Category: Ethics

 

On September 18, 2024, thousands of pagers exploded in Lebanon, killing several people and injuring thousands. The next day, walkie-talkies exploding, killing and injuring more people. As the attack targeted Hezbollah members, Israel has been blamed for the explosions.

While some initially believed that malware was used to overload the batteries, experts now believe that explosive material was placed within the pagers somewhere along the supply chain. While the exploding pagers were Gold Apollo brand, the company claims that they were manufactured under license by another company, BAC. Manufacturing under license is a common practice and hence would not have seemed suspicious. This attack raises ethical concerns.

On the face of it, killing and injuring people is morally wrong. But as we routinely engage in violent disputes, we have developed an entire ethics of violence that deals with issues of when we can morally kill people, ethical means of killing, and morally acceptable targets. If a nonstate actor, such as a criminal organization or lone psychopath had launched such an attack against civilians, it would be rightfully condemned by all as an evil action. After all, only an evil person would try to kill thousands of people with exploding pagers. But since the intended targets were members of Hezbollah and this organization is in conflict with Israel, some would argue that this attack falls under the ethics of violence in the context of state and group conflicts. This, as many philosophers who specialize in the ethics of conflict would argue, is a key factor in assessing the morality of the attack. In this context, some would argue, the attack must be subject to a nuanced analysis and cannot be simply categorized as immoral because people were killed and injured.

Those presenting a moral defense of the attack would most likely focus on the fact that Israel allegedly targeted members of Hezbollah as part of an ongoing conflict. A critic would point out that the explosive devices killed and injured people who were not members of Hezbollah, including children. Those defending the attack would point out that such collateral casualties are an acceptable part of conflict and note that a conventional military attack against Hezbollah (such as airstrikes) would have killed many more innocent people as well as causing property damage. That is, the use of pager bombs has a moral advantage over less focused attacks. One could also argue that the attack was directed against Hezbollah’s communication system and enemy communication systems are usually considered morally legitimate targets in conflict, even when targeting them kills people.

Those who see the attack as immoral would certainly focus on the fact that the bombs were detonated without those controlling them knowing who might get hurt. And, in fact, children and people who are not members of Hezbollah were harmed.  On this view, the attack could be seen as indiscriminate. Those defending the attack can, of course, point out the awful truth that attacks that are even more indiscriminate are often claimed to be morally acceptable. That is, we have a moral tolerance for collateral death and injury that makes the attack acceptable or perhaps even praiseworthy in its relative restraint compared to, for example, airstrikes against schools and hospitals that are claimed to target enemies.

One might also express moral concern about the means of the attack, that an exploding pager is a morally dubious weapon. While conventional weapons are indeed terrifying, transforming a mundane device like a pager into a weapon of war seems aimed at creating terror: you might think that perhaps any device at any time could kill you. Defenders of the attack might note that that same fear can be created by conventional means, such as airstrikes or artillery barrages that could happen at any time. There are also more general moral concerns about the implications of how the attack was possible.

While the details are not yet known, it seems most likely that Israel (allegedly) got control over part of the supply chain for the pagers and was able to install explosives. In addition to the practical concerns this raises, there are also moral concerns.

As experts have noted, this is the first large scale attack of its type. While the idea has been around a long time, this attack has put the concept into the world news and hence into the minds of people who could do the same thing. While such an operation would be challenging for small scale actors, it is obviously something that a state actor could do and is also within the means of a well-funded terrorist or criminal organization. As such, one moral harm of the attack is that the effectiveness of this means of attack has been proven and advertised. It is probably only a matter of time before similar attacks are launched. To help prevent this, companies will need to strengthen their supply chain security to prevent tampering, and efforts will need to be made to check devices to ensure they are safe.

But there is the obvious concern that companies could be in on such attacks and hence better supply chain security would not help when the threat is the company handling such security. It is also easy to imagine state actors using this method of attack.  I suspect that some people in the United States are now thinking that phones imported from China should be checked for explosives. Or worse, such as biological or chemical weapons concealed in devices. Imagine, as a horror scenario, a smart device that releases bacteria or viruses when sent the right command.

There is also some psychological harm as people are now probably a bit worried about their phones and other devices. While we did need to be concerned about our smart devices being compromised, we now need to think about the possibility of explosives in those devices. After all, it just requires a small amount of explosives and a data connection like wi-fi or a cell network to make almost any device into a remote-controlled bomb. This has been true for a long time, but now we not only know it can happen we feel it can happen because we have seen it. And that can cause fear. This is the type of attack that changes the shape of conflict.

 

I agree with JD Vance that kids should get votes. My disagreement with him is that these votes should be cast by the kids and not given to the parents. In my previous essay, I argued why parents should not get these “extra” votes. In this essay, I will argue why kids should get to vote.

On the face of it, there should be a presumption of voting rights: each citizen of the United States should have the right to vote unless an adequate reason is given to deny a person this right. In terms of justifying this presumption, the obvious justification comes from the social contract theory that provides the basis of American political philosophy. The general idea is that legitimate political authority derives from the consent of the governed and voting is a means of ongoing consent to the ongoing political authority. To the degree that the United States denies citizens the right to vote, it undercuts its own legitimacy. Thus, the burden of proof rests on those who would restrict voting and not on those who favor the right. There are, of course, arguments that children should not have the right to vote, but these can be countered.

One general class of arguments focuses on the alleged defects of children. The reasoning is that because children are defective relative to adults, they should not have the right to vote. One alleged defect is epistemic in nature: children lack the knowledge and information needed to vote in an informed manner. The obvious reply to this is that adults are not denied the right to vote if they are ignorant and ill-informed, which is often the case. While citizens should be knowledgeable and vote in an informed manner, this is not the foundation for the right to vote—it is, once again, the need for the state to secure consent to have legitimacy.

Another alleged defect is a matter of character: children are supposed to be irrational, impulsive and unable to make good decisions. To use a silly example, that children might vote to make cake legally a vegetable. But this does not distinguish them from adult voters, who often vote in ways that are irrational, impulsive and not good decisions in both the practical and moral sense. Opponents of Trump tend to see Trump voters this way, while still supporting their right to vote. Trump’s proponents tend to see Democrats this way, although they usually do not propose stripping all Democrats of the right to vote. While voters should be ethical and rational in their voting, these are not necessary conditions for this right.

There is also the alleged defect that children would be easily swayed and duped by unscrupulous politicians. While it is true that children can be less discerning and more trusting than adults, American politics shows that adult voters are easily swayed and duped. After all, Trump voters claim that Democrats are duped by Democratic politicians and critics of Trump point to his relentless duplicity and lack of scruples. So, both sides will agree that voters are duped, they just disagree as to who the dupes are. As such, if effective critical thinking skills were required for the right to vote, many adults would need to be stripped of this right. And, as noted above, the right to vote is not based on the ability to vote well, but the moral view that the legitimacy of the state depends on ongoing consent.

While this is but a single example, Mike Lindell provided an excellent example showing how a child, in this case Knowa De Brasco, can be rational and informed and an adult (who gets to vote and gets on the news as a pundit) can be ill informed, impulsive and irrational. While De Brasco and Lindell are both somewhat unusual, they do stand in for significant numbers of people: informed children and irrational adults. As such, the argument that children are defective relative to adults and should not have the right to vote is not a compelling argument—unless we wish to strip Mike Lindell and those like him of his voting rights. Which we should not do.

Another type of argument involves pointing out that rights and privileges are age gated in the United States. For example, the legal drinking age is 21. As another example, the legal age for marriage varies as four states have no official minimum age and other states range from 15 to 18. There are also age gates on driver’s licenses, being able to rent a car, and being able to enlist in the military. From a moral standpoint, the usual argument for restricting such rights (and liberties) is the sort presented by J.S. Mill in his discussion of liberty. Roughly put, children could be harmed by poor decisions if they had the freedom to make certain choices and they lack the faculties to reliably make good choices. This does raise an obvious problem for adults: if an inability to make good decisions should deny a person the right to make such decisions, then adults should never get the right to make such decisions. After all, if they made the wrong decision, they would have shown they should not have the right to make that decision. But, back to children.

While children use the same logic and critical thinking as adults, their brains are still developing and thus they are inclined to make what many adults would see as risky or bad choices. As such, it is reasonable to put age some gates in place—although there can be good faith and rational debate about what these should be. The justification is to protect children from harm until they are more capable of dealing with the consequences of bad decisions. Or have the agency to be accountable for such decisions. But this argument does not apply to the right to vote.

While a child might make a bad decision when casting their vote, the voting will not cause them the sort of direct harm that, for example, underage drinking or marriage could cause. The worst that can happen is what could happen to any adult voter: they will vote for someone or something that ends up causing them harm, such as voting for a politician who cuts education funding for the kid’s school or opposes gun control legislation that might reduce school shootings. As such, the protection from harm argument does not apply to voting, since voting does not cause direct harm to the voter.

One final argument I will consider is a practical one, that young kids who cannot read or work a voting machine on their own would not be able to vote. But this could be addressed by assisting children who want to vote (as adults are assisted) or by setting the voting age based on when kids would usually have the basic abilities needed to physically cast a vote; this would be at least by age 5, since that is when kids usually start school. And if they can handle going to school, they are ready to vote and would, generally, not do any worse than adults.

 

Both Vice President Harris and former President Trump have promised to eliminate taxes on tip income. Critics of both have raised the obvious points that Harris could (attempt) to do this now and Trump could have done it when he was President. While this tax cut sounds appealing as a political move, there are questions about whether it is a good idea from both a moral and practical standpoint.

On the positive side, eliminating taxes on tips would be directly beneficial to workers who receive a significant tip income. Being able to keep more of their income means that they would have more money to address the high cost of life in today’s economy of high rent and grocery bills. As tipped workers tend to be in the lower economic classes, this tax break has an extra appeal since it will mostly help lower income people. That said, there is the usual concern about tax changes that people will find ways to exploit and abuse this tax elimination. For example, it would not be surprising to see wealthy people suddenly receiving substantial tip income in addition to their capital gains income. But this is not a defect with eliminating taxes on tips itself, although there are concerns about this proposal.

One concern is that the proposal does not address the fundamental problem with jobs that rely on tips. While tipping has greatly expanded, it has not always been practiced in the United States and was once looked upon in a negative light. Like many bad things in America, the negative aspects of tipping can be traced back to slavery: freed slaves sometimes worked jobs for no pay, relying on tips from customers to have an income. While there is now a federal minimum wage for tipped workers, this wage is currently $2.13 an hour (although some states have higher minimum wages).

This means that the income of tipped workers relies heavily on chance. For example, whether a waiter does well on their shift comes down to luck with the generosity of customers. While some might say that a waiter can increase their tips through hard work or skills, this is obviously not consistent. A hard-working waiter might get a lousy tip from a stingy customer while a bad waiter might catch the eye of a customer in some manner and “earn” a big tip. While eliminating the tax on tips does increase take home income, it does nothing to make the income of those who work for tips more consistent. Also, it could be argued that mandating a higher minimum wage for such workers would provide more benefit.

Employers of tipped workers have an obvious incentive to favor the tax cut over any increase in wages, since tips shift the burden of paying the workers from the employer to the customer. In effect, the worker is a short-term employee of the customer, but the customer is not required to compensate them fairly (or at all) for their labor. In defense of this practice, it can be argued that in the case of restaurants, the margins are so tight that this is the only way for the restaurant owners to make a profit. It could be countered that the cost of service should be added to the cost of the food, and this should be paid to the workers. This does have some appeal, since people who tip are already paying more for their food. The main arguments against involve claims that this would cause people who do not tip or who are willing to tip but not willing to pay more for the food itself to cease patronizing the restaurant that adopted such a policy. These do have some appeal, if the claims are true. But the strongest moral arguments against eliminating the tax are based on fairness.

The first fairness argument is that it just as the employer of tipped workers shifts the burden to the customer, the elimination of taxes on tips would shift their tax burden to everyone else who pays taxes. These are the people who make enough to pay taxes but not so wealthy that they can avoid taxes. This is, of course, not a special problem with the elimination of the tax on tips but a general problem with any tax cut. The funds to pay for the military, subsidies to farmers, Trump’s Secret Service protection, border security, and the PPP “loans” for wealthy Republican politicians during Trump’s presidency have to come from somewhere and each tax cut shifts the burden. The obvious response is that the tax cuts can be addressed by spending cuts. But these are unlikely if Harris wins and if Trump wins the cuts would most likely hurt the lower income tipped workers. But if this tax cut was offset by making the wealthy pay at least some of their fair share, then that would make it more morally acceptable in terms of fairness. Instead of redistributing wealth in the usual upward direction, this would at least redistribute some of it back to the workers.

The second fairness argument is that only workers receiving tips benefit from the tax cut. Other workers who make the same income would be paying more taxes despite this sameness of income. A reply to this is to point out that the tax system already favors certain types of income. The maximum capital gain tax is significantly lower than the maximum tax on income from jobs. But at least this special category would benefit workers. The counter to this is to point out that such differences seem fundamentally unfair as income is income and granting special benefits seems unjust.

In closing, since tipped workers tend to be in the lower economic classes, eliminating taxes on tips has a certain moral appeal and it would seem wicked to oppose this. That said, this approach does not meaningfully address the fundamental problem with tip-based jobs and there are fairness concerns in terms of shifting the tax burden and granting some workers a tax cut based solely on the type of income. A better approach would be to address the fundamental problem with tipping, but it is unlikely that Harris would do so and certain that Trump would not.

 

Some years ago, I was firing my .357 magnum at an indoor range. It made a very satisfying “bang.” Then there was a much louder noise, and I felt a “whuummmp” in ribcage. My friend Ron was firing his .44 magnum in the next lane, close enough for me to feel the shockwave from the weapon.

While the .44 magnum is a powerful handgun, it is a peashooter compared to the Carl-Gustav M3, a shoulder fired heavy infantry weapon. When fired, this weapon generates a strong shockwave that might be causing brain injuries to the operators. Mortars and other weapons have also been linked to brain trauma. While some doubt that the shockwave can cause trauma, the shockwave from such weapons is analogous to that of other explosions, such as IEDs that have caused terrible injuries. While IEDs can inflict shrapnel wounds, their shockwaves can inflict brain damage without leaving a mark on the target.

The United States military had been gathering data using blast gauges worn by soldiers. However, their use was discontinued when it was claimed they could not consistently indicate when a soldier had been close enough to an explosion to suffer a concussion or mild traumatic brain injury. These gauges did provide a wealth of information including data that showed infantry operating heavy weapons were being repeatedly exposed to potentially dangerous levels of overpressure. Because the data could link such exposure to long term health issues in soldiers, it might be suspected that the Pentagon stopped collecting data to avoid taking responsibility for such harms. This can be seen as like the NFL’s approach to concussions. This leads to some moral concerns about monitoring the exposure of operators and the use of heavy infantry weapons.

While it might seem awful, a moral argument can be made for not gathering data on soldiers operating heavy weapons. As noted above, if it were shown that being exposed to the overpressure of such weapons can cause brain injuries, then this could cost the state money. Without such data, the state can claim there is no proof of a connection and avoid responsibility. From a utilitarian standpoint, if the financial savings outweighed the harm done to the soldiers, then this would be the right thing to do. However, intentionally evading responsibility for harm is morally problematic, at best. It can also be objected that the benefits of being aware of the damage being done outweigh the benefits of intentional ignorance. One obvious benefit is that such data could help mitigate or eliminate such damage and this seems morally superior to intentional evasion by willful ignorance.

While there are steps that could be taken to minimize the damage done to troops operating heavy weapons it is likely that such damage cannot be avoided altogether. One technological solution would be to remotely operate heavy weapons, thus allowing the operator to be out of the damage zone. Another technological solution would be to automate such heavy weapons, thus keeping humans safe. Well, some humans.  Either of these options would increase the cost of the weapon system and would require weighing this against the wellbeing of soldiers. But many who are fiscal conservatives about human wellbeing are fiscal liberals when it comes to corporate profits, so a way to sell these ideas is to ensure that it would be profitable to corporations. There is also a moral argument that can be made for using the weapons as they are, even if they are harmful to the operators. It is to this that I now turn.

From a utilitarian standpoint, the ethics of exposing operators to damage from their own weapons would be a matter of weighing the harm done to the operators against the benefits of using such heavy weapons in combat. Infantry operated heavy weapons are useful in combat. One benefit of such weapons is they allow infantry to engage vehicles, such as tanks and aircraft, with some chance of success. Taking on a tank or aircraft with light weapons generally goes badly for the infantry. As such, if the choice is between risking some overpressure damage or facing a greater risk of being killed by enemy vehicles, then the choice would be obvious. If the effectiveness of the weapon against the enemy outweighs the risk to the operator, then it would be morally acceptable for the operators to take that risk.  There is, however, still the question of the damage suffered during weapon training

The obvious way to argue that it is acceptable for troops to risk injury when training with heavy weapons is that they will need this practice to use the weapon effectively in combat. If they were to try to operate a heavy weapon without live practice, they would be less likely to be effective and more likely to fail and be injured or killed by the enemy (or their own weapon). As such, the harm of going into battle without proper training morally outweighs the harm suffered by the operators in learning the weapon. This, of course, assumes that they are likely to end up in battle. If the training risks are taken and the training is not used, then the injury would have been for nothing, which takes this into the realm of considering odds in the context of ethics. On approach would be to scale training based on the likelihood of combat, scaling up if action is anticipated and keeping a minimal level when action is unlikely.

Making rational choices about the risks does, obviously enough, require knowing the risks. As such, there must be a proper study done of the risks of operating such weapons. Otherwise, the moral and practical calculations would be essentially guessing, which is morally unacceptable

Throughout American history it has been claimed that immigrants steal jobs, commit crimes and spread disease. Sometimes, such as with Ron DeSantis, some descendants of immigrants can go on to make the same accusations against current migrants. My focus in this essay is to address the claim that immigrants (and migrants) are stealing jobs from Americans.

One approach is to consider what it means for immigrants to steal jobs. To facilitate the discussion, I’ll offer an analogy to another type of alleged theft, that of stealing someone’s girlfriend (or boyfriend).

While I will change the names to protect the innocent and the guilty, when I was in college Dick was dating Jane.  Jane was at my school and Dick was attending a school in a different state. Jane started spending a lot of time with John, and eventually John started dating Jane. An angry Dick showed up to confront John about “stealing his woman.” Jane’s response that she was not stolen because she was not anyone’s property. She chose who she wanted to be with. In this case, John. For those who are wondering, I am not John, Dick or Jane. But thanks for asking. While there were moral concerns about what Jane and John did, Jane was right. She is not anyone’s property and could not be stolen. So, Dick’s charge of theft did not apply. If John had kidnapped Jane, then that would have been another matter entirely, but still not theft.

Like affection, a job is provided by someone else and not something that can (typically) be stolen. So, when an immigrant is hired by an American employer, the immigrant is not stealing the job. The American employer is choosing to hire the immigrant rather than hiring an American. Going back to the girlfriend analogy, the American worker would be like Dick, he thinks the job is rightfully his. But the employer is like Jane, she is the one deciding who gets her affection (in the case of the employer, the job). So, the American did not have their job stolen; the American employer decided to give it to someone else. The job, after all, belongs to the employer.

This argument could be countered by going back to the girlfriend analogy. Suppose that Dick and Jane are engaged and are committed, but John is willing to do more for Jane and asks far less in return and is much more appealing. It could be claimed that John is not playing fair: he should respect the special relationship between Dick and Jane and not outcompete poor Dick.

The easy and obvious reply is that it would clearly be morally problematic for John to intentionally make a play for Jane when she is in a committed relationship.  However, it is still Jane’s choice whether to stay with Dick or move on to John. As such, most of the responsibility would rest on Jane. It is fair to note that John did outcompete Dick, but Dick could have stepped up to compete if he really wanted Jane to stick with him.

In the case of the job, it is morally problematic for immigrants to cross the border illegally to seek jobs in America. However, the bulk of the moral responsibility lies with the employers. While immigrants might tempt them by being willing to work for far less, it is up to them to stick to their commitment to the law or to break it. As such, it is not the immigrants that are stealing jobs. Rather, employers are choosing to hire immigrants and if any wrong is being done to Americans who want those jobs, most of it lies on the employers.

Turning to the practical matter of immigration, if a political party wants to deter migrants from coming to the United States illegally in search of employment, it makes the most sense to focus on enforcing employment laws and punishing businesses that break these laws. While the border would still need to be secured, cracking down hard on employers breaking employment laws would reduce the number of people coming here to work illegally. But neither party has the will to do this, since they know a big chunk of the American economy depends on not policing illegal employment. But because of their rhetoric and the xenophobia baked into the political apple pie of America, they cannot support a sensible system of legal employment and documentation of workers. They thus get their pie (being able to rail against migrants) and eat it too (having large parts of the economy rest on the backs of migrant workers who are employed illegally). As a closing point, we should speak in terms of illegal employment rather than illegal immigrants; that would be more honest.

While most Americans are not hostile to transgender people and oppose discrimination against their fellow Americans, the Republican party has made them a major target in their endless culture war. While sports have become one of the newest battlefields in this fight, there is still a focus on the bathroom battles. While the legal issues will be addressed by judges, there are also the moral issues.

Utilitarianism provides one approach to the moral issue of whether transgender people should be able to choose which bathroom to use. This involves weighing the harms of denying this choice against the harms of granting it. In a democracy, this approach seems to be a reasonable one, at least if it is believed that a democratic state should aim at the general good of the people (and that America is a democracy).

A utilitarian assessment leads to an obvious conclusion: bathroom choice should be granted. The two main arguments against bathroom choice fail in the face of facts and logic. One argument is that allowing bathroom choice would put people in danger. Since some states have already allowed bathroom choice, there is data about the danger presented by such choice. Currently, the evidence shows that there is no meaningful danger. As some wits enjoy pointing out, more Republican lawmakers have been arrested for bathroom misconduct than transgender people. As such, Republicans worried about bathroom safety should focus on policing their own party.

The other argument is the privacy argument, which contends that allowing people in bathrooms based on their gender identification would violate the privacy of other people. While the focus is on women’s bathrooms, men’s bathrooms have the greater potential for privacy violations because of urinals. Sometimes there are not even dividers between them and someone could simply look down and across at another person engaged in urination. As women’s bathrooms lack urinals and have stalls, there is more privacy. However, someone could obviously peep under a stall. In this sense, bathrooms already lack some degree of privacy. But this could be addressed by enclosing urinals in stalls and making stalls peep proof in ways that would still allow ventilation and ease of cleaning. But making bathrooms peep proof has not been a focus of Republican law makers, so they are probably thinking of privacy in a different way. The most reasonable interpretation is privacy from members of the other sex, this could be called “gender privacy.”

Those favoring transgender rights would point out that allowing people to use facilities based on gender identity would not result in boys seeing girls or vice versa. It would just be the usual girls seeing girls in the girls bathroom and boys seeing boys in the boy’s bathroom. Since the main worry is transgender girls in girl’s bathrooms, I will focus on that. However, the same discussion could be made for transgender boys.

The obvious reply to this would be to assert that gender identification is not a real thing: a person’s gender is set by biological sex. So, a transgender girl would, in fact, be a boy and hence should not be allowed in the girls’ locker room. This is presumably, based on the assumption that a transgender girl is still sexually attracted to girls because they are still a boy. There seem to be three possibilities here.

The first is that transgender girls are straight boys and are sexually attracted to girls (that is, they are just faking) and this grounds the claim that a transgender girl would violate the privacy of other girls. This would entail that lesbian girls also violate the privacy of other girls and since about 10% of the population is gay, then any bathroom with ten or more girls probably has some privacy violation occurring. As such, those concerned with privacy would presumably need to address this as well. The worry that lesbians might be violating privacy could be addressed by making stalls peep proof, but then no transgender bans would be needed since privacy would be protected.  While this could prove expensive, if Republicans are truly dedicated to bathroom privacy, they could provide funding for this.

The second is that transgender girls are not automatically sexually attracted to other girls and hence do not violate their privacy: they are girls like other girls. It could be objected that what matters is the genetic makeup or gender past of the person: someone who was once a biological male seeing a girl in the locker room violates her privacy. Arguing for this requires showing how this matters in terms of privacy, that being seen by girls is not a privacy violation but being seen by a transgender girl who is just going about their business is a privacy violation. That is, if the person looking does not care about what is being seen, then how is it a privacy violation?

The third is that transgender girls are just girls. In which case, there is no privacy violation since it is just girls seeing girls.

While those advancing these arguments might honestly believe them, it might be suspected that the motivation for opposing bathroom choice is a dislike of transgender people. This is the “transgender people are icky and bad” argument. This “argument” has no merit on the face of it, which is why it usually is not advanced as a reason by opponents of bathroom choice. But now back to the utilitarian argument.

One stock problem with utilitarian arguments is that they can be used to justify violating rights. This problem typically arises in when the benefits received by a numerical majority come at the expense of harms done to a numerical minority. However, it can also arise in cases where the greater benefits to a numerical minority outweigh the lesser harms to a numerical majority. In the case at hand, those opposed to bathroom choice could argue that even if bathroom choice benefits transgender people far more than it hurts people who oppose bathroom choice, the rights of anti-choice people are being violated. This then makes the matter a question of competing rights.

In the case of public bathroom facilities, such as student bathrooms at schools, members of the public have the right to use them since that is the nature of public goods. There are, however, reasonable limits placed on access. For example, the bathrooms in public schools, courthouses and government buildings are generally not open to anyone to wander off the street to use. So, while there is a right to public bathrooms, like all rights, it does have its limits. It can thus be assumed that transgender people have bathroom rights just as people who oppose bathroom choice do. What is in dispute is whether the right of transgender people to choose their bathroom trumps the right of anti-choice people to not be forced to use bathrooms with transgender people.

Disputes over competing rights are often settled by utilitarian considerations, but the utilitarian argument already favors bathroom choice. As such, another approach is needed, and a reasonable one is the consideration of which right has priority. This approach assumes that there is a hierarchy of rights, and that one right can take precedent over another. Fortunately, this is intuitively appealing. For example, while people have a right to free expression, the right to not be unjustly harmed trumps it. This is why libel and slander are not protected by this right.

So, the bathroom issue comes down to this: does the right of a transgender person to choose their bathroom have priority over the right of an anti-choice person to not encounter transgender people in the bathroom? My inclination is that the right of the transgender person has priority over the anti-choice person. To support this, I will use an analogy to race.

Not so long ago, there were separate bathrooms for black and white people. When the bathrooms were to be integrated, there were dire warnings that terrible things would occur if bathrooms were integrated. This is a stock conservative approach against expanding rights: if these people get this right, then terrible things will happen. This argument was made in defense of the anti-miscegenation laws, against desegregation of schools and the military, and against same-sex marriage. So far, the claims of harm have turned out to be wrong.

In the specific case of desegregation of bathrooms, these terrible things obviously did not take place. Whites also have argued that they had a right to not be in the same bathroom as blacks. However, the alleged white right to not be in a bathroom with blacks does not trump the right of blacks to use the public bathroom. Likewise, the right of transgender people to choose their bathroom trumps the right of anti-choice people to exclude them.

It can be objected that if this argument is taken to its logical conclusion, then gender mixing will occur in the bathrooms. For example, one common sight at races (such as marathons) is long lines leading to the women’s bathrooms and short lines for the men’s bathrooms. Women runners might start going into the men’s room (they already sometimes do). Then terrible things might happen. Specifically, I might need to wait longer to pee before races. This is a case where my selfishness must outweigh my moral principles: though I have no moral objection to gender mixing of bathrooms, my selfish bladder says that I cannot give up my right to a shorter line. If men want to go to the women’s bathroom, my bladder approves since that means less wait for it.

 

I regularly use AI images in my game products, such as my D&D adventures. I also use such images as illustrations on my blog. This leads to the question of whether I am acting in an ethical manner using these images. As a side note, I use “images” rather than “art” intentionally. While they are clearly images, it is not clear if AI images are art in a meaningful way. But that is an issue for another time and my focus is on whether I am doing wrong by using these images. This question is linked to the broader question of whether AI image and text generators, such as Midjourney and Open AI’s products are ethical. I believe that they are not but need to make this case.

It is often claimed that AI systems were trained on stolen data, be the data images or text. The stock defense offered by AI defenders is that the AI systems “learned” in a manner analogous to that used by humans, by being trained on existing works. On the face of it, this has some appeal. When people learn to draw or write, they usually do so by copying existing works until they are able to produce their own works. But this argument is easy to counter, at least for the data that was stolen in an unambiguous sense. While a human learning how to draw by buying art books would not be theft, stealing books from a bookstore to learn to draw would be theft. And it seems that some AI training data includes commercial works acquired without purchasing copies. While this matter is being hashed out in lawsuits, the ethics of stealing works are clear, especially when the thieves are well funded and intend to use their stolen goods for their own profits. They cannot appeal to the usual arguments floated to justify piracy against corporations since they are corporations.

Many critics of AI go beyond these cases of unambiguous theft to argue that any use of data without consent and compensation is theft. Those holding this view do need to address the argument that AI is not stealing but merely learning as a human would. One reasonable reply is to counter by arguing that while we do not know exactly how humans engage in learning to be creative, AI systems are not replicating what humans do. The analogy also breaks down in various ways when comparing the situation of a human creator with an AI system. Some relevant differences include the fact that AI systems are owned by corporations and are “machines” for churning out products at an inhuman rate.

While not a great analogy, AI image generators are doing something like what I do when I use cartography software like Inkarnate and  Campaign Cartographer. These programs come with premade map symbols, such as trees, rocks, and castles. When I use them, I can combine premade assets to make maps. This does require creativity and some skill on my part, but I am mostly relying on the work of others. This is morally acceptable, since I paid for the software and the people creating the symbols gave their consent and received compensation for this use.

Even if it is assumed that the AI is being creative in a way analogous to my creativity in making maps, AI is working with a vast set of images that are being used without consent or compensation. That is, it would be like me using stolen symbols to create my maps while claiming that my creativity in combining the symbols means that I am not acting in an unethical manner. It could be countered that my analogy is flawed since AI is not creating collages of stolen pieces but is creating original works it learned to make through training. If someone looks at all the symbol sets for the maps and then creates their own maps using symbols that are different from what they learned from, then it would be hard to call that theft. That the symbols might look alike would not be surprising; after all symbols of rocks, castles and trees will all tend to look somewhat alike in that they will be of rocks, castles and trees. But in the case of AI, I suspect that the main reason to think that it must be theft is that the AI is believed to be engaged not in creation but recombination—that it is combing stolen pieces based on probabilities and algorithms that are also stolen.  This is probably true. But this is but one of the many moral crimes of AI.

Anyone familiar with how the modern economy works will not be surprised that AI is built upon underpaid and exploited labor, and this has been going on since before the latest AI surge. Amazon’s aptly named Mechanical Turk is a good example of how this works in that “people are paid pennies to train AI.” In some cases workers are never paid.

AI also unsurprisingly comes with a large environmental cost, much of which is a result of the energy required to train and maintain AI systems. This energy usage is expected to increase so dramatically that some are claiming that there will need to be breakthroughs in energy technology just to keep up with the demand. This environmental harm contributes to AI being unethical to use.

Given that I just argued about the evils of AI, it might be wondered how I can still use it. The unsatisfying answer here is that using AI is just one of a vast number of evils involved in my work. While those who dislike my views might see this as an admission, this is true of almost everyone. If you are reading this, you are also involved in evil. As a quick illustration, I use gaming books that were bought printed in China (using cheap labor) and shipped across the sea to be sold by Amazon, which exploits its workers. Shipping the books created pollution. I do my work on a computer that I built, but the parts were made by exploited workers and bought from corporations. My computer also uses energy. I am wearing clothing made by exploited workers and I eat food created in a horrible system that exploits and pollutes. And so on. This is not to say that my use of AI images in my work is good. Far from it, but it is but one of the many evils involved in creating and distributing anything. Now on to some more evil.

What people tend to talk about the most is how AI will take jobs, something that technology has been doing since the beginning. In the case of AI image generators, the concern is that it will take jobs from artists, and this is a reasonable concern. This problem arises because of capitalism and the need of artists to work to survive. After all, if people were free to create from their love of creation or just as a hobby, then AI image generation would be irrelevant. As such, AI image generation is just a specific problem of the current capitalist economy. It is here that I am probably doing the least evil.

Prior to AI image generators, I created my own images, used royalty free images and purchased stock images. The main problems with the free and stock images are that they generally did not match what I wanted, and they were obviously used by many other people. Over the years I have attempted to hire artists to create custom images for my works, but this has never worked out. In most cases they rightfully wanted to charge me more than I could ever hope to make on my works. When the price was affordable, the artists inevitably failed to deliver and dropped out of contact after a rough preliminary sketch or two. So my earlier works generally include few images and these are often only vaguely relevant to the content of the work. As such, I did not “fire” human artists and replace them with AI; for the most part where I use an AI image in my work there would have otherwise been no image.

When AI image generators became available, I tried them and found that they could rapidly generate relevant images that just needed a little work in Photoshop. Before the revelations about the evils of AI, I thought this was great. But after learning about the evils of AI, I realized that having unlimited relevant images came with a moral price. But I already knew, as noted above, that my work already came with a high moral price (think of the energy cost and pollution arising from the device you are using to view these words, from the device I used to type them, and so on). I did consider going back to works with just a few pieces of mostly irrelevant art but decided on another approach. My moral solution is to make my game products (and obviously my blog) available for free. Which is something I was already doing for Mike’s Free Encounters and Mike’s Free Maps.  I do have a “pay what you want” option for many of my works (which I was also doing before AI image generators) and this allows people who think that creators should be paid for their work to get my work without paying for it.

It might be objected that this is like giving away stolen property for free along with my own property, which is a fair point. But the economy is built on theft, so everything I create and distribute is grounded in something that involves theft from someone and is probably hurting people in some other way. This is not to say what I am doing is right, that would be absurd. All I can say is that I am minimizing the evil I do. To be honest, I could be convinced to abandon AI images and go back to reusing the same stock images and scouring the web for royalty free images.

In conclusion, my use of AI images is wrong, but it is one evil among many that are part of creating in the world as it is. But not what it could be or should be.

Trump seems likely to be re-elected president and he will certainly return to his support for religious freedom and is promising a harsh crackdown on immigrants.  This combination leads one to think about people protecting migrants due to their religious convictions and offering sanctuary. The idea of churches serving as sanctuary from the state was developed in Western Europe during the Middle Ages and is a part of Western culture. Of course, even if the Democrats win, they seem inclined to take a harsher stance on immigration.

Sanctuary is morally appealing when it is granted to protect a person from injustice on the part of the state. Judging who is worthy of sanctuary (as with any moral assessment) can be complicated, but the basic principle is clear enough. If our country’s immigration policies and practices are  unjust, I believe that immigrants who have committed no other crimes would be worthy of sanctuary. Since they typically lack the resources to defend themselves, church sanctuary can provide them with the protection they need to make their case and seek justice. Even if sanctuary proves ineffective for a particular immigrant, the granting of sanctuary can make a moral and political statement that might influence public perception. As a practical matter, the effectiveness of sanctuary depends on the reluctance of the state to use force to remove people. This reluctance might be grounded in many things, ranging from the power of the institution to the negative public reaction that might result from violating sanctuary. 

While the notion of sanctuary does enjoy the support of tradition, it could be argued that churches should not be be allowed a special exemption from the enforcement of the law. It should not matter whether migrants are seeking shelter in a church, a Starbuck or a private home. Law enforcement officials should be able to arrest and remove them because they are, by definition, breaking the law. This view is grounded on the idea that all institutions, religious or not, fall under the laws of the state and are not to be granted special exemptions. But, if exemptions from laws were granted to religious institutions in other areas, then this could be used to justify an exemption for sanctuary. 

In the United States religious institutions enjoy special exemptions from taxes and some laws. For example, the Catholic Church is not subject to certain anti-discrimination lawsuits despite restricting certain jobs to men. As another example, there is also an exemption for religious employers regarding coverage of contraceptive services. There has also been a push for new religious liberty laws that are aimed mainly at allowing people to discriminate against same-sex couples on religious grounds. Such laws grant exemptions based on religion and the arguments used to defend them could, in many cases, be pressed into service as arguments in favor of granting sanctuary to illegal immigrants. For example, if it is argued that exceptions to anti-discrimination laws should be granted to churches and businesses because of religious beliefs about gender and sex, then it would be challenging to argue that an exception to immigration laws should not be granted to churches because of religious beliefs.

The obvious challenge in using the religious liberty and exemption arguments to justify sanctuary is showing that the situations are analogous. This is super easy to do. Christians who oppose same-sex marriage usually cite Leviticus, but Exodus 22:21 is quite clear about how strangers should be treated: “Thou shalt neither vex a stranger, nor oppress him: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.” Scholars also point to Matthew 25, especially Matthew 25:40 when justifying granting sanctuary to immigrants: “And the King will answer and say to them, ‘Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me.’” As such, granting churches a sanctuary exemption to immigration laws seems at least as well founded as other cases of religious liberty. From a moral standpoint, an exemption for sanctuary would seem superior to exemptions for discrimination, for it is better to help people than to discriminate against them.

A way to counter this reasoning is to argue that there should not be religious exemptions to laws. While this would argue against a religious exemption to immigration laws, it would also apply to all other exemptions and is thus not an option for those who support those other exemptions. Since many of those who are anti-migrant do favor religious exemptions and religious liberty in general, this option is not open to them in a principled way. Fortunately for them, there seem to be no meaningful consequences for holding inconsistent views.

Another way to object is to contend that while religious exemptions should be allowed in other cases, it should not be allowed for granting sanctuary migrants. One approach would be a utilitarian argument: the harm done by allowing sanctuary would be sufficient to warrant imposing on religious liberty. As I have used this argument myself against “religious liberty” laws that make discrimination legal, I must give such an argument due consideration. So, if it can be shown that granting migrants sanctuary would create more harm than would violating the religious liberty of the sanctuary churches (and the harms done to the migrants) then religious liberty should be violated. But this approach would need to be applied in a consistent manner: those who argue against sanctuary on the grounds of harms must apply the same principle to all religious liberties.

My overall view of the matter is that since Congress and the President have consistently failed to create a just and rational immigration policy, then citizens have the moral right to offer protection to migrants who need protection from injustice. This must be done until our elected officials create a rational, realistic and ethical system. If Trump gets elected, then this will be especially important because his followers seem to  believe in themselves and America first but not that God was serious when He said, “this is my commandment, that you love one another, as I have loved you.”

As discussed in the previous essays, Trump and some of his followers claimed that God intervened to save Trump from being killed. If this is true, then it would follow that God decided to let one person die and two others get critically injured when He could have intervened. This raises the classic problem of evil, a stock Atheism 101 argument.

The simple version of the argument is that if God is all good, all powerful and all knowing, then there should be no evil. But there is evil, so God does not exist. A slightly more sophisticated version concludes that either God does not exist, or He is lacking in at least one of those three attributes. Much more sophisticated versions consider, in depth, how to reconcile God’s qualities with the existence of evil. I will look at each of these three attributes and how they might be reconciled with evil.

Philosophers usually present God as being omnipotent, but there is debate about what it means to be all powerful. The famous question of whether God can create a rock He cannot lift is part of this discussion. Some philosophers, the Intellectualists, claim that God’s intellect is his primary quality and that He either will not or cannot do the impossible. On this view, God can do anything that is possible, but His omnipotence is thus limited.  For example, God cannot make a triangle that has 4 sides. Those accepting this view often try to use this logical limit to solve the problem of evil. For example, God cannot create a perfect world and hence the world must be imperfect. One version of this reasoning points out that if God created a second perfect being, that being would also be God. But there cannot be two perfect beings (because each being would lack what the other has and for various other reasons) and this is why there can only be one God and why the world must be imperfect. On this view, evil (imperfection) is a necessary part of the world and that is why God saved Trump but lets other people die. The usual response to this is to point out that the world is worse than imperfect, and God could make things better while the world remained imperfect.

People also try to explain evil by limiting God’s powers in other ways. A classic move is to embrace a form of polytheism and attribute evil to the Devil. But this requires accepting that God and the Devil are comparable in power or coming up with some explanation as to why God lets the Devil cause evil. Another classic gambit is to invoke free will and use that to explain human caused evil. Free will limits God’s power and that is how evil can occur. The challenge is explaining how free will works and then explaining why God could not allow free will but mitigate the evil it is alleged to cause. Others also speak of God’s plan; that the evil that occurs is necessary for His plan. This also postulates a limit on God’s power, since He cannot reach His goal without allowing evil.

 Reducing God’s power in various ways to explain evil is an option that can solve the problem of evil, but it comes with the obvious cost of diminishing God. On this view, God could save Trump, but because of whatever limits His omnipotence, He could not have prevented the other people from being shot.

There are other philosophers, the Voluntarists, who claim that God’s will is supreme and He can will anything, even the impossible. This means the logically impossible and not just things that are very difficult. For example, God could will that triangles have 4 sides while still being triangle. It is not that we would call squares triangles, it is that the necessarily three-sided figure would be four-sided but still a triangle. He could also make all contradictions true and all tautologies false. He could make it so that if A is bigger than B and B is bigger than C, then A is smaller than C. None of this makes any sense to our mortal minds, but a God that can do the impossible can do all that and infinitely more impossible things. It might initially seem that being a Voluntarist would make it more difficult to solve the problem of evil. After all, the Voluntarist would have to accept that God could create a perfect world. But one consequence of God being all powerful in this sense is that He also defines morality, so He can make anything good or evil, even if it made no sense to us. This moral view is called divine command theory, on this view what God commands is good and what He forbids is evil. People who like divine command theory tend to think that God commands what they themselves want and forbids what they dislike, but that is not how the theory works. God could, at any moment, chose anything to be good or bad and He can obviously lie about it. So, for all we know, God just decided that being a woke transgender vegan advocate of renewable energy is the very best thing to be. Or maybe it was that way all along. Given that God can change logic and truth at will, our reason is useless in sorting any of this out. Or anything at all, since God’s will also applies to physics, chemistry and so on.  On the plus side, the problem of evil is solved: whatever God wills is good, so everything that happens is good. On the minus side, reason is useless. On this view, God saved Trump, killed one person and let two people be critically injured. But maybe this is all good? We do not and cannot know. While most thinkers focus on God’s power, His knowledge can also be relevant to the problem.

As with God being all powerful, philosophers debate what it means for God to be all knowing. Does this mean that God has all possible knowledge or that He even has impossible knowledge? In terms of the problem of evil, it could be argued that evil occurs because God does not know that it is occurring. On this view, perhaps God suddenly knew that Trump was in danger and acted just in time to save him. As might be guessed, free will could also figure in here: because humans have free will, God does not know what we might do. So, God did not know that the shooter was going to shoot until he started shooting. God will also need to require time to gain knowledge and act on it, otherwise He could just intervene instantly, which would raise the question of why He did not act. While claiming that God has epistemic limitation would explain evil, it does create its own problems in terms of diminishing God and making prophecy more difficult to explain.

The easiest solution to the problem of evil is to abandon the idea that God is all good. The two usual options are to simply reject that God is all good or to argue that our conceptions of good and evil are wrong. Rejecting that God is all good, that evil also comes from God, solves the problem. Evil exists because God is not all good. For Trump’s followers, God did a good thing in saving Trump but letting the other people get shot is not a problem because God does or allows evil as well.

If it is argued that our conceptions of good and evil are wrong, then the problem is solved because we are wrong about there being any evil. On this view, everything that happens is good, but we might not realize this. This is sometimes explained in terms of God’s plan (which ties back to limiting God’s power) or the big picture argument. The big picture argument often uses an analogy to looking at a beautiful painting by pressing it against your face. It will look awful. But if you move back from the painting, you will see its beauty. So, while the person dying at Trump’s event seems bad, it would be seen as good once one sees the big picture. This view might also involve accepting that God has a limit on His power since His big picture must apparently be made with a lot of events that seem evil up close. This approach is appealing to many since it explains away any evil that occurs, which is the solution most look for.

When I was a kid, I believed if a person was shot by a criminal, their treatment would be paid for.  I wasn’t sure how this would work, but I reasoned it would be unjust for them to have to pay for the misdeeds of another. As has turned out with most of my beliefs about American justice, I was wrong. Shooting victims are usually presented with the bills for their treatment and unless you are a presidential candidate, being shot comes with a high cost.

Dr. Joseph Sakran, who had been shot in his youth, co-authored a study of what shooting victims are charged for their treatment. Since gunshot wounds range from relatively grazing wounds to massive damage, the costs vary greatly. While the average is $5,000 it can be as high as $100,000. While such costs are often covered by insurance, uninsured or underinsured shooting victims become victims again: they must either pay or pass on the cost. When the patient cannot pay, their credit can be damaged and the cost is passed on in the form of premium increases. There can be costs beyond the initial medical bills, such as ongoing medical bills, the loss of income, and psychological harm.

In addition to medical expenses, there are also the costs of the police response, the impact on employers, and the dollar value of those who are killed rather than wounded (and dying in the hospital does not automatically clear the bill). While estimating the exact cost is difficult, a mass shooting like the Pulse Nightclub shooting will probably end up costing almost $400 million. While mass shootings and assassination attempts get the attention of the media, gunshot wounds are a regular occurrence in the United States with an estimated cost of $600 million per day. While some might dispute the numbers, it is indisputable that getting shot is expensive and it would be rational to reduce the number of shootings and address the high cost of being shot.

While the rational approach to such a massive health crisis would be to undertake a scientific study to find solutions, the 1996 Dickey Amendment bans the use of federal funding for gun research. There is also very little good data about gun injuries and death, and this is no accident. Efforts to improve the collection of data are routinely blocked by such things as the Dickey Amendment. Efforts to impose more gun control, even when there is overwhelming public support for such things as universal background checks, are consistently blocked. While this shows how much say the people have in this “democracy”, it also shows that trying to address the high cost of getting shot by reducing shootings is unlikely to succeed. As such the most practical option involves finding ways to offset the medical costs to victims. While victims can bring civil suits, this is not a reliable and effective way to ensure that the medical expenses are covered. After all, shooters are rarely wealthy enough to pay all the bills and are sometimes killed.

Some victims have set up GoFundMe pages to get donations to pay their medical bills and this has become a common practice for many medical expenses. One problem with this approach is that it is not reliable and depends heavily on luck and being appealing to the crowd. There is also the moral problem of people needing to beg so they can pay the bills arising from getting shot. I have two proposals to address this problem.

My first proposal is that gun owners be required to purchase a modestly priced insurance policy that is analogous to vehicle insurance. In the United States, people are usually required to have insurance to cover the damage they might inflict while operating a dangerous piece of machinery. This helps pool the risk (as insurance is supposed to do) and puts the cost on the operators rather than on those who they might harm. The same should apply to guns. They are dangerous machines that can do considerable harm and it makes sense that the owners should bear the cost of the insurance. Naturally, as with vehicles, owners can also be victims.

It could be objected that owning a firearm is a right and hence the state cannot impose such a requirement. The easy and obvious reply is that the right to keep and bear arms is a negative right rather than a positive right. A positive right is one in which a person is entitled to be provided with the means to use that right (such as how people are provided with free ballots when they go to vote). A negative right means the person must provide the means of exercising their right, but it is (generally) wrong to prevent them from exercising that right. So, just as the state is not required to ensure that people get free guns and ammunition or free TV or radio time to exercise their freedom of speech, it is not required to allow gun ownership without insurance, provided that the requirement does not impose an unreasonable infringement on the right.

Another reply is that rights do not free a person from responsibility. In the case of speech, people cannot simply say anything without there even being consequences. In the case of gun insurance, people would be acting in a responsible manner. They would be balancing their rights with a rational amount of responsibility. To refuse to have such insurance is to insist on rights without responsibility, something conservatives usually pretend to hate. As such, both liberals and conservatives should approve of this idea.

My second proposal, which is consistent with the first, is that there be a modest state fee added to the cost of firearms and ammunition. This money would go into a state pool to help pay the medical expenses of the uninsured who are injured in shootings. Yes, I know that this money would probably be misused by many states. The justification is that the people who buy guns that could hurt people should bear the cost for the medical expenses of those who are hurt. People already pay sales taxes on these items; this would merely allocate some money to help offset the cost of people exercising their second amendment rights. To go back to the vehicle analogy, it makes sense to add a fee onto the cost of gas to pay for roads and other infrastructure, that way the people who are using it are helping to pay for it. Likewise for guns.

An obvious objection is that this fee would be paid by many people who will never engage in a gun crime. This is a reasonable concern, analogous to other concerns about paying into anything that one is not directly responsible for. There are two reasonable replies. One is that the funds generated could cover uninsured medical expenses involving any firearm crime or accident and anyone can have an accident with a gun. Another is the responsibility argument: while you or I, as gun owners, will probably never engage in a gun crime, being able to exercise our right to own guns allows people who will engage in gun crimes to engage in those crimes. For example, the person who tried to kill Trump was operating under the protection of the same gun rights that protect all gun owners up until the moment he started firing. This fee would be our share of the responsibility for allowing the threat of gun violence to endanger everyone in the United States. Such a modest fee would be a very small price to pay for having such a dangerous right. Otherwise, we would be selfishly expecting everyone else to bear the cost of our rights, which would not be right. So, to appeal to principled conservatives, this would be a way for taking responsibility for one’s rights. As people love to say, freedom isn’t free.