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While being a charter school is distinct from being a for-profit school, one argument given in favor of charter schools is because they, unlike public schools, can operate as for-profit businesses. While some might assume a for-profit charter school must automatically be bad, it is worth considering this.

As one would suspect, the arguments in favor of for-profit charter schools are essentially the same as arguments in favor of providing public money to any for-profit business. While I cannot consider all of them in this short essay, I will present and assess some of them.

One stock argument is the efficiency argument. The idea is that for-profit charter schools have a greater incentive than non-profit schools to be efficient. This is because every increase in efficiency can yield an increase in profits. For example, if a for-profit charter school can offer school lunches at a lower cost than a public school, then the school can turn that difference into a profit. In contrast. A public school has less incentive to be efficient, since there is no profit to be made from cutting costs.

While this argument is reasonable, it can be countered. One obvious concern is that profits can also be increased by cutting costs in ways that are detrimental to the students and employees of the school. For example, the “efficiency” of lower cost school lunches could be the result of providing the students with low quality food. As another example, a school could be more “efficient” by not offering essential services for students with special needs. As a final example, employee pay could be kept as low as possible.  

Another counter is that while public schools lack the profit motive, they still need to accomplish required tasks with limited funds. As such, they also need to be efficient. In fact, they usually must be creative with extremely limited resources and teachers routinely spend their own money purchasing supplies for the students. For-profit charter schools must do what public schools do but must also make a profit. As such, for-profit schools would cost the public more for the same services and thus be less cost effective.

It could be objected that for-profit schools are inherently more efficient than public schools and hence they can make a profit and do all that a public school would do, for the same money or even less. To support this, proponents of for-profit education point to various incidents of badly run public schools.

The easy and obvious reply is that such problems do not arise because the schools are public, they arise because of bad management and other problems. There are many public schools that are well run and there are many for-profit operations that are badly run. Boeing provides an excellent example of this. As such, merely being for-profit will not make a charter school better than a public school.

A second stock argument in favor of for-profit charter schools is based on the idea competition itself improves quality. While students go to public school by default, for-profit charter schools must compete for students with public schools, private schools and other charter schools. Since parents generally look for the best school for their children, the highest quality for-profit charter schools will win the competition. As such, the for-profits have an incentive that public schools lack and thus will be better schools.

One obvious concern is that for-profits can get students without being of better quality. They could do so by advertising, by exploiting political connections and various other ways that have nothing to do with quality. Think of businesses that people hate and that offer poor goods and services, but still manage to make a profit. They are not getting customers through their quality, but by other means and charter schools could use similar methods.

Another concern about making the education of children a competitive business venture is that competition has causalities: businesses go out of business. While the local hardware store going out of business is unfortunate, having an entire school go out of business would be worse. If a for-profit school goes out of business, there would be considerable disruption to the children and to the schools that would have to accept them. There is also the usual concern that the initial competition will result in a few (or one) for-profit emerging victorious and then settling into the usual pattern of lower quality and higher costs. Think, for example, of cable/internet companies. As such, the competition argument is not as strong as some might believe.

Those who disagree with me might contend that my arguments are mere speculation and that for-profit charter schools should be given a chance. They might turn out to be everything their proponents claim they will be.

While this is a reasonable point, it can be countered by considering the examples presented by other ventures in which for-profit versions of public institutions receive public money. Since there is a school to prison pipeline, it seems relevant to consider the example of for-profit prisons.

The arguments in favor of for-profit prisons were like those considered above: for-profit prisons would be more efficient and have higher quality than prisons run by the state. Not surprisingly, to make more profits, many prisons cut staff, pay very low salaries, cut important services and so on. By making incarceration even more of a business, the imprisonment of citizens was incentivized with the expected results of more people being imprisoned for longer sentences. As such, for-profit prisons turned out to be disastrous for the prisoners and the public. While schools are different from prisons, it is easy enough to see the same sort of thing play out with for-profit charter schools.

The best and most obvious analogy is, of course, to the for-profit colleges. As with prisons and charter schools, the usual arguments about efficiency and quality were advanced to allow public money to go to for-profit institutes. The results were not surprising: for profit colleges proved to be disastrous for the students and the public. Far from being more efficient than public and non-profit colleges, the for-profits generally turned out to be much more expensive. They also tend to have significantly worse graduation and job placement rates than public and non-profit private schools. Students of for-profit schools also accrue far more debt and make significantly less money relative to public and private school students. These schools also sometimes go out of business, leaving students abandoned and often with useless credits that cannot transfer. They do, however, often excel at advertising. This explains how they lure in so many students when there are vastly better alternatives.

The public paid the price for these schools as the for-profits receive a disproportionate amount of public money and students take out more student loans to pay for these schools and default on them more often. Far from being models of efficiency and quality, the for-profit colleges have usually turned out to be little more than machines for turning public money into profits for a few people. This is not to say that for-profit charter schools must become exploitation engines as well, but the disaster of for-profit colleges must be taken as a cautionary tale. While there are some who see our children as another resource to be exploited for profits, we should not allow this to happen. As such, the fact that a charter school could be for-profit is a reason against funding them with public money. In closing, the charter school approach seems to a method of funneling public money to fund value-based groups (like churches) and into private pockets.  

In my previous essay on charter schools, I considered the quality argument. The idea is that charter schools provide a better alternative to public schools and should receive public money so that poorer families can afford to choose them. The primary problem with this argument is that it makes more sense to use public money to improve public schools rather than siphoning money from them. I now turn to another aspect of choice, that of  values.

While parents want to be able to choose a quality school for their children, some parents are also interested in having an alternative to public schools based on their values. This desire forms the basis for the value choice argument for charter schools. While public schools are supposed to be as neutral as possible, some see public schools as problematic in two broad ways.

One way is that the public schools provide content and experiences that conflict with the values of some parents, most commonly with their religious values. For example, public schools often teach evolution in science classes, and this runs contrary to some theological views. As another example, some public schools allow students to use bathrooms and locker rooms based on their gender identity, which runs contrary to the values of some parents. As a third example, some schools teach history (such as that of slavery) in ways that run afoul of the ideology of parents. As a final example, some schools include climate change in their science courses, which might be rejected by some parents on political grounds.

A second way is that public schools fail to provide value-based content and experiences that parents want them to provide, often based on their religious and political views. For example, a public school might not provide Christian prayers in the classroom. As another example, a public school might not offer religious content in the science classes (such as creationism). As a final example, a public school might not offer abstinence only sex education, which can conflict with the values of some parents.

Charter schools, the argument goes, can offer parents an alternative to public schools, thus giving them more choices regarding the education of their children. Value-based charter schools can avoid offering content and experiences that parents do not want for their children while offering the content and experiences they want. For example, a private charter school could teach creationism and abstinence only sex education.

It might be argued that parents already have such a choice: they can send their children to existing private schools that match their values. But, as noted in my first essay, some parents cannot afford to pay for private schools. Since charter schools receive public money, parents who cannot afford to send their children to private value-based schools can send them to value-based charter schools, thus allowing them to exercise their right to choose. As an alternative to charter schools, some places have school voucher systems which allow students to attend private (often religious) schools using public money. The appeal of this approach is that it allows those who are less well-off to enjoy the same freedom of choice as the well off. After all, it seems unfair that the poor should be denied this freedom simply because they are poor. That said, there are problems with ideological charter schools.

One concern about value-based charter schools is that funding them would fund specific values with public money. For example, public money going to a religious charter school would be a case of public funding of that religion, which is problematic in many ways in the United States. At least until the Supreme Court removes that obstacle. Those who favor value-based charter schools usually do so because they are thinking of their own values being funded by public money and not value-based charter schools they would dislike. However, it is important to consider that allowing such charter schools opens the door to funding values other than one’s own. For example, conservative Christian proponents of religious charter schools are no doubt thinking of public money going to Christian schools and are not considering that public money might also flow to Islamic charter schools, to a Satanist school or a charter transgender training academy. Or perhaps they believe, probably correctly, that they can ensure the money flows in accord with their values.

Another concern is that funding value-based charter schools with public money would deny others their choice. There are many taxpayers who do not want their money going to fund values they do not accept. For example, people who do not belong to a religious sect would most likely not want to involuntarily support that sect and people who oppose abortion would not want state funds supporting abortion.

What might seem to be an obvious counter is that there are people who do not want their money to go to public schools because of their values. So, if it is accepted that public money can go to public schools, it should also be allowed to flow into value-based charter schools. After all, if state money should be denied to anything that some people oppose based on their values, almost all public funding would cease.

The reply to this is that public schools are controlled by the public, typically through elected officials. As such, people do have a choice regarding the content and experiences offered by public schools. While people will not always get what they want, they do have a role in the process. Public money is thus being spent in accord with what the public wants, as determined by this process. That people do not always get what they want is how democracy works.

 In contrast, the public does not have comparable choice when it comes to value-based charter schools. They are, by their very nature, outside of the public education system. This is not to say that there should not be such value-based schools, just that they should be in the realm of private choice rather than public funding.

To use a road analogy, imagine that Billy believes that it is offensive in the eyes of God for men and women to drive on the same roads and he does not want his children to see such blasphemy. Billy has every right to stay off the public roads and every right to start his own private road system on his property. However, he does not have the right to expect public road money to be diverted to his private road system so that he can exercise his choice.

Billy could, however, argue that as a citizen he is entitled to his share of the public road money. Since he is not using the public roads, the state should send him that share so that he might fund his private roads. He could get others to join him and pool these funds, thus creating his value-based charter roads. If confronted by the objection that the public should not fund his values, Billy could counter by arguing that road choice should not be a luxury that must be purchased. Rather, it is an entitlement that the state is obligated to provide.

This points to a key part of the matter about public funding for things like public roads and public education: are citizens entitled to access to the public systems or are they entitled to the monetary value of that access, which they should be free to use elsewhere? My intuition is that citizens are entitled to access to the public system rather than to a cash payout from the state. Citizens can elect to forgo such access, but this does not entitle them to a check from the state. As a citizen, I have the right to use the public roads and send any children I might have to public schools. However, I am not entitled to public money to fund roads or schools that match my values just because I do not like the public system. As a citizen, I have the right to try to change the public system and that is how democratic public systems are supposed to work. As such, while the ideological choice argument is appealing, it is not compelling.

In the previous essay I considered the monopoly argument for them. On this view, charter schools break the state’s harmful monopoly on education. It is worth noting that the state does not have a monopoly on education (there are private, non-charter schools). Instead, the state schools often have a monopoly on public money and charter schools break this monopoly by receiving public money. This, it is argued by charter school proponents, allows for more choice. They are right. But not all choices are good choices.

Without charter schools, people have one less type of alternative to publics schools. But there are alternatives. One is home schooling. While this is appealing to some, it has obvious limits and doing it well demands much of the parents. Another alternative is attending a non-charter private school. While these schools can provide excellent education, they are also often known for being expensive. As such, they are usually only an option for those who can afford them. Because charter schools receive public money, they can provide an alternative to public schools for those who cannot afford a private school. However, there is the question of why there should be such a choice and why people would take it.

Proponents of charter schools often claim charter schools provide better education than public schools or have some other advantage, such as being safer. Proponents of charter schools point to failing public schools and their various problems as support for their view. While this is a rational argument, it does raise some concerns.

One concern is that while there are bad public schools and excellent charter schools, there are also excellent public schools and awful charter schools. As such, there is nothing intrinsic to the public system that necessitates its badness nor anything intrinsic to the charter system that necessitates its superiority. This raises the question about what factors determine school quality.

The easy and obvious answer is funding. It is no accident that the best schools tend to be in affluent neighborhoods and the worst schools tend to be in poor areas. After all, most public school funding is local and based on property taxes. As such, high value property generates more funding for schools. Low value property generates less. Naturally, this is not the whole story for school funding, but it is an important part. It is also worth noting that it is not just community wealth that is a factor. Community health is also important for the quality of education. After all, stable communities that have families actively involved in the school can create a very good educational experience for the children. However, wealth and health often travel hand in hand.

Parents usually prefer their children to attend the best schools. This is why parents who have the income buy houses in the best school districts. This provides another limit to choice: while anyone can attend the best public schools, they must be able to afford to live in the districts that have the best schools. This public school is analogous to private schools; one must pay to be able to choose to attend. An appealing promise of charter schools is that children can escape the poor schools and go to a superior charter school, using public money rather than needing to rely on the resources of the family.

While this is appealing, there are obvious problems. One is that poor schools will become poorer as they lose students and will decline until only those who cannot escape remain as students. This is like spending a fortune on lifeboats for an ailing ship rather than using the money to fix it.

Of course, this analogy could be countered by saying that the public-school ship is doomed and the only viable option is to escape. This is a reasonable counter. If a school is so badly wrecked that it cannot be saved, then escaping to another school would be as sensible as fleeing a sinking ship. The challenge is, however, showing that this should be a charter school and not a new public school.

 Another concern is that it would seem to make more sense to use the public money to improve the public school so that parents would want their children to attend. After all, if parents want to choose good schools, the best use of public money would seem to be to make public schools better. Since there are excellent public schools, this is something that can be done with proper funding and a strong community. As noted above, there is no special magic to charters that makes them inherently better than public schools. To use another analogy, the charter school argument is like pointing to the poorly maintained roads of a community and saying that the solution is not to fix the roads, but to use the public money to put in another set of roads adjacent to the existing roads. It would seem to make much more sense to fix the existing public roads rather than building charter roads.

Given the above discussion, the choice argument for charter schools based on quality does not appear compelling. Unless it can be shown that charter schools are inherently better than public schools in virtue of being charters, then it would be better to improve the quality of existing public schools rather than siphoning away public money to charter schools. There are, however, other factors that figure into offering choices in education. In the next essay I will look at the appeal of ideological choice: charter schools can offer an ideological or theological alternative to public schools.

Before discussing charter schools, I need to present factors that might bias me against them. Like many Americans, I attended public schools for K-12. Unlike some Americans, I got a good education that provided the foundation for my undergraduate and graduate education. Both of my parents were educators in public schools.  My father taught math and computer science and my mother was a guidance counsellor. I went to a private college for my undergraduate degree and then to a public graduate school. This led to my current career as a philosophy professor at a public university. I belong to the United Faculty of Florida, the NEA and the AFT. As might be suspected, my background inclines me to have some suspicions about charter schools in the context of the political climate of today. Because of this, I take special care to consider the matter fairly and objectively.

As with most politically charged debates, the battle over charter schools is long on rhetoric and short on logical arguments. Proponents of charter schools lament the poor quality of public education, rail against indoctrination, and crusade for choice, and praise the profit motive as panacea. Opponents of charter schools sometimes see them as harmful to the public good, places of indoctrination, and as profiting at the expense of the children.

 While there is some merit behind these rhetorical stances, charter schools should neither be accepted nor rejected based on rhetoric. As liberals and conservatives have pointed out, the American public education system has problems. Charter schools have been advanced as a proposal to address some of these problems and should be given objective consideration. I will begin with what can be called the monopoly argument in favor of charter schools.

Proponents of charter schools assert that the state holds a monopoly on education and employ arguments by analogy to show why this is a bad thing. For example, the state monopoly on education might be compared to living in an area with only one internet service provider. This provider offers poor service and there is no competition. While this is better than not having any internet access at all, it is a bad situation that could be improved by competition. If the analogy holds, then the harm of poor-quality schools could be addressed by allowing competition.

This analogy can also be used to argue that people who do not have children in school should not be forced to pay into the education system. This would like making people pay for internet access they do not use. But this is another issue.

While the analogy does have some appeal, the state already lacks a monopoly on education. There are already private schools that operate without public money. These provide competition to public schools. By going through the appropriate procedures, anyone with the resources can create a private school. And anyone with the resources to afford a private school can attend. As such, there is already a competitive education industry in place that provides an alternative to public education. There is also the option of home schooling, which also breaks the monopoly.

Supporters of charter schools can counter that there is a monopoly without charter schools. To be specific, without charter schools, public schools have a monopoly on public money. Charter schools, by definition, break this monopoly by allowing public funds to go to schools outside the state education system.

This can allow privately owned charter schools to enjoy what amounts to state subsidies, thus making it easier to start a privately-owned charter school than a privately funded private school. Those who are concerned about state subsidies and things like welfare might find the use of state funds problematic, perhaps because it seems to confer an unfair advantage over privately funded schools and funnels public money into private hands.

Supporters of charter schools can counter these criticisms by turning them into virtues. Public money spent on charter schools is good exactly because it makes it easier to fund competing schools. Private schools without public funding need to operate in a free market. They must compete for customer money without the benefit of the state picking winners and losers. As such, there will not be as many privately funded schools as there would be charter schools funded by taxpayer money in a form of school welfare.

As such, charter schools would break the public-school system’s monopoly on public money, although there is not a monopoly on education (since privately funded schools exist). The question remains as to whether breaking the funding monopoly is a good thing or not, which leads to the subject of the next essay in this series, that of choice.

 

Shortly after Trump was elected president for the first time, Scottie Nell Hughes, a Trump surrogate, presented her view of truth on The Diane Rehm Show:

 

Well, I think it’s also an idea of an opinion. And that’s—on one hand, I hear half the media saying that these are lies. But on the other half, there are many people that go, ‘No, it’s true.’ And so one thing that has been interesting this entire campaign season to watch, is that people that say facts are facts—they’re not really facts. Everybody has a way—it’s kind of like looking at ratings, or looking at a glass of half-full water. Everybody has a way of interpreting them to be the truth, or not truth. There’s no such thing, unfortunately, anymore as facts.

 

As the claim there are no facts seems absurd, the principle of charity requires considering that she meant something other than what she said. One of the many things I have learned from teaching philosophy is that students often claim to think that everything is a matter of opinion and thus seem to think is no truth. The follow up discussion usually reveals that they do not believe what they think they believe. Rather than thinking that there is no truth, they think people disagree and people have a right to freedom of belief. If the Trumpian “denial” of facts is just that people believe different things and have a right to freedom of belief, then I have no issue with this.  

But perhaps the rejection of facts is not as absurd as it seems as there are philosophical theories embracing this view. One is relativism, which is the view that truth is relative to something. This is typically a culture, though it could be relative to a political affiliation. One version of this is aesthetic relativism in which beauty is claimed to be relative to the culture and objective beauty is denied. Another rejection of facts is subjectivism, which is the idea that truth is relative to the individual. Sticking with an aesthetic example, the idea that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” is a subjectivist notion. On this view, there is not even a cultural account of beauty, beauty is dependent on the  individual observer. While Hughes did not develop her position, she and other Trump supporters seem to be embracing political relativism or even subjectivism: “And so Mr. Trump’s tweet, amongst a certain crowd—a large part of the population—are truth. When he says that millions of people illegally voted, he has some—amongst him and his supporters, and people believe they have facts to back that up. Those that do not like Mr. Trump, they say that those are lies and that there are no facts to back it up.”

If it is claimed that truth is relative to the groups (divided by their feelings towards Trump), then this is a relativist position. In this case, each group has its own truth that is made true by the belief of the group. If truth is dependent on the individual, then this is a subjectivist view. In this case, each person has their own truth, but s might happen to have a truth that others also accept.

While some might think this view of truth in politics is new, it dates back at least to the sophists of ancient Greece. The sophists presented themselves as pragmatic and practical and for a fee, they would train a person to sway the masses to gain influence and power. One of the best-known sophists, thanks to Plato, was Protagoras.

The rise of these sophists is easy to explain in terms of the niche that was created for them. Before the sophists arose, the pre-Socratic philosophers argued relentlessly against each other. Thales, for example, argued that the world is water. Heraclitus claimed it was fire. These disputes and the fact the arguments tended to be equally strong for and against any position, gave rise to skepticism, the philosophical view that we (seem to) lack knowledge. Some thinkers embraced this and became skeptics, others went beyond skepticism.

Skepticism often proved to be a gateway drug for relativism. If we cannot know what is true, then it is sensible to infer that truth is relative. If there is no objective truth, then the philosophers and scientists are wasting their time looking for what does not exist. The sincerely religious and the ethical are also wasting their time for there is no true right and no true wrong. But accepting this still leaves twenty-four hours a day to fill, so the question remained about what a person should do in a world without truth and ethics. The sophists offered an answer.

Since searching for truth or goodness would be pointless, the sophists adopted a practical approach. They marketed their ideas to make money and offered, in return, the promise of success. Some of the sophists did accept that there were objective aspects of reality, such as those dealing with physics or biology. They all saw matters of value (such as ethics, politics, and economics) as relative or subjective.

Being practical, they did recognize that the masses tended to profess belief in moral and religious values.  They were also aware that violating these norms could prove problematic when seeking success. Some taught their students to act in accord with the professed values of society. Others, as exemplified by Glaucon’s argument in the Ring of Gyges story of the Republic, taught their students to operate under the mask of morality and social values while achieving success by any means necessary.

Relativism still allows for there to be lies of a certain sort. For those who accept objective truth, a lie is an intentional untruth, usually told with malicious intent. For the relativist, a lie would be intentionally making a claim that is false relative to the group in question, usually with malicious intent. Going back to Trump, for his true believers his’s claims are true because they accept them. The claims that Trump is lying would be lies to them, because they believe that claim is untrue and that Trump doubters are acting with malign intent. The reverse holds for the Trump doubters. They have their truth, and the claims of the Trump believers are lies. This approach has been broadly embraced, with many pundits and politicians claiming that what they disagree with is thus a lie.

Relativism robs the accusation of lying of its sting, at least for those who understand the implications of relativism. On this view a liar is not someone who is intentionally making false claims. A liar is someone you disagree with. This does not mean that relativism is false, it just means that accusations of untruth become rhetorical tools and emotional expressions without any truth behind them. But they serve well as a tool to sway the masses, as Trump keeps showing. He simply accuses those who disagree with him of being liars and many believe him. Or at least purport to do so.  

I have no idea whether Trump has a theory of truth, but his approach remains consistent with sophism. It would also explain why Trump does not bother with research or evidence. These assume there is a truth that can be found and supported. But if there is no objective truth and only success matters, then there is no reason not to say anything that leads to success.

There are, of course, some classic problems for relativism and sophism. Through Socrates, Plato waged a systematic war on relativism and sophism and some exclellent criticisms can be found in his works.

 One concise way to refute relativism is to point out that relativism requires a group to define the truth. But there is no way principled way to keep the definition of what counts as a group of believers from sliding to there being a “group” of one, which is subjectivism. The problem with subjectivism is that if it is claimed that truth is subjective, then there is no truth at all, and we end up with nihilism. An impact of nihilism is the sophists’ claim that success matters is not true. This is not because it is false, it is because there is no truth. Another classic counter is that relativism about truth seems self-refuting: it being true requires that it be false. This argument seems rather too easy and clever by far, but it does make an interesting point for consideration.

In closing, it is fascinating that Hughes so openly presented her relativism (and sophism). Most classic sophists advocated, as noted above, operating under a mask of accepting conventional moral values. But we have seen a new approach to sophism: one that is trying to shift the values of society to openly accepting relativism and embracing sophism. While potentially risky, this could yield considerable political advantages and sophism might claim another triumph in 2024.

Some claim that we are living in a post-true era. In support of this claim, people often use the example of the linked success of Trump and fake news.  This does make a good case that untruth has triumphed over truth. But, then again, the truth seems to remain.

Imagine people tenting in the jungle of the real. Within the tent, people create narratives and are rewarded or punished based on whether others believe their tales. Or at least find them useful. Some people realized that it did not matter whether their tales were true and found that lies were often consumed like candy. They became convinced that all that mattered was their stories and the success they brought. But they were wrong.

Outside the tent, stalking the jungle of the real, is a tiger. The tiger does not care about the narratives. The thin fabric is no protection from its claws. The tiger might pass by the tent while doing nothing. But someday, perhaps soon, the tiger will tear through fabric and its hunger will not be satisfied by even the sweetest of lies.

While a metaphor is not an argument, the tale of the tiger can be made into one. The tent is the society we construct that serves the thin wall between us and the rest of world (the jungle of the real). The people in the tent are us and the untrue narratives are the lies. The tiger is truth, which is how things really are. As in the metaphor, no matter what lies people tell, the truth remains true. While people can profit from lies and avoid the consequences, reality remains unchanged. For example, consider the narrative woven by the sugar industry about sugar, fats and heart disease.  This tale, told within the tent, has shaped the American diet for decades and has served the sugar industry well. But reality is not changed by these narratives and the consequences are serious. Tobacco companies provide another example and perhaps the best example is climate change. Some claim that climate change is a lie told by a global conspiracy of scientists. Others think that its denial is a lie spread at the behest of those who profit from fossil fuels. One side is weaving a false narrative, but the tiger is out there.

It might be claimed that this is not really a post-truth era in the sense of there being no truth. Rather, the post truth era is defined by the fact that truth matters little, if at all, in some contexts. In one sense, this is true. Trump was, for example, has been rewarded for his relentless untruths and has a good chance of being elected in 2024. Some who peddle fake news and other false content have enjoyed great financial success, thus showing there can be profit in lies. On this view, Ben Franklin is wrong: honesty is no longer the best policy, lying is. At least in the context of politics and business.

In another sense, this is not true. While lying has proven an effective short-term strategy, it will ultimately run up against the truth. Going back to the metaphor, the tiger is always out there. As an example, while the false narrative denying climate change has resulted in short term success, it will prove to be a long-term disaster. Those who believe it is real claim that the danger is climate change. Those who deny climate change claim disaster will result from the catastrophic environmental policies imposed by “the liberals.” Both agree reality will impose a disaster but disagree on its nature. While both cannot be right, they are both right that ignoring the truth will be a disaster.

It could be countered that I am wrong because I am considering the impact of such lies broadly. That is, I am focused on how their consequences can impact people in general. I should, one might argue, focus on the advantages to those engaged in the untruths. In philosophical terms, this is the claim that one should embrace ethical egoism, which is the moral theory that what is right is to maximize value for oneself. Alternatively, one could just accept selfishness as a virtue.

While an unskilled liar can end up in trouble, those with a talent for untruth can benefit from their lies while the harmful consequences impact others. One way this can happen is that the harm can lie in the future. For example, lies about the climate will not harm the liars in the elite classes today for they will be dead before the greatest consequences would impact them. This can also happen when the harms occur to other people and liar avoids them through being far from the harms. For example, lies about the safety of a town’s water would not impact the health of a governor who does not live in that town.

A third way is that the liar might be able to protect themselves through their wealth or position. For example, a rich straight white Christian who lies about things impacting Muslims, blacks, gays or poor people does not reap the harms of those lies. These consequences fall upon the targets of their lies.

A selfish reply to this is that most of us are more likely to be harmed by broad lies than benefited by them. This is because most of us care about our relatives who will be alive when we are gone, because most of us live in the impact zone of lies, and because most of us lack the status and wealth to escape the consequences of broad lies. As such, we have a selfish interest in opposing lying as it  will hurt us and those we care about.

An altruistic reply is that we should care about other people and the harm they suffer. This can also be argued for on utilitarian moral grounds—that this lying will create more unhappiness than happiness for everyone. There is also the religious argument. Many religions purport to endorse the truth and enjoin us to show compassion for others, to love each other as God has loved us. As such, the post-truth world should be rejected. Honesty is, as Ben said, the best policy.

Put roughly, vegetarians are defined by their refusal to eat meat. Vegans take it further and refuse to eat any animal products. There are, as vegetarians and vegans will tell you, many varieties of each and some involve nuances about what is and is not acceptable to eat. For example, some vegans will consume honey while others will not.  While this oversimplifies things, people tend to embrace these views for two broad reasons. Moral vegans/vegetarians are motivated by the belief that it is morally wrong to harm animals. Some also consider the total harm arising from the use of animals as products, such as the environmental damage and wastefulness of animal farming. The second reason is health. Some vegans/vegetarians are motivated by concerns about their physical well-being; they think consuming animal products is unhealthy. It is obviously possible to have both (and other) motivations, but I will focus on ethics in context of defining meat.

From a moral standpoint, the concern about meat (and other animal products) is the harm done to the animals. For example, the creation of veal and foie gras are both moral nightmares of animal suffering. The production of eggs and milk is also often terrible for the chickens and cows. In the case of animals harvested for their meat, even if they are treated well, they are still killed and consumed. Since vegans and vegetarians need to eat to avoid death, they turn to eating plants and plant products.

The moral justification for eating plants, which are living things, is usually based on the claim that plants do not suffer. They lack, it is argued, the sort of nervous system needed to even feel pain. As such they either lack moral status or have a status that allows them to be consumed. This is even though plants are alive. Interesting, and to the annoyance of some vegans, there has been research suggesting that plants have some degree of awareness or even intelligence. This, if true, would raise an moral concern for ethical vegans/vegetarians: if it is wrong to eat meat because of animal suffering, then it would also seem to be wrong to eat plants that can suffer. This concern can be addressed by using an argument analogous to one used to morally justify consuming meat: even if they are aware and have some intelligence, these qualities are insufficient to grant plants a moral status that would make eating them wrong. This could be done without hypocrisy since moral lines can be drawn in a principled way. For example, most people who eat meat would not eat humans because they make a moral distinction between humans and animals. A vegan/vegetarian could draw a line between plants and animals. The concern could also be addressed by eating foods that do not cause any suffering. Interestingly, one option would be synthetic meat.

While synthetic meat would be alive, it would not be part of an animal (or any living thing) that has the capacity to suffer. This would seem to make synthetic meat a non-meat from a moral viewpoint, at least from the standpoint of a moral vegan or vegetarian. Then again, a vegan could counter that the cells needed to grow the synthetic meat were taken from an animal, which would make it unacceptable. An obvious reply is that taking a few cells from an animal would not hurt it or cause suffering. This problem could also be addressed by using source animals that would be well cared for and allowed to die natural deaths. In this case, the moral objection would have to be abstract, that there is just something wrong with consuming any animal product, regardless of any other factors such as suffering.

One way to address this concern would be to create completely synthetic meat that has no direct link to an animal. This synthetic product would be identical to meat but would be completely artificial. As such, no animal would be harmed directly or indirectly in its creation and thus it would morally be not-meat. The logic would be that if meat is murder and synthetic meat is not murder, then it is not meat. While this is a bit silly, it does have a certain appeal.

It could be objected that it is not the ethics of meat that makes meat what it is. To use an analogy, a stolen potato would be morally different from an honestly acquired potato, but both would still be potatoes. As such, it could be argued that even “moral” meat would still be meat, and thus unacceptable to a certain sort of vegan or vegetarian. The challenge would be, of course, to show what it is about such “moral” meat that would still make it immoral. One obvious approach would be the costs of producing it. Synthetic meat is and probably will remain inefficient relative to using resources to grow plant-based foods. However, this would apply to anything wasteful of resources and would not be meat specific. It would, for example, apply to the wasteful process of growing almonds in California.

Given the above, synthetic meat would be morally distinct from classic meat. On the one hand, it could be contended that this would make it not-meat. As such, vegans and vegetarians could eat it and still claim to not be eating meat. On the other hand, it could simply be claimed that it would simply be moral meat and that vegans and vegetarians could not eat it without ceasing to be vegans or vegetarians. Based on the above, synthetic meat would obviously avoid the moral concerns about the suffering of animals. But it does raise moral concerns about its production, but these are not unique concerns and would apply to the production of any food.

 

While lab-grown meat is a staple chow in science fiction, researchers are working hard to make it a commercially viable product. While there are many controversial aspects to lab grown meat, one matter of dispute is whether it is meat.

As lab-grown meat startups arose, the beef industry rushed to argue that lab-grown meat should not be labeled as meat. Interestingly, legal definitions of food types do not need to correspond to ways chemists or nutritionists would define them. For example, since high fructose corn syrup has a bad reputation among consumers, the industry tried to get the name changed to “corn sugar.” To the chemist and nutritionist, high fructose corn syrup is a sugar; but the sugar industry rejects this definition—they presumably see a financial advantage in fighting this legal label. While the legal wrangling over how foods should be categorized can be interesting, it does not solve the problem of, metaphysically, what it is to be meat. This is because the legal answer is easy and obvious: it is whatever the law says, and this need have no rational foundation at all. My concern, as a philosopher, is with the issue of whether lab-grown meat is real meat.

While philosophers are often accused of lacking common sense, some philosophers think this is where philosophy should begin. That is, when trying to define what something is, a good starting point is where we already are in terms of common sense. J.S. Mill took this approach in his discussion of poetry, electing to start with the generally accepted view of poetry and working from there. This seems to be a sensible approach and will be applied to the matter of meat.

The common-sense definition of “meat” is that it is the edible flesh of an animal, most commonly the muscle tissue. While people do refer to the kernel of a nut as “nut meat”, common sense divides this sort of meat from animal meats. To illustrate, a vegan will not say, “I do not eat coconut because that is meat.” But a vegan would refuse to eat a turkey leg—because that is the meat they do not eat. As such, I will stick with animal-based meats and ignore the other uses of the term “meat.” This does mean that I am rejecting all plant-based meats. They are not, on the face of it, real meat.

On the face of it, synthetic meat would not seem to meet the common-sense definition. It is not cut from an animal since it is grown in a vat (or whatever). Thus, it would fail to be meat. On this view, it is the origin of the meat that defines it as meat. At this point, one could raise a weird sci-fi scenario: what if scientists created an animal whose body also included vegetable matter, such as potatoes growing as part of a genetically modified cow? The potatoes would be part of the animal, but they would not seem to be meat. As such, the composition of the material also matters and to be meat something must have the right composition (typically muscle tissue). On this view, composition would be a necessary condition for being meat (so cow-potatoes would not be meat). But composition would not be a sufficient condition. On this view, synthetic meat that was not cut from an animal would not be meat. While this quick and easy solution is appealing, it does not seem to be the final word.

Suppose that a cut of muscles cells is taken from a cow. This would obviously be a steak. Now suppose these meat cells were cultivated in a lab and grown into a massive slab. These cells originated from steak and are the same. As such, it would seem to be hard to claim the slab is not meat. To us an analogy, if someone took a plant cutting and grew a slab of the plant cells in the lab, it would seem undeniable that the slab would be plant. The same should also apply to meat.

There are two replies to this analogy. One is to argue that plants lack the individuality of animals and hence plant material works differently from meat. If potato was grown as a slab in the lab, it would still be potato. But meat must come from an individual animal, or it is not meat. The second reply is that the “plant” slab is not plant (to use “plant” like “meat”) since it is not coming from a plant. A slab grown from potato cells is not a potato plant and hence is not plant.

The counter to these replies is to focus on the question of what the discernible difference would be between the slabs and the plants and animals. Obviously enough, looking at them in the lab would be a dead giveaway, but that would be an unfair comparison. After all, a living cow does not look like a steak. A fair comparison would be to put a steak cut from a cow against a synthetic steak in a series of tests. Some would relate to food, such as taste testing. Some would be chemical and genetic, to see what the material is. Naturally, the tests would have to avoid being rigged. So, a test that was aimed only at telling if the meat was grown in an animal would be an example of a rigged test. If synthetic meat passed these test (it tastes like meat, has the texture of meat, looks like meat, has the amino acids of meat and so on), then it would be hard to deny that it is meat.

So far, I have only been discussing synthetic meat that can trace its origin back to non-controversial meat. But there is also the problem of completely synthetic meat. This is meat that is completely synthetic and has no causal chain linking it back to an actual animal. In the ideal, it would be chemically engineered protein that duplicates the qualities of meat. To use a science fiction example, think of the replicator from Star Trek. This fictional machine could create a perfect steak by assembling it from raw materials, no cow involved. Unless someone insists that an animal must die (or at least be cut) for meat to be meat, it would be difficult to argue that replicator meat or properly engineered protein would not be meat. After all, unless one knew that it did not come from an animal, it would pass all the empirical tests for being meat.

This does point to the obvious counter—someone could draw a line and insist that meat must, by definition, come directly from an animal to be meat. Anything else could be meat-like but would need to be distinguished from meat. This, of course, nicely mirrors what Locke said in the context of personal identity regarding the use of words, “And indeed every one will always have a liberty to speak as he pleases, and to apply what articulate sounds to what ideas he thinks fit, and change them as often as he pleases.” As such, the problem of meat could be solved by having multiple terms for various meat and meat-like things. Or we could follow the lead of Hume and conclude that “…all the nice and subtle questions concerning personal identity can never possibly be decided, and are to be regarded rather as grammatical than as philosophical difficulties.” In this case, “meat” is merely a matter of language, which is to say that the problem remains unsolved

While the consumption of meat has long been a part of the endless culture war, a new front has opened–the insects and lab-grown meat battlefield. In May of 2024 my adopted state of Florida passed a law prohibiting the sale of lab-grown meat. Governor DeSantis’ website made the announcement, asserting that Florida “is taking action to stop the World Economic Forum’s goal of forcing the world to eat lab-grown meat and insects.” Perhaps as an attempt at proving the claim about insects, the page links to a World Economic Forum page that makes a case for using insects as protein and fertilizer.

In his speech about the law, DeSantis asserted that “Florida is fighting back against the global elite’s plan to force the world to eat meat grown in a petri dish or bugs to achieve their authoritarian goals…” He was backed up by Florida Commissioner of Agriculture Wilton Simpson who claimed that Florida farmers and American agriculture need to be protected from lab-grown meat because it is “a disgraceful attempt to undermine our proud traditions and prosperity, and is in direct opposition to authentic agriculture.”

As people often think eating bugs is gross, this is a smart culture war move. But like almost every battle of the culture war, this is a fight against a largely imaginary enemy. While the World Economic Forum and some “global elites” have pushed for synthetic meat and using bugs in agriculture, the World Economic Forum obviously cannot force the world to eat insects or synthetic meat. Even if states did nothing, people can obviously just decline to buy and consume foods they do not want.  As such, the law protects the people of Florida from nothing (except the right to choose whether to buy lab-grown meat). It is like passing a law banning the sale of exercise equipment in Florida and claiming that it is to protect Floridians from the World Health Organization and the “global elites” forcing people to exercise.

Somewhat ironically, the passage of the law simply confirms that the WEF and the “global elite” lack the power to bend the people of the United States to its will regarding bugs and lab-grown meat. After all, if they had the power to force people to do this, a single law passed in Florida would hardly suffice to stop them. But even if the “global elite” had the power to force the United States to bend to its will (but somehow not enough power to overcome a single law), they would not be able to make people eat lab-grown meat because there is not enough of it.

Currently, lab-grown meat is not a viable product that could be mass-produced to be forced onto people. That is, even if the “global elite” wanted Floridians to eat lab-grown meat, there is not enough of it. Even the most optimistic estimate from proponents of alternative proteins is that about 5% of protein will be coming from such sources in 2030. As such, the law protects the people of Florida from what amounts to nothing. But one might argue, lab-grown meat presents a significant future threat to Florida, and this justifies the law.

One obvious reply is that lab-grown meat does not seem to present a meaningful danger to consumers. While contamination of meat is always a concern, there is no reason to think that lab-grown meat would be more likely to cause food borne illness than conventional meat. After all, lab-grown meat will not be anywhere near animal feces. One could, of course, raise various sci-fi concerns about synthetic meat, but it seems unlikely that lab-grown meat would present any such dangers in the real world. This is not to deny that lab-grown meat could be contaminated, that is always a concern in our woeful system of food safety. But it is not a special concern for lab-grown meat.

There is also the obvious fact that unlike with products like cigarettes, vapes, or pain killers, lab-grown meat does not have any addictive properties or appeal that would cause people to become addicted. As such, there seems to be no meaningful harm that this law would protect consumers from. Unless one thinks that choice is harmful. While the above has focused on the consumer, Simpson seems focused on the agricultural businesses.

As noted above, Simpson claims that lab-grown meat is an attempt to undermine “proud traditions.” This is, of course, the fallacy of appeal to tradition. That something is traditional provides no proof that it is true or good; it also provides no proof that it is false or bad. It just means that it has been around for a while–and many bad things, like murder, have been around a while. But also, good things, like ice cream, have been around for a while. Also, as with almost any appeal to tradition, it is reasonable to inquire about which tradition is being appealed to. After all, agriculture has changed radically even in recent years thanks to new technologies, genetic engineering, and chemicals. But what about the matter of prosperity?

While the Republican party has traditionally professed a love for the competition of the free market and the importance of freedom of choice, this law is clearly aimed at using the state to crush the competition before the contest begins. Some might see this sort of thing as the state “picking winers and losers” or even socialism. It is most certainly not free market capitalism. I won’t offer any free market arguments of my own here, I will simply refer the reader to decades of Republican arguments in favor of the free market and freedom of consumer choice. In this case, the free-market arguments have merit: the lab-grown meat vs traditional meat fight should be settled by consumer choice and not the fiat of the ruling elite of Florida who have the authoritarian goal of preventing this freedom of choice.

Continuing with prosperity, while a successful lab-grown meat product might have a slight impact on traditional meat sales, this would still mean that companies would be making profits and paying workers. This would not lead to a general economic downturn, although it could result in a slight decline in profits for traditional meat companies. But I suspect it would also shift profits away from companies that sell existing meat alternatives, such as tofu. But, as past Republicans would have argued, this is just the competitive market of products. As such, the law is clearly aimed at protecting the elites of the meat industries from competition, under the mask of protecting the people of Florida from a nefarious global elite. As such, this is just an anti-competition law protecting a traditional industry from a possible competitor. This does show that they learned their lesson from what happened to milk: when given a choice, some consumers will opt for vegan or vegetarian options. Hence, they have taken action to try to protect meat–this indicates  the meat industry is worried that it would lose this free-market competition.

Simpson’s final point does raise an interesting metaphysical issue about the nature of authentic agriculture. While “authentic” is a rhetorical term, especially given the highly technological and chemical nature of modern agriculture, one can raise the reasonable question of whether lab-grown meat is meat. This will be addressed in an upcoming essay.

A stock argument against raising the minimum wage is built on the claim doing so would hurt small businesses. This argument has some merit. While companies like Amazon and McDonalds could increase employee wages while still making a massive profit for upper management and shareholders, a small business that is barely making a profit could be hard pressed to increase wages without running at a loss.

 To use an imaginary example, suppose Larry owns Larry’s Lawn Care and pays his workers $10 an hour. He charges his customers $20 an hour for the labor of his employees and the expenses for things like fuel and maintenance equal about $5 an hour. So, Larry makes a profit of $5 for every hour an employee works. He also draws a salary and includes this in the bills.

But if the minimum wage were increased to $15 an hour, then Larry would make no profit unless he cut expenses. If cutting expenses is an option, Larry will need to increase what he charges to make a profit from his business. This increase, some would argue, could cause a loss of business which would lead to fewer hours for employees—thus causing a loss of income or even the firing of some employees.

It could be countered that if Larry’s business is breaking even while Larry is earning a salary for his own labor, then everything is good—Larry and his workers are getting what they deserve within the context of what customers are willing to pay for the services. But if the business was experiencing a loss and could not make full payroll because the wages and the minimum cost of operating the business exceeded what customers would pay, then it could justly be claimed that the increase in wages hurt the business and employees. This is the sort of scenario commonly used in making the small business argument against minimum wage. The reasoning is that because of the alleged harms of increasing the minimum wage, it should not be increased.

But it must also be noted that operating costs (and other expenses) are also a factor that impacts profits. If fuel and equipment costs were lower, the lawn care business would have more income.  But few argue that these costs should be kept low by the government to aid small businesses. As such, the burden of keeping small businesses profitable is usually put on the employees–the lower their wages, the greater the profit. The obvious argument against the state keeping operating costs low is that keeping operating costs low would hurt other businesses and thus (possibly) hurt other employees. But this is still a choice about who is harmed and how they are harmed. Increasing what the customers pay would also shift the harms, which is also a choice.

 Interestingly, those who argue against minimum wage often accept that companies can raise prices to increase profits even when doing so could result in employees losing hours or jobs—in fact, companies are often rewarded financially for firing people. To be consistent, someone who argues that increasing minimum wage is wrong because it would hurt employees by reducing hours or costing jobs must also argue that profitable policies that result in workers losing hours or jobs would also be wrong. Otherwise, it would be clear that their argument really has nothing to do with protecting employees and everything to do with protecting profit. An honest argument of this sort would actually be refreshing: minimum wage should not be increased because owners would make less profit.

It is also often argued that an increase in minimum wage would hurt small businesses because larger companies can afford to pay these wages while still making vast profits. One easy reply is that if this is true, then small business that would be harmed could be an exception to the general increase. This would hardly be unprecedented, since there are already many regulations that are linked to the size of a business.

A second reply is that those who argue against increasing the minimum wage on this ground would also need to accept that small businesses should be protected from larger businesses in other ways. After all, if the minimum wage should not be increased because smaller businesses cannot compete with large businesses, then the state should also see to it that larger businesses do not enjoy other advantages over small businesses. If one is not willing to accept this view, then it is likely that one does not care about small businesses—one is just against increasing the minimum wage.

A third reply is the free market reply: if small businesses cannot compete in this manner, then they will go out of business just as they would if they cannot compete in other ways. While harsh, this is consistent with capitalism as practiced. But embracing this approach would, of course, mean abandoning the small business argument against increasing minimum wage.

A final response to the small business argument is to point out that the argument can be taken to be that minimum wage should not be increased because doing so would decrease the income of small business owners. This seems to assume that the owners are entitled to their profits. But employees can point out that not increasing the minimum wage (even if only to match inflation) reduces their income as inflation reduces the value of their wages. So, if reducing income is wrong, then not increasing the minimum wage to at least account for inflation would be wrong. After all the owners would still be making the same profit they were before (adjusted for inflation). As such, those who oppose increasing the minimum wage to at least account for inflation cannot consistently use the small business argument—unless they are willing to be clear that what they are concerned with is the profits of the owners rather than alleged harms that might arise to employees.