A Philosopher's Blog

Philosophical Essays on Many Subjects

Archives for September 2013

Taxes & Profits

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Thief (soundtrack)
Thief (soundtrack) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

One of the rather useful aspects of philosophy is that it trains a person to examine underlying principles rather than merely going with what appears on the surface. Such examinations often show that superficially consistent views turn out to actually be inconsistent once the underlying principle is considered. One example of this is the matter of taxes and profits.

One of the stock talking points in regards to taxes is that taxes are a form of theft. The rhetoric usually goes something like this: taxes on the successful/rich/job creators is taking the money they have earned and giving it to people who have not earned it so they can get things for free, like food stamps, student financial aid and unemployment benefits.

Under the rhetoric seems to be the principle that taking the money a person has earned and giving it to those who have not earned it is theft and thus wrong. This principle does have considerable appeal.

This principle, obviously enough, rests on the notion that earning money entitles the person to that money and that not earning the money means that a person is not entitled to it. Simple enough.

A second stock talking point in regards to wages for workers, especially the minimum wage, is that the employers are morally entitled to (attempt to) make a profit and this justifies them in paying workers less than the value of their work.

Not surprisingly, those accept the first talking point also accept the second. On the face of it, they do seem consistent: the first says that taxes are theft and the second says that employers have a right to make a profit. However, these two views are actually inconsistent.

To see this, consider the principle that justifies the claim that taxing people to give stuff to others is theft:   taking the money a person has earned and giving it to those who have not earned it is theft and thus wrong.

In the case of the employer, to pay the worker less than the value of his work is to take money the worker has earned and to give it to those who have not earned it. As such, it would also be theft and thus wrong.

At this point, it might be objected that I am claiming that an employer making a living is theft, but this is not the case. The employer is, like the worker, entitled to the value of the value she contributes. If she, for example, provides equipment, leadership, organization, advertising, and so on, then she is entitled to the value of these contributions.

Profit, then, is essentially the same thing as taxing a person to take their money and give it to those who have not earned it. As such, it should be no surprise that I favor justice in regards to both taxes and wages.

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Cruzing & Obamacaring

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English: Logo of The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc....
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Ted Cruz undertook an almost marathon talking session against Obamacare. Not surprisingly, he does not have any need of Obamacare. As a senator, he already has access to government funded healthcare. However, he also does not need this coverage as, apparently, he falls under his wife’s Goldman Sachs’ coverage. Interestingly, while one of the anti-Obamacare talking points is that the cost of providing insurance will destroy business, the top executives at Goldman Sachs have their $40,500+ family premiums paid for by the company. As a point of comparison, the median household income in the United States is $50,000.

Naturally, to attack Cruz’s claims by pointing out his health care situation would be a mere ad homimem. However, his situation does serve to illustrate the incredible health care gap between the wealthy pundits and politicians attacking Obamacare and average Americans. It is certainly a thing of beauty to see a man with incredible coverage provided for by his wife’s employer rail against a law that would require almost many employers to provide lesser coverage to their employees.

It also illustrates an interesting inconsistency, namely that he seems to hold to the position that his wife should receive health care benefits from her employer but that the same is not true for other Americans. Of course, it is consistent with the view that the wealthy should be treated differently from everyone else.

It might, however, be objected that Cruz is right. After all, Goldman Sachs is incredibly profitable and can easily afford such premiums as part of the very generous (some might say excessive) compensation packages they offer to their “top talent.” Lesser businesses, those run by and employing the little people, cannot afford to provide even the minimum health care benefits required by Obamacare and, apparently, the employees do not deserve such coverage. As such, health care benefits from employers are for the wealthy but not for the little people.

While this approach has some merit when it comes to small businesses, the obvious counter is that the smaller businesses are exempt from this requirement. However, the potential economic impact of Obamacare is worth considering. As is the potential economic damage of the threatened government shut down.

It has been claimed that the cost of implementing Obamacare will cause businesses to fire people and to cut employee hours so that they are not full time employees. Presumably this will not impact the wealthy—Cruz did not seem worried that Goldman Sachs would fire his wife or cut her hours so they would not need to provide healthcare benefits.

While cost is a point of concern, there is the obvious question of whether businesses actually need to fire people and reduce hours or not as a rational response to Obamacare. That is, would the increased cost be so onerous that the firing and cutting would be a matter of survival? Or would it merely be a matter of slightly less profits?  After all, some businesses obviously believe they can afford to provide extremely generous health care benefits to some people, so perhaps those affected can afford to provide lesser benefits to their workers.

This does, of course, raise some interesting questions about what benefits employees should receive and what constitutes economic necessity. However, these matters go beyond the scope of this essay. However, I will note that I do agree that health care should not be linked to employment and that I do agree that it should not be the responsibility of businesses to provide health care coverage. Unfortunately, the structure of health care benefits in the United States is such that having businesses as the provider is the main viable option. The other is, of course, having it provided by the state. Unless, of course, health care could be reformed to the point where average individuals could afford quality health care on their average incomes.

Oddly enough, Cruz and others have spoken of all the terrible damage that Obamacare has done and is doing. While this might be merely a slip of tenses, Obamacare cannot be doing any damage yet—it has not gone into effect. As such, it is an error to speak of the damage it has done—at least until it starts doing damage.

Cruz also made use of hyperbole and a rhetorical analogy by trotting out the absurd comparison of Obamacare to the Nazis. In the past, I have advocated a bi-partisan ban on this (Democrats use it, too) and I still support this proposal. As a general rule, only things that are comparable in badness to the Nazis should be compared to the Nazis. Even if Obamacare does all the awful things that certain Republicans claim it will do, it will obviously fall far short of starting a world war and engaging in genocide. Making the Nazi comparsion seems to show that a person has nothing substantial to say or that he has an impaired grasp of reality.

While Obamacare will certainly have problems, Cruz and his fellows have not offered any alternative plan of any substance. For the most part they make vague claims about market reforms and some even advance the absurd idea that people can just rely on the emergency room. While it is fair to be critical of a law when one does not have an alternative, the Republicans need to offer something other than threats to shut down the government. This makes these Republicans seem rather crazy.

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DePARCCing

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Official photo of Florida Governor Rick Scott
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While education has always been a matter for politics, the United States has seen an ever increasing politicization of education. One reason for this was the financial meltdown—with less revenue the states and federal government had to make cuts. As usual, education was a target of opportunity for such cuts. Another reason is that the education system is now regarded as an exploitable resource with excellent opportunities for money-making. Making the system ripe for harvest involved a concerted effort to demonize educators and the education system. It also involved a concerted push for assessment and standardization. The assessment that is being advanced is the sort that is provided by well-paid contractors, such as standardized tests. The standardization, in addition to the tests, includes having a standard curriculum to make it easy for the private sector to monetize education.  This was all done under the guise of reform.

Florida’s former governor Jeb Bush helped bring about the Common Core State Standards for the public education system, so it is somewhat ironic that current Florida governor Rick Scott wants to remove Florida from this system.

The governor has made it clear that he wants Florida to ditch the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC). He is not, of course, abandoning assessment—that is a lucrative business for private contractors. As such, his plan is to have “competitive bidding” to determine the new assessment method. Naturally, the schools will not be allowed to create their own assessment—money is too precious to waste on public schools when it could go instead to private sector contractors.

Speaking of money, Florida had been selected to be the “fiscal agent” for PARCC, but Scott informed the Education Secretary of the United States that Florida would no longer have ties to PARCC. It might be wondered why the governor would pass up the opportunity to be a fiscal agent. Fortunately, the answer is rather straightforward: a large part of Scott’s base is made up of Tea Party members. Apparently, the Tea Party membership believes that the Common Core and PARCC are federal impositions. The Tea Party (thanks to anti-government rhetoric put forth by certain conservative pundits and, ironically, some conservative politicians) tends to be against the federal government (although generally not against government programs like Medicare). As such, they are against both Common Core and PARCC.

One rather obvious problem with the claim that Florida should bail because of the federal involvement is the fact that the Common Core was developed by the National Governors Association, not the federal government. That is, the states developed the core and this, oddly enough, should match up with the Tea Party values. I am not sure if the Tea Party (and perhaps Rick Scott) are confused in this matter or not. In any case, Scott needs the Tea Party support to get re-elected and hence he is ditching PARCC and the Common Core in hopes of keeping their votes. This has led to something of a conflict in the Republican Party. Some Republicans, like Jeb Bush, have been strongly backing the Common Core and certainly want the states to adopt it. However, if the Tea Party ire at Common Core and PARCC spreads, there might be a change in this support.

Oddly enough, I am also suspicious of the Common Core and PARRC. However, this is not due to a fear of the federal government (other than the NSA and drones). Rather, it is because of concerns with the academic impact of Common Core and PARRC. Ironically, I might well find myself allied with the Tea Party on some aspects of this matter.

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Neutral Evil

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English: Protester seen at Chicago Tax Day Tea...
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I wrote previously on the usefulness of Dungeons & Dragons alignments in discussing ethics in the real world. In that essay, I wrote about the lawful evil alignment. I now turn to the neutral evil alignment.

In the Pathfinder Role Playing Game version of the alignment, neutral evil is defined as follows:

A neutral evil villain does whatever she can get away with. She is out for herself, pure and simple. She sheds no tears for those she kills, whether for profit, sport, or convenience. She has no love of order and holds no illusions that following laws, traditions, or codes would make her any better or more noble. On the other hand, she doesn’t have the restless nature or love of conflict that a chaotic evil villain has.

Some neutral evil villains hold up evil as an ideal, committing evil for its own sake. Most often, such villains are devoted to evil deities or secret societies.

Neutral evil represents pure evil without honor and without variation.

This alignment, unfortunately enough, matches up quite well to some people in the real world. As the description above indicates, neutral evil people are completely selfish. It is important to note that this is different from having a sense of self-interest. The distinction is that self-interest means that a person takes into account his or her own interests when making decisions. A completely selfish person takes self-interest to an extreme, perhaps to the point where only her interests are regarded as having any value. Being self-interested is perfectly compatible with being good. In fact, a good creature would need a degree of self-interest or it would be engaged in wronging itself, which could be an evil action.

Interestingly enough, neutral evil actually has its own real-world moral theory, namely ethical egoism. This is the moral view that a person should do only what is in her interest. This is contrasted with altruism, which is the view that a person should at least sometimes consider the interests of others. There are, of course, degrees of altruism (and egoism). As might be imagined, the extremist form of altruism (always sacrificing all one’s interests for those of others) is an absurd position that could be seen as a form of evil given how the altruistic fanatic treats herself. More moderate altruism just requires at least not being totally selfish—which seems both reasonable and good.

Stupid neutral evil people are open about their selfishness and simply do as they wish. However, unless they are powerful or protected by powerful people, they would tend to come to a bad end. Neutral evil people who are not stupid and also lack the power to do whatever they wish with impunity tend to take one of two approaches.

The first is for the neutral evil person to conceal the fact that she is neutral evil. The classic example of this is the Ring of Gyges story in Plato’s Republic. Such neutral evil people are careful to maintain the appearance that they are not neutral evil and, provided that they have the skills and resources to do this, they can remain unexposed. Even if they are exposed, they sometimes have the ability to regain their mask and return to their evil actions in secret.

The advantage of this approach is that the neutral evil person is able to act in a selfish way in relative safety. The disadvantage is that maintaining the illusion of being not-evil can be costly and can impede the person’s ability to act on his selfishness. This is, however, a viable option for those who are evil and capable, yet lack absolute power.

The second is for the neutral evil person to present their selfishness as being virtuous rather than a vice. That is, rather than concealing their evil behind a mask of false ethics, they endeavor to convince people that their selfish behavior is actually ethically correct.

Ayn Rand is perhaps the best known philosopher who took this approach. She argued that selfishness is a virtue and that altruism is wrong. Of course, the altruism she attacked was the absurd extreme altruism presented above, rather than the sort of moderate altruism that is embraced by actual human beings. Unfortunately, the sort of extreme ethical egoism she endorsed has been embraced, most famously by certain folks in the American Tea Party as well as those who have manipulated this movement.

In the United States, there has been a concerted and brilliant effort to present supporting altruism as supporting vile socialism or communism and of wanting to rob the “job creators” of the wealth they have earned. That is, being altruistic and wanting to assist others is cast as vile villainy. There has also been an equally brilliant effort to cast anyone who benefits from public altruism as being lazy, thieving and parasitic. Naturally, racism has been cleverly exploited here as well.

This has been a rather successful campaign in that many Americans now regard those who support public altruism as exceeded only in wickedness by those who might receive it—especially if those who receive it are minorities.

In contrast, those who have great wealth that has been acquired from the labor of others are cast as having made it on their own, despite the massive government subsidies and state support that helped make their success possible. Ironically, those who are the most selfish are cast as the most virtuous and even those they shameless exploit rush to their defense.

While this alignment can be quite beneficial to the neutral evil person, it is a rather corrosive alignment. After all, neutral evil types are essentially damaging to society. Unlike the lawful evil types who believe they have a stake in the success of society, the neutral evil types are selfish to the degree that they only consider what they regard as their own self-interest.

While an enlightened neutral evil person might get that she has an interest in society, this sort of enlightenment is actually contrary to the alignment. After all, an evil person who sees value in society would be lawful evil rather than neutral evil. As such, while good people have a clear interest in combating neutral evil people, so too would the lawful evil people. In a sense, the neutral evil person is everyone’s enemy—even other neutral evils.

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Gun Violence, Once More

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The most common type of gun confiscated by pol...
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Mass murders, defined as four or more people killed, occur with unfortunate regularity in the United States. These murders typically involve guns—most likely for the obvious reason that guns make killing much easier. The latest incident to grab the public’s attention was a shooting in a Washington Navy yard in which twelve people were murdered. As with each such horrible event, the gun cycle has been restarted.

As always, some people demand that “something be done” while others rush to head off any attempts to actually do something that might involve guns. As with each previous cycle, this one will slowly spin down and lose the eye of the public. Until the next shooting.

I have written so many times about guns and violence that I suspect that I do not have anything new to say about the matter. From what I have heard, seen and read, it seems like the same is true of other people.

In defense of guns, people trot out the usual line about it being people that kill rather than guns. This is, obviously enough, a true claim: guns are tools that people sometimes use to kill other people. Guns do not engage in murder by themselves. Another way to look at it is that it is true that guns do not commit gun crimes—people do. Of course, the same is true about drug crimes: drugs do not commit drug crimes—people do.

While muttering about guns not killing sounds callous when bullet ridden corpses so recently lay on the ground, this approach does have some merit. After all, when people do kill people with guns, there is some reason (a causal chain) behind it and this reason is not simply that the person had a gun. Rather, they have the gun and use it for reasons (in the sense of there being causes).

In the case of the latest alleged shooter, there seems to be evidence of mental health issues, such as his allegedly telling the police about voices and attempts to beam messages to him with microwaves. He also had a police record that included “minor” gun incidents, such as shooting a coworker’s tire and discharging a firearm through his ceiling into the apartment above. Despite all this, he was still able to legally purchase a gun and even keep his security access to military bases.

Looking back at other shootings, some of them are similar in that the shooter had mental issues that were known but did not reach a level at which legal action could be taken. This, of course, suggests that changing the laws would be a potential solution. However, the obvious concern is that the majority of people who fall below the level at which legal action can be taken to deny them guns never engage in violence. I have written extensively about this before and hold to the same position, namely that denying people their rights requires more than just the mere possibility that they might do something.

It is interesting and disturbing to note that it is worth considering that our entire society is mentally deranged. This point was made quite some time ago by Emma Goldman in her essay on anarchism. She noted that we are like animals in captivity and our behavior is deranged by the conditions that are imposed on us by those who hold power. We face a society with grotesque inequalities, ethical problems, drug abuse (which is both a cause and effect), little social support and great stress. Most people who are ground down by this situation break down in non-violent ways, but it is hardly a shock that some people respond with violence. If this is the case, then the violence is a symptom of a greater disease and gun laws would fail to address the disease itself—although they could make gun violence less likely.

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Tower of Zakelana at DriveThruRPG & Paizo Store

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Zakelena-Cover

Description

Roughly three centuries ago the young Zakelana began her adventuring career as a wizard. She was well known for her gift for turning foes to allies and for having a rather broad definition of what counted as a legitimate target for adventuring. This approach earned her the anger of many powerful people who sent assassins or monsters to exact their vengeance. Whenever possible, Zakelana attempted to persuade any would be killer to switch sides. The best known example occurred when a rival mage send a creature to torment Zakelana in her dreams. According to the tale, Zakelana was able to win over the creature with the gift of a pony named “Giggles.”

In her later years, she retired from adventuring and one day she simply vanished. Some speculate a final experiment failed and banished her eternally to some other dimension. Another tale relates how one of her many enemies finally killed her. In any case, she vanished but left behind a tower and a magical gateway to the space containing the tower. Some tales claim that the guards of the tower are monsters that Zakelana won over but could not allow to roam freely. The tales also speak of the great wealth and magical secrets within the tower.

Tower of Zakelana is a Pathfinder Role Playing Game compatible adventure. It is intended for a party of 10th-12th   level characters.

Here are some of the features of the adventure:

  • Usable as a side adventure or extended encounter.
  • Detailed color map for the adventure.
  • Full statistics are included for all encounters—no need to look up monsters.
  • New spells (Zakelana’s Dimensional Tunnel and Zakelana’s Dimensional Pit).

Available on Amazon.

Available at DriveThruRPG.

Available at the Paizo store.

Downloads

Tower of Zakelana Monsters & Map PDF

Hero Lab Portfolio Folder

See paizo.com/pathfinderRPG for more information on the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game.

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