Category: Economics

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Way back during the college admissions scandal of 2019 the media briefly focused on how the wealthy can secure admission to the best schools. The discussion included talking about opportunity hoarding, a concept developed by Richard Reeves in his Dream Hoarders. Opportunity hoarding occurs when parents seek advantages for their children in ways harmful to others. One example is parents disparaging the children of other people who are competing with their own for school admission. The practice of opportunity hoarding raises moral issues I will address in a short series of essays. I will begin by discussing economic mobility.

Americans want to believe in economic mobility, that by hard work, people will be better off than their parents. While people just talk about economic mobility, it is important to distinguish between two types: relative mobility and absolute mobility. In both, mobility is moving up or down relative to one’s parents. Relative mobility is measured by comparing the economic ranking of current adults relative to their parents’ ranking. This can be illustrated by an analogy to racing 5Ks. When comparing two 5Ks, your relative performance is a measure of your place in the second race relative to how you placed in the first race. If you placed better in the second race than in the first one, then your relative performance was upward. If you placed worse, then your relative performance would be downward. In this analogy, the race is a generation: the first race would correspond to the economic ranking of the parents and the second would be analogous to the current adult’s ranking.

Absolute mobility is a measure of whether the current adults have a higher adjusted (for inflation, etc.) income at the same age as their parents. Going back to the running analogy, your absolute performance would be a measure of whether you were faster in the second race relative to the first race. As before, the first race is analogous to the parents’ income and the second is analogous to the current adults’ income. While both measure improvement (or decline) there are important differences.

A critical difference is that relative mobility is a zero-sum game: if someone moves up, someone else must move down. To illustrate, the top 1% can only be 1% of the population. If Sally moves into the 1%, then she pushes someone else down. The analogy to the race illustrates this as well: if you move into first place, then you push someone else into second place. In contrast, absolute mobility need not be zero-sum: you having more income does not entail that other people get less. Going back to the running analogy, if you get faster between races, it does not make anyone else slower, and everyone could get faster. Because of this, a country could have little or no relative mobility, but great absolute mobility.  Using the running analogy, the same people could place in the top 10 in race after race while everyone is also getting faster. Because of this, distinguishing between the two types of mobility is critical, especially when it comes to opportunity hoarding.

If relative mobility is low, then children usually stay in the same economic class as their parents. For example, if Sally is born to parents in the top 20%, then she will probably stay there. If relatively mobility is high, then people are likely to move up (or down) relative to their parents. While it is tempting to think that low relative mobility would always be bad, this is where absolute mobility is important. If relative mobility is low but absolute mobility is high and widely distributed, then most people will be better off than their parents, though they will still be in the same relative place. Going back to the running analogy, everybody is running faster, but people keep getting the same places in the races. One could imagine a desirable society that has very low relative mobility but exceptional absolute mobility. Imagine, if you will, a nation in which Bartholomew Billionaire’s family has always been in the top 1% and owns dozens of houses, several yachts, three private jets and 100 luxury cars. Living in the same country is Paula Poor whose family has always been in the lowest 1% of income earners. But her family now owns a modest house, her children are attending state college, and she and her husband can easily afford health insurance, good food and the occasional vacation.

 This seems to be better than a society with high relative mobility but poor absolute mobility. People readily moving up (and down) from generation to generation might seem good, but if income does not improve (or worsens) from generation to generation, then moving around more freely would be worse than being “stuck” in a good situation. Going back to the running analogy, this would be like races in which people did not get better (or got worse), but different people made it into the top 10 each race.

A society in which both types of mobility are low would be bad: those stuck in the lower income classes would not move up relatively or absolutely. While those in the upper classes would be secure, their lot would also not improve much relative to their parents. This would be a rather stagnant society. But what about real countries, such as the United States?

Currently, the United States has low relative mobility: contrary to American mythology, people usually  stay within the class they were born into. Absolute mobility used to be good, but income has stagnated and now the United States has lower absolute mobility. As such, many Americans are worse off than their parents and are also stuck in their economic class. In this situation, we are experiencing downward mobility.

Those in the upper classes (the top 20%) are aware of what downward mobility entails and they try to prevent this by giving their children advantages over other children. While doing the best one can for their children is usually the right thing to do, it can become morally problematic when this harms the opportunities of others, perhaps by locking them out of moving upward. Richard Reeves and Kimberly Howard have discussed the phenomena of the glass floor—a metaphor for the various factors that keep the children of the well off from sinking into the lower classes. This floor is a ceiling for others. Even if there is no malicious intent, to the degree that it keeps the children of the upper classes from descending it also keeps the children of the lower classes from ascending. This is for the obvious reason that relative mobility, like the places in a race, is zero-sum. My victory is your loss, and your victory is my loss. But it should not be simply assumed that this is immoral, hence the need for additional essays on this subject.

Because of income inequality and a lack of compassionate leaders, America has a serious homeless problem. One growing segment consists of people who live in their cars and many of them  are homeless despite being employed. They are usually not homeless not by choice, but because they cannot afford housing near their work.

Such people lack political power and are often the subject of negative stereotypes, it is not surprising that municipalities have tried to “solve” the problem by laws that crack down on living in cars. As would be expected, these laws have not been effective. Churches, charity groups and some communities have attempted to address the problem in a more positive way by establishing safe parking areas for the homeless. In some cases, there is access to showers and bathrooms. This situation raises moral concerns about what, if anything, should be done to help the homeless. This is, obviously enough, part of the broader moral question of what we owe other people.

One approach, as noted above, is to try to solve the problem by banning people from sleeping in their vehicles in public areas. This gives people the choice between trouble with the law or leaving. If these laws are widespread, then leaving becomes a problem, as there will be fewer places to go. Also, those with employment are tied to their jobs and moving would only make things worse. If they stay, they can end up losing their car to fines and impoundment, which will leave them without shelter and transportation. This solution is also cruel as it punishes people for being poor and unable to find affordable housing. It could be objected that these people could easily drive somewhere, find a new job and get affordable housing. However, if it were so easy for them to do this, then they would have done so already.

Another approach, as mentioned above, is for charity, churches and communities to create safe parking for the homeless. While this is preferable to using the police against the poor and the powerless, it does have some problems. One concern is the cost of the lots and resources used to pay for them could pay for housing. Another concern is that the lots used by the homeless are not usable by others, reducing available parking. But this could be addressed by improving public transportation, which we should be doing anyway.

 Perhaps the greatest concern is that while the homeless need not fear the police and have some safety, they are still living in their cars in a parking lot, which is stressful, unpleasant and difficult. The fact that they do not have a permanent residence also creates other problems, such as where the children can attend school. As such, while such safe lots are a step up from parking illegally or “in the wild”, they are hardly ideal and do not address the underlying problems.

Obviously enough, the main reason that the working homeless live in their cars is that they cannot afford housing. This can be explained in terms of either their pay being too low or the cost of housing being too high. As such, the underlying problem is financial, and this suggests two obvious solutions.

The first is to increase wages so that the working homeless can afford at least basic, safe housing. The obvious problem is determining how this should be done. While some employers do provide sufficient wages, it would be foolish to think that most will willingly pay a living wage. Another option is to use the coercive power of the state, not against the homeless, but to compel employers to pay more. This raises the usual objections about the state interfering with the “free” market.

The second solution is to provide more affordable housing. As with better pay, this could be done by the private sector (landlords voluntarily making less money) or by the state (compelling more affordable housing). As always, this raises the usual objections about the state interfering with the “free” market.

As noted above, one could argue that the working homeless should find better jobs or move someplace with lower housing costs. While this has some appeal, the working homeless driving away would be a problem for the welathy: if the people who clean their houses, make them lattes, teach their kids, put out their fires, police their streets, and work in their startups are forced to move too far away, then the rich will be left without these services. Perhaps this is why Silicon Valley is working so hard on robots. As such, even the rich have a reason to support better pay, affordable housing, or better public transportation (until the robots arrive). However, expecting rational self-interest or moral concerns about the well-being of others to solve the problem within the private sector is irrational. Also, solving social problems is not really the job of the private sector. Dealing with social issues is one reason we have governments. So, if the problem is to be addressed effectively, then the power of the state would be needed.

As noted above, using the coercive power of the state against the homeless is not an effective solution and is not ethical. As such, the state should use our resources to address wages or housing costs. As noted above, many would object to the state interfering in the market (except, obviously, when the state’s interference is to their advantage) by compelling change in wages or the cost of housing. However, the Lockean view of the state is that it exists for the good of the people and using it to slightly reduce the wealth of the wealthy so the less well-off do not have to live in their cars is morally justified. At least for those who subscribe to the Lockean view of the state. But not everyone subscribes to this view of the purpose of the state and even Lockeans might see this as unjustified.

Another option that does not involve increasing wages or increasing affordable housing is for the state (and perhaps some in the private sector) to invest in affordable, reliable and fast public transportation that would allow workers to live where housing is affordable and commute into the upper-class zones for work. This approach would have the negative effect of enhancing the growing division between the classes in America: the rich will dwell within their enclaves, while those who teach their children, make their lattes, clean their houses, fight their fires, and police their streets will be transported in to do their work, then shipped out when they are done. But at least they won’t be living in their cars. Life in America is a choice between dystopias, at least under the current system.

The fact that college admission is for sale is an open secret. As with other forms of institutionalized unfairness, there are norms and laws governing the legal and acceptable ways of buying admission. For example, donating large sums of money or funding a building to buy admission are within the norms and laws. But there was admission scandal in which celebrities and other elites broke the rules to get their children into elite colleges. On the face of it, there is no need to argue that what they did was morally wrong. What is more interesting is considering the matter in the context of fairness.

On the surface, the actions of the accused are clearly unfair. While the tactics varied, they included altering admission test results, bribing coaches to accept non-athletes as recruited athletes, and the classic direct bribe. Interestingly, most comments on these misdeeds noted the elites could have used traditional legal and accepted methods of purchasing admission. These methods are unfair because admission was not based on the students’ merits, thus they might have unjustly taken the places of students who merited admission. While the parents did act unfairly, it is worth considering this unfairness within the broader context of our society.

As many others have pointed out over the years, even the normal admission system is unfair. Poor children will almost always attend inferior schools and have far less opportunity to engage in the application enhancing activities available to the well-off. Poor children will also usually not be able to afford tutors, test preparation training, personal statement coaches and so on. They will also usually lack connections that influence admission. In contrast, wealthy children will enjoy a cornucopia of admission advantages. While there were programs and other efforts to provide some microscopic mitigation of disparity, the Trump administration is intent on defunding and dismantling most of these. As such, the disparities in admissions will grow.

It might be countered that some people rose from poverty to attend elite institutions and go on to great success, while some born into wealth have been failures. The obvious reply is that while these stories are interesting, they are just anecdotes and what matters is the general statistics. While some people succeed despite incredible odds, these few examples only show getting out of poverty and into an elite school is extremely unlikely. If people regularly arose from poverty, such success stories would be unremarkable.

In general, college admissions are like a race in which some people must run on foot, some get bikes, some get cars, and some get rocket ships. While one can talk about the merits of people in this race, the competition is fundamentally unfair in intentional ways. I do, obviously, recognize that people vary greatly in abilities. My point is, to stick to the analogy, that even the most talented runner is not going to win against someone who gets to race with a car.

While the elites cheated, they cheated in an already unfair race. To continue the analogy, their children were already driving fast cars in competition with people forced to run. These parents did things analogous to cutting the course and using illegal modifications on their cars. While this certainly matters, it does not matter that much from the perspective of those who were already competing by running. Again, I am not denying that people do vary in ability or that no one ever wins this race on foot or that no one crashes their metaphorical car. My point is that if fairness truly matters, then we should not just be outraged when the elites cheat in an already unfair system, we should be outraged by the unfair system.

In the previous essay I proposed adding inheritance rules to the standard Monopoly game. The aim was to provide a context for discussing the tension between inheritance and fairness by using the classic board game. Out of curiosity, I also posted my proposed rules on Facebook. Not surprisingly, people got the point of the rules and there were criticisms of my analogy. One reasonable criticism was that while Monopoly is a zero-sum game, the economy is not. This does raise the question of the impact of making a non-zero-sum version of monopoly with the inheritance rules in play.

One response to the zero-sum criticism is to note that Monopoly does reflect zero-sum aspects of the real economy. The classic game is about owning properties and major business and these are zero-sum in the actual world. If, for example, I own a vast tract of land, that means less land for other people. While we can make more usable land by draining swamps and building islands, there is a finite amount of land on earth. The same generally holds true of businesses. There is a finite limit to the number of viable businesses and the success of a business in an area limits the success of others. As such, for the zero-sum parts of the economy, Monopoly is not a terrible model.

The easy and obvious counter to this is to argue that there is no zero-sum economy or that there is a significant non-zero-sum part of the economy that negates the unfairness of the inheritance system. My Monopoly analogy, the criticism would go, fails and inheritance is fair. But what if Monopoly could be made into a non-zero-sum game?

In the real economy, the idea is that the sum grows over time. The same can be applied to monopoly. A way to simulate this is to add in the Board Expansion rule variant to the inheritance rules (unlimited money, houses, and hotels can also be added by printing them as needed). To play this variant, you will need several Monopoly sets.

 

Board Expansion Rules for Monopoly Inheritance!

 

Rule 1: Prior to the start of the next game in the series of games, place another Monopoly board with its Go square adjacent to the Just Visiting square of the prior board. Repeat until the players decide to stop playing. Play begins in the Go square on the board from the first game.

 

Rule 2: Once a player’s piece has completed moving completely around a board (from Go back to Go), they must exit the board and move to the next board. A board is exited via the Just Visiting square and entered via the Go square. Once a piece has completely moved around the final board in the set, the piece must be moved back to the prior board and so on until the original board is reached. The process begins anew and continues into the game ends. The board a piece is on is treated as the game board for that piece.

 

Alternative Rule: Instead of being forced to leave a board after moving completely around it (from Go to go), a player can elect to stay on a board if they wish. This rule allows players a chance to escape the original game’s board.

 

This variant allows for a non-zero-sum game, limited only by the number of Monopoly boards on hand. While this allows the players who do not have the luck of inheritance a better chance, the player who gets the inheritance still has a massive advantage. While there will be a new board with property available to all players each game, the player who has inherited from the previous game will be in a much better position than the other players to acquire the new property. The main effect of the expanding game would seem to be that the heir player will have ever more property at the end of each game and thus the next heir will have an even greater advantage over the non-heirs. While the game is not zero-sum, those that lack inheritance will almost certainly still lose.

 

The estate tax in the United States allows a person to gift or donate up to $13.9 million tax free (be sure to check the latest tax law). The catch is, of course, that they must die. The Republicans have long called the estate tax the “death tax” and argue against it. But they also pitch the narrative of a free market, and most Americans praise fair competition and equality of opportunity. So, Americans like inheritance and fair competition. But these 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 version of Monopoly.

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. In normal play, the outcome of one game does not affect the next: the game has an equal opportunity start, since everyone begins with the same resources, in the same place and with a chance to win based entirely on ability and luck. My proposed variation adds in inheritance rules to make it more like the real world. This variation requires playing multiple games of Monopoly.

 

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. This includes 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 fractions up.

 

Multiple Heirs: If there are at least three players, then two players are randomly selected to be heirs, dividing the possessions of the winner 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 has an incredible advantage. Anyone playing by these rules who is not the heir will 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 take 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 on through all the millions of 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 inheritance is a fair addition to the game. And then to think about whether it is fair in 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.