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Value Vagueness

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While the Republican politicians in my adopted state of Florida profess to love freedom, they also have been busy passing laws to restrict freedom. To illustrate, Governor DeSantis has opposed mask mandates and vaccine passports on the professed grounds of fighting “medical authoritarianism.” However, the Governor and the Republican dominated state legislature have banned ‘critical race theory’ from public schools and have mandated a survey of the political beliefs of faculty and students. On the face of it, there seems to be an inconsistency here: the freedom loving Republicans appear to be waging war on academic freedom and freedom of expression. I could spend hours presenting examples of the apparent inconsistencies between Republican value claims and their actions, but my focus here is on the notion of value vagueness.

In my ethics class, I teach a section on moral methods—these are argument templates for ethical reasoning. One method, which is useful beyond ethics, is Logical Consistency. This method is based on a basic concept in logic, that of logical consistency. Two claims are consistent with each other when both can be true at the same time. For example, the claim “restricting freedom is sometimes acceptable” is consistent with the claim “restricting freedom is sometimes unacceptable.” This is because both claims could be true.  Two claims are inconsistent when both cannot be true at the same time (but both could be false). For example, the claim “people should be free from government control” would seem to be inconsistent with the claim “the government should ban the teaching of critical race theory.”  This is because while these claims cannot both be true at the same time, they could both be false.

Because of the nature of inconsistent claims, if someone makes inconsistent claims, then at least one of their claims must be false. The fact that two (or more) claims are inconsistent does not show which of them is false. The inconsistency just shows that they all cannot be true at the same time. Sorting out the true from the false is another matter; but you can know that a set of claims contains inconsistent claims without knowing which ones are false. Since logically inconsistent claims cannot be true at the same time, it is irrational to accept such claims when their inconsistency is known. There is a way to respond, rationally, to a seemingly reasonable charge of inconsistency.

In some cases, it is possible to respond to the charge of inconsistency by dissolving the inconsistency. This can be done by showing that the inconsistency is merely apparent. This is achieved by arguing that the claims are consistent despite appearing to be inconsistent.

In the case of value claims, such as claims about political or moral matters, an inconsistency can seem to occur because of how the person making the charge defines a term or phrase. Their definition can be different from that used by the person making the claim. In some cases, this difference can be the result of bad faith, but people can disagree about definitions in good faith.  The concept of freedom is an excellent example of this: people have rather different definitions of this concept, and the definition is relevant to sorting out a charge of inconsistency.

Those who read my work know that I often accuse Republicans of being inconsistent in such matters as freedom. But they could be defended by showing that under their conception of freedom, they are being consistent. For example, the same Republicans who rage against “cancel culture” and lost their minds over Dr. Seuss and Mr. Potato Head are the same people passing laws banning the teaching of (what they think is) critical race theory. They are also the people who lose their minds when some athlete protests police violence during the national anthem. On the face of it, they seem to engage in inconsistent claims: people should be free to express their views, but people should be forbidden from teaching critical race theory and condemned for protesting police violence during the national anthem.  But there is an easy way to respond to this charge in a sensible manner.

The concept of freedom is vague and saying one supports freedom is to make a vague claim. Outside of a philosophical analysis of “freedom” this is a normal and sensible thing to do: if you spent the time precisely defining your concept of freedom during a speech or conversation, your audience would fall asleep if they could not escape. When a person is pressed on their view, then that is the time to be more precise about their concept. For example, I also say that I am for freedom of expression. But if I were asked if I thought that Ted Cruz should be free to shout rape threats at Mike Pence, I would say that he should not do that. If someone attacked me for this seeming inconsistency, I would contend that my account of freedom of expression does not make freedom absolute—there are limits. I would, as always, use the stock argument about the role of harm in limiting freedoms and point out Hobbes’ realization that a right to everything amounts to a right to nothing. Republicans can do the same sort of thing and argue that while people should be free to go mask less and unvaccinated during a raging pandemic, they should not be free to discuss critical race theory in class or protest police violence during the national anthem. They would, however, need to show how these are consistent under their theory of freedom. On the face of it, this would seem challenging. Take, for example, the usual use of the principle of harm: while this allows me to be against Cruz making rape threats against Mike Pence, it would not seem to warrant the freedom to go mask less within a pandemic. Yet it would seem to allow people to teach critical race theory and protest. So, they would need some other means of justifying the different applications. A plausible approach is to use the principle of relevant difference.

If there are relevant differences between the cases, then this warrants a difference in application of the concept of freedom. Common differences include who is taking the action, that nature of the action, and the consequences of the action. In my Cruz example, above, I can appeal to a relevant difference in terms of the harmful consequences of allowing people to make such threats. Republicans could contend that who is acting is relevant; when Republicans are accused of being racist and sexist, they could be limiting freedom to white men. They could also focus on the action: kneeling in protest is clearly different from going without a mask during a pandemic—the difference could be that one energizes their base and the other enrages their base. The challenge is showing how this is a relevant difference that warrants the difference in freedom.

It is also worth noting that while value concepts are vague (until clarified), this vagueness can be exploited for rhetorical purposes. The general strategy is to use a value term (or phrase) vaguely to make the target audience feel positively (or negatively). Since audience members will generally use their own definition for the concept, this can be very effective: the audience member will often assume that they both have the same view of the concept.

Value concepts that are seen as positive can be very effective in this role. “Freedom” is very popular in the United States, so politicians talk endlessly about it. It is a vague concept, so it can be applied broadly and inconsistently. So, for example, Republicans in Florida talk about fighting mask mandates because they love freedom. They also pass laws restricting freedoms, counting on the fact that “freedom” is vague. The defense against being swayed by this rhetoric is to determine what the concept really seems to mean (if anything) to the person using it. In the case of Republicans in Florida, their conception of freedom has some very strict limitations. But, of course, this need not be a problem for them: as long as their base has a similar conception, they can seem to be speaking virtuously about freedom while acting against many freedoms.

 

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Earning Faculty Buy-in with SAME (Simplify, Automate, Motivate, and Educate)

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I am doing another presentation at an assessment conference in October and I thought I would share the text of the presentation. I included some philosophy stuff, but it also gives some insight into what academics do when we are not destroying America with Woke Post-Toasted Communism.

Introduction

I am the chair of the General Education Assessment Committee and the philosophy professor completing our reports. The Simplify, Automate, Motivate, and educated (SAME) method was developed in both roles: a professor wrangling department colleagues and a committee chair wrangling university colleagues. Yes, I sometimes must wrangle myself and I can be a lot of trouble.

The Challenge

A fundamental challenge is earning faculty buy-in and failure has a range of negative consequences. Without buy-in faculty are more likely to provide incomplete data, low quality, or no data. They might even provide fabricated data. De-motivated faculty tend to provide garbage data and “garbage in, garbage out.”

A second area is in closing the loop. Even with adequate data, de-motivated faculty are likely to neglect other parts of the process. There are ways to help earn buy-in and these include the SAME method. I will begin with Simplification.

 

Simplification

A complicated assessment process is analogous to the tax code: problematic, convoluted, torturous, difficult, and inconsistent. Complicated systems deter participation because they are challenging to understand and impose an unnecessary cost. Effective simplification makes it easier to understand and lowers the cost of participation. This increases the likelihood of faculty buy-in. Proper simplification also improves assessment quality by focusing faculty effort and using resources more effectively.

The process of simplification often has the virtue of reduction. As an example, in 2018 Florida A&M University’s General Education Assessment Committee’s faculty data contribution guide was 13 pages and our data collection form was four pages. The form was so complicated, one faculty member compared it to a tax form. That was a red flag—if you are being compared to the IRS, you know the faculty are not happy. While a rewritten version of the guide was retained, a short and focused video guide was also created.  The form was simplified to the essentials. The online version allowed for greater simplification: irrelevant questions would not appear. This improved faculty participation.

While a systematic guide is beyond the scope of this presentation, philosophy provides some general simplification principles. Our good dead friend Aristotle provides a fine starting point: ask whether a part of something contributes positively. If not, remove it, “For a thing whose presence or absence makes no visible difference, is not an organic part of the whole.” Parts that have a negative impact should be excised immediately. When erring, it is usually better to err on the side of simplification— but simplification is not without its hazards.

Simplification can sometimes make assessment less useful. For example, while the simplified form mentioned earlier is easier to complete, it collects less data.  As a guide to what to keep, Aristotle’s and Confucius’ mark of virtue serves well: one must find the mean between the two extremes. For example, a well-designed form balances between the extremes of demmanding excessive data and being uselessly simplistic. The form should have the right questions, at the right time, for the right reasons and presented in the right way.

A consequentialist approach also serves here: each addition should be assessed in terms of costs and benefits individually and in total. While a part taken in isolation might create more benefit than cost, the cost of the entire system could end up exceed its benefits. In general, having information about student performance is more beneficial than not having it. So, any sensible data collection entry on a form would appear good when assessed in isolation. But adding all these questions to a form would have an overall negative consequence: this mega-form would impose an absurd burden on faculty.

A simplified system need not be simplistic—it could be quite sophisticated. One way to operate a sophisticated system with greater simplicity and ease is with automation.

 

Automation

As a matter of psychology, people are more likely to stick to a default inclusion when opting out requires effort. For example, when employees are automatically enrolled in a retirement plan and must opt out, they enroll at a significantly higher rate than when they must opt in. This can be used to increase faculty participation.

While making faculty participation in assessment the default might increase participation, it is less likely to do so if it is much easier to opt out than participate. I would never suggest making opting out more burdensome as a means of coercing participation. This would only antagonize faculty. A better solution is developing participation that has a minimal cost. Effective automation provides a way to do this. Default participation, properly handled, decreases chances of faculty opting out and the automation lowers the cost of participation. In cases where no effort is required, participation would probably be quite good.

While it might be tempting to make effortless participation unavoidable, faculty must always be given a choice to opt out as a matter of ethics and practicality. In terms of ethics, professors are the moral custodians of their courses and its data. There is also to practical concern that faculty could be put off by mandatory participation. What, then, are some ways to automate at low cost?

Most faculty already use a Learning Management System (LMS) and these support the creation of automatically scored tests. Since such tests can be easily imported, this allows for the deployment of automated assessment instruments (AAI). As an example, the Philosophy and Religion Unit at Florida A&M University developed an Argument Basics Assessment Instrument (ABAI) which provides an automated pre and post assessment of student competence in critical thinking.

Such premade AAI would require minimal effort on the part of faculty. At most, they would need to import the instruments and collect the data. In some cases, the instruments could be pre-loaded into classes and the data collected without requiring faculty involvement. Faculty might also find such premade tests appealing—less work for them to do.

As an ideal, an automated system could extract assessment data from classes on the LMS and perform create useful information. While technologically feasible, there is the problem of cost. For most schools, a more realistic option is establishing some degree of integration between the school’s LMS and whatever software it might be using for assessment purposes.

While Simplification and Automation lower the cost of participation (and Automation can yield some positive benefits for participation) there remains the challenge of Motivation.

 

Motivation

Faculty’s negative view of assessment often de-motivates them. Even if the system is simplified and automated, de-motivated faculty will often perform the bare minimum. This will lower assessment quality and can lead to a de-motivation spiral.

While specific causes vary, there are general demotivating factors. One is the perception of assessment as imposed with little consideration of faculty concerns and workloads. This can arise from role differences between faculty and administrators. Faculty see themselves as educators and researchers who do administrative tasks from necessity (or compulsion). At best, such tasks are necessary evils. For administrators, such tasks are not necessary evils, but their job.

Administrators can also be unaware of key facts about faculty. For example, I sometimes must explain that tasks that are paid work for administrators are often unpaid labor for faculty. So, issues can arise simply because of the failure of faculty and administrators to understand each other’s situation. With good faith effort to understand the challenges and needs of faculty and administrators, many of these issues can be resolved and thus improve the quality of assessment.

Assessment is often seen as existing to create administrative positions or to generate data to appease the whims of bureaucrats or legislators. There is also the perception that even well-intentioned assessment is useless. I could go on cataloging problems, but it is more profitable to offer solutions.

As a faculty member, I have found a pragmatic appeal can be useful, if blunt. Florida A&M University is subject to performance-based funding. Schools are rewarded and punished based on their assessed performance. While somewhat hyperbolic, my stock line is that participating in assessment impacts the continued employment of faculty. This can be effective.

All accredited schools must undergo the accreditation process. Assessment is now a key part of this process. So, I can honestly tell faculty that their continued employment depends on faculty participation. Threatening faculty would be counterproductive and unethical. But clearly and honestly presenting the stakes can be a great motivator. Fortunately, there are also positive options.

One way provide positive motivation is to address the view that assessment is useless. This can be done by showing faculty the value of assessment in the context of what they value: the quality of education. Naturally, the assessment process must be useful to faculty.  Those involved in assessment must have a clear role in this. If faculty could just do this on their own, then there would be no value in having dedicated assessment: it could be replaced with a database.

Most schools have assessment committees with faculty members, such as our GEAC and ILAC (Institutional Level Assessment Committee) and they can assist faculty in closing the loop. If faculty see the value for them in assessment, then they are more likely to engage in quality participation.

Traditionally, faculty could be motivated by appeals to unpaid extra work for the good of the students. However, the ascendence of the business model has weakened these traditional motivators. As a practical matter, motivation must be considered within the expanding conception of the university as business. Universities have consciously embraced this model and profess to see themselves more as brands and less as institutes of learning and research. Assessment itself was originally an intruder from the business world.

In this context, money (or release time) is the most obvious motivator. If faculty were adequately compensated for assessment, they would be more motivated. Linking compensation to performance, the quantity and quality of participation in assessment would improve. If resources are available, this would be the best solution to the motivation problem: compensate those working on assessment adequately and assessment will (probably) improve.

Unfortunately, most universities lack either the needed resources or desire. While assessment is presented as important, the opposite message is sent by the lack of resources. Fortunately, there are low or no cost motivators. These are used in business and other contexts when someone wants to motivate but is unwilling to provide adequate compensation. Or, less cynically, when people want to show their gratitude in non-financial ways.

The GEAC committee members discussed this matter and proposed some options. An obvious free motivator is a sincere expression of gratitude. Faculty sometimes just want to be appreciated. This is, quite literally, the least that should be done.

One low-cost motivator is the certificate of appreciation—this puts the expression of gratitude into a tangible and visible form. There is a risk that over doing it can make them meaningless or even a joke.

Another low-cost motivator is a letter evidencing service. These are in demand by faculty going up for tenure and promotion and provides a compensation that faculty value. In the case of GEAC, explicitly offering such letters for service has proven to be an effective recruiting tool. On the downside, they only work for faculty seeking tenure and promotion and some faculty drop out afterwards.

Digital badges have become quite popular; they are modeled on achievements in video games and rely on a similar psychological mechanism. Some represent skills and accomplishments and could be seen as icon or emoji versions of resume entries. Given the current popularity of badges, they are worth considering. These could be created and distributed within the university—essentially digital icons performing the same role as certificates. There are also services that offer badge systems—although these often involve a subscription cost. Badges might be a passing fad—or they might be like Pokémon—something that will endure, and people will want to catch them all. Yes, I have suggested creating Assessémons to incentivize faculty. The final factor is educating the educators.

 

Education

As the discussion of motivation implies, faculty are often unaware of the process, value, and purpose of assessment. This lack of knowledge can have a negative impact on faculty buy-in. If the faculty do not know how the process works, they can find participation confusing, frustrating, and difficult. As noted above, this can be addressed by simplification—but even a simplified system can be a problem if faculty do not know how to use it. Therefore, educating faculty on the relevant parts of the process is critical to earning buy-in.

If the faculty do not know the value of assessment, they will not be inclined to participate. After all, people are rarely enthusiastic about things that appear to lack worth. While providing incentives can address this (making assessment valuable to do), faculty also need to believe (correctly) that their participation has worth. This requires ensuring that it does have value and making this value clear to faculty.

If the faculty do not know the purpose of assessment, they will be disinclined to participate—why do something when the purpose is unknown (or lacking)? Addressing this requires that assessment have a meaningful purpose and informing the faculty of this purpose.

Informing faculty does come with challenges. For example, special, mandatory meetings to learn about assessment can serve to de-motivate faculty. Faculty generally dislike meetings and having more meetings is not a good way to win us over. As such, it is preferable to minimize the cost to faculty: the information can be provided, in a concise form, at existing meetings and short, informative videos can also be useful. Somewhat ironically, while everyone is Zoomed out, concise and focused Zoom training can be more appealing than in-person training: clicking a button is easier than travelling to a meeting on campus.

In sum, if assessment is made worth doing and knowing about, educating faculty about it will help earn their participation.

 

Conclusion

While it can be challenging to earn faculty buy-in, it will improve the quantity and quality of participation. While SAME is not a magic bullet, effectively Simplifying and Automating the assessment process can increase faculty participation by lowering its cost. Motivating faculty is even more critical since demotivated faculty will not use even a simplified and automated system willingly or well. And faculty must be Educated to understand not only the how but the why of assessment.

Woke Elites, Blue Collars and Race

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The right has declared a war on wokeness, and they have cast the woke elite as the generals of this opposing force. “Wokeness”, like “cancel culture” and “critical race theory”, is ill-defined and used as a vague catch-all for things the right does not like. In part, this war on wokeness has been manufactured by the right’s elite. In part, the war arises from grievances held by the base. There is even a real foundation to this war—at least on the part of the Americans that can be lumped together as blue-collar folks. I will be focusing on this matter and will try to define the groups and harms as clearly and truthfully as possible.

Put very roughly, the United States has two broad categories of blue-collar folks. There are what are called the traditional blue-collar workers, such as those who work in manufacturing, employees of plumbing businesses, truck drivers and so on. There are also the blue-collar elites; these are people who own small businesses, who are successful self-employed electricians, middle managers at blue-collar industries and similar folk. As with any class, there are degrees in each of these categories. For example, a successful self-employed plumber could be considered a blue-collar elite, but they would be lower on the economic class structure than a businessperson who owns and operates a profitable plumbing business they built up from their one-person business. Someone who simply bought a plumbing company with their inheritance would most likely be a white-collar elite.

The woke, broadly speaking, can be seen as folks on the left who embrace liberal values. While this aspect of the definition is contentious, the woke can be seen as focusing mostly on social issues relating to such factors as race and sexuality and being less (or not at all) concerned about general economic issues. Put crudely, the woke can be seen as breaking away from concerns about the lower economic classes in general and focusing on specific oppressed groups. The woke elite are what David Brooks calls the Bobos; this is the ruling class of the left that has largely abandoned the working class left of the past. There are, of course, degrees in these classes. A poor college student working at McDonalds to pay their tuition who blogs and tweets in support of BLM could be seen as woke, but not elite. Stephen Colbert can be seen as an example of a top tier woke elite. To be honest, one could try to cast me as a lowest tier woke elite—although my commitment to class issues would seem to keep me in the traditional left. As noted above, there is the problem of what counts as being in the woke class—and the right’s “definition” is so vague as to be useless in a rigorous discussion. To be fair, they do not intend this usage: “woke” is a political term and is kept intentionally vague. But the right does have terms to capture those who are concerned with broad economic issues—they are called “socialists”, “communists” and “Marxists.” As would be expected, these terms are usually not used rigorously, correctly, or consistently. A person could be condemned as being “woke” for allegedly ignoring the plight of workers while simultaneously being blasted for being a “socialist” who supports the workers on matters such as unions, benefits, and wages. But back to the woke elite and blue-collar folks.

As noted above, the elite of the right blast the woke elite for abandoning the blue collars in favor of their woke ideology. The blue-collar workers believe, correctly, that their situation has gotten worse—especially relative to their parents and grand-parents. The blue-collar elites, though well off economically, see themselves as victims: they are excluded, mocked, or simply ignored by the woke elite. They are not wrong about this. I will begin with the workers.

Trump and his fellows have appealed to the perception of white, blue-collar workers that the woke elites have abandoned them in favor of their woke ideology. There are also those who accept racist explanations for their woes. For example, there is the idea that minorities are stealing jobs from white workers (with the aid of the woke elites). These workers are not wrong in their view they are being hurt, but their explanations tend to be mistaken. So, let us look at the woke elite and race.

The woke elite and right elite are both fighting to stay at the top of the hierarchy, but they do differ in some of their methods.  But there are similarities. The woke elite, by definition, profess to be anti-racist (or at least not racist). But they generally benefit from racism in two ways. First, the white woke elite benefited from past racism and benefit from current racism in the usual ways—though they profess to condemn these things. Second, racism gives them a battleground with their opposing elite on the right. The elite of the right have, for the most part, use racism as a tool to maintain the social hierarchy that benefits them. For example, they use racism to divide the working class against each other. The woke left can be sincere in this fight, but they also benefit from keeping the fight focused on such matters as race to distract from concerns about class.

Both the work elite and right elite are careful to avoid engaging on class issues; this is because they agree on the economic class structure (them on the top, everyone else beneath them) and do not want to disrupt that. A key difference, as noted above, is race. For the right, race is both a tool to maintain the existing hierarchy and a key part of the hierarchy. While the woke elite benefit from racism, they are like elites prior to the construction of race: their hierarchy is not built on race and racism is not one of their tools. While professing a kinder, gentler view of economics, they do all they can to lock in their position and thus lock out others. One example is education: the woke elites jealously protect their significant control over who has access to elite universities. The infamous college admission scandal laid bare how the elites attempt to control this access. A second example is the concentration of the woke elite in a few cities. This has hyper concentrated wealth with a range of negative effects. This includes harms to the cities that would seem to benefit from this, such as a skyrocketing cost of living. A third example, which is what the right (ironically) focuses on is that the woke elite have transformed the Democrats from a party with some meaningful commitment to workers into a party that has abandoned them in meaningful ways. It has also had a similar impact on the American left in general. There are, of course, some who have remained strongly committed to workers, such as Bernie Sanders. But the blue-collar workers are right to recognize the woke elite as their enemies—but not for the reasons the right gives. It is not the anti-racism of the woke that hurts workers, but their commitment to maintaining the economic social order. The woke elite are committed to maintaining the existing social order, they just do not use racism as a tool in doing so—they have other tools that work very well. And, if they embraced racism, they would just be elites of the right.

The right is correct to call out the woke elites for abandoning the workers—but they only offer lies, racism, sexism, and such. They have no desire to meaningfully improve conditions for the workers—the “woke” Bezos and anti-woke Ted Cruz are both vehemently anti-worker. The difference is that Cruz sees racism as a critical tool and Bezos (probably) does not—he has other tools that get the job done. As such, blue collar workers need a third party—one that will fight for them and not for the woke elite or the right elite.

 

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DeSantis Death Calculus

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Harvard and Yale graduate Ron DeSantis has tripled down on assisting COVID ravage my adopted state of Florida. It is no wonder that liberals often see him as a villainous buffoon and a mini-Trump. This view does have some appeal. Floridians are being infected and dying at ever increasing rates at a time in which effective vaccines are readily available and modest precautions can make a meaningful difference while DeSantis is pitching anti-vax and anti-mask merchandise. While this is certainly villainous, DeSantis need not be a buffoon. He could, aided by his advisers, be engaged in a cold calculation to hold onto power.

While Trump won Florida and the Republicans dominate the state, their grip on power grows ever more precarious. As such, DeSantis must keep his base energized for the upcoming election or he could be dethroned. A key part of his base consists of people who oppose wearing masks and who oppose vaccine mandates. Many of these people remain unvaccinated. They tend to feel very strongly about these matters and DeSantis can easily get cheers and praise for coming out against organized efforts to fight the pandemic. People in this group vary in terms of the cause of their believes, but there is a feedback system in operation: these beliefs are both appealed to and strengthened by people like DeSantis. While this energizes the base it is not without risk: COVID is like a wildfire in Florida and the unvaccinated are very vulnerable. This creates two problems for DeSantis. The first is that COVID will kill some of his voters, thus costing him votes. The second is that he will lose votes because of voters taking a negative view of his handling of COVID. While I cannot provide an exact calculation, DeSantis is banking on things working out in his favor. This can be presented in simple gain and loss terms. If the DeSantis Death calculus yields a gain for him, then his position makes excellent political sense.

On the plus side are the votes he will gain from his position and the votes he will keep for this position. A voter who votes for DeSantis because of this view who would otherwise vote for the Democrat is a double plus for DeSantis: he gets a vote and takes one away from his opponent. Gaining or keeping a voter who would not otherwise vote for the Democrat is only a single plus. Each voter who dies who would have voted for the Democrat is also a plus for DeSantis.

On the minus side are the votes he will lose due to individual DeSantis voters dying from COVID. Also on the minus side are DeSantis votes lost because of the negative view of his COVID policies; these are voters who would have otherwise voted for him but for these polices and their impact. For example, a voter who loses their husband to COVID and does not vote for DeSantis because of this would be a lost vote. DeSantis suffers a double loss if the voter who would have voted for him votes for the Democrat instead.

While DeSantis might change his position at some point, as of this writing he is staying the course. He presumably believes that the death calculation still favors him. DeSantis and his fellow Republicans are also doing their best to suppress votes—this will help with his chance of winning if it suppresses those who would have voted for the Democrat more than those who would have voted for DeSantis if voting had not intentionally been made more difficult. This is also a calculation on DeSantis’ part: just as he believes that enabling COVID is his best bet, he is also confident that his party’s voter suppression will contribute to his chances of winning.

 

 

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Space Joyrides for the Rich

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While the rich have long enjoyed luxury cars, mansions and yachts, the newest luxury item is the spaceship. Musk has the most useful rockets—his SpaceX vessels can put satellites into orbit and reach the International Space Station. While they do have some innovations, they are essential an evolution of existing rockets rather than a revolution.

Branson has a spaceplane, which can be likened to a passenger version of the old X-15. While spaceplanes do have potential, Virgin Galactic seems to be mostly focused on space tourism. Bezos has a conventional rocket that shot him into space. Because of its limited reach, it seems suitable mainly for space tourism.  As would be expected, many critics see these billionaire space vessels as wasteful excesses: resources are being expended for ego trips to space that would be better used to address serious problems here on earth.

Bezos acknowledged the validity of the critics’ point, saying “Well, I say they’re largely right. We have to do both. You know, we have lots of problems here and now on Earth and we need to work on those, and we always need to look to the future. We’ve always done that as a species, as a civilization. We have to do both.” He claimed that his mission is aimed at “building a road to space for the next generations to do amazing things there, and those amazing things will solve problems here on Earth.” Is Bezos right?

I do agree that he is correct that the critics are largely right: while Musk can claim that his SpaceX ships put cargo into space, Branson and Bezos have just been joyriding (just barely) into space. Vast resources were expended to enable these joyrides, and, in the case of Bezos, it can be argued that his flight was enabled by his brutal exploitation of his workforce. As is now well known, Amazon workers have been pushed so hard that they need to pee in bottles to meet the requirements of their job. Amazon’s leadership has also been busy crushing unions, thus enabling Bezos to expand his wealth the point that he has his own rocket ship. This presents a powerful symbol in the context of the usual arguments about taxing the rich and increasing the minimum wage. It might seem absurd to argue that the rich would be hurt by having to pay taxes or that business like Amazon would be meaningfully harmed if they had to provide workers with better pay and benefits. After all, if a company is so well off that its owner has his own rocket ship, it would seem absurd to argue against treating employees better. Put crudely, Bezos could have forgone some of that rocket ship money and eased up on his employees so that they would not have needed to pee in bottles. Given his bountiful wealth, he could easily have done both. But he decided not to. He also could have used all those resources to address problems here on earth while still maintaining a lavish lifestyle including multiple yachts.  His counter is, as mentioned above, that he is building a road to space.

For sci-fi fans, it is obvious that Bezos is thinking of Heinlein’s novella The Man Who Sold the Moon. This novella recounts the machinations of Harriman, “the last of the robber barons”, to get to the moon. In the story, Harriman manipulates and schemes to get backing for his plan and uses the money to acquire talented people to solve the technical problems. The story includes a successful flight the moon and ends with the plans to establish a colony on the moon. But Harriman is never allowed to go to the moon: he is seen as too important to risk. Heinlein does present a plausible tale and it is still well worth reading today. But, of course, the actual world turned out differently.

Like most other huge endeavors, the moon was reached as part of a collective effort by a state—the United States put the first person on the moon. For a while, it seemed like a version of Heinlein’s vision might come to pass. But a moon colony was never established and humanity’s expansion into space has been slow and limited for many reasons.

We do have the technology to create a moon base and plans have long existed to do just that. As such, Bezos and his fellows are not really in the business of overcoming technological hurdles for a moon base or space expansion. As noted above, Musk and Bezos have rockets and Branson has a spaceplane—nothing really new there. Also, while they are extremely wealthy, they do not have the resources to establish a significant moon base, let alone a Mars colony. But, one could argue, what they can do is shape public policy towards space. To use an obvious analogy, the United States government has heavily subsidized such things as the railroads, fossil fuels and interstate highways. This has usually been done at the behest of the wealthy. This public investment has provided infrastructure and, of course, vast fortunes for some. As such, the space billionaires might be planning something similar with space: a vast public investment gets them into a position where they can make private profit. Musk seems to be doing the best here; he has been getting contracts from the state to provide space vessels and services.  Bezos and Branson are behind here, but they seem to be aiming at space tourism.

In terms of billionaires building the road to space, that is a good analogy: the road was built by public funds and now the billionaires are cashing in—rather like with public roads. It is certainly debatable whether contracting to pay billions to billionaires for space is superior to using those billions to fund public space operations—as was the model in the past. While there is the myth that the private sector is magically better than the public sector, there is the obvious question of how billionaires will make a profit while somehow also being cheaper and better than what could be done by NASA.

In terms of the road to space leading to amazing things that will solve problems here on earth, a case can be made for this. One example is asteroid mining. Asteroids contain vast resources and mining in space would seem to avoid the usual environmental harms of mining on earth. However, there is the obvious concern about how those resources will be used and who they will benefit. If this just leads to space trillionaires while most people remain poor, then this will only solve the problem of not being a space trillionaire for a very few. One would need to go through and assess all the plausible benefits to make (or break) this claim, which is beyond the scope of this short essay.

In closing, an obvious critical consideration is what would be the best investment for problem solving. Sci-fi fans find the idea of space as the solution appealing—I know I do. But we need to be realistic about this. For example, while a Mars colony sounds cool, those same resources could be used to address problems here on earth. For example, the failing infrastructure of the United States could be repaired and upgraded—this would solve many problems. It would not be as cool as a Mars colony, but would certainly solve more problems.

Because of my sci-fi shaped mind, I do really want humanity to go into space. But moral considerations point to focusing more on solving problems here on earth. As Bezos said, we can do both—but this would require the billionaires to decide to use some of their billions to solve these problems. Many of which they themselves have created and thus could often easily fix.

 

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Pollution: The Ethics of NIMBY

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When it comes to pollution, people respond with a cry of NIMBY and let loose the dogs of influence. While there is some debate about its impact, this shows that everyone gets what is obviously true: pollution is unsightly, unpleasant, and unhealthy. Air pollution alone is deadly, killing millions of us each year. As such, pollution is costly. It is also obviously true that our civilization generates vast quantities of pollution, and we must decide where this pollution goes.

As one would expect, the cost of pollution is regularly shifted onto those with less influence. The wealthy and politically influential use this power to ensure that sources of pollution are in places where the poor and uninfluential live. To illustrate, we do not see incinerators and coal power plants constructed near the residences of Nancy Pelosi, Ted Cruz, Bill Gates, or Oprah.

In the United States (and elsewhere), as one would expect, race is also a factor: pollution is concentrated along racial lines, even accounting for disparities of income. To illustrate, highways tend to run through minority neighborhoods and industrial plants tend to be located near minority residences. While some might rush to point out that white Americans are subject to horrific levels of pollution, this is hardly the devasting riposte that one might think it is. After all, pollution is distributed disproportionally to wealth and there are many poor white people in America. Also, pointing out that white people are also heavily exposed to pollution only shows how widespread the problem of pollution is. As with most harms in America, pollution hurts the poor, the children, and minorities the most.

In some cases, the shifting of cost is a conscious decision: people know exactly what they are doing. In other cases, one could argue it happens with less direct intention. To illustrate, if a company proposed to build a refinery in a wealthy white neighborhood, the residents would use their influence to block this. The company would keep trying to find a location and would, of course, end up somewhere where the inhabitants lacked the power to prevent it from being built in their backyard. This would generally be a poorer area and is likely also to be predominantly inhabited by minorities. It can be argued that the wealthy white folks have no desire to inflict the pollution on the poor people, it just happens because of the disparity in power. After all, that chemical plant must go somewhere, just not in their backyard. While the folks who make the decisions probably care little about ethical theory, it can and should be applied to this decision making—be it direct or indirect.

One obvious approach to such large-scale moral decision making is to use a form of utilitarianism: the pollution should be located where it does the least harm to those who matter morally. Deciding who (and what) matters and how much they matter involves sorting out the scope of morality. There is also the problem of sorting out the calculation of value: what is the measure of the good and the evil? There are many ways to address the matters of scope and value, which can lead to considerable moral debate. Interestingly, a solid argument can be made for the common practice of dumping the most pollution on those with the least power.

As John Kenneth Galbraith said, “The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.” Utilitarianism provides an easy way to do just that by adjusting the scope of morality. As noted above, determining the scope of morality is a matter of determining who has moral worth to what degree. One extreme example is ethical egoism. On this consequentialist view each person limits the scope of morality to themselves. Ayn Rand is a good example of an ethical egoist. On her view, each individual should be selfish and act in their best interest. People should always do what maximizes their self-interest. In terms of the scope of morality, the ethical egoist sees themself as the only one with moral value. The opposing view is altruism. This is the view that at least some other people count morally. An ethical egoist can easily provide a moral justification for shifting the cost of pollution onto others: only they count, so the right thing to do is to ensure that someone else is the one exposed to the pollution. Obviously enough, this view entails that everyone will be selfishly striving to push the pollution onto someone else and they are all morally right to do so. The matter would, from a practical standpoint, be settled by strength: the strong will do as they wish, the weaker will suffer as they must. This strikes some as being fundamentally unethical or even the absence of ethics. But one can expand the scope of morality while still pushing the pollution onto others.

One obvious approach is to argue that the people in the upper classes have more moral worth than those in the lower classes. How the scope is set can vary greatly. One might, for example, claim that only the elites have any moral worth at all. One could be more “generous” and grant all the classes moral status, but have the moral status correspond to the class status. On this sort of view, the poor would have some moral worth, but they would matter far less morally than the elites. This seems to be a commonly held view: only the most heartless would claim that the poor have no value, but our civilizations clearly treat the lower classes as having far less moral worth. They are generally less honest about this these days; but it is evident upon even a cursory examination of countries like the United States and China.

One can also bring race in as a factor is setting the scope of morality. The United States provides a clear example of this: while many racists would accept that people outside of their group have some moral worth, a racist regards their group as having greater moral worth than others. This allows an easy “justification” of shifting the harms of pollution onto minorities: for the racist, these people have less worth and thus it makes moral sense to have them suffer the harms.  There are utilitarians, such as J.S. Mill, who have a broad scope of morality, taking all humans and even much of “sentient creation” to count morally.

For those who consider all people to have moral worth, then shifting pollution onto the poor and onto minorities becomes more morally difficult. One could still make a case for doing so, but it would be much more difficult that simply adjusting the scope of morality to devalue the poor and minorities.

 

 

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