the wealth.  I say competitor but honestly they’re a rather distant second aren’t they?  The fat cats are getting only about half what they get here in the USA.  In terms of inequality at least the USA is Number One!  In the UK and France the top one percent claim a relatively modest eighteen percent of the wealth and in Canada sixteen percent.  And how about little Finland where the League of Fancy Pants only manages a measly twelve percent?  Got to love Finland.  I think I read they do their traffic tickets based on a graduated scale according to the wealth of the malefactor as a gesture toward making tickets equally onerous to people at different wealth levels.  Can one imagine the USA ever doing anything like that?

I’m sure I’ve mentioned before that our respectable national wealth statistics can give foreigners a rather inaccurate idea of life here in the USA.  I know I’ve discussed in previous posts articles that have pointed out the median American (by which I mean in this instance residents of the USA) by wealth, that is, that hypothetical person with the characteristic that exactly fifty percent of Americans have greater wealth and fifty percent less, is rather worse off than the median resident by wealth of many or dare I say most developed countries.  In other words the person in the middle of our wealth scale is basically tanking compared to his or her counterpart in most other developed countries.  You can see the same phenomenon by looking at the share of wealth claimed by the richest percentiles.  But numbers can be so impersonal can’t they?  Let me just lay it out in words.  The USA is a county in which some people live like kings and many many others live like paupers.  Don’t make the mistake of thinking of it as roughly similar to other developed nations in the EU or elsewhere.  Think more along the lines of Czarist Russia or Medieval Europe or colonial Haiti and you’ll be closer to the mark.  Basically a vast sea of poor, ignorant, unemployed, frequently violent, quite often drug addled and basically forgotten people surrounding a few shining gated communities of successful greedy self infatuated jerks lolling on couches and divans with guns under the pillows.

But you know what’s even more comical?  The funny ideas about distributions Americans hide away in the dark recesses of their confused minds.  Another humorous bit from the article I was just discussing involved a little survey conducted in 2010 by some researchers who asked a random sample of 5,500 Americans what sort of wealth distribution they thought would be reasonable or justified.  As one might expect it came out to nothing at all like what we actually have.  They had in mind the top twenty percent might be getting thirty-two percent of the wealth with the bottom twenty percent claiming about eleven percent. Rather different from the reality wouldn’t you say?  Ninety percent of wealth to the top twenty percent and a resounding negative one percent for the bottom twenty percent?  Yes, on average that benighted lower wealth group actually has negative net worth.  Ouch.  So if many Americans think the distribution we actually have is so different from the one they feel might be justified does that mean they’re prepared to stand up and do something about it?  No.  Not at all.  They’ll elect Republicans all but guaranteed to make the real distribution of wealth diverge ever more from what these Americans say they would find justified.  And they’ll do it again and again and again.  Why do they do that?  Hmm.  Interesting question.  I have a few ideas.

First, many Americans just don’t like to talk about money and in particular distributions of income or wealth.  It’s awkward.  It’s uncomfortable.  Addressing it would require people to come together and discuss their values and so on and we’re just not very good at it.  We’re fine touting our own value or even talking with other people who share our values.  We’re just not very good talking with people holding other values.  It’s most likely a function of the fact that most Americans view their values as delicate little hot house flowers more akin to religious sentiment of the etherial swoony sort than intellectual propositions.  Values for most Americans are meant to be protected from scrutiny and potential criticism not brought out into the light of open debate.

Second, many Americans and in particular conservative Americans believe the free market allocates wealth, wages, and just in general goods and services in the ethically correct and optimal way and that consequently whatever level of inequality falls out of such a system must be both equitable and appropriate.  Liberals ted to compare the results of real world markets to results they would find ethically justifiable or optimal on other bases but conservatives do things the other way round.  They are enamored of the ethical principles expressed in the mechanics of free markets and are more likely to adjust their thinking about what results are ethical and appropriate based on what happens in a market system.  When one comes at the issue from this perspective fretting about inequality and the share of wealth going to different bits of the population is irrelevant and really rather unethical since changing it would require one to change what happens in a market system.  According to this view it’s really irrelevant if for example most Americans end up dying on the street because if that’s what falls out of the market then that’s what should happen.  If some people are destined to die they should get on with it and reduce the surplus population.

Third, many Americans and in particular conservative Americans hold the rather fanciful belief that market systems tend naturally to spread wealth about rather than concentrate it.  This is view expressed in so-called  “trickle down” economics in which resources allocated to wealthy people are understood to help the less fortunate as well.  I would argue this is pretty much the opposite of what real markets do.  Indeed, one of the notable features of market systems I would say is that it’s a lot easier to make money if one has money.  In other words, the natural result of a market system is most likely an ever increasing concentration of wealth.  Anyway that’s how it has seemed to me during my fleeting lifetime.  We tax income from working at a much higher rate than we tax income from investments.  Now that I’m older and investments contribute relatively more to my total income than when I was younger I’m finding it relatively much easier to make a buck.   And that’s just one example.  Many rich people have money simply fall into their laps as their wealthy parents pass on to that great country club in the sky.   Before that happy day if they find they need to prepare for actual work they can afford the best education and can undertake the sort of activities like unpaid internships and so on that poor students may find untenable.  As adults they can relocate easily, have no messy financial commitments to struggling relatives, can afford to take risks, can easily find the money for any ventures they might care to try, will always have plenty of second chances, can take their time to find the fields and areas in which they excel, and are likely to have friends and relations with well paying positions who can help them along.  How different is their experience of life from that of the poor in this country.  How simple for them to prosper where others struggle.  And so the share of wealth going to the already wealthy rises year after year.  Why would it do anything else?  Certainly nothing inherent in a market system.

So on it goes.  Here in the USA the wealthy elite have relentlessly increased their stranglehold on all facets of American life including most notably our national politics.  The man and woman in the street or many of them anyway go along with it hoping forlornly and impotently for better days just around the corner, their thinking and imaginations manipulated by both the confused and the unscrupulous in academia and our burgeoning infotainment and propaganda industries.  Living vicariously.  Watching the rich cavort on TV.  Hunkered in their little houses, the lucky ones anyway, surrounded by their precious guns they trust will defend them against their increasingly poor and desperate neighbors who they fear may fall upon them at any moment like the proverbial rats in a sewer.  Taking drugs to ease the pain.  And how will it end I wonder? Well, let’s not think about that right now shall we?  It’s not the time to think about endings but the time to think about beginnings.  It’s a new year!  Let’s all dream a happy dream!  Let’s say we liberals rally and defeat conservatism and that the little guys and gals learn to stand up for themselves against Mr. and Mrs. Moneybags.  Let’s say we reaffirm the power of democracy to give voice to the economically weak and to serve as a counterpoint to the market power of the wealthy.  Let’s say we strengthen our national government instead of weakening and shrinking it.  Let’s say we reduce the influence of big money in politics rather than ever increasing it.  Let’s say philosophers and maybe even some economists begin to get real and people finally start to understand some of the real issues involved in social ethics including the ethical weakness and implausibility of so-called welfare economic theory.  Let’s say they start to look seriously and critically at market systems to understand both their strengths and weaknesses rather than being content to contemplate them in starry eyed wonder.  The future can be beautiful.  We can make it happen if we try.

References

The richest 1 percent now owns more of the country’s wealth than at any time in the past 50 years.  Christopher Ingraham.  December 6, 2017.  The Washington Post.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/12/06/the-richest-1-percent-now-owns-more-of-the-countrys-wealth-than-at-any-time-in-the-past-50-years/?hpid=hp_regional-hp-cards_rhp-card-business-technology%3Ahomepage%2Fcard&utm_term=.68f307c45f59.

Originally published January 5, 2018