Author: Michael LaBossiere

While the police are supposed to protect and serve, there are grave concerns about policing in America. Back in 2015, Patrolman Michael Thomas Slager shot Walter Lamer Scott to death after what should have been a routine traffic stop. While the video does not show what happened before Scott started to flee, it shows Scott was no threat to Slager: he was unarmed and running away. The video also shows Slager dropping an object by Scott’s body, what appears to be Slager’s Taser. When Slager called in the incident, he described it as a justifiable shooting: he claimed Scott grabbed his Taser and he had to use his service weapon. Obviously Slager was unaware that he was being recorded as he shot the fleeing Scott.

As I am friends with former and current law enforcement personnel, I know there are good officers. As such, I will not offer a sweeping condemnation of all police. However, this incident raised concerns about policing in the United States.

What made this incident unusual is not that a situation involving a black man and white officer escalated. It is also not very unusual that a black man was shot by a police officer. What was unusual at the time was that it was videotaped and the public got to see what happened, as opposed to what was claimed by the officer. If the incident had not been recorded, this would have bene just another case of a suspect attacking a police officer and being shot in self-defense. The recording, however, transformed it from the usual to the unusual: a police officer being charged with murder for shooting a suspect.

Since I teach critical thinking, I understand that the story of one incident, however vivid, is just an anecdote. I am also aware that to generalize from one incident is to commit the fallacy of hasty generalization. That said, the videotape provided grounds for being suspicious of other incidents in which suspects have been shot while (allegedly) trying to attack an officer. Since we know that it has happened, we know that it can happen. The obvious and important concern is the extent to which this sort of thing has happened and is still happening. That is, what needs to be determined is the extent to which officers have engaged in legitimate self-defense and to what extent officers have gotten away with murder.

This videotape showed, rather dramatically, that requiring police to use body cameras can be a good idea. People are somewhat less likely to act badly if they know they are being recorded. There is also the fact that there can be evidence of misdeeds. Cameras can sometimes benefit officers as video evidence might show when the use of force was legitimate.

What was also usual about this incident is that there was intense focus on the fact that Scott had a criminal record and legal troubles involving child support. This was part of the usual strategy of trying to show that the victim of a police shooting was “no angel” and perhaps to suggest that the shooting was, in some manner, justified. Or, at the very least, not as bad as one might think. However, Scott’s background had no relevance in this incident: his past legal troubles did not justify the shooting.

What was also usual was the reaction of Bill O’Reilly and some of the other fine folks at Fox, which I learned about back in 2015 from Professor Don Hubin’s reaction and criticism. Rather than focusing on the awfulness of the killing and what it suggests about other incidents, O’Reilly’s was worried that some people might use the killing to “further inflame racial tensions” and he added that “there doesn’t seem to be, as some would have you believe, that police are trying to hunt down black men and take their lives.” While this is not a claim that has been seriously put forth, O’Reilly endeavored to “prove” his claim by engaging in a misleading comparison.

He noted that “In 2012, last stats available, 123 blacks were killed by police 326 whites were killed.” While this shows that police kill more whites than blacks in total numbers, the comparison is misleading because O’Reilly leaves out a critical piece of information: the population at the time was about 77% white and about 13% black. This sheds a rather different light on O’Reilly’s statistics: they are accurate, yet misleading. In total numbers, more whites than blacks were killed by police. But blacks were killed at a disproportionately higher rate.

This point is usually countered by the claim that blacks commit more crimes than whites and thus it is no surprise that they get shot more often than whites. After all, one might point out, Scott did have a criminal record. This reply has a certain irony to it. After all, people who claim that blacks are arrested (and shot) at a disproportionate level claim that the police are more likely to arrest blacks than whites and focus more on policing blacks. As evidence that blacks commit more crimes, they point to the fact that blacks are more likely (adjusting for proportions) than whites to be arrested. While one would obviously expect more blacks to be arrested if they committed more crimes (proportionally), to assume what is in doubt (that policing is fair) as evidence that it should not be doubted is circular reasoning.

O’Reilly also used another stock defense: “You can’t … you can’t be a perfect system. There are going to be bad police officers; they’re going to make mistakes; um .. and then the mistakes are going to be on national television.” O’Reilly is using the perfectionist fallacy: the system cannot be perfect (which is true), therefore (he infers) we should not be concerned that this could be evidence of systematic problems. Or perhaps he just means that in an imperfect system one must expect mistakes such as an officer shooting a fleeing suspect. O’Reilly was also concerned that the mistakes would be on television. perhaps his concern was that people would fall victim to a hasty generalization from the misleading vividness of the incident. That would be a fair point if he operated in good faith. However, the message O’Reilly seemed to conveying is that this incident was an isolated one that does not indicate a systemic problem. Even though these “isolated” incidents happen with terrible regularity.

I will close by noting that my objective is not to attack the police. Rather, my concern is that the justice system should be just. It should also be important to all Americans, after all, most of us pledged allegiance to a nation that is supposed to offers liberty and justice to all.

 

Back in 2018, President Trump proposed executing certain types of drug dealers as a solution to the opioid epidemic. As Trump remains Trump, it is likely he will make a similar proposal when he returns to the White House. But this does raise the issue of whether executing drug dealers is a good way to address drug addiction. Put crudely, can the United States kill its way out of this problem.

From a practical standpoint, a key question is whether executing drug dealers would reduce drug addiction in America. It will, of course, be assumed that the CEOs of pharmaceutical companies manufacturing and distributing opioids will not be executed. For those interested in a career in drug dealing, the best option is to get congress to legalize your dealing. The second best is to run your drug dealing as part of the legal business of your large corporation. This way you will probably never do any time no matter how much you do crime. At worst, you’ll be forced to pay a percentage of your profits in a negotiated settlement.

Intuitively, execution could impact addiction. As a great philosopher once said, “if you kill someone for doing something, they won’t do that again.” Killing drug dealers would reduce their numbers and could reduce the extent of drug addiction in America. This would require killing new dealers if they stepped in to replace the dead ones, but this is a practical problem in the logistics of killing.

There is also the deterrence factor. On the face of it, one might believe the threat of execution would deter people from dealing drugs. This assumes drug dealers are suitably rational actors, and their calculation of the risks and benefits will guide them to stop dealing. This would also assume that they have better options available. Alternatively, it could be argued that fear of execution would suffice to deter them. People do fear death and try to avoid it. As such, one could conclude that we could kill our way out of this problem. However, we do not need to rely on speculative arguments about how potential drug dealers might respond to threats of execution. We can look at the data about the effectiveness of the threat execution as a deterrent.

We have extensive data about the death penalty, thanks to America’s enthusiasm for killing people. The evidence is that it is not an effective deterrence, which runs contrary to what intuitions about death and threats of death would suggest. So, it seems unlikely that we can kill our way out of this problem. In addition to the practical issue of whether this approach would work, there is the moral question about its ethics.

On the face of it, the moral issue has been settled by the practical issue: if the death penalty would not deter drug dealers, then the deterrence argument does not morally justify executing them. However, the retribution argument remains: killing drug dealers could be morally justified as retribution for their crimes.

On the one hand, this does have some appeal. Drug use does result in some deaths, and some of the blame for some deaths can be placed drug dealers. If a business knowingly provides a dangerous product to customers, then they are morally accountable for at least some of the harms. This is true in the case of legal products, such as tobacco and prescription opioids, and especially true for products that are illegal because they are harmful, such as illegally trafficked opioids.

While drug dealers do deserve punishment for distributing harmful products (such as tainted drugs), the punishment must fit the principle of proportionality: the punishment must be warranted by the severity of the harm done in the crime.

A drug dealer that intentionally sold contaminated products that killed users would be directly responsible for those deaths. The same would apply to a company that knowingly sold fatally flawed legal products that killed people, such as defective cars. Obviously, the criminal could face legal consequences for their crimes, but from the moral perspective, the legality of the actions is not the primary concern. It would be causing death that matters morally. It would be these case that would most plausibly merit execution, on the principle that the punishment (death) should match the crime (causing death). However, selling someone a fatally defective product is morally distinct from directly killing them, such as by stabbing them to death. As such, executing those who knowingly sell defective products that could cause death would raise moral concerns.

Drug dealers probably do not intentionally sell defective products to kill their customers, if only because they want repeat business. But illegal drugs are often harmful, and this is morally relevant. The harms of illegal drugs can be numerous, ranging from health issues to death by overdose. Many legal products, such as alcohol and tobacco, are also harmful. As such, the question is whether it is morally acceptable to execute someone for providing a harmful product that can potentially kill the user. Once again, the legal issue is distinct from the moral—after all, all any drug could be legalized tomorrow, but this would not change the basic moral concern. The easy and obvious answer is that while knowingly selling harmful products is wrong, this level of wrongness does not merit execution. As such, killing drug dealers for dealing drugs would be no more ethical than killing the owners of Heineken or R.J. Reynolds for distributing legal products that cause significant health issues and contribute to the ruin of many lives.

My name is Dr. Michael LaBossiere, and I am reaching out to you on behalf of the CyberPolicy Institute at Florida A&M University (FAMU). Our team of professors, who are fellows with the Institute, have developed a short survey aimed at gathering insights from professionals like yourself in the IT and healthcare sectors regarding healthcare cybersecurity.

The purpose of The Florida A&M University Cyber Policy Institute (Cyπ) is to conduct interdisciplinary research that documents technology’s impact on society and provides leaders with reliable information to make sound policy decisions. Cyπ will help produce faculty and students who will be future experts in many areas of cyber policy. https://www.famu.edu/academics/cypi/index.php

Your expertise and experience are invaluable to us, and we believe that your participation will significantly contribute to our research paper. The survey is designed to be brief and should take no more than ten minutes to complete. Your responses will help us better understand the current security landscape and challenges faced by professionals in your field, ultimately guiding our efforts to develop effective policies and solutions for our paper. We would be happy to share our results with you.

To participate in the survey, please click on the following link: https://qualtricsxmfgpkrztvv.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_8J8gn6SAmkwRO5w

We greatly appreciate your time and input. Should you have any questions or require further information, please do not hesitate to contact us at michael.labossiere@famu.edu

Thank you for your consideration and support.

Best regards,

Dr. Yohn Jairo Parra Bautista, yohn.parrabautista@famu.edu

Dr. Michael C. LaBossiere, michael.labossiere@famu.edu

Dr. Carlos Theran, carlos.theran@famu.edu

Some states have passed or are considering laws that would restrict what government aid can be used to purchase. One apparently pro-active approach, taken by my adopted state of Florida, has been to weed out drug users by requiring recipients of aid to pass a drug test. In Missouri, there has been an effort to prevent food stamp recipients from using their aid to buy steak or seafood. In Kansas a proposed law forbids people receiving government assistance from using those funds to visit swimming pools, buy movie tickets, gamble or get tattoos.

While these proposals and policies are fueled by unwarranted stereotypes of the poor, it is possible to argue in their favor and two such arguments will be considered. Both arguments share a common principle, namely that the state needs to protect certain citizens from harm (which is a reasonable principle). The first argument centers on the need for the state to protect the poor from their poor decision making. The second focuses on the need to protect the taxpayers from being exploited by the poor.

The first argument is essentially an appeal to paternalism: the poor are incapable of making their own good decisions and thus the wisdom of the lawmakers must guide them. If left unguided, the poor will waste their limited government support on things like drugs, gambling, tattoos, steak and lobsters. This approach has a philosophical pedigree. Aristotle, in his Nicomachean Ethics, argued that the compulsive power of the state should be used to compel the citizens to be virtuous. Other thinkers, usually those who favor totalitarianism, also find the idea of this paternalism appealing.

Despite the pedigree of this approach, it is always reasonable to inquire as to whether a law is needed or not. In the case of a law that forbids, the obvious line of inquiry is to investigate the extent to which people engage in the behavior that is supposed to be forbidden by the law.

Despite the anecdotal evidence of Fox News’ infamous welfare surfer, there seems to be little evidence that people who receive state aid are blowing their state aid on strip clubs, drugs, steak or lobster. Rather, the poor (like almost everyone else) spend most of their money on things like housing and non-luxury food. In regard to drugs, people on support are no more likely than anyone else to be using them. As such, unless it can be clearly shown that a significant percentage of aid recipients are engaged in such “poor choices”, these laws would seem to be, at best,  solutions in search of a problem.

It is also reasonable to consider whether a law is morally consistent in regard to how all citizens are treated. If the principle at work is that recipients of state money must be guided by the state because they cannot be trusted to make their own decisions, then this must be extended to all recipients of such money. This would include farmers getting subsidies, companies getting government contracts, government employees, recipients of tax cuts and so on. This is all government aid.

This is a matter of moral consistency. If some citizens must be subject to strict restrictions on how the state money can be spent and perhaps pass a drug test before getting it, then the same must apply to all citizens. Unless, of course, a relevant difference can be shown.

It could be argued that the poor, despite the lack of evidence, are simply more wasteful and worse at spending decisions than the rest of the population. While this does match the stereotypical narrative that some like to push, it does not match reality. One does not need to spend much time on Google to find multitudes of examples of how non-poor recipients of state money wasted it or blew it on luxuries. Also, surviving in poverty requires using very limited resources well.

It could be argued that extending this principle to everyone would be a good idea. After all, people who are not poor make bad decisions with state money and this shows that they need the guiding wisdom of the state and strict control. Of course, this would result in a paternalistic (or “nanny” as some prefer) state that so many self-proclaimed small government freedom lovers profess to dislike.

Obviously, it is also important to consider whether a law will be more harmful or more beneficial. While it could be argued that the poor would be better off if compelled by the state to spend their aid money on what the state decides they can spend it on, there is still the fact that these policies and proposals are solutions in search of a problem. That is, these laws would not benefit people because they are typically not engaged in wasteful spending to begin with.

There is also the moral concern about the harm done to the autonomy and dignity of the recipients of the aid. It is, after all, an assault on a person’s dignity to assume that she is wasteful and bad at making decisions. It is an attack on a person’s autonomy to try to control him, even for his own good.

It might be countered that if the poor accept the state’s money, then they must accept the restrictions imposed by the state. While this does have some appeal, consistency would (as noted above) require this to be applied to everyone getting state money. Which includes the rich. A tax cut is still a handout. And the people passing such laws, since they are paid by the state. Presumably they would not like to be treated this way and consistency would seem to require that they treat others as they would wish to be treated.

The second main argument for such restrictions is based on the claim that they are needed to protect the taxpayers from being exploited by the poor. While some do contend that any amount of state aid is too much and is theft from the taxpayers (the takers stealing from the makers), such restrictions at least accept that the poor should receive some aid. But this aid must be for essentials and not wasted, otherwise the taxpayers’ money is being (obviously enough) wasted.

As was discussed above, an obvious point of concern is whether such waste is occurring at a level that justifies the compulsive power of the state being employed. As noted above, these proposals and policies seem to be solutions in search of a problem. As a general rule, laws and restrictions should not be imposed without adequate justification and this seems lacking in this case.

This is not to say that people should not be concerned that taxpayer money is being wasted or spent unwisely. It, in fact, is. However, this is not a case of the clever poor milking the middle-class and the rich. Rather, it is a case of the haves milking the have-less. One prime example of this is wealthfare, much of which involves taxpayer money going to subsidize and aid those who are already quite well off, such as corporations. So, I do agree that the taxpayer needs to be protected from exploitation. But the exploiters are not the poor. This should be obvious: if the poor were draining significant resources from the rest of the citizens, they would no longer be poor.

But some might still insist, the poor really are spending their money on steak, lobsters, strip clubs and gambling. One not unreasonable reply is that “man does not live by bread alone” and it does not seem wrong that the poor would also have a chance to enjoy the few luxuries or fun that their small amount of aid can buy.  Assuming, of course, that they are not spending everything on food and shelter. I would certainly not begrudge a person an occasional steak or beer. Or a swim in a pool. I do, of course, think that people should spend wisely, but that is another matter.  

 

 

While assessment is embedded into the body of education, when it first appeared I thought it would be another fading academic. When it first appeared, a modified version of the classic insult against teachers sprung to mind: “those who can do; those who can’t do teach; those who can’t teach assess.” In those early days, most professors saw assessment as a scam: assessment “experts” getting well-paying positions or consulting gigs and then dumping the tedious work on professors. Wily professors responded by making up assessment data and found no difference between the effectiveness of their fictional data and real data. This was because they were both ineffective. I, like many professors, found myself in brave new world of assessment.

I eventually got dragged into assessment. At the start, I did the assessment paperwork for the Philosophy & Religion unit at my university. In 2004 I was given an eternal assignment to the General Education Assessment Committee (GEAC) and then made a co-chair. This resulted in me being on all the assessment committees. As such, I now have over 20 years of assessment experience.

On the one hand, I retain much of my old skepticism of assessment. Some of it still seems to be a scam and other aspects a waste of time. There is money to be made in this area, money that is taken from other areas of education. Assessment also takes faculty time that could be used for teaching or research. There are also good questions about the effectiveness of assessment, even when it is done sincerely.

On the other hand, my reading of Aristotle and experience shows there is some merit in properly done assessment. The good and proper purpose of assessment is to evaluate the effectiveness of education. This is reasonable—as Aristotle noted in his Nicomachean Ethics, if one aims to become a morally good person, one needs an index of progress. In the case of virtue, Aristotle used pain and pleasure as his measure: if you feel increasing pleasure at doing good and increasing pain at doing wrong, then you are making progress. This indirect measure (to use an assessment term) enables one to assess moral progress. In the case of education, there must also be assessment. Otherwise you don’t know how well you are doing in your role as an educator.

One mantra among the assessment elite is “grades are not assessment.” While this has been challenged, it remains a common belief. To be fair, there is some truth to this. One concern is that grades can include factors irrelevant to assessing the quality of work. Professors sometimes give extra credit that is not based on merit. Factors such as attendance and participation can go into grades. For example, my students can get +5 points added on to a paper grade if they turn the paper in by the +5-bonus deadline. If I used the extra credit grade for assessment, it would not be accurate. However, it is easy to adjust grades so that they serve a legitimate role in assessment. For example, knowing that the +5 bonus papers have a +5 bonus allows me to assess them using the grades by subtracting 5 points. I, of course, assess the papers using rubrics, if only to avoid getting a lecture on why grades are not assessment.

Another concern is that professors can be inconsistent in their grading. For example, the way I grade papers is different from my colleagues because I am a different person with different experiences. A paper I grade as an 84 might be graded as a 79 or even a 90 by a colleague. Part of this can be due to a professor being a harder or easier grader; part of it can be due to different standards. While this is a concern, the same problem applies to “non-grade” assessment. Different assessors will be harder or easier in their assessment. While having a standard rubric can help offset this, the subjectivity remains whether you call it a grade or an assessment. Another approach is to have several faculty assess the same class work. While a good idea, schools rarely compensate faculty for this extra work and assessing the work of multiple classes would be a part time job by itself.

There are also concerns that some faculty are bad at properly grading work and hence their grades are not legitimate assessments. While it is true that some faculty are bad at grading, this is not a problem with grading but a problem with the faculty. Addressing the shortcoming would fix two problems: bad grades and assessment. There is also the fact that people can be just as bad at assessment, especially when people are assigned to assess work outside of their field. For example, if an English professor were asked to assess philosophy papers for critical thinking or an engineering professor were be asked to review biology lab reports for written communication.

In closing, assessment can be ineffective and a waste of resources. But it seems to be a fixed feature in education, although the support and enthusiasm for it seems to be fading. In my adopted state of Florida, the Republican legislature is far more concerned with ideology in education and ensuring that faculty are compelled to teach the right content and forbidden to bring up taboo subjects.

 

When the survivors of the Parkland school shooting started speaking against gun violence, conspiracy theorists launched the theory that they were crisis actors. In this context, a crisis actor is someone who pretends to be a victim and does so in service to some secret power. The crisis actor is, by their appeals to pity, supposed to help advance the secret agenda of their secret masters, such as destroying the Second Amendment and taking away peoples’ guns.

As with the false flags discussed in the previous essay, the claim that there are crisis actors presents an epistemic problem: how does one know if the person is a real survivor or an actor serving a secret force? There is also the possibility that a person is a real survivor yet has been recruited to serve the agenda of the secret force.

When sorting out the matter of crisis actors, the same methodology used to address false flags should be applied: when writing about miracles, Hume contends that the certainty one places on the truth of any matter of fact should be proportional to the strength of the evidence. As such, the key question is where the weight of the evidence lies: for or against crisis actors. Naturally, each case needs to be considered on its own, but a general assessment is possible.

When it is alleged that someone is a crisis actor, the usual evidence offered is photographic: the alleged crisis actor has allegedly appeared at the scene of multiple crises. As a method, this is certainly credible: if it can be shown that the same people keep appearing at different events, then it would be reasonable to be suspicious.

However, the first step is to establish that the people are, in fact, the same people. Conspiracy theorists will usually find images that seem to support their claim: what appear to be photos of the same person at different events. However, the photos tend to be low-quality pictures of people with faces distorted by emotion and who have similar hairstyles. Obviously, people in the images can look alike without being the same person. There is also the fact that resemblances between people are not uncommon, especially when the images are of people in the same age range. Snopes has done an analysis of one such case, nicely debunking the claim that the same woman is in all the photos.

In the case of the Parkland students, it was claimed that David Hogg was a crisis actor because he appeared on the news in California. The conspiracy theory is that Hogg was pretending to be a high school student in California and is now pretending to be a Florida high school student. The problem with this narrative is that a person can, obviously enough, travel and be filmed or photographed in different places. Hogg really was in California, but not pretending to be a student. Photos can be found of many people that were taken in far apart locations, but this does not prove they are pretenders,

While investigating individual claims is important, it is also possible to make a general assessment of the likelihood of crisis actors existing. To use the example of David Hogg, he would have needed to establish a fake identity at Parkland. This would require that the other students, the teachers, the people in the community who allegedly knew him, and so on would all need to be active participants in the conspiracy. After all, if he was an actor, his cover would easily be pierced by simply asking people in Parkland about him unless they were also in on the conspiracy. Applying Hume’s principle, the issue is whether it is more likely that Hogg is a real student who survived a real shooting or that he is an actor, and the town is in on the conspiracy. The simpler and more plausible explanation is, obviously enough, that David Hogg was a real student. The same sort of reasoning can be applied to other cases involving alleged crisis actors.

People try to make sense of events by weaving narratives matching their world views. One awful example of this is when people claim school shootings are false flag attacks. In this context, a false flag attack is when the attack is claimed to have been conducted by a mysterious force (like the deep state) to advance some political goal (such as taking away guns). In some cases, the false flag is alleged to be entirely false: there was no attack. In other cases, it is claimed there was a real attack, but attackers were acting at the behest (wittingly or not) of this mysterious force.

From a philosophical perspective, these alleged false flags present an epistemic problem: how does one know an attack is a false flag? As would be suspected, those advancing false flag narratives are often short on evidence. While a complete investigation would require considering each case, David Hume offers a useful guiding principle. When writing about miracles, Hume contends that the certainty one places on the truth of any matter of fact should be proportional to the strength of the evidence. I will apply this principle to the falsest of false flags first, the fictional attack.

Some conspiracy theorists, such as Alex Jones and James Tracy, infamously claimed that no one was killed at Sandy Hook.  Despite the repeated debunking of this claim, conspiracy theorists usually double down in the face of efforts to disprove their claims. That said, it is worth considering the false flag claim in the light of Hume’s principle as well as using the standard inference to the best explanation.

Faking a school shooting would involve many people. The fake parents, fake students, fake police, fake teachers, and others would need to be in on the conspiracy and would need to maintain the façade in the face of years of investigation. School records, police records and such would also need to be faked. There would need to be fake funerals with fake bodies. And so on for a conspiracy that would involve hundreds of people. Given what we know about the ability of people to keep secrets, it is wildly implausible that such a conspiracy could occur and occur repeatedly, as the false flag conspiracy theorists allege.

While it could be countered that the secret force behind the conspiracy has the power and funding to engage in such massive fakery and maintain the fiction for years, this simply creates another problem: if this secret force is so powerful, so capable and so disciplined, then it should be able to easily achieve its political goals. If the conspiracy theory about school shootings being faked to justify banning guns were true, then guns should have already be banned. The theory, in a way, disproves itself.

That is the trouble with proposing such a force. It would have no need to remain a dark conspiracy when it could simply impose its will. The best explanation is that the shootings are not complete fiction. This, however, does leave open the possibility of a false flag that is not a complete fabrication.

Other school shooting conspiracy theorists advance the idea that some or all school shootings are real shootings, but the shooter is acting at the behest of the secret force that makes such things happen. In this case, only the shooter needs to be involved in the conspiracy—either willingly or by being manipulated. There is also the option that the real shooter is an agent of the secret force and then a patsy is put in their place, perhaps as a corpse.

Those arranging the attacks are supposed to be acting as architects of fear who hope to scare the public into backing attempts to destroy the Second Amendment and take away guns. On these theories, the conspirators might be liberals who hate guns so much that they are willing to murder children. Or they might be someone else. The theories vary.

As before, the way to assess this claim is to consider the evidence. An obvious problem is that conspiracy theorists will claim that evidence against their view is the work of Them and they will cherry pick their evidence to confirm their theory. But a more objective assessment indicates the conspiracy theory is less plausible than the alternative. After all, the conspiracy theory requires a secret force that can operate in an amazingly effective manner yet is somehow unable to achieve its alleged ends. It is both extremely capable and extremely ineffective, which is an odd combination. If this secret force is alleged to have control of the state, then it should be able to achieve its goals. If it is not in control of the state, then there is the obvious question of why the state remains ignorant of its operations or ignores them. Once again, the best explanation is that the alleged false flag operations are simply what they appear to be; awful murders.

Proponents of unions advance the classic free-rider argument for compelling non-union employees to share in the cost of collective bargaining. Public unions are usually legally required to provide services to non-member employees. Because of this, if employees did not pay fees to offset the costs of these benefits, then they would be exploiting the people who did pay. This would effectively be stealing. This argument is morally compelling, and this can be illustrated by an analogy.

Imagine that a Lunch Group was formed by people who went to lunch together and this group provided lunch and other benefits in return for a membership fee. Now suppose that a law was passed that required the Lunch Group to pay for the lunches of anyone who was in the same restaurant when they had their lunch. While this would be a great deal for freeloaders, it would not be fair for the Lunch Group. As people could get the benefits of the Lunch Group without contributing, the group would probably disband as paying members would have little incentive to remain because the free riders would be exploiting them.

Naturally, some free riders might argue they are entitled to the free lunch, but that they should not contribute because they do not like the other benefits and disagree with some of the views of the group members. They just want their free lunch. This is analogous to the free speech argument advanced in favor of not paying the union fees: the employees want the benefits of the union, but do not want to pay for them.  They justify this by claiming that they do not agree with the political views and activities of the union. However, this is an absurd argument.

The no-free lunch reasoning is usually a favorite of conservatives. For example, it is a common conservative position that people who can work should work rather than “freeloading” on welfare. They criticize people who exploit the system as free riders. This principle should apply to public unions: if free riding on others is morally wrong, then free riding on a public union is morally wrong as well.

Fortunately, there is an easy solution to the problem, and one often endorsed by conservatives: workers should be free to join the union or not and they should be free to pay the fees or not. But, if they elect to not pay the fees, then they should receive none of the benefits. Just as a business is not required to provide free stuff to people just because they want it, the same should apply to the unions as well.

If unions are compelled to provide services to non-union members, then the law must also compel them to pay their fair share. Otherwise, the state would be mandating the equivalent of free lunches, something that conservatives rail against.  Except when it comes to busting unions. After all, an effective way to destroy a union is to compel it to provide services for free. This will encourage free riding and will deplete union funds—something that would please most conservatives. It is thus somewhat ironic that some conservatives use a tactic against unions that explicitly violates a professed principle of conservatives. But expecting consistency or any consequence from inconsistency has proven foolish. As has expecting principles.

 

While public employees are usually not required to join unions, they are often required to help cover the cost of collective bargaining. While the legal issue will be settled by money and judges, there is the moral issue of whether public employees should be compelled to pay these fees. As a disclosure, I belong to a teachers’ union and this should be considered a potentially biasing factor.

One argument against such compulsion can be built on an appeal to the right of free speech. As has also been argued in the courts, money is speech and a moral case can be made that forcing employees to pay union fees is compelled speech. This is because unions, like corporations, use their financial resources to influence politicians and voters. A person who does not agree with the views expressed by the union is thus forced to “speak” on behalf of these views by paying fees. Being an advocate of free speech and opposed to compelled speech, I do find this argument appealing. However, it has some flaws.

One concern is whether money is speech. While the courts have, so far, drawn a line at outright and explicit bribery, the logical conclusion of this notion is that if money is speech, then giving a politician money is the same as trying to persuade them via other means. While it would be a slippery slope fallacy to insist this view must lead inevitably to the legalization of bribery, proponents of the view have pushed through other barriers and the sea of money is eroding this last wall. It is reasonable to worry that what is now seen as bribery will become legitimate persuasion. It can be argued that the bribery line can be drawn and held by claiming crossing it would be harmful. But as many lines have already been crossed it is reasonable to worry that this barrier will fall as easily as the others. So, I disagree with the idea that money is speech and that spenders should enjoy so much freedom to use their money to influence politicians.

A second concern is this logic should apply to corporations. If it is morally wrong for employees to be forced to support a union whose views and activities they disagree with, then it is morally wrong for an employer to force employees to support an employer whose views and activities they disagree with. For example, an employee at Hobby Lobby might not embrace the religious views and political activities of that company. While employees are not (yet) required to directly pay for their company’s lobbying efforts, the money generated by their labor obviously goes to these activities. Just as an employee would make less income by being forced to pay fees to a union, an employee makes less income by being forced to receive less pay so that the employer can pay for their lobbying and political activity. Naturally, this would only apply to employers that used business funds to engage in such activities. If employees are engaging in compelled speech by being forced to pay fees to unions, then employees are also engaged in compelled speech by having the money they generate being used to fund lobbying and political activities rather than getting that money in their paychecks. As such, if employees cannot be compelled to pay union dues on free speech grounds, then employees have the same right to demand that their money not be spent by their employer on activities they disagree with. That money should be in their paycheck. Unfortunately, logic has no power in the law and employers would never permit the politicians they bought (with workers’ money) to implement this.

The way to respond to this argument is to argue there is a relevant difference between employers and unions. For example, it could be argued that people chose to work for companies and thus express a tacit agreement with their activities since they can get another job elsewhere. The easy and obvious reply is that the same applies to people seeking employment where they must contribute fees to unions. If they do not agree, they can get a job elsewhere.

It could also be argued that employers have special rights to compel speech that unions lack; the challenge would be to make such a case in a principled way. Merely liking employers and loathing unions would not be a principled justification.

Considering the above discussion, if employees have a free speech right to not pay union dues, then they have the free speech right to refuse to allow their employer to use the money they generate for political activities they disagree with. As such, if employees can get the benefits of the union without paying the fees, then employees should have the choice of contributing some of their pay to the political activities of their employer or getting that sum in their paycheck. As the employers own all of the Republicans and most of the Democrats, this will never happen.

Following their “good guy with a gun” mantra, Republicans often respond to school shootings with proposals to arm teachers. While there is some public support for these proposals, most Americans are not enamored of the idea. Teachers, with some exceptions, tend to oppose these proposals. As a necessary disclaimer, I’ve been shooting since I could hold a gun and shoot it safely.

While people line up on this issue based on their ideology, it should be given an objective evaluation in terms of practicality and morality.

From a practical standpoint, the question is whether arming teachers would make students safer. Under this broad consideration are other practical concerns. For example, an obvious concern is whether an average teacher would be able to engage and defeat a shooter with a reasonable chance of success and survival. School shooters tend to be inexperienced and untrained and a teacher with some training would probably be as skilled as the typical shooter. But school shooters tend to use assault rifles, and this gives them a firepower advantage in terms of range, accuracy, damage and magazine size. This assumes that teachers would be armed with pistols. But some would argue, a pistol is still better than being unarmed.

So, an armed teacher would be objectively better than an unarmed teacher when engaging a shooter. But the engagement would not be like a shootout in a Western, with gunslingers facing each other in an empty street. The engagement would probably take place with students in the area, making it possible that a teacher will miss the shooter and hit students. Even trained professionals often miss pistol shots in an active engagement and a teacher with just basic firearm training will miss more often. This leads to the practical and moral question of whether this engagement would make students safer than not arming teachers. The practical matter is an empirical question: would an armed teacher reduce casualties by either taking out the shooter or keeping their attention and allowing more people to escape? Or would they do more harm by wounding and killing students with missed shots? If teachers are armed, we will be able to collect data on this.

The moral concern is best put in utilitarian terms: if there is a reduction in deaths due to armed teacher intervention, would this outweigh unintended injuries and deaths caused by the teacher? On the face of it, a utilitarian calculation would find the action morally good, provided that the teacher’s actions saved more students than if they had not been armed. However, there is the moral concern about the possibility of teachers unintentionally killing or wounding students. But engaging a shooter would seem to be the right thing to do, even if there are unintentional casualties.

If concerns were limited to the engagement, then this matter would be settled. However, there are obvious worries about what harms might arise from having armed teachers in schools. Their guns will not magically appear in their hands when needed, nor can the guns be safely locked away for use only during an attack. The teachers would need to be carrying their guns all the time. This leads to a host of practical and moral problems.

One problem is accidental discharge. While not common, people do accidentally fire concealed weapons while, for example, digging in their purse for their phone. The risk of accidental death and injury needs to be weighed against the effectiveness of armed teachers. Since each gun is a risk every minute it is present, it is not unreasonable to think that the risk of having armed teachers outweighs the risk of not having armed teachers to respond to a shooter.

Another concern is someone taking a teacher’s gun, such as a student grabbing a gun when a teacher is trying to break up a fight. 23% of shootings in hospitals  involve guns taken from security officers; the same problem would apply to schools. This must also be factored in when assessing the moral and practical aspects of the matter. It would be ironic and awful if a school shooter used a gun taken from a teacher.

There is also the worry an armed teacher will be mistaken for a shooter when the police arrive. In the confusion of an engagement, the police will need to instantly distinguish the good guys with guns from the bad guys with guns. Armed teachers run the risk of being shot by the police or other armed teachers who see the gun but do not recognize their colleague in the heat of the crisis.

One concern that some will see as controversial is the worry that arming teachers will put black and Latino students at greater risk. Because black and Latino students already tend to be treated worse than white students, they will be at greater risk of being shot by teachers. This concern is often coupled with worries about stand-your-ground laws that allow people to use deadly force when they feel threatened. This concern does extend to white students as well; an armed teacher might feel threatened by a white student and pull their gun. It would be terrible and ironic if armed teachers ended up killing students rather than protecting them. While most teachers, like most people, are not inclined towards murder, the possibility of students being wounded or killed by armed teachers must be considered.

Assessing the morality and practicality of arming teachers requires weighing the risks of arming teachers against the benefits of doing so. Based on the above discussion, one advantage of arming teachers is that they will have a somewhat better chance of stopping or slowing down a shooter. Weighed against this are the many disadvantages noted above—disadvantages that include the possibility of teachers and students being wounded or killed by armed teachers.

One rational, but cold, way to approach this matter is to weigh the odds of a school shooting against the odds of people being harmed by arming teachers. While exact calculations of odds are problematic, the odds of a shooting incident in any K-12 school in a year in the United States has been estimated as 1 in 53,925. For high schools, it is 1 in 21,000. For elementary schools, 1 in 141,463. While these calculations can be questioned, school shootings are statistically rare given the number of schools and numbers of students. This does not diminish the awfulness of shootings. But, when coldly weighing the risks of arming teachers, it is critical. This is because arming teachers would be a good idea (practically and morally) if the benefits outweighed the harms. Determining this requires estimating the odds of a shooting, the odds an armed teacher will stop it and the odds of the various harms of arming teachers occurring. If a reasonable calculation shows that arming teachers would create more good than bad, then arming teachers would be a good idea. If not, it would be a bad idea. Perhaps this cold calculation might be countered by an emotional appeal, such as “if only one student is saved by an armed teacher, it would be worth it.” To this, there are two replies. One is that good policy is not determined by emotional appeals but by rational assessment of the facts. The second is an emotional appeal: “would it still be worth it if one student died because of armed teachers? Or two? Or ten?” My view is that arming teachers, given the odds, is a bad idea. However, I am open to evidence and arguments in favor of arming teachers.