Month: April 2025

While American cities have seen an increase in guns being stolen from unlocked cars, Tennessee has been leading the nation. In 2016 2,203 guns were reported stolen from vehicles. In 2017 4,064 thefts were reported. The causes of the increase are no mystery. One factor is the law. Tennessee passed a law allowing people to keep guns in their vehicles without a permit or any training and this increased the number of people keeping guns in their vehicles. A second factor is fear: people worry about violence and anecdotes about car jackings abound. Hence people are more likely to have a gun in their vehicle. A third factor is that when more people have guns, more people want to have guns because they are worried about the other people who have guns. This motivates both the carrying and theft of guns.

Because some stolen guns have been used in crimes, there have been proposals to make it a crime to fail to secure a gun stored in a vehicle. As would be expected, these proposals meet with strong opposition. One argument against them is based on the claim that they would make criminals out of law-abiding citizens. One obvious reply is that this is true of any new law that makes something a crime. What was legal is now a crime, thus citizens who were law-abiding would become criminals if they did not obey the new law. But, as with any law, there is the question of whether it would be a good law.

It can be argued that the gun owner is the victim when their gun is stolen, and they should not be punished for failing to protect their property from theft. To use an analogy, one should not blame the victim of a sexual assault and to suggest that the victim should have been more cautious would be wrong. The same would apply to people who leave guns unsecured in cars. A such, the law should focus on punishing the thief rather than the victim.

While the analogy is appealing, perhaps there is a better analogy here. In my adopted state of Florida pools must be fenced and have gates that close automatically. This is because pools are a hazard and those responsible for them have an obligation to not endanger the public through  negligence. If a child wanders into my pool and drowns because I did not secure it, that death is partially my responsibility. I am not morally protected by property rights to do as I wish with my property.

The same reasoning could be applied to guns: an unsecured gun presents a potential danger to the public and the owner is obliged to secure it. This obligation does not extend to property in general: if someone steals your iPad from your car, that is your loss and does not put others at risk. If someone steals your .45 from your unlocked car, you do suffer a loss, but the public is now at risk from an armed criminal.

One could raise the obvious counter: securing a pool is to protect children who do not know any better, while securing a car is to keep out people who know exactly what they are doing. So, while securing your vehicle is a good idea, the obligation is not on you to secure it, but on other people not to steal from your vehicle.

On the one hand, in general people are not morally obligated to secure their property and other people should not steal. Roughly put, stealing is wrong; not securing your property is just stupid. As such, the law should aim at punishing theft rather than the failure to secure property.

On the other hand, people are morally responsible for dangerous property and should take reasonable steps to secure it. This is especially important for guns since they can be used to harm others. The concern here is that it is not the thief who is at risk, it is other people who could be harmed by the thief using the stolen weapon, which would not have been easily available if it had been secured. As such, this could be seen as  like the pool analogy: the concern is about  innocent people who might be harmed by the negligence of the owner. As always, the mere fact that something is morally wrong does not automatically entail it should be illegal and the legal question remains.

One stock counter to imposing legal responsibilities on gun owners is an appeal to the Second Amendment. The idea is that such restrictions are unconstitutional since they limit the right to keep and bear arms. One stock reply is to point out all the legal restrictions that have passed muster, although these can be debated. Another option is to point out that there are principled restrictions on other fundamental constitutional rights. To use a popular example, the 1st amendment does not allow dangerously irresponsible speech, such as falsely saying that you have a bomb while you are on a plane. The same should hold true for the 2nd. It is not carte blanche for irresponsible behavior and hence it would be acceptable to impose laws requiring responsible behavior as a condition of exercising the right. The question then becomes whether such a law would be unduly burdensome or unreasonable.

On the face of it, requiring people to secure their guns is neither burdensome nor unreasonable. After all, locking the doors is quick and costs nothing. While, as noted above, some have proposed making failure to secure a gun a crime, it seems more reasonable to impose a sensible and effective penalty: the violator would be required to acquire a means of properly securing the gun (such as a gun lock or gun safe). While there might be concerns about cost, these devices are cheaper than the gun they are supposed to secure and hence should be affordable to anyone who can buy a gun. And some guns come with locks when purchased. Pro-gun groups could also use some of their resources to offer discounts to poorer gun owners so they can purchase the means to secure their guns.

Securing one’s gun is a basic responsibility of gun ownership and those who want to exercise this right are obligated to fulfil this responsibility. As such, requiring people to properly secure their guns is reasonable and just, provided that the law does not impose any burdensome requirements or unreasonable punishments.

While there are arguments in favor of school choice that transfers public money to private schools, many of them focus on the benefits to those able to leave public schools. Those left behind seem largely ignored. This is a problem.

An argument in favor of school choice is based on the claim that it allows students to escape from dangerous public schools. It is true that public schools can be violent places and protecting children from violence is laudable. This approach is analogous to moving away from high-crime areas, ideally to well-policed gated communities. While this is beneficial to those who can choose to escape, it does nothing to address the underlying problems of school violence. It merely allows some to escape, while leaving the rest behind.

It could be argued that school choice can still solve the problem. However, the obvious reply is that even if all children are (for example) given vouchers, this will merely recreate the problematic public schools but in private form. This undercuts the safety argument for school choice. It would be like trying to solve the problem of high crime neighborhoods by creating gated communities and then moving everyone within the gates. This shows the basic problem with trying to create safety by moving some people away from unsafe areas: it does nothing for those left behind.

One could counter that the solution is dilution: if the problem children could be identified and distributed among various schools, they would be more manageable. This does have some merit, but this could obviously be done without school choice programs.

It could be argued that what matters is securing the safety of some, be it in private schools funded by public money or in gated communities. As such, school choice is good for those who matter. Those left behind do not matter. While this might be appealing to those on the right side of the gates, the obvious problem is that they do not (yet) exist in total isolation from those left behind. So, failing to address the underlying safety issues still leaves people unsafe. This argument is like arguing that public roads are unsafe because of poor maintenance, so the solution is to provide some drivers with publicly funded road vouchers so they can drive on the safer private roads. While this can be great for those who get the vouchers, it does nothing for those stuck with the dangerous public roads. It would make more sense to use the public money to make the public roads safer.

A second stock argument, the quality argument, in favor of school choice is that private schools perform better than public schools, so parents who want their children to get a good education should favor programs that permit their children to avoid or leave public schools in favor of private schools. This assumes that, in general, public schools will be inferior schools. Let us suppose that is true and the higher quality of private schools is a reason to provide public funds to allow some parents to remove their children from the inferior public schools.

From the perspective of those leaving, this seems like a good argument. Who would not want to be able to choose a better education for their children? However, what happens to those left behind, such as those who do not get vouchers? They, obviously enough, remain in what are claimed to be inferior schools. What about them?

It could be claimed that the choice programs can be expanded to allow more children to escape the bad public schools. But diverting more money to school choice programs will result in less funding for public schools, thus resulting in a spiraling decline for these schools.

It could also be argued that the choice program can be funded without taking money from public schools, so public schools would also be well-funded. However, this creates a problem for the quality argument. If public schools are bad, then it would make more sense to use public money to make them better rather than diverting funds to private schools. If public schools are properly funded and become good schools, then the quality argument would be undercut. Using public money so children can “flee” a good school to attend another good school has little appeal. So, the quality argument is self-defeating.

While school choice is appealing to those who want their children to escape public schools, it does nothing to address those left behind. This is a serious failing of school choice and makes one suspect that its proponents do not really care about the good for all children, just what is good for certain people.

 

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In the previous essay, I considered some arguments in favor of school vouchers. Another set of arguments focus on the choice aspect, that vouchers allow parents to select the education that best fits their children and that will cultivate the desired values. For example, choice proponents claim that vouchers enable parents of children with special needs to pick a tailored program not available in public schools. An obvious reply to these arguments is that the main reason public schools lack tailored programs is that they are underfunded. Schools could offer tailored programs if they had the funding and diverting public money to vouchers makes less sense than funding these programs. This would be like arguing that public money should be diverted from community rec centers to private gyms because the rec centers lack the variety of equipment possessed by private gyms. If the equipment is critical for the community, then the funding should be used to get that equipment for the rec centers rather than funneling money into private gyms.

A third set of arguments focus on economic efficiency and accountability. The gist of the arguments is that private schools will be more economically efficient and more accountable than public schools. While I will not deny that public schools can be inefficient and lack accountability, the same is true of private schools. Look at the nightmare of for-profit colleges to see what can go wrong in the private education sector. There is no public sector curse and private sector magic, one can have bad or good in either. If a school district is inefficient and not accountable, going private is not an automatic fix. It just leaves all the problems in place in what remains of the public sector. Rather, the solution is to increase efficiency and accountability in the public sector, as has been done with many very good public schools. In the case of for-profit schools, there is always the obvious question about how they can do all that a public school would do for less yet still make a profit. At the college level, the answer was that they did not.

A final set of arguments focus on how vouchers and similar programs improve schools by offering competition. While, as a runner and gamer, I do recognize that competition can result in improvements, this does not seem to apply in education. First, consider the disastrous for-profit colleges. If the competition hypothesis held true, they should have been better than public schools and helped improve them. However, they ended up being vacuums for public money and disasters for their students. Public schools mainly responded by doing what they could to help their victims. After the for-profit college debacle I attended meetings about what we could do to help the “refugees” from the failed for-profit colleges. Second, public schools operate at an incredible disadvantage in the competition. They are more accountable than private schools, they must meet far more requirements than private schools, they are subject to state assessment and grading, they must accept everyone, and their funding is limited. Arguing this way for vouches is like arguing that giving places like Disney and Six Flags public money from the state park system would improve the state parks because of the competition. This would not improve the state parks—they are far more limited than the private operations and already have far less funding. If we want better state parks, taking away money is not the way to make that happen. Likewise, taking money from public education is not going to make it better.

In sum, while vouchers are good for some people, they do not benefit public education. The arguments in their favor are problematic, while those against them are strong. As such, vouchers (and similar programs) are a bad idea.

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While strong support for public education has been bipartisan at times, it is now split along ideological grounds Most opposition to vouchers is from the left and they use various standard arguments. First, it is argued that the voucher system is intended to transfer public money to private businesses, thus making it a form of “wealthfare” in which public money benefits the well-off. Second, it is argued that vouchers take money from underfunded public schools that desperately need funding. Florida does very badly in spending per student and is at the bottom of the states for teacher pay. There are many unfilled teaching positions, schools have broken air-conditioning, and teachers routinely buy their own classroom supplies. Third, it is argued that vouchers are often a way to channel public money into religious institutions through their schools and using taxpayer money to fund churches is unconstitutional and wrong. Fourth, it is argued that the voucher system is intended to undermine public education to maintain the existing class structure and undermine democracy. While I agree with these arguments, it is worth considering the claimed merits of vouchers. After all, to simply embrace or shun something solely on ideological grounds would be to reject critical thought. As such, I will consider some of the reasons advanced in favor of voucher programs.

One set of reasons can be grouped under what I will call the “better student argument.” The gist of this argument is that vouchers are good, because they create better students. To be specific, choice advocates point out that private schools have better safety, better academic performance and better graduation rates than public schools. From this, they contend, it follows that vouchers are beneficial.

It certainly makes sense that private schools often have better students than public schools. But this is because they can select their students, and public schools must take everyone. To use an analogy, comparing the two is like comparing intramural teams which must take everyone and varsity teams that have strict tryouts. The varsity teams will almost always be better teams. But it is not being varsity that makes the varsity team better, it is the selection process. The fast runner is not fast because she is on the varsity team, she is on the varsity team because she is fast.  The same holds for the private schools; they get better students because they are free to reject the ones they do not want.

One could also use an analogy to public health: the private schools are like hospitals that can select their patients and exclude those they do not want. Public schools are like hospitals that must take everyone. Such exclusionary hospitals would have better outcomes than the public hospitals as they would select the better patients and would be getting more money. However, this would hardly be a good solution to public health problems. 

On the one hand, if your child is a good student and can get accepted by a private school, then the voucher program is appealing. You can get your child into a school with better students. On the other hand, if your child is the problem child or bad student that other children are trying to escape, then the voucher program will not help you. Your child will be stuck in an ever-declining public-school system. While this might be just a problem for the children who cannot escape and their parents, these children are part of society and are thus everyone’s concern even if the concerns are purely pragmatic about crime and employability. Using a public health analogy, abandoning people into a declining public health care system puts everyone at greater risk.

If it is replied that the problem students will also get vouchers, then the obvious problem is that private schools will no longer be better or safer. Going back to the sports analogy, this would be like varsity teams trying to still claim to be better while responding to criticism about leaving people out by opening the teams to everyone. They would soon cease to be better. Likewise for the voucher program: if it is open to all children, then the public schools would be replicated in private form. If the schools are exclusionary, then people will be left behind in what are claimed to be more dangerous and inferior schools. As such, the better student argument is problematic. Excluding the “problem” students so that the private schools are better means abandoning these citizens to declining public education, which will hurt everyone. Opening the schools up to everyone would mean they would be the same as public schools, so they would not be better. The discussion continues in the next essay.

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The foundation of legitimate political authority has been explored by political philosophers like Hobbes and Locke. When the thirteen American colonies revolted, they sought a foundation for political authority. While there are many views, the founders of the United States adopted a philosophy shaped by John Locke: legitimate political authority requires the consent of the governed and the majority should rule. Being aware of what Mill later called the tyranny of the majority, the founders put in place constitutional protections against oppressive incursions by the majority (and the state).

While these ideas appeal to me psychologically because of my upbringing, they also stand up well to philosophical scrutiny. As such, I accept that political legitimacy stems from the consent of the governed and that majority rule with proper protection against the tyranny of the majority is a good idea. For the sake of this essay, I will assume that these two basic principles are correct while acknowledging that they could be refuted.

Since the legitimacy of the government depends on the consent of the governed, it is essential that the governed can provide or withhold consent. As a practical matter, voting is fundamental to this consent. A citizen can also provide consent by not voting, if they are free to vote and decide against doing so. If a citizen is unjustly denied their right to vote, then their consent is not obtained. This weakens a government’s legitimacy  since the it would be extending its authority beyond the provided consent. To avoid a charge of absurdity, I must make it clear that I am not claiming that disenfranchising a single citizen destroys the legitimacy of the state. Rather, each unjustly disenfranchised citizen reduces the legitimacy of the state to that degree. I cannot specify the specific number of disenfranchised voters that would destroy the legitimacy of a state, but to require this would be to fall victim to the line drawing fallacy. But if most citizens were unjustly disenfranchised, that would be an indisputable case in which the state lost legitimacy. At levels less than this, the legitimacy of the state would be reduced proportionally to the degree of unjust disenfranchisement. Simply put, the more unjustly disenfranchised citizens, the less legitimate the state. Individual citizens who are unjustly disenfranchised can make a reasonable case that they owe little or no obedience to the state that has disenfranchised them. One can appeal to the principle of no taxation without representation.

While we praise the right to vote, the United States has a long and persistent history of unjust disenfranchisement. While the past is of interest, what is of practical concern is the present unjust disenfranchisement of citizens.

One means of unjust disenfranchisement it to use the specter of voter fraud to “justify” measures denying citizens their right to vote. While voter fraud does exist, all the evidence shows that it is incredibly rare.  To use an analogy, the obsession with voter fraud seems like a confused person who thinks Americans face a dangerous epidemic of excessive exercise and that a lack of health insurance is not a serious problem. This confused person would work hard to impose restrictions and limits on exercise while expressing no concern about insurance.  While athletic overtraining does occur, it is not a general problem and the focus should be on the lack of health insurance. Likewise for voter fraud and voter suppression: voter fraud does occur, but the real problem is voter suppression.

There is also the fact that the methods used are often ineffective against the sort of fraud that does occur. These methods are more effective at disenfranchising voters, especially narrowly targeted voters. One example is the Republican’s voter ID law in North Dakota that requires voters to have an ID that shows a street address. Many native American voters live in rural areas and have PO boxes rather than street addresses and they are now trying to get new IDs that meet the requirement of the law. In terms of why the law exists, it is not because there was an epidemic of fraudulent voting by people using government IDs that lack street addresses. Rather, it is because Democratic Senator Heidi Heitkamp won her election by less than 3,000 votes in 2012. 80% of majority-Native counties voted for her, so suppressing their votes could have resulted in a Republican victory. This law will also impact other citizens.

Another example of voter suppression is disenfranchising felons. While felon disenfranchisement impacts Republican and Democratic voters (Trump is a convicted felon), it is seen as impacting Democrats more, which explains why Republicans tend to favor it.

There are other ways in which citizens are unjustly disenfranchised, most of which are the result of strategies of the Republican party. It might be countered that I and the Democrats are only concerned about voter suppression because the voters being targeted are more likely to vote for Democrats. One might go beyond this and claim that I and the Democrats would be fine with the suppression of Republican voters. One might point to how Democrats engage in gerrymandering and other political trickery, perhaps even their own version of voter suppression.

My reply is that I cannot speak for other Democrats; but I can speak for myself. My view is that voter suppression is wrong regardless of who is being unjustly suppressed. As such, if the Democrats engage in voter suppression, I condemn that as strongly as I condemn voter suppression by Republicans. Or anyone, for that matter. While I would generally prefer that a Democrat win (if only from the pure self-interested fact that Democrats tend to be much friendlier to education and more pro-environment than Republicans), I would rather lose an election fairly than win through voter suppression. This is because, as noted above, voter suppression reduces the legitimacy of the state by robbing citizens unjustly of their opportunity to consent. In a nation that professes to be a democracy (yes, I know that it has a republican system at most levels) to rob citizens unjustly of their right to vote is a crime of the highest order. This is because it denies the foundational right of the citizens of a democracy and damages democracy itself. As such, voter suppression is treason, plain and simple.

When people think of an AI doomsday, they usually envision a Skynet scenario in which Terminators try to exterminate humanity. While this would be among the worst outcomes, our assessment of the dangers of AI needs to consider both probability and the severity of harm. Skynet has low probability and high severity. In fact, we could reduce the probability to zero by the simple expedient of not arming robots. Unfortunately, killbots seem irresistible and profitable so the decision has been made to keep Skynet a non-zero possibility. But we should not be distracted from other doomsdays by the shiny allure of Terminators.

The most likely AI doomsday scenario is what could be called the AI burning bubble. Previous bubbles include the Dot-Com bubble that burst in 2000 and the housing bubble that burst in 2008. In 2022 there was a Bitcoin crash that led to serious concerns that “that virtual currency is becoming the largest Ponzi scheme in human history…” Fortunately, that cryptocurrency bubble was relatively small, although there are efforts underway to put it on track to become a bubble big enough to damage the world economy. Unless, of course, an AI bubble bursts first. While AI and crypto are different, they do have some similarities worth considering.

AI might produce a burning bubble, and the burning part refers to environmental damage. Both AI and crypto are incredibly energy intensive. It is estimated that crypto’s energy consumption is .4 to .9% of annual worldwide energy usage and that crypto mining alone produces about 65 megatons of carbon each year. This is likely to increase, at least until the inevitable bursting of the cryptocurrency bubble. It is believed that AI data centers consume 1%-2% of the world’s electricity production and this will almost certainly increase. While there have been some efforts to use renewable energy to power the data centers, their expansion has slowed the planned phaseout of fossil fuels. AI has also become infamous for its water consumption, stressing an already vulnerable system. As the plan is to keep expanding AI, we can expect ever increasing energy and water consumption along with carbon production. This will accelerate climate change, which will not be good for humanity. In addition to consuming energy and water, AI also needs hardware to run on. As with cryptocurrency, companies such as NVIDIA have profited from selling hardware for AI. But manufacturing this hardware has an environmental impact and as it wears out and becomes obsolete it will all become e-waste, most likely ending up in landfills. All of this is bad for humans and the environment.

It can be countered that AI will find a way to solve climate change and one might jokingly say that its recommendation will be to get rid of AI. While certain software has been very useful in addressing climate concerns, it is at best wishful thinking to believe that AI will solve the problem that it is contributing to. It would make more sense to dedicate the billions being pumped into AI to address climate change (and other problems) directly and immediately.

While AI, like crypto, is doing considerable environmental damage, it is also consuming investments. Billions have been poured into AI and there are plans to increase this to trillions. One effect is that financial resources are diverted away from other things, such as repairing America’s failing infrastructure, investing in education, or developing other areas of the economy. While this diverting of resources into a single area raises the usual moral concerns and sayings about eggs and baskets, there is also the economic worry that the bubble is being inflated.

As many have noted, what is happening with AI mirrors past bubbles, most obviously the Dot-Com bubble that burst in 2000. People will, of course, rightfully point out that although the bubble burst, the underlying technology endured, and the internet-based economy is obviously massively profitable. As such, the most likely scenario is that the overvaluation of AI will have a similar outcome. The AI bubble will burst, CEOs will move on to inflating the next bubble, and AI technology will remain, albeit with less hype. On the positive side, the burst might have the effect of reducing energy and water consumption and lowering carbon emissions. But this prediction could be wrong, and the Terminators might get us before the bubble bursts.

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Science fiction is replete with tales of genetic augmentation making people more human than human. One classic example is Khan, who is introduced in Star Trek’s “Space Seed” episode. In the Star Trek timeline, scientists used genetic engineering and selective breeding to create augmented humans in the hope of creating a better world. Instead, it led to the eugenics wars between normal humans and the augmented. While ordinary humanity won, there are other stories in which humanity is replaced by its creations. While these are fictional tales, genetic modification is real and human augmentation seems inevitable.

In  science-fiction genetic engineering is used to create super humans but there is the question of what the technology could do within the limits of biology. To avoid contaminating the discussion with hyperbole and impossible scenarios, we need to consider likely rather than fantastical scenarios. That said, genetic augmentation could provide meaningful advantages that are not the stuff of comic books. For example, immunity to some diseases would be very advantageous and even modest improvements in mental and physical abilities would be useful. These modest improvements still raise moral concerns.

As would be expected, people do advance the “playing God” and “unnatural” arguments against augmentation. However, given that modern medicine is also “playing God” and “unnatural”, these objections have little merit.  A better approach is to consider what we should be doing, without the dramatic rhetoric of “playing God” or it being “unnatural.”

Since early augmentations will probably be modest, they are of the most immediate moral concern. One major concern is with the fairness of such augmentation. The rich will be able to afford to augment their children, thus giving them even more advantages over other people and this is a frequent subject of science fiction. While this does raise some new concerns because of the augmentation aspect, the core moral problems are ancient as they are all about determining how opportunities should be distributed in society and determining moral rules for competition within a society.

As it stands, American society allows the wealthy to enjoy a multitude of advantages over the lower classes and the Trump administration is unleashing a chaotic storm aimed at increasing this disparity. However, there are moral limits to what people will tolerate and a good example of this was the college admissions scandal. While it is socially acceptable for the wealthy to make donations and use legacy admissions to get their kids into college, outright bribes were condemned. Genetic augmentation should be looked at as just one more factor in the competition between the economic classes and the same basic ethical concerns apply, albeit with the addition of the ethics of genetic modification.

From the standpoint of what we collectively accept, the question is whether augmentation is more like the accepted advantages of the rich, such as buying tutoring and better education for their children or more like the advantages that are condemned, such as outright bribery.

On the face of it, genetic augmentation is like methods already used to improve the children of the upper classes. They get better medical care, better nutrition, better housing, better education, better tutoring, better counseling and so on. In a real sense, they are already augmented relative to the lower classes. While these advantages are not earned by the children, they do improve their abilities and enable them to have a better chance to succeed because of their enhanced abilities. Genetic augmentation is the same: while they do not earn their augmentation, it would make them objectively better than they would be otherwise, and it would provide another edge over the lower economic classes. The augmented people would, in most cases, get the best opportunities. As such, if the current system is morally acceptable, then genetic augmentation would be acceptable as well.

As would be expected, those who see the current system as immoral because of its unfairness would also think that genetic augmentation would be unfair. One approach to addressing the unfairness of augmentation would be banning the technology, which was the solution in the Star Trek universe. A moral concern with this approach is that it would deny humanity a chance to improve and could be seen as like banning parents from hiring tutors for their kids. Another approach would be to require that all children have the opportunity for enhancement. This would be analogous to ensuring that public resources are distributed equitably for K-12 education, so that everyone is better off.

If one takes the professed American values of fair competition and equality of opportunity seriously (which we obviously should not), then such augments should be treated like public education and available to all citizens. If one seeks to perpetuate the advantages of the upper classes, then one would insist that such augmentations should be available to those who can pay. That is, the upper classes.

The above discussion does, I hasten to note, set aside concerns specific to augmentation itself as my focus has been on the moral question of fairness and distribution of opportunities.

As noted in previous essays, competition over opportunities is usually unavoidable and can be desirable. However, this competition can do more harm than good. One example of this is opportunity hoarding.  Opportunity hoarding occurs when parents try to seek advantages for their children in ways that are harmful to others. As would be suspected, opportunity hoarding typically occurs when parents use morally questionable methods to secure advantages for their children at the expense of other children. An excellent example of this is the 2019 college admissions scandal and I will use this to set the stage for the discussion.

As many writing about the scandal pointed out, the rich have many legal means of tipping the admission scales in favor of their children. These include methods that have nothing to do with the merit of the applicant, such as the use of legacy admissions and making financial contributions to the institutions. Other methods aim at improving the quality of the applicant (or at least the application). These methods include paid test preparation courses, paid counselors, paid tutors, and paid essay coaches. Because the rich have so many advantages already, the admission scandal seemed especially egregious and even perplexing. After all, given the vast advantages the wealthy already enjoy, why would they risk any consequences by using illegal or socially unacceptable methods?   From a philosophical perspective, the scandal raises an interesting general moral question about what methods are acceptable in the competition for opportunities.

Some might consider a Hobbesian state of nature approach to this competition, a war of all against all with no limits, as a good idea. But this would violate the moral intuitions of most people. After all, while we might disagree on specific limits, we almost certainly agree that there are limits. To illustrate, murdering, blinding or maiming children is obviously unacceptable even to give one’s own children an advantage. But once the blatantly horrific is out of the way, there remains a large area of dispute.

One approach is to use the law to define limits. On this view, parents may use any legal means to restrict opportunities in favor of their children. While this might have some appeal, it suffers from an obvious defect: the law is whatever those in power make it, so the evil and unfair are often legal. The usual extreme, but legitimate, example is the legality of slavery. As such, while it is often right to obey the law, it does not follow that what is legal is ethical.  So, if a parent justifies their actions by pointing to their legality, they merely prove they acted legally and have not shown they have acted rightly. So, something is needed beyond legality to determine what the limits of the competition should be.

Since this is a question of ethics on a national scale, an appeal to utilitarianism seems sensible: the limits should be set in terms of what will be most likely to create the greatest benefit and least harm. This leads to the usual problem of sorting out what it means to create the greatest positive value and least negative value. It also requires sorting out the measure of worth.  For example, certain limits on competition might make the children of the wealthy even wealthier while the less wealthy become worse off. But this could create more total wealth than a more equitable system in which even the poor were well off. If what matters, as it does to some, is the overall wealth then these would be the right limits. However, if maximizing value is more about the impact on each person, then the more equitable division would be the moral choice.  It would create more positive value for more people but would fail to create the most total positive value.

Since a utilitarian approach recognizes only the utilitarian calculation of value, some might find this approach problematic. Instead, they might favor a rights-based approach, or one based on a principle of fair competition. To illustrate, Americans profess to value competition, merit and fairness: the best competitors are supposed to win in a fair competition. This, obviously enough, just returns to the problem of fairness: what means are fair to use in the competition for opportunity?

One possible approach is to use a principle of relevance: a fair competition is one in which victory depends on the skills and abilities that are relevant to the nature of the competition. For example, if the competition is based on academic ability, then that should be the deciding factor and donating money should not influence the outcome. This will, of course, lead to a debate about what should be considered relevant. For example, if it is argued that donating money is not relevant to determining college admissions because it is not relevant to academic ability, one might then argue that race or sex are also not relevant and should not be used. So, if relevance is used, it must be properly and consistently defined and applied.

While relevance, in general, is a reasonable consideration, there are also concerns about the preparation for the competitions. To illustrate, the children of the wealthy get a competitive edge in college admissions because their parents can get them into good K-12 schools, pay for tutoring, pay for test preparation, pay for counseling, pay for help on essays and so on. That is, they can buy many advantages that are relevant to the competition for college admissions and careers. On the one hand, these seem to be unfair advantages because they are not available to the children of the poor simply because they are poor. On the other hand, they are relevant to the competition because they do improve the skills and abilities of the children. One possible solution, for those who value fair competition, would be balancing things out by providing the same support to all children, thus making the competition fair. But those who push for “merit” based competition usually want to ensure that the competition is as unfair as possible in their favor. This leads into the question of how far the quest for fairness should go.

At this point, some might be wondering if I will advocate forcing parents to be no better at preparing their children than the worst parents, to even things out. After all, a parent who can spend time engaging in activities with their kids, such as reading to them and helping with homework, confers an advantage to their children. Since making parents do a worse job would make things worse, this would be wrong to do. As such, I obviously support parents being good parents. I only bring this up, because of the usual straw man attacks against advocating for fairness. However, many parents face the challenges of lacking time, resources and education to be better parents and these should be addressed. As such, I would advocate lifting parents up and reject any notion to bring them down.

The above is only a sketch and much more needs to be said about what the rules of competition for opportunity should be in our society. This is, obviously enough, a matter of values: are we just making empty noises when we speak of “fairness”, “opportunity for all” and “merit-based competition” while embracing the practice of unfairly buying success? Or do we really believe these things? The Trump administration and its ideological allies seem intent on ensuring that “merit” based competition is built on an unfair foundation. That is, the “merit” is based on the  advantages conferred by one’s economic class.

Competition, by its very nature, yields winners and losers and the outcome can be positive, neutral or negative. For example, a parent who leaks information about rival children to college admissions officers might get a positive outcome (her child is admitted) and the other children might get a negative outcome (they are not admitted). While assessing from the perspective of an individual or group is a way to approach assessing the consequences of competition, it is also worth assessing competitions in terms of their consequences for everyone. This is important when competition is within a society. The competition for educational opportunities in the United States is an excellent example of this.

A positive competition yields positive value for all involved. In an ideal positive competition, everyone in the competition is better off than they would be without the competition. This would include being better off than if the distribution of benefits was done equally without competition.

Friendly sports and games provide a paradigm example of positive competition. For example, while only one person wins a game of Risk, all the players can have fun and gain from the competition. As another example, a 5K race will have winners and non-winners, but everyone can have an enjoyable run. As a final example, some claim that an Adam Smith style economy can be a positive competition: while some businesses will succeed and others fail, we will all be winners because of better goods and services at lower costs.

A neutral competition has winners who gain from the competition and non-winners who gain nothing but suffer no harm from losing. While not everyone is better off from the competition, no one is worse off for competing. One example would be a random drawing for prizes. While some will win and others will not, not winning just means not getting a prize. It does not result in harm.

A negative competition has winners who gain from the competition and losers who suffer harm from their loss. In extreme cases, there might only be degrees of harm and winning only means suffering less harm. For example, a liability lawsuit can be a negative competition in which the winner gains and the loser suffers a detrimental effect, such as being forced to pay a settlement.

In many cases a society can control whether competition will be positive, neutral or negative. It should never be forgotten that the nature of such competitions is a matter of choice based on values For example, a society can decide to make competition for educational resources a positive competition: everyone gains, some are better off, but no one is harmed. A society could also make it a negative competition: the winners do very well while the losers end up at a great disadvantage and suffer harm. This segues into opportunity hoarding.

While a society will always have a finite number of opportunities for children and there will be competition for them, the nature of these competitions can be shaped by the collective choices of that society. This includes deciding whether each competition will be positive, neutral or negative. In general, making competitions positive will cost more resources, while neutral and negative competitions will cost less. To illustrate, making the competition for educational opportunities positive would cost more resources than leaving it negative, since the “losers” would still get the resources needed for a good education. As a specific example, the current model for K-12 public education is a negative competition: parents who can afford to live in wealthy neighborhoods give their children the advantage of better schools, while the children of the less wealthy often end up in poorly funded schools that hurt their opportunities. The poor are usually trapped in poverty and suffer the harm that entails. Shifting this to a positive competition in which every child gets at least an adequate education would require expending more resources on the poorer schools, thus incurring greater cost. This would also mean that the better off would have less advantage over the poor in terms of education. The upper classes would still retain the advantage of better schools, but the gap would be smaller and thus the competition they face later life could increase as they will be up against better educated poor people. This is one obvious reason for opportunity hoarding: the less able the competition, the easier victory is. The current education is designed in this manner, to provide the upper classes with an advantage and to burden the lower classes with disadvantages. This all but guarantees that the upper classes will win in a competitive “merit” based system

This example could, of course, be challenged. One could argue that the education system in the United States is already a positive competition: even the poorest Americans are supposed to get free K-12 education and even the worst public education is better than nothing. While this does have some appeal, the same sort of reasoning would seem to lead to obviously absurd consequences. For example, imagine the “competition” between a person intent on committing date rape and their intended victim. It could be argued that the competition is positive: the victim could get a free dinner and drinks, although they are raped. While they did get some “benefit”, the harm is greater, and they would have been better off without that “competition.” I do not deny there can be grounds for dispute over whether to cast a competition as positive or negative, such debates are likely.

As such, if someone wants to characterize the current education system as a positive competition, they can try to make that case. As noted above, the students in the worst school in America do get more than nothing. In this case, one would need to recast the discussion in terms of degrees of positiveness in the competition, how the winners and losers fare relative to each other.

While each competition for opportunity would need to be assessed morally, I would suggest a general guiding principle. When our society is shaping the competition between our children for opportunities, the morally right thing to do is to make them at least neutral and there should be every reasonable effort to make them positive. After all, members of a society should strive to avoid harming each other and this is especially true when it comes to the children. We are, one would hope, friends and not enemies. But many politicians seem intent on ensuring that we see each other as enemies and our real enemies as our friends.

Opportunity hoarding, a concept developed by Richard Reeves,  occurs when parents give their children advantages in ways harmful to other children. In the previous essay I examined income mobility in the context of opportunity hoarding and I now turn to the ethics of competition.

Before getting into this, I will try to pre-empt likely strawman attacks. I will not argue that parents should be forbidden from doing the best they can for their children. As a specific example, I will not be arguing for things like a ban on parents helping their children with homework. I will also not argue that the state should use its compulsive power to force, Harrison Bergeron style,  the equality of children. Nor will I argue for the elimination of competition. Now, on to the discussion, one that will afford plenty of opportunity for criticism.

Opportunity hoarding raises two important moral concerns. The first is the moral issue of what opportunities should be competitive. The second is the issue of what means are morally acceptable in competitions. This essay focuses on the first issue.

While some might argue there should be no competition for opportunities, this position suffers from two obvious defects. The first, and most obvious, is that opportunity is always limited. As such, if there are more people than opportunities, there must be competition of some kind. These limits need not arise from any evil intent. For example, many runners will want to be trained by a legendary running coach, but she cannot coach everyone. As another example, many people might wish to take a writing class with a legendary professor, but they can only grade so many papers. While there obviously are other coaches and other professors, there will always be those who prefer one over the others—even if they are equally good. There is, of course, the legitimate moral concern that opportunities are limited for unethical reasons. I am not suggesting that all limits on opportunity are warranted just because there will always be some unavoidable limits. To illustrate, it is morally fine for a coach to limit the number of people she coaches because she can only do a good job with a limited number of athletes. It would not be morally fine for a coach to refuse runners because they were, for example, Christian or Moslem.

The second defect is that competition for limited opportunities is morally right. The easy and obvious argument is that if opportunities are limited (and the limit is ethical), then they should be distributed on a competitive basis. As is often argued, opportunity should be earned. The obvious analogy is to sports: the awards in a 5K should be earned by those who run the fastest. To hand out the awards randomly or based on some standard other than performance would be unfair and wrong.

Even if the notion of competition for opportunity is accepted, there arises the moral and practical problem of deciding how the competition will be resolved. In some cases, this will be obvious. For example, it makes sense that the best athletes be the ones who are on an Olympics team. In other cases, deciding who wins is more complicated, such as determining who should be admitted to a university. As would be expected, volumes can be written about the ethics of resolving competitions.

While there is debate about resolving competitions ethically, there is the question of what opportunities should be competitive. While there are always finite opportunities, there is also always a finite number of people seeking opportunities. In many cases we can decide how many people can have these opportunities by deciding how we allocate resources. For example, Americans could decide that we want all our public schools to be well-funded so all children can attend a good school. This would not eliminate competition for schools. Even if all schools were well funded and supported, there would still be better schools. But people would not need to compete to buy houses in wealthy neighborhoods to get their children into good schools, they could live anywhere and still get into a good school. This would come at a cost as the well-off parents would need to contribute to the general education of children rather than just supporting only their children’s schools. But if we value equality of opportunity for all children, then this would be a price worth paying.

This essay cannot, obviously, provide details about each opportunity. A reasonable starting point for broad moral choices is, of course, the utilitarian approach: looking at the cost and benefits for all, what would generate the most good and the least evil? This series continues in the next essay.