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Archives for June 2021

The Border & Mercenaries?

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When it is not lying about the 2020 election, creating laws to solve problems that do not exist, or doing other dishonest and awful things, the Republican party is focused on the border. Trump obsessed about his wall—but it is a

“absentia monumentum, to make up a phrase. Now that Joe Biden is President, some Republican leaders have decided to take immigration policy and border control into their own hands by deploying law enforcement to border states. As this is being written, Florida, Nebraska and Iowa have committed to this. South Dakota governor Kristi Noem has decided to one-up these states: she wants to deploy up to 50 National Guard troops to the U.S. border with Mexico.

While using National Guard troops in law enforcement roles might strike some as illegal, this is apparently within the law if the troops are acting under the command of a state governor. Matters change if the National Guard is acting under federal authority. As such, Noem can legally send the Guard to serve in law enforcement roles. Biden cannot, which answers the question asked by some conservatives about why Joe is not sending the Guard or federal troops to enforce laws on the border. The answer is that it would be illegal for him to do so.

While Noem and her fellows seem to be simply engaged in political theatre to impress their base, this situation does raise some important concerns. A very unusual aspect of Noem’s plan is that she has announced that a donation from Willis and Reba Johnson’s Foundation will fund the deployment. Willis Johnson is a billionaire who regularly contributes to Republicans, including a sizable donation to Trump’s losing campaign. Normally, if a Guard unit from one state is deployed in another, the federal government pays for it. Guard deployments within a state are usually paid for by state funds. The private funding of a National Guard deployment seems to be an historic first and one that is worrisome.

On the one hand, this could be defended. As Noem argued, private funding for military operations would save the taxpayers money. As noted above, deploying the Guard in this manner would normally be paid for by federal money, although a state could decide to pay instead. Since the federal government is controlled by the Democrats, they are unlikely to fund this Republican political theater—so Noem is “saving” the taxpayers of her state money by getting private funding for her political theater. While I obviously think that Noem should not be sending the troops, the idea of using private funding does have some appeal and an interesting moral case can be made that the wealthy who want or benefit from troop deployments should bear the cost of these deployments. Imagine, for example, if the Iraq War had been privately funded rather than paid for with taxpayer money. So Noem might be on to something here. Not something new, though.

On the other hand, there are obvious concerns about private money being used to fund military operations by state forces. Soldiers who act on the behest of private citizens who pay them are, obviously, acting as mercenaries. Now, in the case of Noem the soldiers would be acting under the orders of their legitimate commander; but her orders would seem to be at the behest of a private citizen who is paying for her to order the Guard to conduct operations on American soil. That is, she is ordering them to act as mercenaries. I want to stress that I am not accusing the Guard soldiers of being mercenaries themselves—they are being put into a morally problematic situation by a leader who should not be doing that to honorable men and women. The moral failure is on her, not them.

Another concern is the precedent this sets. While the wealthy have operated private armies in America in the past and used their influence to get federal and state forces to enforce their will, this seems to be the first case of private money being used to fund a National Guard operation for clear political purposes. This raises the worry that this precedent will be followed by other billionaires and corporations: it has been established that a Republican governor will accept private money to fund military operations by state forces to advance their political goals and ambitions. This is, to say the least, an exceptionally dangerous precedent. To anticipate a straw man attack, I would have no moral objection to a private donor assisting in providing funds to the National Guard in response to a natural disaster. As an example, if Bill Gates wanted to buy the Florida National Guard equipment critical to their response to a destructive hurricane and no one was up to political machinations to misuse the Guard, then that would be morally acceptable. But using private money to fund military operations for political goals, gain and ambitions is dangerous and wrong.

 

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Banning Municipal Broadband

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In the information age, broadband is a critical service. As would be expected in the United States, there are many people who lack this service. In some cases, it is a matter of money, but in other cases it is due to a lack of providers. Ohio, where I went to college, has a serious access problem. About one million Ohioans simply do not have access to broadband and many areas that do have it face slow speeds and unreliable connections. Other states face similar challenges, and the problems tend to be worst in rural and low population areas.

One of the main reasons for the lack of access is that for-profit providers have little interest in providing services in such areas. After all, this would require investing in infrastructure—something they are generally loath to do. To be fair to them, they are in the business of making money for their shareholders and executives, expanding into these areas would not serve this goal very well. Those who take a dim view of such providers (which is probably most people) might think that they also derive some pleasure in denying people service—that the cruelty is the point.

The obvious solution (and one that has often been proposed) is for municipalities to step in and provide such services to the citizens. On the face of it, you would think that there would be little or no opposition to this. Those living in these underserved areas generally want broadband and the for-profit companies have no interest in selling their services there—hence they would not be losing any business. But if you think this, then you would be wrong.

Ohio, as noted above, suffers from a lack of broadband access. The state has been considering expanding broadband access but, as one would expect, the Republican controlled legislature seems interested in preventing this—although some other Republicans are on board. There is currently a law being proposed that would band municipal broadband services and efforts are underway to defund broadband expansion plans. This approach is not unique to Ohio and as of this writing there are 18 states that restrict municipal broadband as a matter of law. Republicans in congress have also proposed a nationwide ban on municipal broadband.

Republicans, as one might recall, profess to favor local control, claim to be the party of small government and purport to loath federal overreach. Those familiar with how the party operates will, of course, know that these claims are often made in bad faith: Republicans are clearly fine with usurping local control, growing the government, and expanding federal power when they want to do such things. When they do not want the state to do something, then they suddenly remember these principles. But perhaps they do have a principled way to defend using the coercive power of the state to overreach its power onto local governments.

Republicans also profess to love the free market and competition—they even claim to especially love the free market of ideas. In the case of municipal broadband, the argument would seem to be that banning municipal broadband would allow for the competition they claim results in better products and services at lower prices. You know, the classic laissez faire argument. In the abstract, this argument has some appeal. In reality, it is often made in bad faith.

I do agree that competition in the area of broadband could be good for customers; but the reality is that it is a field dominated by monopolies and oligarchies—ones that are often enabled and preserved by the force of law and regulation.  This is done, obviously enough, at the behest of the corporate lobbyists who now write most laws at all levels of government. Somewhat ironically, allowing municipal broadband would allow for competition—the existing monopolies could face, for the first time, meaningful competition. Something they do not want and fight hard to prevent. As such, the competition argument against municipal broadband is generally a bad one in most circumstances: allowing it would generally add competition to the existing monopolies and oligopolies.

One can also make the somewhat ironic argument that makes use of another stock conservative argument. When arguing against the state doing things, conservatives often claim that the private (for profit) sector will be better. The usual claims are that the state will do things badly and at high cost. In contrast, the for-profit operation will do things much better and at a lower cost—while also managing to turn a profit. Sometimes this happens to be true; but reality shows that there is no necessary causation at work here. For-profit companies can deliver bad products and services at high cost (like many broadband companies do), while the public sector can do a good job. But now to the ironic bit.

If one accepts that for-profit companies will do a better job than the public sector, then there is no need to ban municipal broadband. The market will, according to the conservatives, sort itself out: people will choose the superior and lower cost product and conservatives claim that this will always be the private sector product. One would, of course, need to prevent the municipal broadband from being a legal monopoly and the private sector would need to be protected from unfair laws that would hurt their ability to compete. But if conservatives are right, then the private companies should easily win any fair competition.

One could argue that the municipal broadband would always have an edge: being able to rely on public funding would mean that it could offer lower cost services and people would choose that over the for-profit broadband. This, obviously, assumes that the savings would offset whatever superior features the for-profit broadband offered. But this would seem to be a market victory: the best product for the price would win. If the municipality offered a much lower cost but had a terrible product relative to the for-profit broadband, then people would presumably go for the better service and pay the higher price. If they could not afford this price, then the for-profit company would not be losing any customers—those people would not buy the service even if there was no municipal broadband. In that case, people who could not afford the better service would at least have some service—which would seem to be a win for everyone. To pre-empt the obvious straw man attack, I am describing a situation where the municipal broadband is available as an option, but there is open competition—for example, there are no special burdensome regulations or financial burdens imposed on the private sector just to hurt them relative to the municipal option.

As a final point, municipal broadband is most often proposed in areas where the for-profit companies have no interest in providing services (or people cannot afford these services). As such, the main purpose of the sort of law being proposed in Ohio would seem to be to prevent people from getting broadband access. Creating a law that does nothing but hurt people seems like a terrible idea.

 

 

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Florida’s Political Survey

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Governor DeSantis signed a law recently that includes a requirement to survey public university faculty and students about their political views. Institutions can lose funding if the results do not satisfy the Republican dominated state legislature. As would be suspected, there are many concerns about this law, or so Republicans have suggested.

The survey results might not be anonymous and despite some reassurances there is nothing in the bill that prohibits faculty from being rewarded or punished for their professed beliefs. The treatment of Republicans such as Liz Cheney provide grounds for concern. After all, if Republicans will punish their own for deviating from their devotion to Trump and his election lies, then it would be odd if they showed restraint towards faculty who disagreed with their views.

As would be expected, this law is following the GOP playbook. First, it is claimed that there are benevolent intentions behind the law; Republicans claim the survey is aimed at determining “the extent to which competing ideas and perspectives are presented” and to assess if students “feel free to express beliefs and viewpoints on campus and in the classroom.” Taking in isolation, these goals seem reasonable. After all, universities are supposed to be places of diverse ideas where students can express their views. Which is what they, in fact, are.  This takes use to the second stock play.

Republicans have shown a marked tendency to pass laws to solve problems that do not exist in a meaningful way or are already adequately addressed by existing laws and practices. If universities were ruled by ideological dogmatism and students’ right of expression was being trampled, then action would be needed. One would think that if the “small government” Republicans were using the coercive power of the state, then there would be real problems calling for government action. But when reporters pressed DeSantis for evidence of the problem, the best he could do was offer the vague claim that he knows “a lot of parents” who are very worried about their children being indoctrinated in school.  There are many problems with this justification.

One problem is that DeSantis failed to provide any examples of cases where schools indoctrinate students. This is because that is not being done. Another problem is that he does not even provide verifiable examples of concerned parents—surely if this is a large problem, then there would be parents willing to express their concerns publicly. But even if parents were worried, there is the question of whether this worry is justified. After all, another stock Republican tactic is to drum up fear and anger based on nothing—as they did with their lies about widespread election fraud. So, it would not be surprising that parents are worried about their children, since Republicans have been busy trying to scare them about this matter. While the President of the Florida Senate Wilton Simpson claimed that public institutions are “socialism factories” he did so, as one would expect, without evidence. Or even explaining what that would even mean. After all, if universities were doing what he claimed, then socialism would presumably be doing very well in this country. After all, most politicians, business leaders and professionals attend college. Ironically, if these college educated politicians were right about the power of professors to indoctrinate, they would probably be socialists and I would not be writing this piece now. Instead, I suppose, I might be writing a piece thanking the state legislature for being so dedicated to quality public education in Florida.

Another part of the law purports to be aimed at protecting free speech, something Republicans do not really care about. As noted above, the party has been crushing dissent within its ranks and has been busy passing laws restricting free expression, such as those aimed at “cancelling” critical race theory. The law specifically protects speech that “may be uncomfortable, disagreeable or offensive.” One concern is that speech is already legally protected at state schools, hence there is no clear need for this law. Some are, however, concerned that this law will make it easier for hate groups to hold events on campus. On the one hand, I do understand the concern about hate groups using this law to attempt to intimidate students. On the other hand, I do favor free expression within the usual limits of not harming people (you know, the classic no yelling “fire” in theaters that are not on fire thing). So, while I think that even offensive views should be freely expressed, I do worry about this being weaponized against students and faculty. Ironically, this aspect of the law shows once again that Republicans do not really give a damn about free expression as a general principle. After all, DeSantis has also been leading the charge in cancelling critical race theory. While a little legalize could make these things compatible, they do conflict as a matter of principle: banning critical race theory would go against the professed values of not restricting even offensive expression on campus. But, again, the Republicans generally do not care about principles. They seem to be aiming at allowing hateful speech on campus while working hard to keep students ignorant of why hateful speech is a bad thing.

A final, somewhat odd, part of the Republican playbook is to say out loud the quiet part. Barney Bishop, who lobbying for the bill, made it clear he was not very concerned about “intellectual diversity.” Rather, he pushed the bill as an effort to shore up what he thinks of as the country’s conservative Christian identity in the face of the youth who are not as on board with religious right-wing values. I do certainly respect that bit of honesty and it nicely explains the bill: it is a weapon aimed at higher education and a shield to protect the far right on campus.

 

 

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Kant & Why the Flash Might Still Travel by Plane

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As a runner, I have often imagined what it would be like to have super speed like the Flash or Quicksilver. Unfortunately for my super speed dreams, Kyle Hill has presented the fatal flaws of super speed. But while Hill did consider the problem of perception, he seems to have missed one practical problem with being a super speedster and that is how mentally exhausting (and boring) running a super speed could be. Naturally, Kant will be involved in this.

Our good dead friend Kant argued that time is not a thing that exists in the world, rather it is a form in which objects appear to us. It is for him, the “form of inner sense” because our mental events must occur in temporal sequence. Or, rather, must occur to us in that way. He does bring up a very interesting point, namely that other beings could experience reality rather differently than the way we experience it temporally. For example, God might experience all time simultaneously—which is a way to account for both omniscience and free will: God knows what you will do because from his perspective you done did it, are doing it, and will do it. Other beings might have a similar inner sense, but with a different perceived speed. This takes us to speedsters.

While humans can successfully operate fast moving vehicles, a super speedster would also need to perceive the world and make decisions at super speed under most conditions. Consider a simple comparison. With some training, I could pilot a jet plane going hundreds of miles per hour safely. But imagine that I had the physical ability to run as fast as a jet (about 500 mph), but my brain was unchanged in terms of my speed of perception and decision making. If I tried to run on a winding trail in the woods, for example, I would immediately slam into a tree because my physical speed would vastly exceed my ability to perceive the trail and make decisions about when to turn. But if my mental processes were also fast, then I would be able to run “normally” on the trail: from my perspective, I would have plenty of time to make my decisions and avoid collisions. My “form of inner sense” would match up with my physical speed, so I would be fine. Mostly. But there would still be a bit of a problem if I wanted to use my speed to save on travel expenses.

Suppose I wanted to visit my family in Maine. My father’s house is about 1500 miles from my house in Florida. If I could run 500 mph, I could be there in three hours. Being an experienced marathoner, I know that running for three hours is no big deal for me—it would be well worth it to save the cost of a flight and to avoid the airport. But the situation is rather more complicated than just me running for three hours. For people watching me and by my watch, it would be three hours of running. But remember, my mind would be significantly sped up to enable it to handle my physical speed.

To keep the math simple, suppose my normal human running speed is 10 mph. So, my super speed would be fifty times that (500 mph). Suppose that my perception and decision-making speed was equally increased. While this might seem amazing, it would entail that from my perspective the three-hour run would take 150 hours (6.25 days). Even ignoring concerns about sleep and endurance, that would be extremely unpleasant run. After all, I would experience it as if I were running there at normal human speed (although other people and things would seem to be moving very slowly). For me, it would not be worth it to spend 150 hours running even if it saved me the price of a plane ticket. After all, I could do that now—and I sensibly do not.

One could, of course, tweak the numbers a bit—perhaps I could safely run at 500 mph while my mind operated at slower than 50 times normal speed. But it would still need to operate much faster than normal, otherwise I would keep running into things and doing a lot of damage. So, super speed would generally be terrible for long distance travel.

One could, of course, do some comic book stuff and come up with workarounds to avoid the boredom problem. Perhaps a speedster would have multiple levels of awareness—a fast navigating awareness that guides them safely and a slower conscious mind to avoid the boredom. Going back to Kant, this would involve having two different forms of inner sense operating in the same mind—which is obviously not even very weird in philosophical terms. In that case, super speed would be a great way to travel.

 

 

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The Good Billionaire, Revisited

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In a rambling essay, I looked at the question of whether a good person could be a billionaire. I concluded that, in general, the two are not compatible. The gist of the argument is that if a person is good and they have vast resources, then they would use those resources to do good. I, of course, also used an analogy: could a good person on a derelict ship sit on a vast trove of supplies while other people suffered and died from a lack of supplies? The answer would seem to be obvious, a good person could not do that.   In thinking a bit more about this matter, I realized I had omitted some important ethical considerations.

In moral philosophy, philosophers make an important moral distinction between doing harm and not doing good. As philosophers such as Mill have argued, our intuitions tend to favor the idea that people do have an obligation to not do harm to others. That is, we generally consider harming others to be wrong—although there can be exceptions. So, a billionaire who becomes rich by doing harm to others or who uses their wealth to cause harm would seem to be a bad person—or at least not good. But one can make a case that people have no moral obligation to help others and can withhold their assistance and still be good.

Immanual Kant considers just such a scenario in his moral philosophy. He asks us to imagine a person who is very well off and could easily help people. This person considers their options and elects to not harm others but also decides to withhold all assistance. Kant considers that such a person would be more honest than those who speak of good will and charity but do nothing to help—this person makes no bones about charity and good will.

Kant being Kant, he believes that this person would be acting immorally. Interestingly, Kant uses a method that I call reversing the situation: he asks us to imagine what the person would want if they found themselves in dire straits and in need of assistance. Kant claims that the person would want the help of others and thus he cannot will the moral rule that no one is obligated to help others. Crudely put, Kant seems to be arguing that since if a well-to-do person found themselves in poverty, they would want help and thus the morally right thing to do is to help others. That is, to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. The Golden Rule. This sort of reasoning can, and has, been countered.

One hard core approach is for a person to insist that they would not want such help; that if they were poor or otherwise in need, then they should be left to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. This is, of course, easy for a well-off person to claim. But even if it were true that they would refuse such aid, this is not decisive: what some people would or would not want does not seem to suffice to show what is good or bad. This also applies to Kant’s case: even if everyone would want help, this seems to be just a fact of psychology rather than proof of what is right. That said, the reversing the situation/Golden Rule is a good start and can be very useful in considering the morality of actions. After all, thinking about why you would not want something done unto you can help in sorting out why you, perhaps, should not do it to others.

Another classic distinction in ethics is between killing (or doing harm) and letting die (or allowing harm to come to others). In the case of the billionaire, if they acquired their wealth by or used it to cause harm, then they would be doing active harm and thus would not be a good person (in general). But if they merely allowed harm to come to others, then one could contend they are not doing wrong—they are merely allowing wrong to occur. Going back to the ship analogy, if the person is killing other people and taking their supplies, then they are doing wrong actively. But if they merely sit on their vast stockpile, they are merely letting people die. One could argue that a good person could do this, since they are not doing evil.

One can, of course, argue that letting people die can be doing active evil. In the analogy of the ship, the person who stockpiles the supplies is actively denying other people what they need to survive—they are killing rather than letting die. Likewise, a billionaire who stockpiles wealth is denying others what they need—thus they are actively doing harm. To use a more extreme analogy, think of a derelict spaceship and imagine someone who is stockpiling air so that they have a vast supply they can never use up. They are thus actively killing the other people on the ship by taking away air that they need. They cannot be a good person and do these murders. Likewise, a billionaire is actively harming people by taking away resources.

One could, of course, argue that there is plenty for people—if they would just work hard and pull themselves up by their bootstraps. But that is simply not true; a person cannot be a billionaire in a meaningful sense unless other people are poor.

 

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Juneteenth

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As many Republican controlled states rush to “cancel” critical race theory, Juneteenth became a federal holiday. While the Emancipation Proclamation outlawed slavery in the South in 1862 (going into effect in 1863), it was not until June 19, 1865 that Union Army general Gordon Granger announced General Order No. 3. This order proclaimed freedom for slaves in Texas. Starting in 1866 this event was celebrated, and June 19th became known as Juneteenth, Jubilee Day, Black Independence Day, and Emancipation Day. The official holiday is  now called Juneteenth National Independence Day.

From a moral standpoint, I see this as a good thing. It symbolically elevates the end of slavery in America, thus “officially” marking it as an important historical event. One hopes that this makes it clear that this change was a good thing. It can also be seen as a positive sign; one can also hope that it signals that the arc of history is still bending in the right direction. That said, these are troubled times and one can be worried that the holiday will be exploited by bad actors.

While some might think that the “woke” radicals would be the ones exploiting Juneteenth, the real risk is the holiday being misused by those on the right. Ironically and shamelessly, they could attempt to use the holiday to “argue” that systematic racism is over (if it ever existed). After all, since Juneteenth was made into a federal holiday with bipartisan support, then how could racism still exist in America?

One could use the same logic with Armistice Day (now Veteran’s Day in the United States). Armistice Day celebrates the end of the war to end all wars (World War One), so we must infer that war came to an end and there are no longer any problems. That is, of course, absurd. Obviously, the continued existence of systematic racism is consistent with having Juneteenth become a holiday. One could also draw an analogy to Independence Day—having that day as a holiday does not prove that the rights and liberties celebrated in the Declaration of Independence have been eternally secured and nothing needs to be done now to address encroachments on them. As such, just as Independence Day should be taken as celebrating rights and liberties that must be forever defended even after one foe was defeated, Juneteenth should be taken as celebrating freedom that must forever be defended even after slavery (mostly) ended.

The creation of the holiday does not prove that systematic racism has ended or that all evils arising from it have been nullified and rectified. All it proves is that there was enough support to make the event into a holiday. This, as I noted above, is a good thing—but it merely celebrates the end of (most) legal slavery in the United States. It does not mark the end of racism and the harms still radiating from the evils of the past. Perhaps our ancestors will have a holiday that marks the end of racism.

Another concern is that Juneteenth could be exploited in bad faith by those on the right who want to whitewash history. While Republicans profess to be opposed to “cancel culture” and for free speech, Republican lawmakers are working hard to hide the harsh and unflattering truths about our past and to prevent discussion about how our past sins as a nation still bear wicked fruit today. They could exploit Juneteenth as part of this process, asserting that there is no need to have critical race theory, no need to discuss racism, and no need to look unflinchingly at the past because things were not so bad then and there are no problems now. After all, they might say, the end of slavery was celebrated and so that must surely mean that racism ended then (and, of course, it was not so bad).

Despite my concerns that bad faith actors on the right will try to exploit the holiday, it is good that we have finally made it official. As noted above, it is important for us to acknowledge the truth of our past. While creating the holiday is largely symbolic, it is an important symbol if we choose to use it to inspire us to be better at being the people we profess to want to be.

 

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