Category: Economics

With each mass shooting the gun debate ignites again, in an endless circular dance. Some people see such horrific events as evidence in favor of new gun regulation. Others quickly head off attempts to act.

Some think it odd that I, an allegedly liberal philosophy professor, am pro-gun. The psychological casual explanation for this is easy: I was shaped by my pro-gun upbringing. I learned to shoot as soon as I could hold a gun, I hunted for years, and I am still a gun owner. I enjoy shooting and I feel comfortable with guns. I feel uncomfortable around people with guns who have no grasp of basic gun safety—an encounter that sometimes happens at the range. But how I feel about guns should not determine what I should believe about guns and gun control.

Gun control, the limiting of gun ownership, can be supported by a very reasonable utilitarian argument. By restricting gun ownership, the likelihood of people getting injured or killed by guns is reduced. While limiting gun rights can be seen as a harm, this is supposed to be offset by the greater reduction in harm to the potential victims of guns (or people with guns if you prefer).

Because of the utilitarian argument, I accept that some gun control laws can be morally justified. However, there is the question of the extent to which gun rights should be limited (if at all). There are varying degrees of gun control ranging from none to complete gun control in which gun ownership is forbidden.

In the United States, people often see gun rights as special rather than in terms of general principles about right. On the right, gun ownership is sometimes venerated and defended with zealous devotion. On the left, guns are sometimes seen as inherently terrifying. I, however, follow a general principle that can be used to sort out what should be allowed and what should be restricted.

As noted above, the main argument for restricting gun rights is to reduce harm. This is based on the more general principle that rights or liberties can be restricted under the justification of reducing harm. As such, it would seem useful to discuss gun rights in this general context.

Given that the goal of gun control is to reduce harm, it might be tempting to argue in favor of complete gun control or at least strict restrictions. The general principle is that a ban or strict restrictions would be justified by significant harm reduction. While this does have some appeal, it needs to be considered in a broader context.

If the goal is to reduce harm, then gun control would be low on the list of things that should be restricted. After all, far more people perish due to automobiles, tobacco, alcohol and obesity than die in incidents of gun violence.  As such, if guns should be restricted to reduce harm, then automobiles should also be restricted more because they do much more harm. Also, poor health choices create massive harm, so regulation of food and exercise would be justified by this general principle. While some do advocate this regulation, most see these as absurd. However, if banning Big Macs and cars seems absurd, then banning guns would also seem absurd.

But it can be argued there are relevant differences between gun control and such things as strict automobile and obesity control. In the case of obesity, it can be argued that a person who is obese is primarily hurting themself (although general obesity does harm everyone). If people have a right of self-harm while not having the liberty to harm others, then the distinction is easy to make. Except, obviously, for suicide by gun—if slow suicide by obesity should not be restricted, then quick suicide by gun would also be a liberty. Using a right to self-harm, one might argue that suicide deaths involving guns should be morally distinct from homicides involving guns.

In the case of automobiles, it is tempting to argue that automobile deaths are accidents while gun deaths are intentional. However, there are accidental deaths involving guns and intentional deaths involving automobiles A vehicle can be used as a very effective weapon, albeit one that is hard to conceal.

A more plausible option is a utilitarian approach: while severely restricting automobiles would lower death and injury tolls (not to mention reducing pollution and perhaps encouraging exercise), the utility of the automobile provides an adequate offset against the harms arising from automotive liberty.

Unlike cars, it could be argued that guns lack adequate utility to morally justify the harm they cause. After all, guns are mainly used for entertainment such as hunting and target shooting. While they are sometimes used for survival hunting or protection against animal or human threats, these benefits are offset by the harm of allowing gun rights or liberties.

Naturally, when making the calculation of harms and benefits, if the entertainment value of guns is to be discounted or dismissed, then the same must be done for automobiles and anything else. This would include pool ownership. While pools are mainly for amusement, they cause numerous drowning deaths every year. This would also apply to tobacco, which has no practical benefit and is used solely for pleasure, despite the fact that it harms the user and those exposed to the secondhand smoke. It could even apply to junk food, snacks and desserts—these are consumed for pleasure rather than any health benefit yet are major contributors to obesity. It could even be argued that these harmful products are inflicted on people (by advertising and subsidies that make them cheaper than healthy food) and thus they could be seen as a form of attack.

Interestingly, if the restriction of guns is based on arguing that they are primarily entertainment and lack suitable utility, then the same line of reasoning can be used to restrict automotive rights. After all, if the enjoyment of target shooting does not justify the liberty to use a gun for this purpose, then the enjoyment of driving would not justify the liberty to drive. So, if automotive liberty is warranted in the face of death and injury on utilitarian grounds then then it is reasonable to restrict automotive usage to utility, such as transporting heavy items over a long distance. Merely driving around for amusement or to go someplace to be amused, such as a movie, would not warrant putting oneself and others at risk of death and injury.

Of course, gun defenders will argue that guns are not primarily for amusement. Rather, they would point to their essential role in protection, perhaps against scary minorities or communists. There is also the argument that private ownership of guns provides a balance against the compulsive power of the state. An unarmed population is only free at the discretion of the armed, which is a rather uncertain sort of freedom. After all, we did see the pro-gun groups rush out to counter the flooding of cities with ICE and the National Guard just as they promised. At least we might have in some possible world in another timeline.

The stock counter is that people are safer without guns and that the state can generally be trusted not to oppress the people to a degree that would necessitate armed resistance. These are, of course, factual matters—but not uncontroversial ones.  After all, people will point to the few cases where someone defended themselves and others with their guns. And we do see the Trump regime flooding the streets of American cities with ICE to allegedly do crimes against people and inflict terror on the population.

It can be said that it would be a better world without any weapons. This might be true, but it would also be a much better world if no one was willing to hurt anyone else and these seem equally likely to come about.

 

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In an earlier essay I explained why I use AI images in my D&D content. This was not offered as an excuse or justification as I agree it is morally wrong to use these images. In another essay I presented the argument that using AI generated images is wrong because AI companies engage in theft. This moral argument would not apply to image generators not built on theft (if any exist). But there is another moral argument against using AI image generators which is that using them displaces human artists.

Concerns about the technological displacement of workers is, of course, ancient. As a philosopher, one example I often hear is that of Hiero of Alexandria who invented the aeolipile which is often presented as the first steam engine. One explanation sometimes offered as to why steam power did not revolutionize the ancient world is that it would have displaced slave labor and there was a political choice not to do this. There are alternative explanations, of course.

In general, the technological displacement of jobs can be divided into three categories. One is when technology ends an industry. Being from Maine, one example I know well is the end of the whaling industry. Petroleum and kerosene replaced whale oil while spring steel and plastic replaced whalebone. Whether such an ending is ethical or not obviously depends on the specifics of the situation. But AI is obviously not eliminating the industry of images.

Another is when technology reduces the number of jobs because it augments the ability of an individual to do work. As each worker can do more, fewer workers are needed and jobs might be eliminated. The power loom and spinning Jenny are examples of such technology as is the printing press. A much more recent example is the forklift—one forklift driver can do the work of many people. Some people worried that Photoshop would have a similar effect, that one worker using the software could replace many workers. Interestingly, Photoshop (and similar software) increased the number of artists and graphic designers employed. But it did automate some tasks and eliminate some jobs which takes us to the third way.

A third way technology eliminates jobs is through automation. While automation can augment, the pure form of automation is when human workers are replaced by machines that do the job in their place. The examples that are always used are when human computers were replaced with computers, when elevator operators were replaced with push button systems, when switchboard operators were replaced with automated dialing systems, and when manual pinsetters were replaced by machines in bowling alleys. In some cases, automation that eliminates one set of jobs creates other jobs; people like to say that the automation of manufacturing created jobs in repairing and programming robots, for example.

Not so long ago, the stereotype of automation eliminating jobs was that of a machine replacing “unskilled” manual labor. However, worries about AI replacing “skilled” jobs have been around for some time, with Star Trek’s 1968 “The Ultimate Computer” being an excellent example in science fiction. In the real world, we did see the creation of expert systems in which human experts were analyzed and interviewed so their skills could be recreated in software. One simple example of this is something you have probably used, which is tax preparation software.

One type of automation that is often overlooked is human automation in which humans become living robots (automanations?, hubots? biobots?). No, this is not a science fiction story but actual business practice.

During the rise of industrialization, skilled workers were studied to find out how they did their tasks and then these tasks were analyzed and broken down into simple tasks that could be done by unskilled workers. Business leaders had an excellent reason to do this, since skilled workers are less common and more difficult to replace than unskilled workers. So they need to be paid more and treated better. While it might be an exaggeration, it would not be absurd to say that the history of business is the history of trying to replace skilled workers with the cheapest possible unskilled alternative.

While this oversimplifies things, unskilled workers can “run a program” copied from skilled workers and complete a task as if they were skilled workers—thus serving as human robots. In philosophy, Searle’s Chinese room is an example of how this can work. While this deskilling was originally done for “manual” labor, it has been applied to “mental” labor as well.

While it might be seen as a silly example, if you have interacted with customer service or tech support, you almost certainly will have experienced an unskilled person operating from a script. The idea is the same—the script is an attempt to replicate skill (a program) and the person “running” it does not need to have any skill beyond following the script. Obviously, a human can still go off script and probably one of the many reasons humans prefer other humans for tech support and customer service. While “deskilling” jobs means that humans are still employed, the goal is to reduce the value of the worker so they can be paid less and be easily replaced. For example, replacing a gourmet chef is hard; replacing a McDonald’s worker is easy. AI is, of course, aimed at replacing human workers entirely by having a machine run the skill scripts. But there is the question of what AI can do.

Having been involved in the AI debate in the 1980s, I do recall that some artsy folks were confident that machines would never be able to create art—that literature, poetry and painting would be forever beyond the reach of AI. Modern AI can obviously generate text and images but there are people who insist AI is not creating art, usually by appealing to the old claim that machines cannot create art or some appeal to the human soul or magical creativity. While I agree that AI is not creating art, people worry that it is stealing jobs from human artists.

I think it is important to say that AI is not stealing jobs, for a reason analogous to why undocumented migrants aren’t stealing jobs. Neither AI nor migrants are forcing employers to hire them. Rather, employers are choosing to hire AI or migrants. Obviously, it is foolish to blame AI or migrants for what business leaders decide. Whatever complaints one might have about AI or migrants “stealing” jobs should be leveled against the business leaders who decide to use AI or hire people illegally.

From a moral standpoint, the criticism is that people should be hiring humans to create art. While some people do cast this in terms of AI images not being art, the practical concern is that companies are using AI rather than paying a human to create images, thus robbing a human of income. As I noted in the earlier essay on AI image generation, I am a general principle sort of person and here the general principle would be that it is unethical to use automation rather than pay a human being to do the job. It would also be unethical to do business with a business that uses AI image generators. If you have read my essay on AI images and theft, you know where this is going.

Given how widespread automation and technological displacement of jobs is, it is almost impossible to do business without doing business with a company that does not displace or eliminate jobs with technology. In some cases, those running the company have no idea they are doing this. For example, a company that uses forklifts to move cargo is probably not thinking they are eliminating lifting and carrying jobs. In other cases, they are explicitly trying to do this, as when they try to replace workers with AI. Each of us must decide what level of evil we are comfortable with in terms of, for example, which grocery store we shop at or what ISP we use. For some people, the use of AI image generation is a red line—and this can be the right choice. But what about individual use, such as when I create images for my D&D adventures?

Many of us use tax preparation software rather than paying someone to do our taxes or filling out the forms by hand. We are using an expert (I hope) system to do our taxes and thus potentially displacing a worker. But I suspect no one would condemn this as evil and insist that we must hire someone to do our taxes or do them by hand. We use the software because it is cheaper and easier. And it can do a better job than most of us.

But if we accept the principle used to condemn the use of AI image generators in place of human workers, consistency will require us to condemn the use of tax preparation software for the same reason. And so on for any use of automation that would replace a human we would otherwise pay to do the job for us. For example, the software I use to create my D&D content has an abundance of automation features that replace the work I could hire other humans to do.

An obvious reply is to break the analogy by arguing that art is special in a way that makes using image generating software morally wrong. I think that some of this is psychological, that people want to believe that art is something special that only people can create. For those who don’t condemn the automation of “manual” tasks, one might see a prejudice at work here that elevates art.

Or one could argue, as some people do, that all the automation is wrong. I do know people who still curse the use of programs like InDesign and even Word because they see these programs as destroying the old paste up approach to creating works. I also know people who lament automation across the board, longing for a “simpler” time they never lived in.  But what about the evil I do by using AI images in my D&D content?

One thing that shapes my view is that AI image generators do not prevent people from creating art. You can draw and paint all you wish—AI is not stopping you. That said, I am mad at the AI companies for ruining my birthday drawings.

Before AI, I would do a drawing of a friend on their birthday and post it to Facebook, which many people seemed to like. But when AI image generation became a thing, the value of the drawings became essentially zero—anyone could just create an image in a few seconds with AI. When people started thinking my drawings were done with AI, I knew it was time to stop—my gift having lost all value and meaning. I still draw everyday—I enjoy it and it is probably slowing down the failure of my brain. But I am still angry about the death of the birthday drawings. I suspect something similar might happen when robot cooks become a thing—if a robot in your kitchen can prepare a “homecooked” meal for your date or friend, then the value of cooking would presumably decrease. But back to AI images.

As people can still create art even if other people use AI image generators, the main worry is now economic. That is, the harm AI image generators do is to allow businesses and individuals to generate images without paying a human. Which is the harm automation always does and hence this is not a problem unique to AI and image generation. Instead, it shows a systemic problem in our economic system: the goal is to eliminate skilled human workers in favor of unskilled labor and AI. In the extreme, the goal would seem to be the elimination of all human workers in favor of automation.

In response, someone might point out the obvious: wouldn’t replacing all workers mean that companies would have no customers and thus this would be suicidal? While companies might engage in suicide (because it would be “rational” for each company to eliminate workers to compete with other companies doing the same), they are already beta testing an economy without the rest of us. Companies like Nvidia, OpenAI and Microsoft are essentially moving money around in a circle, only the circle does not include us. One can imagine the final form of the economy will be a single super AI running a virtual economy in cyberspace, a virtual world in which the number always goes up.

While companies using AI image generators in place of human artists is wrong, this is just a tiny symptom for a fundamental disease. While fighting for artists is good, it still leaves the true horror of our economic system unaddressed.

 

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In the United States, the number of homeless shelters increased in the 1980s due to a variety of factors (mostly Reagan). One factor was a recession which resulted in more people being unable to afford housing. A second factor was a shift away from single room housing. Though limited in size, this was cheaper than the alternatives. Back in the early 1990s, some of my fellow graduate students lived in singles, but these seemed to be (like most graduate student housing) relics from another time. A third factor was the infamous closing of mental institutions and reduction in care for the mentally ill. While proponents of the approach lauded the cost savings, some critics saw it as simply dumping people onto the streets.

In the face of this surge in homelessness religious groups, charitable organizations and local governments increased the number of homeless shelters. The intent was to provide people with a place to stay until they could sort things out and secure a permanent home. This approach does make some sense and did work in some cases. After all, it seems reasonable to infer that people become homeless because of problems (financial, mental and so on) and that once these problems are fixed, then a person will be ready to have a home. Unfortunately, this approach did not prove successful and there are now about 771,480 people without homes.

Fortunately, an alternative approach had a more positive impact. This approach reverses the old approach: rather than “fixing” people so that they are ready for permanent homes, this approach involves getting the homeless into more home-like shelters or permanent housing. Those who need treatment are given treatment and the results seem to have been positive.

While this approach seems to have merit, there is the stock concern that the state funded programs are wasting the taxpayers’ money by supporting free riders. Somewhat ironically, the troubled economic times that increase homelessness also decrease the funding available for such programs and gives some support to claims that scarce financial resources should be better used, perhaps by allowing more tax breaks for the job creators or bailing out corporations whose bad decision making wrecked them. As such, there seem to be two main arguments against funding such programs with state money.

The first is a utilitarian argument. As there is less state money available than what was normal before it is even more important that the money be spent effectively. Putting money into shelters, programs and permanent housing for the homeless would yield fewer positive results than using the money elsewhere (such as deficit reduction, tax breaks for the rich or maintaining infrastructure). As such, the money should be spent in these other areas rather than in addressing the problem of homelessness.

This argument can, of course, be countered by showing that the money spent on addressing homelessness would be less than the cost of not addressing the problem. If this is the case, then the cost argument favors spending the money rather than incurring the costs that can be avoided or mitigated by spending.

While homelessness is clearly bad for the people who are homeless, it is also costly to society. One area of cost is the medical costs of homelessness. On average, homeless people average hospital stays longer than comparable non-homeless people. Also, since homeless people tend to not have insurance, the cost is born either by the state (that is, us) or by those with insurance (in the form of increased premiums).

Not surprisingly, people do become homeless because of medical problems and medical problems are caused or worsened by being homeless. Those who are homeless are more likely to become ill than those who have homes and are more likely to suffer from problems of greater severity. As such, homelessness adds a burden to the health care system, especially the emergency rooms. Addressing the problem of homelessness would help reduce these costs. That said, no doubt some people profit off this problem and they would argue that this is a good thing.

Another area is crime and prisons. People who are homeless tend to spend more time in prison than the non-homeless, especially since the United States tends to address many social problems by criminalizing them. In some cases, they are arrested for “general” criminal activity, but they are often arrested for breaking laws that are aimed specifically at the homeless, such as laws against loitering and begging. That is, they are arrested because they are homeless. While this laws are often pitched as a means to coerce the homeless to go elsewhere and be someone else’s’ problem, they also help feed “customers” into the for-profit prison system.

While prisons can be quite profitable for the private companies that run them, it is expensive to imprison people. The prices vary greatly. For example, a prison stay in California costs $127,788 a year. While those who profit from prisons will not see it this way, reducing homelessness would be a good thing because it would mean fewer people in prison and lower the cost to the taxpayers. Those who profit from prisons will, of course, wish to ensure that people keep suffering from homelessness as long as this increases the chances they are imprisoned. After all, every prisoner means more profit.

A third factor is the cost of emergency shelters, which are the traditional homeless shelter.s These shelters are more expensive than the cost of a permanent residence. As such, permanent housing would provide savings over temporary shelters.

Naturally, it is reasonable to wonder what impact the permanent home programs might have on the cost to society of homelessness. Studies have shown that these do save money, although they do obviously cost money to implement.

Of course, these savings assumes that the temporary shelters would be funded. For those willing to allow homeless people to live on the streets or who want to drive them away to become someone else’s problem, this sort of program would not yield the highest savings. After all, the cost of housing the homeless on the street is nothing. Of course, this would not reduce the other costs associated with homelessness and would almost certainly increase them. After all, people living on the street are more likely to get ill or injured and more likely to be arrested. But, as noted above, these could be profitable features for some or a chance to inflict harm (cruelty is, after all, often the point).

Of course, changing the law so that people can be refused even emergency medical care if they cannot pay and ending all state-funded treatment programs for addiction and mental illness could reduce the medical costs. That is, we could entirely abandon the homeless, other than imprisoning them when they are arrested. Of course, there would remain the question as to whether this would result in a cost saving. After all, the abandonment approach might result in a large enough increase in number of homeless people being imprisoned to offset the savings from abandonment. Naturally, this does not consider the moral cost of abandonment, just the financial cost.

Overall, the evidence does seem to be that providing permanent housing for the homeless would be a cost saver, though perhaps not as big a cost saver as the complete abandonment of a sort worthy of fiends. The second argument is a moral argument or, rather, various moral arguments. One stock argument is based on the idea that we have no moral obligations to others and hence not obligation to help the homeless. On this view, we could provide such support, but we are not obligated to do so.

A second stock argument is that providing such support is immoral because it creates a culture of dependency. That is, by providing the homeless with permanent homes and treatment for any health problems they might possess they are learning to depend on others and will be unable to carry their own weight. While not supporting them might seem harsh, the argument is that this sort of “tough love” will enable then to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Those who make this argument are often the wealthy who are bailed out by the government when their bad decisions cause their businesses to fail or who are lavishly gifted state subsidies.

While this line of reasoning has some appeal, one obvious reply is that this approach is like responding to a broken leg by refusing to treat it because putting a cast on a broken leg will just make the person dependent on the cast.  As with a broken leg, a person whose life is broken needs support until they can stand on her own again.

One reply to this is that while this might hold for those who will be able to stand on their own, it does not address the problem of those who will remain dependent forever. These people, it can be argued, are just parasites and should not be supported.

I do, of course, agree that someone who is just free riding the system should not be supported. However, the number of people who will intentionally become homeless and unemployed just so they can free ride seems to be rather low (but probably more than zero). After all, most people want to be self-supporting rather than dependent on others. To deny people who need the support to rebuild just because some small percentage of poor people would free ride seems as unreasonable as getting rid of handicapped parking because some people will get a decal for those spaces that they are not really entitled to.  It can also be countered that supporting a free rider in such a program would be cheaper and less damaging than having them free riding on the alternative system.

Another moral argument against providing support for other people is that those being supported are stealing from the taxpayers by having their housing and treatments paid by others. As such, the homeless are morally wrong and we should not enable their theft by allowing such programs. Alternatively, the homeless people could be cast as being pawns used by the politicians who are stealing money from taxpayers and giving it to the homeless. Or, for extra immorality, the homeless and those who enable such support can be seen as being in wicked (or at least misguided) cahoots.

One obvious reply is that by this sort of reasoning we all spend years as thieves. After all, as children we live off our parents (or whoever is keeping is alive), we steal education from the state (or whoever is paying for it), and until we pay enough in taxes to pay for all the public goods and services we use we are stealing every time we walk down a public sidewalk, drive on a public street or go to free a public park. We also steal from all those who have come before us and who enabled us to live in a modern society with technology, medicine and such. That is, we are all beneficiaries of the labor, money and ideas of others. As such, it would be hypocritical to regard the homeless as thieves because others assist them. It would be especially hypocritical of the wealthy who benefit from tax cuts, subsidies, bailouts and government contracts.

The obvious reply is that the non-homeless who do pay taxes (and presumably pay off their financial debt to their families) eventually pay back what they stole (or borrowed) from society when they were young thieves. Of course, the same could be said of the homeless, if they are able to return to society and work, they can repay what they owe to others.

This does not, however, address the problem presented by those who will either never be able to return to contributing to society or who will not be able to repay what they cost society, perhaps because of mental illness. The obvious reply is that it would seem unreasonable to see such people as thieves. It could, of course, be argued that we should be rid of those who cannot support themselves—but this would be a different moral argument than the one based on thievery. And would take us into a monstrous place.

What, then, about people who could return to society but elect to be free riders? That is, their situation is entirely a matter of choice and tomorrow they could pay their own way. In this case, it would be reasonable to regard these people as thieves. After all, they are taking what they could earn by honest labor and there would be (by the scenario presented) no justification for them receiving support. These do seem to be limited cases, unless we consider the wealthy people supported by the public. As argued above, the fact that very few people might exploit something intended to help people in need does not give an adequate reason to treat everyone in such a program as being an exploiter.

Considering the above arguments, providing permanent housing for the homeless seems to be both a cost saver and morally acceptable.

 

 

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The United States has great economic inequality, but the American narrative is that upward mobility is not only possible but the normal order of things. This narrative has many components. One is the idea that each generation will (or should) do better than the previous. Another is that individuals can use their talents, gumption and a bit of luck to rise from humble beginnings. This general narrative is typically accompanied by specific anecdotes, such as the popular tales of Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg.

While narratives and anecdotes can be interesting, they are not a substitute for evidence. After all, anecdotes can and often are about cases that are unusual rather than what is supported by statistical evidence. This is why there is a fallacy called anecdotal evidence. This fallacy is committed when a person draws a conclusion about a population based on an anecdote (a story) about one or a very small number of cases. It is also committed when someone rejects  statistical data supporting a claim in favor of a single or small number of examples that go against the claim.

Unfortunately, the United States is a high inequality and low mobility country. Years ago,  Esmé Deprez appeared on CNN to discuss a Bloomberg report on this fact and other researchers have been discussing the matter for some time. Since then, things have only gotten worse.

42% of the men raised in the bottom 20% income remained there as adults, which matches poorly against Britain (30%) and Denmark (25%). 8% of the men in the bottom 20% were able to reach the top 20% while this rate was 12% in Britain and 14% in Denmark. 65% of those born in the bottom 20% stay within the bottom two-fifths. Of those born in the bottom 10%, 22% remain there. In Canada, the number is 16%.

The news is, as always, better at the top: about 62% of those raised in the top 20% remain in the top two-fifths. For those in the top 10%, 26% of American men born there stay there. Canada fares worse here: only 18% of Canadian men born into the top 10% remain there.

This mobility from income class to income class is relative mobility.  It is relative in that the movement is defined relative to the person’s class of origin. So, for example, someone born in the bottom 10% who moves on up to the top 10% would be upward relative mobility.

Another type of mobility is absolute mobility. This measure involves a comparison of incomes rather than economic class. Looked at in terms of absolute mobility Americans seem to be doing well: back in 2012 81% of Americans had a higher income than their parents because the United States was richer in 2012 than it was earlier. This is, of course, changing and we are seeing the youth on track to make less than their parents.  No conversation about economics in the United States would be complete without mentioning the middle class, which is said to be vanishing.  

As far as why the United States has limited mobility (especially upwards), this is a matter of dispute tainted with competing political ideologies.

Years ago, Rick Santorum claimed that the poor in the United States are more likely to be raised by single mothers relative to other countries. This is taken by some to be a factor in the lower mobility and as something to be utilized as a premise in arguing in favor of the traditional family.

Another factor is that the United States leads the world in the percentage of its citizens who are in prison. Being imprisoned is a major economic impediment that impacts the rest of the person’s life. As such, the high incarceration rates reduce economic mobility by trapping people in poverty. This seems intentional, so is a feature of America rather than a bug.

A third factor is the great economic inequality in the United States such that the distance between economic classes is large. To use an analogy, the lowest economic class starts out at the base of Mt. Everest while the top class begins at the summit. Working up from the bottom or even in the middle requires a significant change in income and wealth.

A fourth factor is that the economic playing field is obviously not level. Some people have great advantages (such as starting wealth, family connections, political influence, and race). To use a sports analogy, moving up is like running a marathon in which some people start at various miles along the course, with the poorest starting at the very beginning and the rich starting miles closer to the end. Catching up to folks who have such a huge lead might not be impossible, but would at best be very difficult.

One advantages people have is education, which is one of the many reasons the Republican party has been focused on this area. While people in the lower classes can attend college, this is more difficult in terms of paying, being prepared (wealthy areas tend to have the best K-12 schools while poor areas have the worst), and having the connections needed to get into the better schools. The trend is to cut public education spending that benefits the lower classes which hurts poorer families more than wealthy families and this will lower mobility.

A fifth and controversial factor is unionization. While the fantasy narrative of the right is that unions are job killers and economy destroyers, lower rates of unionization lead to lower wages and reduced benefits, thus reducing the ability of workers to work their way up. Interestingly, the lowering of wages is sometimes seen as a good thing since it increases profits and it is claimed that this leads to more jobs. However, some see the creation of more lower paying jobs ass less than ideal.

A sixth factor and one that might seem odd is the obesity epidemic in the United States. While the exact impact of modern obesity will not be known for some time, it is known that being obese increases health care costs and generally has a negative impact on success. Some of this impact is due to the health impact of obesity that can cause a person to miss work and be less productive. Weirdly enough, the United States might be less mobile because of obesity.

 

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One of the main arguments against heat safety regulations is based on a general profit argument: regulation will cost industry money. On the face of it, this seems intuitive: surely safety regulations would impose costs, such as the cost of providing shade, water and breaks. At the very least, if workers are taking breaks, they are not working in those breaks. So, the regulations will cost money, and the owners will lose profit.

If we suppose that this is true, given what we know about the harm of heat exposure (such as death), then opposing such regulations would be evil because it values profit over human well-being. Obviously, those who are willing to hurt (even kill) other people for profit will disagree with me. However, the fact is that effective safety practices increase profits.

The most popular example of this is how Paul O’Neil became the CEO of Alcoa in 1987 with the goal of zero worker injuries. O’Neil knew that improving worker safety in the right ways would also benefit the bottom line and was proved right.

In general terms, good safety practices can improve profits by reducing downtime and lost productivity. They can also reduce the costs imposed by damaged equipment, hiring, retaining and insurance. In general, good safety practices provide a positive return on investment per dollar. But what about heat safety? Would that help the bottom line?

Heat and dehydration reduce productivity for obvious reasons. For those who doubt this, it is easy to test by heat suicide: get out in the heat and do hard work without breaks or hydration to see what happens. Do not do this since it could kill you. Heat and dehydration also cause confusion and impair thinking; this leads to more accidents and bad choices that can impact the bottom line. There are also medical costs with heat exposure (which businesses try to pass on to workers, of course) and the fact that needlessly harsh working conditions lead to labor shortages as people do not want to work in such conditions. This is one of the many reasons American businesses often like illegal migrant labor: they can coerce them into working in dangerous conditions and pay them less. But getting back to why heat safety is good.

Hydration and shade breaks allow workers to recover and work at an overall higher efficiency than if workers were forced to push through heat. Again, you can (but should not) test this yourself. Given that safety practices improve profits, why would business leaders fight even good regulations that would make them more money?

While motivations can be difficult to prove, a reasonable inference would be that causing suffering and harm is the point. After all, if they would make more money by following good safety practices, then they are not being motivated by money. A good hypothesis would be that they are cruel, and evil given that they would be doing cruel and evil things. But when confronted with such claims, business geniuses have some replies.

One stock reply is that they are not evil, they are just operating withing the present value bias (discounting the future). A business leader might know that good heat safety practices would make more money in the long term, but they might claim that it is more profitable right now to not follow those practices. While this is still evil, it also seems untrue in the case of heat safety: heat safety now yields profits now. As such, even the short-term profit argument fails. So, a business leader would need to be either ignorant or extra evil (or both).

Another reply is the “someone else will do it, so I should too.” One could try to justify not following good heat safety practices by claiming that complying will put a business at a disadvantage against those who do not comply. One could, of course, apply that to many things that are regulated. This is like someone arguing they should sell cocaine or murder their business rivals because someone else will do the same. Also, heat safety practices give a business an advantage over those that do not do this; so opposing effective heat safety just reveals one is ignorant or evil (or both).

 

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Like many Americans my age, I was cajoled by my parents to finish all the food on my plate because people were starving somewhere. When I got a bit older and thought about it, I realized that eating (or not eating) the food on my plate would have no effect on people starving in a faraway part of the world. However, I did internalize two lessons. One was that I should not waste food. The other was that there is always someone starving somewhere and that this is bad.

While food insecurity is a problem in the United States, we Americans waste a shocking amount of food. It is estimated that 29%-35% of available food goes uneaten. This food includes the unconsumed portions tossed into the trash at restaurants, spoiled tomatoes thrown out by families, moldy leftovers tossed out when the fridge is cleaned and so on. On average, each American wastes about 325 pounds of food per year at an estimated cost of $762.

On the national level, it is estimated that one year of food waste (or loss, if one prefers) uses up 2.5% of the energy consumed in the U.S., about 25% of the fresh water used for agriculture, and about millions of barrels of oil. The loss, in dollars, is estimated to be about $325 billion. Food waste accounts for about 3.5% of greenhouse gas emissions and makes up about 24% of municipal waste.

One moral concern is with waste food. Intuitively, wasting food seems wrong, especially (as parents used to say) when people are starving. Of course, it is reasonable to consider whether less waste by Americans would translate into more food for other people. On the one hand, it might be argued that less wasted food would surely make more food available to those in need. After all, there would be more food.

On the other hand, it seems obvious that less waste would not translate into more food for those who are in need. Going back to my story about cleaning my plate, my eating all the food on my plate did not help starving people. After all, the food I eat does not help them. Also, they would not get less food because I did not eat my Brussel sprouts.

As a specific example, suppose that Americans conscientiously only bought the exact number of tomatoes that they would eat and wasted none of them. The most likely industry response would not be to give the extra tomatoes to people in need. Instead, farmers would grow less tomatoes and markets would stock less in response to the reduced demand.

For the most part, people do not go hungry because Americans are wasting food and making it unavailable. It is because they cannot afford the food they need. It is not that people are starving because others are tossing food into the trash. It is that people in poverty cannot afford the food that is so plentiful that other people can toss it away.

It could be countered that less waste would influence the affordability of food. Returning to the tomato example, farmers might keep producing the same volume of tomatoes, but lower the prices because of lower demand and seek new markets.

It can also be countered that as the population of the earth grows, food thrown away by Americans would be taking food away from other people. If food does become increasingly scarce (as some have argued will occur due to climate change and population growth), then waste will matter even more. This is worth considering.

There is, as mentioned above, the intuition that waste is, well, just wrong.  “Throwing away” all those resources (energy, water, oil and money) is  wasteful. There is, of course, also the obvious practical concern: when people waste food, they are wasting money.

For example, if Sally buys a mega meal and throws half of it in the trash, she would have been better off buying a more moderate meal and eating all of it. As another example, Sam is throwing away money if he buys steaks and vegetables, then lets them rot. So, not wasting food makes good economic sense for individuals. It would also make sense for businesses—at least to the degree that they do not profit from waste.

Of course, some businesses profit from waste. Consider all the food that is purchased and never consumed. If people did not buy this food, this would result in less sales and this would impact the economy from the store to the field. While the exact percentage of food purchased and not consumed is not known, the evidence is that it is significant. So, if people did not overbuy, then the food economy would be reduced by that percentage—resulting in reduced profits and perhaps reduced employment. As such, food waste might be important for the American food economy (much as planned obsolescence is important in the tech fields). Somewhat awfully, the greater the waste, the greater its importance in maintaining the food economy.

If this sort of reasoning is good, then it might be immoral to waste less food—after all, a utilitarian argument could be crafted showing that less waste would create more harm than good (putting supermarket workers and farmers out of work, for example). As such, waste might be good. At least in the context of the existing economic system, which might is not good. In fact, if wasting food were shown to be profitable and good for the economy, that would be another reason why our economic system is bad.

 

 

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Higher education in the United States has largely embraced the business model. One highly visible example of this is the brand merchandizing of schools. Schools have licensed their names and logos for billions of dollars. Inspired by these brand-based profits, schools trademarked their slogans. Impressively, there are over 10,000 trademarked slogans.

Trademarked school slogans include “project safety” (University of Texas), “ready to be heard” (Chatham University), “power” (University of North Dakota), “rise above” (University of the Rockies), “students with diabetes” (University of South Florida), “student life” (Washington University in St. Louis) and “resolve” (Lehigh University). Those not familiar with trademark law might be surprised by some of these examples. After all, “student life” seems such a common phrase on campuses that it would be insane for a school to be allowed to trademark it. But one should never let sanity or logic be one’s guide when considering how the law works.

While the trademarking undertaken by schools might seem odd but harmless, the main purpose of a trademark is so that the owner enjoys an exclusive right and can sue others for using it. This is, of course, limited to certain contexts. So, for example, if I write about student life at Florida A&M University in a blog, Washington University would (I hope) not be able to sue me. However, in circumstances in which the trademark protection applies, then lawsuits are possible (and likely). For example, Eastern Carolina University sued Cisco Systems because of Cisco’s use of the phrase “tomorrow begins here.”

One practical and moral concern about universities’ enthusiasm for trademarking is that it has pushed higher education deeper into the realm of business. One might think universities should be focused on education rather than business—after all, an institution that does not focus on its core mission tends to do worse at that mission. This would also be morally problematic, if schools should (morally) focus on education.

An easy and obvious reply is that a university can wear many hats: educator, business, “professional in all but name” sport franchise and so on provided that each function is run properly and not operated at the expense of the core mission. Naturally, it could be added that the core mission of the modern university is not education, but business—branding, marketing and making money.

Another reply is that trademarks protect the university brand and allow them to make money by merchandizing their slogans and suing people for trademark violations. This money could then be used to support the core mission of the school.

There is, naturally enough, the worry that universities should not be focusing on branding and suing. While this can make them money, it is not what a university should be doing—which takes the conversation back to the questions of the core mission of universities as well as the question about whether schools can wear many hats without losing focus.

A second legal and moral concern is the impact trademarks have on free speech. On the one hand, United States law is clear about trademarks and the 1st Amendment.  The gist is that noncommercial usage is protected by the 1st Amendment and this allows such things as using trademarked material in protests or criticism. So, for example, the 1st Amendment allows me to include the above slogans in this essay. Not surprisingly, commercial usage is subject to trademark law. So, for example, I could not use the phrase “the power of independent thinking” as a slogan for my blog since that belongs to Wilkes University. In general, this seems reasonable. After all, if I created and trademarked a branding slogan for my blog, then I would certainly not want other people using my trademarked slogan. But, of course, I would be fine with people using the slogan when criticizing my blog—that would be acceptable use under freedom of expression.

On the other hand, trademark holders do sometimes try to exploit their trademarks and people’s ignorance of the law to their advantage. For example, threats made involving claims of alleged trademark violations are sometimes used as a means of censorship and silencing critics.

An obvious reply is that this is not a problem with trademarks as such. It is, rather, a problem with people misusing the law. There is, of course, the legitimate concern that the interpretation of the law will change and that trademark protection will be allowed to encroach on freedom of expression.

What might be a somewhat abstract point of concern is the idea that what seem to be stock phrases such as “the first year experience” (owned by University of South Carolina) can be trademarked and owned. This diminishes the public property that is language and privatizes it in favor of those with the resources to take over tracts of linguistic space. While the law currently still allows non-commercial use, this also limits the language other schools and businesses can legally use. It also requires that they research all the trademarks before using common phrases if they wish to avoid a lawsuit from a trademark holder. It has also long struck me as bizarre that someone can claim ownership of words and sentences, they did not create. But, of course, people also claim ownership of land and resources they obviously did not create. Ownership is weird.

The obvious counter, which I mentioned above, is that trademarks have a legitimate function. The obvious response is that there is still a reasonable concern about allowing private ownership of language and restricting freedom of expression. There is a need to balance whatever legitimate need there is to own branding slogans with the legitimate need to allow the use of stock and common phrases in commercial situations.  The challenge is to determine the boundary between the two and where a specific phrase or slogan falls. Or we could also consider that the approach of owing and exploiting common goods for profit is a bad idea and maybe we should do that less. Or not at all.

 

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The United States persists in waging and endless war on drugs and faces ever increasing and problems with higher education. I will reconsider an immodest proposal I made years ago intended to address both problems.

In the case of higher education, one problem is that the cost of education exceeds the resources of many Americans. One reason is that America’s political and economic elites repeatedly blow up the economy and have been engaged in an unrelenting extermination of the middle class. Another reason is the view that higher education has been cast as a private (rather than public) good and is seen by the elites as just another area to exploit for profit. Because of this, funding to public schools has been reduced and funding has been diverted from public schools to costly and ineffective for-profit schools. Yet another reason is that public universities have an ever-expanding administrative burden. Even the darling of academics, STEM, has seen significant cuts in support and public funding.

Through their war on drugs, the rulers have imposed a massive cost on the United States. First, there is the cost of the resources devoted to policing citizens, trying them and incarcerating them for drug crimes. Second, there is the cost of the social and personal damage done to individuals and communities. From the perspective of most citizens, the war on drugs has been a losing fight—mainly because “we have met the enemy and he is us.”

Fortunately, I have a solution to both problems. Years ago, I spoke with an engineering student about Florida State’s various programs aimed at creating businesses and heard a piece on NPR about the financial woes of schools and how faculty and staff were being pushed to be fund-raisers for schools. Unsurprisingly, things are even worse now.

This got me thinking about how universities could generate funding and I remembered a running joke from long ago. Back when universities started to commit to  “businessification, I joked with a running friend (hence a running joke) that we faculty members should become drug lords to fund our research and classes. While I do not think that I should become a drug lord, I would propose that public universities get into the drug business.

States should begin by legalizing marijuana and pass a general law allowing recreational drugs that can be shown to be as safe as tobacco and alcohol (that sets the bar very low).  The main restriction will be that the drugs can only be produced and sold by public universities. All the profits will go directly to the universities, to be used as decided by boards composed of students and faculty. To be realistic, the ruling elites would need to get a cut of this, but I’ll leave the corruption aspects to others.

To implement this plan, faculty and students should be actively involved. Business faculty and students would develop the models, plans and proposals. Design and marketing students and faculty will handle those aspects. Faculty and students in chemistry, biology and medicine will develop the drugs and endeavor to make them safer. Faculty and students in agriculture will see to the growing of the crops, starting with marijuana. Engineering students and faculty will develop hydroponics and other technology.

Once the marijuana and other drugs are available, the universities will sell the products to the public with all profits being used to fund the educational and research aspects of the universities. Since the schools are public universities, the drugs will be tax-free—there is no sense in incurring the extra cost of collecting taxes when the money is going to the schools already. Since schools already have brand marketing, this can be easily tied in. For example, Florida State can sell Seminole Gold and Seminole Garnet marijuana, while my own Florida A&M University can have Rattler Green and Rattler Orange.

One practical objection is that the operation might not be profitable. While this is obviously a reasonable concern, the drug trade can be very profitable. Also, by making such drugs legal, the cost of the war on drugs would drop, thus potentially freeing up resources for education and reducing the harms done to individuals and the community.  So, I am not too worried about this.

One reasonable objection is that drugs are unhealthy. The easy reply is that while this is true, we already tolerate unhealthy products such as tobacco, alcohol, cars and firearms. If these are tolerable, then the drugs sold by the schools (which must be at least as safe as tobacco and alcohol) would also be tolerable. The war on drugs is also very unhealthy—so scaling back the war would be good for public health.

One moral objection is that drugs are immoral. There are three easy replies. The first is that the drugs in question are no more immoral than alcohol and tobacco. If these can be morally tolerated, then so can the university drugs. Second, there is the consequentialist argument: if drugs are going to be used anyway by Americans, it is better that the money go to education rather than ending up in the coffers of criminals, gangs, terrorists and the prison-industrial complex. Third, there is also the consequentialist argument that university produced drugs will be safer and of higher quality than drugs produced by drug lords, gangs, terrorists and criminal dealers. Given the good consequences of legalizing university-manufactured drugs, this plan is clearly morally commendable.

Given the above arguments, having universities as legal drug sellers would clearly help solve two of America’s serious problems: the high cost of education and the higher cost of the ineffective and destructive war on drugs. As my contribution to the brand, I offer the slogan “get high for higher ed.” As you would suspect, I am not good at marketing.

 

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Years ago, one-time `presidential candidate Mitt Romney was criticized for saying corporations are people. The guy who beat him, Obama, called corporation that used inversion unpatriotic. One might argue that criticizing corporations for being unpatriotic is to accept that they are people.

In the United States, corporations are legally persons—and the Supreme Court is devoted to granting them all the advantageous and convenient rights of actual people. The court, because it is not constrained by logic, ignores that it is illegal to own persons in the United States. I have argued elsewhere that corporations are not people and should not have that legal status—so I will not repeat those arguments here. However, I will address the issue of whether a corporation can be called unpatriotic without being committed corporate personhood.

On the side of corporate personhood, it could be argued that being unpatriotic (or patriotic) requires the intentional and emotional mental states that only a person could possess. As such, if a corporation is unpatriotic, then it is a person.

This sort of language argument has been used by philosophers such as Socrates and John Locke. In arguing for universals, Socrates (or Plato) would proceed from how one talks to accept an ontological commitment. In discussing personal identity, Locke took the fact that people use expressions such as a person not being themselves as evidence that someone in a normal state of mind can be a different person from someone in an abnormal state: “human laws not punishing the mad man for the sober man’s actions, nor the sober man for what the mad man did, thereby making them two persons: which is somewhat explained by our way of speaking in English, when we say such an one is not himself, or is beside himself; in which phrases it is insinuated, as if those who now, or at least first used them, thought that self was changed, the selfsame person was no longer in that man….”

One counter is that when someone refers to a corporation as being unpatriotic (or patriotic), they need not commit to the corporation itself being a person. Rather, the person can be taken as using a shorthand expression in place of asserting that the people who decide to implement corporate policy and make it happen are acting in what is seen as an unpatriotic way. To use an analogy, if someone claims a sports team is enthusiastic, the she is not committed to the team being a person—an entity over and above the players, coaches, etc. Rather, she is just using conversational shorthand to refer to the members of the team.  If such conversational shorthand expressed a commitment to personhood, then people would be routinely expressing commitments to a vast number of entities—thus dramatically swelling the ontology of persons. This seems both odd and unnecessary. Given the injunction of Occam’s razor, due care should be used when moving from how people speak to an ontological commitment. In the case of corporations and other groups, it would seem to suffice to attribute the mental states to the people that make them up rather than adding another entity to the matter. As such, the appeal to language argument for corporate personhood fails.

Thus, someone can claim that a corporation is unpatriotic (or patriotic) without being committed to corporate personhood. Just like a person can talk about team spirit without being committed to team personhood.

 

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In my previous essays I wrote about the sharing economy, focusing on regulations and taxes. In this essay I will cover resources (human and other). The new sharing economy is exemplified by companies such as Uber and Airbnb that organize transactions between individuals. In the case of Uber, people can sell rides in their own cars—without (as of this writing) all the usual costs and regulations of operating a cab. In the case of Airbnb, people can rent out property and (as of this writing) generally avoid the usual regulations associated with running a hotel.

For the people providing goods and services, the new sharing economy  is supposed to make it easier to earn money. In general, the new sharing economy involves three parties. The first is the person who provides the actual good (apartment, for example) or service (a ride to the airport, for example). The second is the person who uses the service and the third is the company that provides the organizing service. While this is an old model (people have long offered services and goods via things like newspaper ads), technology changed the scale of this once informal economy. It has also served to blur the traditional roles. Those who provide the goods and services are, it is often argued, not  employees of the organizing services and those using the goods and services are not exactly customers of the services. There are some advantages and some disadvantages to this.

In the case of those providing the services and goods, one obvious advantages is that they can make money. While they could do this without the organizing service, the service is supposed to make this easier and provides other advantages.

One of the advantages of not actually being an employee of the organizing services is that the provider has a degree of autonomy usually absent in the traditional employee-employer relationship. The provider can (within the constraints of economic need) work as little as desired and is free to stop at will. This autonomy appeals to some people—especially those looking for a more traditional job while making money to pay the bills. In some ways, the situation is somewhat like being a temp worker.

Of course, there are many disadvantages to being a provider. One is that there are typically no benefits and no job security. Also, the risks and costs all fall heavily on the provider. For example, if someone crashes into the company truck Sally is driving, then the company handles the matter. But, if Sally is driving for Uber and her car is hit, this is most likely going to work exactly as it would if Sally was just driving to Starbucks for a latte—that is, it is on her.

Another point of concern is that the organizer might be in the position to set rates or impose other limits—much like a traditional boss can. For example, Uber can set what drivers are paid.

But this is nothing new—people who do freelance work or are self-employed in the usual sense face all these problems. After all, being a worker in America always puts one at a disadvantage and being what amounts to a temp or freelancer can be even less optimal in terms of security and pay.

There are many advantages to the companies. One is that their workers are usually not considered employees. Another is that the worker, for the most part, also provide the essential resources like vehicles and property. While the companies do incur costs, they are able to avoid (or significantly reducing) the usual costs of running a business. For example, a hotel needs to have hotel employees and an actual hotel. Airbnb does not—the providers provide the services and buildings. As another example, a service that organizes drivers does not need to buy cars, maintain them or insure them—thus resulting in considerable savings relative to a company that must hire drivers as employees and buy vehicles.

In essence, the new sharing economy splits management from what would traditionally be the resources (human or otherwise) of a company. The organizer takes on the role of management while avoiding the need to have traditional human resources (beyond the administrative aspects of the business) and the need to have the material resources (beyond those needed for the administrative aspects).

Some companies do operate in something of a hybrid mode—having workers as well as material resources owned by the company while also having a sharing aspect to the business. This is a variation of the old model of a company hiring temp workers, freelancers and contractors.

This model can, apparently, be profitable—in large part due to matters of scale. After all, getting a slice of thousands of sales can result in a profit. Also, many of these companies benefit from tech inflation—the almost magical overvaluation of companies with business models based on the right sort of tech. That said, Uber famously operated at a loss for years and some suspect that the sharing economy is built to enrich the very few rather than for creating sustainable businesses. Which, to be fair and balanced, is often how the traditional economy operates.

Given the apparent success of companies like Uber and Airbnb, I predicted years ago that there would be a sharing bubble. But we have seemed to have gotten enshitification. While noting that there are some limits on what sort of sharing companies can exist (or example, airlines and heavy manufacturing are not really fit for the sharing economy) I speculated that additional advances in economy might see new areas for the sharing economy. For example, if 3D printers become truly viable, light and specialized manufacturing might become part of the sharing economy. While this might still occur, the new bubble is the AI bubble. But we might see the residue of the AI bubble worked into the sharing economy.

 

 

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