A Philosopher's Blog

Philosophical Essays on Many Subjects

Business

Inheritance & Monopoly

by 10 Comments

The current “death tax” in the United States allows a person to gift or donate up to $11.18 million tax free. The catch is, of course, that they must die. The Republicans have long made it clear that the “death tax” is a hated foe, but they also like to present a narrative of a free market and almost all Americans love to praise fair competition and equality of opportunity. As such, Americans like inheritance and fair competition. As with many cherished beliefs in belief sets, these two are at odds with each other: allowing significant inheritance conflicts with fair competition and equality of opportunity. While it is easy enough to argue for this point, it makes more sense to make people feel the unfairness inherent to inheritance. This can be done by playing my special variant of Monopoly.

Image Credit

Almost everyone is familiar with Monopoly. For those who are not, the rules can be found here. The gist of the game is that you win by driving all the other players into bankruptcy by using the rules of the game. In normal play, the outcome of one game does not affect the next: the game is an equal opportunity ideal in that everyone starts with the same resources, in the same place and with a chance to win based on ability and luck. My proposed variation adds in inheritance rules. This variation requires playing multiple games.

Monopoly Inheritance!

Rule 1:  The first game in the series is played normally using the standard rules.

Rule 2: Upon the conclusion of a game in the series, the winning player records what they possess at the end—money, property, houses, and hotels.

Rule Three: At the start of the second and later games in the series, one player is randomly selected to receive the game possessions of the winning player from the previous game. The receiving player is the heir and the possessions make up their inheritance. The other players start normally. The game is otherwise played using the normal rules, with the exceptions noted in these rules. The series ends when no one wants to play it anymore.

Inheritance Variations

Players can experiment with these variations to make the game more “realistic” or “fairer.” The rules need to be set prior to play.

Fractional Inheritance: The heir receives a percentage of the possessions of the previous winner (75%, 50% or 25% are suggested). Property is selected by drawing the property cards randomly. Round up.

Multiple Heirs: Two players are randomly selected to be heirs, dividing the possessions of the winner of the between them. This can be a 50-50 split or a 75-25 split at the discretion of all the players.

While a player who is not the heir could win the game, the heir obviously has an incredible advantage. Anyone playing by these rules who is not the heir can easily see how unfair the game is. This should help people feel how inheritance of significant wealth is inconsistent with having a fair and competitive economic system.

From a philosophical standpoint, the first game could be considered a state-of-nature game (of the sort envisioned by Locke) in which everything is initially available to all and property has yet to be divided up.

The players in the second (and subsequent) game are obviously taking on the role of the next generation. Since birth is random and inheritance is not merited by effort, the heir is selected at random rather than being the previous winner.

As with any analogy that compares something simple to something vastly more complicated, this analogy will break down quickly. To illustrate, the real-world features multiple heirs, there is no equal start for everyone else, there is not just one game with one winner and so through all the differences. My point is, of course, not that this game variant is a perfect model of inheritance in the United States. Rather, my goal is to get people who are fine with the inheritance system as it stands to play this variant and see if they still feel that this is a fair ruleset for the game. And then to think about whether it is a fair ruleset for the real economy. The question that I want to pose is this: would you play Monopoly by these rules? Why or why not?

As always, I am open to arguments against my view—perhaps allowing and encouraging massive disparities in inheritance is fair and makes for competitive economic system that improves the general welfare.

My Amazon Author Page

My Paizo Page

My DriveThru RPG Page

Follow Me on Twitter

Regulations I: The Problem

by 12 Comments

While we all live on earth and suffer from environmental degradation and climate change, these matters have become political weapons. On the left, the outer edges engage in attacks on the existing political and economic systems.  They tend to characterize business as willing to harm or even kill us to stack up more profits. This allows conservatives to cast those concerned with the environment as radicals who are out to destroy jobs. As such, those on the right often regard any concerns about the environment or extinction of species as leftist plots to destroy their beloved capitalism. In many cases, this view has been manufactured and fed by economic interests to a degree that results in an outright rejection of scientific evidence and empirical experience.

Embed from Getty Images

Since environmental issues have become intensely political and baked into the tribal identities of the political parties it is very difficult to discuss environmental concerns rationally in the public arena. After all, if many of those in power are dedicated to denying that problems even exist, it becomes extremely difficult to work on solutions. This is analogous in some ways to trying to address drug addiction when the addict refuses to accept that there is even a problem.

In some cases there are those who have a clear economic interest in denial or opposition. For example, the heads of industry tend to want to avoid health and safety regulations that would cost them profits. It must be admitted that some regulations are needlessly burdensome, but this fact does not prove that all regulations are bad. There are regulations that are clearly just, such as those that aim at protecting people from serious health threats. These are also regulations that are just in the sense that they aim to put the burden of the costs on the industry rather than allowing them to shift costs onto others. For example, restrictions on dangerous pollutants put the cost of dealing with them on industry, rather than shifting them onto the people in the contamination areas in the form of damage to their health.

Even in cases in which regulations would impose minimal costs or even provide benefits, companies tend to fight them. This might be due to mere ignorance of the benefits. For example, the railroad owners initially opposed safety equipment for trains on the grounds of cost—but it turned out that this equipment advantageous. There is also the possible influence of ideology—that the market should be free of state regulation. Of course, this ideology seems rather tolerant of restrictive regulation that benefits the established companies (think, for example, of the effective cable monopolies). There is also a strategic advantage in opposing all regulation—if one yields nothing (even to beneficial regulation), then it is easy to hold off any other regulations. Individuals also oppose regulations for similar reasons, often under the influence of the companies that dislike those regulations.

It would, obviously enough, be wrong to try to force regulations onto companies that would be ineffective or harmful. It is equally obvious that just and beneficial regulations would be morally acceptable. Aside from those who oppose (or love) all regulations, these two claims are quite plausible. It is also obvious that people disagree about where particular regulations fall; that is, whether they are beneficial or harmful. Matters are also complicated by the obvious fact that regulations tend to involve a mix of harms and benefits and sorting them out is challenging.

While I am sometimes cast as an anti-business leftist, I do recognize the importance of companies in human civilization. I rather like living in a technological society with computers, supermarkets and airlines. That said, I also recognize the importance of having a healthy ecosystem.  So, I hold that there needs to be a careful balance between our technological civilization and the ecosystem of which we are a part. Unfortunately, the various sides have tended to weaponize these matters and demonize each other, thus making it rather difficult to create and implement rational solutions to real problems. The gist of the problem is that even reasonable proposals get made into straw men and are often attacked savagely with well-funded ad campaigns. This, obviously enough, is not conducive with creating and implementing rational and just solutions.

Since I teach philosophy professionally, I am aware of what Aristotle said long ago: reason is the weakest form of persuasion. Having taught critical thinking for decades, I know that people are best swayed by fallacies (logically defective arguments) and empty rhetoric (no argument at all). As such, the best way to motivate acceptance of rational and just regulation would be to avoid logic and use the tools of rhetoric and fallacies to get people to accept them for the wrong (or no) reasons. This can, of course, be justified on utilitarian moral grounds. However, a philosopher should feel some shame (as a philosopher) for using such methods. But, perhaps, it is possible to win people over with reason. This will be discussed in the next essay.

 

My Amazon Author Page

My Paizo Page

My DriveThru RPG Page

My Dungeon Masters Guild Page

Follow Me on Twitter

What Did Companies Do With the Trump Tax Cuts?

by 7 Comments

When the Trump administration put through its tax cuts, it was promised that 70% of the tax cut would go to workers.  I predicted that these cuts would not primarily be used to raise the wages of employees or to hire more workers. Now that the cuts have been in place, there is actual data about what they did with the money they saved.

According to CNBC, the tax savings were used primarily for:

According to Bloomberg, the uses of the $54.5 billion in tax savings were:

  • Stock buybacks/increasing dividends: $21.1 billion.
  • Business Investments: $12.3 Billion
  • Employees (wages, benefits and bonuses): $8.1 billion.
  • Philanthropy: $1.4 billion.

According to NBC

  • Stock buybacks.

According to the NY Times

  • Stock buybacks

To be fair, some of the money from the tax savings did go to employees (counting bonuses). However, the 70% promise was not kept. Of course, the promise was made by the White House and not by the companies–they did not, as some have pointed out, promise to do anything. However, the tax cuts were sold (in part) by making the claim that they would benefit workers (hence the 70% promise). As such, I certainly do not blame the corporations–the state gave them the cuts and gave workers a promise but did nothing to ensure that the cuts would be used as promised by the state.

Costly College

by 4 Comments

While upward mobility is far more limited than the American myths would have us believe, there is the story that college helps people move up the economic ladder. My family story nicely fits this narrative. My father’s parents did not finish high school—they had to take jobs to help support their families. My father not only finished high school, he ended up getting a master’s degree, taught high school for years and eventually taught mathematics at the college level. I earned my PhD and am currently part of the liberal conspiracy that masquerades as American education. As with the general American tale, my family moved up the economic rungs thanks to higher education. Because of this, I am in favor of college education for those who want it.

Embed from Getty Images

While college has never been cheap, recent years have seen an absurd increase in the cost of higher education that has greatly outpaced inflation. The reasons are quite clear. First, states have generally disinvested from public higher education. Some of this is a residue from when the financial sector burned down the economy, much of it is political choice. Some of this is ideological: Republicans now tend to oppose the idea of funding public colleges, preferring to channel money into the private sector. There is also the practical reason that weakening public education helps push students towards for-profit colleges—who have lobbied Republicans and Democrats. With less public support, more of the burden falls on students and their families.

Second, there is massive administrative bloat. Some of this bloat is in the form of the numbers of administrators—there are now assistant deans, associate deans, and deans. Some of this is due to burdens imposed by the state, such as assessment and enforcing various education laws. Some of it is due to the mad obsession of colleges to be like business: many now have such things as marketing departments who talk endlessly about the brand. There is also the natural tendency of bureaucrats to expand their bureaucracy. At this time, it is standard for schools to have entire cadres of administrators who have no direct connection to education or the educational mission at all. Administrative tasks are also now commonly assigned to faculty—thus requiring hiring more people to teach as their teaching time is devoured by these tasks.

In addition to the ever-increasing number of administrators there has also been a significant increase in their salaries, especially at the higher levels. It is not unheard of for university presidents to have salaries close to a million dollars and bonuses are standard practice. This is also a result of the business model: high paid “management” ruling over lower paid “workers.” While administrators advance arguments about how top money is needed to attract top talent from the private sector (usual business), the same arguments seem to never apply to faculty. Presumably because faculty are not as important to the mission of the university as administrators.

Third, there is the cost of fancy facilities and amenities. Some of this is certainly reasonable: smart classrooms with computers, wi-fi and such are more expensive than the traditional dumb classroom. Other luxury items mainly serve to drive up costs.

Since college does provide a way to advance up the ladder or at least get a strong grip on the rung, it is important to address the problem of high costs. While one solution has been to make colleges “free”, this runs into the obvious problem that there is no such thing as free college. “Free” college just shifts the cost burden—which can be a solution to the problems of some while potentially creating problems for others. This shift can, however, be morally and economically justified—but the discussion needs to be honest about who is paying for the college.

A less drastic solution is for states to return to investing strongly in education. This was once seen as a good idea on the obvious grounds that the money spent on students was returned many times over as well as on the non-economic positive returns on the investment. This does run against current trends, which is to funnel money towards those with the best lobbyists and fattest campaign contributions.

It would also help if the state reduced some of the imposed administrative burden on colleges. While this would have a negative impact on those employed in these administrative offices, it would help reduce the cost of education. The challenge is, however, sorting out which administrative burdens to lessen. Reducing administrative positions and salaries would also help.

The number of administrators could be brought back to the older ratios of administrators to everyone else and their salaries could be reduced to more closely match those of faculty. While it could be argued that this would cut down on the top talent, there are some obvious responses. One is that education obviously attracts top talent faculty who are willing to work for relatively low salaries. So, if the administrative logic were good, then the faculty should be terrible. Another is that the various scandals and problems have shown what these top dollars buy.

Finally, schools can also cut their spending on facilities and things that are not truly relevant to their educational mission. There are, of course, other possibilities but these would be a good start.

 

My Amazon Author Page

My Paizo Page

My DriveThru RPG Page

My Dungeon Masters Guild Page

Follow Me on Twitter

Abortion & Regulation

by 20 Comments

As J.S. Mill noted in his book On Liberty, people generally do not limit liberty in a principled and consistent way. Rather, they impose or oppose restrictions based on unreasoned likes and dislikes. The political, moral and legal issues of abortion are, obviously enough, areas where this occurs.

Conservatives purport to oppose regulations and favor liberty; yet they tend to support imposing strict and even harsh restrictions on abortion. Liberals purport to favor regulations to protect people, yet also tend to accept abortion. This apparent inconsistency raises the interesting problem of working out a consistent moral position regarding liberty and regulation. I will begin with the generic conservative and then move on to the generic liberal while noting that I understand there are nuanced positions.

While it is a stereotype, conservatives are often cast as opposing many regulations aimed at protecting people from harm. For example, environmental regulations are generally supposed to be aimed at protecting people from toxins. As another example, safety regulations for products and business operations are supposed to be aimed at protecting consumers and workers. Naturally enough, few conservatives will say that they oppose protecting people; however, they argue against such regulations by claiming that they harm business and thus “kill jobs” and limit profits. Some will contend that the claims about the dangers of things like pollution are simply fabrications by liberals who are motivated by their hatred of capitalism.

Embed from Getty Images

Pushing aside the rhetoric, an objective look at the general conservative stance towards regulations of this sort is that they are willing to tolerate harms, such as the deaths of children from pollution, as part of the cost of economic advantages. This is a utilitarian/consequentialist approach: a certain amount of harm (pollution, safety issues, health problems, etc.) is an acceptable price to pay for the economic advantages. This is also a cost-shifting approach: the cost is moved from the business to those impacted by the weak or lack of regulations. For example, weak regulations on pollution and environmental damage allow businesses to make more profits because they do not need to pay the full costs of these harms. They are instead shifted on to the people impacted by then. To give a specific illustration, allowing toxins to go out of a factory saves the company money, but costs those exposed to the toxin in terms of their health and economically, if only from health care costs. The idea is, in general terms, that the interests of business outweigh the interests of those harmed—even when those harmed are the unborn and young children. This is a classic consequentialist approach for resolving competing interests.

In the case of abortion, the conservatives generally profess to be against it. This is generally presented in moral and religious terms of how life is sacred, that the unborn must be protected from harm, and so on. They do not, of course, present it as imposing on liberty. The obvious problem with this position on abortion is that it directly contradicts their professed position on regulations aimed at protecting people: they oppose such regulations by arguing in favor of economic interests. Obviously enough, if it is acceptable to allow harm to the unborn when doing so is in the interest of those doing the harm, this general principle must also be applied to abortion as well—it should be acceptable when the interests of the woman outweighs that of the unborn.

This line of reasoning can be countered on utilitarian grounds: allowing businesses to harm to the unborn for economic interests outweighs the harms; allowing women to have abortions when it is in their interest does not. This could also be argued by contending that women matter less (or not at all) in the calculation, unless they are in business and harming the unborn via business activity. This approach, while honest, does seem terrible: the unborn should not be harmed, unless doing so is profitable for the right economic interests. As noted above, liberals also run into a problem here.

While it is a stereotype, liberals are supposed to favor regulation that protects people—even when doing so imposes considerable economic costs. They are also supposed to be pro-choice and support the liberty of a woman to have an abortion.

When arguing for protective regulations, one approach is to do so on utilitarian grounds: protecting people from harm creates more good than bad, even when the economic harms are factored in. There is also the fairness argument: when businesses can shift the costs to the people being harmed by their activities, this is stealing from those people. And, of course, there is the more deontological approach (that actions are good or bad in themselves) that allowing people to be harmed is just wrong.

The utilitarian justification can, obviously enough, be used to justify abortion: the benefits gained outweigh the harm done. Obviously not for the unborn, though. This suggests that the same approach can also justify opposing protective regulations—if it is acceptable to kill the unborn when doing so is in one’s interest, then this would apply both to abortion and business.

The fairness argument, also quite obviously, also seems to tell against abortion: the cost is being imposed on the unborn—they are killed for the interests of another; which seems analogous to cost shifting in business. The deontological approach would also seem to tell against abortion: if regulation is needed to protect the unborn from the harm of pollution and such, then it would also be needed to protect them from abortion.

It is important to note that I am not addressing in this essay the matter of which position is correct. Rather, my objective has been to map up the conflict between views of protective regulations and abortion. Pro-life folks should be for protective regulation across the board, or have a reasonable argument why aborting the unborn is wrong but killing them through environmental pollution is acceptable. Pro-choice folks should be tolerant of the liberty to harm others when doing so is in one’s interest, or have a reasonable argument why aborting the unborn is acceptable but harming them with pollution is not. I am confident that wise thinkers can easily address these minor challenges.

 

My Amazon Author Page

My Paizo Page

My DriveThru RPG Page

My Dungeon Masters Guild Page

Follow Me on Twitter

Compelled Speech & Corporations

by 18 Comments

Embed from Getty Images

I include a section on the media in my critical thinking class and have, over the years, pointed out the ever-increasing media consolidation. One of the major consolidators is Sinclair Broadcasting Group, which own almost 200 local stations and is poised to expand this ownership. One obvious concern about media consolidation is that, by definition, it puts more and more control of the news into fewer and fewer hands. This reduces the options of news consumers and increases the chances of biases dominating the news. This should, obviously enough, concern people on the left on the right—there is no monopoly on bias or media ownership by the left or the right.

It might be objected that consolidation is not necessarily a bad thing, and, in fact, it has some benefits. For example, a large corporation can fund investigative journalism in a way that small operations cannot. As far as the concerns about consolidation, it could be claimed that this is only a problem when companies use their control in nefarious ways, something they surely would not do because of, perhaps, the free market.  The easy and obvious reply is to point out what critics of the “liberal media” have been saying for years about the bias in media.  This bias is, obviously enough, not limited to the left-wing media, as demonstrated by Sinclair’s heavy-handed, Russian style exercise in compelling local anchors to read a script denouncing their fellow journalists.

Deadspin created a video collage of the anchors reading from their script for the corporation, which would have been hilarious if it were a parody and not reality. While some have attacked the stations and anchors that participated (not all of them did), this is clearly unfair. If the anchors believed what they read, then they should not be condemned for being “cowards.” If the anchors did not believe what they read, they should no more be condemned than should hostages forced to read the propaganda of their captors. While Sinclair did not threaten to fire a gun at the employees if they did not comply, there is the clear threat of being fired for not doing what the owners say. While some might still call them cowards for not risking their jobs to take a principled stand, this is a great deal to expect from a person in the economic system we live in. While they obviously would not be killed, being out of work is seriously harmful in the United States. Naturally, anyone who criticizes them as cowards should give serious thought to whether they would risk their job to take such a stand. It can, of course, be claimed that the employees were really not at risk of any reprisals and that the worries of the workers are based on delusions. However, the evidence seems to show that many of the anchors felt compelled to read the script.  I turn now to the matter of compelled speech.

The subject of compelled speech has figured prominently in some recent court cases. One involves the baker who has argued that being forced to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex couple would be compelled speech. Another features a compelled speech argument against compelling employees to pay fees to unions offset the costs of representation. In these cases, the general argument is that the right to free speech includes the right against compelled speech and thus forcing the baker to bake the cake or the employee to pay fees would be wrong. If this argument has merit, it would also seem to apply to the Sinclair case: forcing employees to engage in compelled speech by reading the script would be wrong.

The easy and obvious counter to this is to point out that the 1st Amendment forbids Congress from making any law abridging the freedom of speech. It says nothing about employers restricting, punishing or compelling their employees regarding speech. Workers, to paraphrase Oliver Wendell Holmes, do have a constitutional right to talk politics, but no such right to keep their job. As such, Sinclair compelling its workers to speak seems to be perfectly legal. Sinclair is not unique in this—companies do compel workers to engage in partisan political activities and, ironically, do so under the protection of their own free speech rights. There are also those who claim that this practice of compelled speech is standard in the industry, insisting that what Sinclair did was no big deal, because what about CNN and MSNBC?  The fact that it is legal does not, of course, entail that it should remain legal. After all, discrimination and sexual harassment by employers used to be not be illegal, but now are. As such, laws could be created protecting employees from compelled speech. However, there would need to be a compelling reason for such laws.

One obvious argument can be built around the professional ethics of journalists and editorialists. Journalists, as the Sinclair script notes, should not be pushing a biased agenda or engaging in false news. They should, of course, be presenting the truth and making it clear where the facts end, and opinion begins. If an employer compels a journalist to advance a biased agenda or present fake news, then this would be a violation of professional ethics.

While editorialists are in the business of presenting opinions, they are supposed to present their honest opinions and make it clear where their opinion ends and the opinion of another begins. As such, compelling them to express views that are not their own would also be a violation of professional ethics. Compelling journalists and editorialists in this manner would be somewhat analogous to the owner of a hospital compelling doctors to lie to patients, so they could make more money with unnecessary treatments. Both are clear violations of professional ethics.

One might object that as paid employees, they are obligated to speak as their employer requires. If they do not like the work they do, they can quit. The easy and obvious reply is that there is already a job whose professional ethics requires that the employee do just that: the paid spokesperson. If a media employee is to be compelled to speak, they must be properly identified as paid spokespeople and not wear the false mantle of being a journalist or editorialist.

There are legitimate concerns with how laws to protect professionals from compelled speech would be crafted and some might claim that this would be too hard or too harmful to employers. However, protecting professional ethics and preserving the moral right against compelled speech is no harder than crafting other laws and balancing harms. It must also be noted that such laws would need to be narrowly written to protect employees from certain types of compelled speech while avoiding harming the legitimate interests of employers. Since corporations are incredibly devoted to free speech rights, their moral principles should compel them to get on board with protecting the free speech rights of the people who work for them. To do otherwise would be inconsistent and hypocritical. Unless, of course, corporations are a better sort of people than real people.

 

My Amazon Author Page

My Paizo Page

My DriveThru RPG Page

My Dungeon Masters Guild Page

Follow Me on Twitter

%d bloggers like this: