Category: Politics

 

When I look back at over a decade of writing about gun violence, I am struck by the fact that I keep writing essentially the same thing. This is not because I am a lazy writer. This is because almost nothing changes other than the names. Those who oppose gun control have a script they follow after each mass shooting, and it contributes to ensuring that nothing changes.

Immediately after a mass shooting, some people demand more gun control. In response, those who oppose gun control respond with thoughts and prayers. They then say that now is not the time to discuss gun violence. Are they right?

On the one hand, this might be reasonable After all, strong emotions can impede good reasoning, and laws should be well crafted. There is an abundance of fallacies “fueled” by emotions that lead people astray from good reasoning, even when they are acting in good faith. Examples include appeal to anger, appeal to pity, and appeal to fear. In these fallacies, something that creates an emotional effect (anger, pity or fear) substitute for a logical reason to accept a claim. People are more likely to commit such fallacies when they have strong feelings. For example, a person’s anger about and fear of violence might lead them to think a bad law is a good idea.

A reasonable concern is that people will make poor decisions about laws or policies while feeling strong emotions and these decisions can have negative consequences or lead to ineffective solutions.  One can argue that better decisions would be made after emotions have cooled down and we should make laws and policies when our reasoning is at its best. As would be expected, the same people who advise a waiting period for discussing gun violence are quick to press for laws they favor when something happens that supports their political narratives, such as when a migrant commits a crime or has a traffic accident.

On the other hand, waiting to discuss gun violence has downsides. First, concern about gun violence fades over time as people are distracted and their emotions cool. So, a delay might not lead to a more reasonable discussion of gun laws and policies but to no real discussion at all. This is illustrated by the usual media cycle: there is a focus on the shooting for a few days and then coverage fades until the next incident. So, it seems reasonable to push for serious discussion when people are paying attention.

Second, there is the worry that the call to wait is not motivated by a desire  to have calm reflection but a tactic to take advantage of the media’s and the public’s short attention span. If the discussion can be held off long enough, people will forget (as noted above) and the status quo will continue.

While I favor a rational discussion, this can be done without waiting until people have mostly lost interest. As such, the time to discuss the matter seriously is now. And always has been.

When a shooting makes the news, someone will often claim that those killed would still be alive if the person who killed them did not have a gun. A talking point response to this is to point out that by this reasoning, if OJ Simpson did not have a knife, then the people who were allegedly killed by him would still be alive.

This talking point does, in a mean way, make a reasonable point. After all, people can kill without guns. Knives have been used to kill people.  Other tools have been used in violence as well, including such bizarre ones as frozen animals (or their parts). As such, getting rid of guns would not eliminate murders or suicide. From this some people conclude that nothing new should be done about guns.

Guns make killing easier as they are tools designed for that task. As such, if people did not have guns, they would have to use other means of killing, most of which make killing people more difficult. This would reduce the number of killings in the same way that if there were no cars, then Americans would be less likely to go places. If a person must work harder to accomplish a task, they are usually less likely to attempt that task.

It is also worth considering that a gun makes impulse killing easier. After all, a person can point the gun and pull the trigger and this allows  little time for thought. If people had to use slower means of killing, they might pause between the impulse to kill and the act of killing. Then again, this might have little impact. After all, a person can stab with a knife almost as fast as shooting a modern gun.

People also correctly point out that a gun can do a lot of damage, making death more likely than with many alternative means of violence. For example, a gun will usually do more damage than a club or a fist.  But there are weapons that can match guns in lethality, such as a knife, crossbow or automobile. But these are harder to use, thus reducing the chances that someone will be able to kill other people, especially many other people. There are obvious reasons, for example, that no one uses a crossbow to attempt a mass shooting. But to be fair and balanced, a person can hurt many people by driving a car into a crowd or slashing people with a knife.

But it does make sense that getting rid of guns would reduce the number of deaths in the United States. However, there is the question of the significance of the impact and the costs associated with eliminating guns. After all, getting rid of automobiles would significantly reduce deaths, yet most Americans would argue that this would not be worth the cost. The usual trump card people play is the Second Amendment, arguing that gun ownership is a legal right. But the obvious reply is that Constitutional rights (including gun rights) are limited and the Constitution can be amended. In the Free State of Florida, for example, the rulers of the state routinely pass laws limiting First Amendment rights, although these sometimes do get overturned.

Another talking point is that “when guns are outlawed only outlaws will have guns.” A more recent social media variant seems to argue that gun control laws should not be passed because criminals will just ignore them. The obvious problem is that this reasoning can be applied to anything and thus lead to absurdity. For example, if meth is illegal, then only criminals will have meth. While that is true, it does not give us a good reason to not try to control meth.

A final point of consideration is the usual talking point that “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” This is true. After all, people do not (in general) kill just because they have guns. Rather, they use guns to kill because they have a reason (or think they have a reason) to kill. As such, banning guns would not address the foundational cause of violence, since taking away guns would not take away the reasons people kill. So, one might conclude, guns should not be banned like comedians Trump dislikes. But this is more of an argument in favor of addressing the root causes of gun violence than a good argument against banning guns. While the right is often happy to blame mental illness, they generally do not support meaningful efforts to address the mental health crisis in the United States or other causal factors behind gun violence.  

 

 

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The now infamous Flock cameras have, like data centers, united Americans in a loathing that crosses the political spectrum. But there are those who defend Flock, presumably with some not even being paid to express this view. As those familiar with my writings would guess, I’m consistently opposed to the surveillance state and hence to the Flock camera system. But I am always willing to consider arguments for mass surveillance.

One stock line I have heard from Flock defenders is that they are morally okay because we do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in public. This is partially true. In the broadest sense, the nature of public spaces is such that we cannot expect privacy in public. But there are specific cases where privacy rights can be violated even in public spaces. Obvious examples include someone intruding into your stall in a public bathroom or getting into your backpack or purse at a public library.

While photographing someone in a public space is usually morally acceptable, there are also exceptions, like upskirt photos. Upskirt photos were once legal even when the target was a minor, as a case in Oregon showed. Fortunately, laws making this illegal have passed in the United States. In terms of how this relates to Flock cameras, it does show that even in public spaces there are still privacy rights about what can be photographed. But someone can easily argue that Flock cameras are not doing the moral equivalent of upskirt photographs as they are allegedly “just” capturing images of our vehicles. Smart glasses with cameras, such as those made by Meta, are also raising privacy concerns because, unlike with a smartphone, it can be difficult to tell when you are being filmed.

As would be guessed (as with upskirt photos) women are the main target of such secret filming. From a legal standpoint, such public filming is allowed (aside from in public bathrooms, etc.) but recording audio can run afoul of the law if private conversations are recorded. Flock cameras, as far as I know, only take photos and hence escape concerns about audio recordings. But the same moral concerns about the cameras in smart glasses arise for Flock cameras: while they are not camouflaged as innocent objects, they can be difficult to spot as you are driving. As such, you and your vehicle can be Flocked without your knowledge or consent—much like how weirdos use their smart glasses to film women in public. Defenders of Flock can argue that those using Flock are different from people using smart glasses from perverse motivations and hence the analogy fails. The obvious reply is to point out that as of this writing at least 50 “rogue” officers have been charged with misusing it and other similar systems. As would be expected, much of the misuse has been to stalk women. As such, the analogy to privacy violations using the cameras in smart glasses seems somewhat reasonable.

To be fair and balanced, the analogy will fall apart under sufficient pressure. For example, Flock is an entire network of cameras and software that takes photos of vehicles without our knowledge or consent, while a guy filming women using his smart glasses without their knowledge or consent is obviously just one guy who might upload the video. But defenders of Flock will insist that the analogy does not hold. Or perhaps they would also defend the use of smart glasses in this manner.

In addition to building arguments based on the lack of an expectation of privacy in public, defenders of Flock often draw an analogy to how Flock is like having a police officer at an intersection, checking out cars and taking notes. Or, since Flock is a private company, like having a police officer and a CEO checking out cars and taking notes at an intersection. However, as opponents point out, it is not like having a single person doing this. It is like having thousands of police (and corporate employees) watching everyone and sharing their notes with each other. This, one might argue, is equivalent to stalking.

But a Flock defender might express doubt: how could having many people watching other people be like stalking? After all, stalking involves one person directing repeated unwanted attention at a specific person that causes the target fear or distress. Going back to the police officer analogy, a cop watching an intersection, even with a CEO with them, is not stalking. They are just watching people go by and there is not that pattern of repeated unwanted attention that is essential to stalking. They could apply the same argument to the analogy involving having thousands of police (and other people) watching their own sections of streets—no one observer is repeating the pattern of unwarranted attention. It is just thousands of unrelated incidents of unwanted attention. At this point, you can see where this is going.

While a single Flock camera at one location would not be stalking, a Flock camera that followed you around all day would be. But as the Flock cameras are in a network, you are being stalked by Flock—it is a repeated pattern of unwanted attention and thus violates your moral right not to be stalked. That is, the Flock is following you all day through its many eyes, like a monster.

 

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Since most of the earth’s surface is covered in water it seems odd to be worried about the availability of water. But this seems less odd when we remember that most of this liquid bounty is too salty for humans to drink or use in most forms of agriculture. When pollution and distribution are considered, then worry makes sense.

While people normally think of water in terms of something we drink, 92% of our water usage as a species is in agriculture. Plants and animals need water directly, but water is also used for other purposes in agriculture. In addition to direct use of water, it is removed from being useful to humans by agricultural contamination The chemicals and waste of agriculture often end up in rivers and other bodies of water, rendering it unsafe unless it can be treated.

Looking just at the direct water costs, the creation of animal “products” imposes the highest water costs per kilocalorie (kcal). Growing edible roots and cereals requires .5 quarts per kcal, making these foods very water efficient. Fruits are more costly, requiring 2.2 quarts per kcal. For meat product, pork is relatively efficient, requiring 2.3 quarts per kcal. Beef is by far the least efficient, using 10.8 quarts per kcal. As might be imagined, this use of water raises both practical and moral concerns. Concerns about water are, of course, increasing as the fight over data centers intensifies.

One practical concern is working out how to efficiently handle water resources as our population increases. Adding to the difficulty is that economic improvements in developing countries will lead to a significant increase in the desire for meat, especially beef. Given the water cost of meat, the agriculture industry will be hard pressed to meet increased demand, especially if the water supply is under even greater strain. If we add data center usage and the ongoing impact of climate change, the challenge grows.

Fortunately, there are practical solutions to some of the technical problems of water. For example, more efficient agriculture would enable more food to be grown using less water. Another example, developing cheaper means of purifying water would help. Obviously enough if the world eschewed meat in favor of plants, then that would have a significant impact on water usage. We could also forgo the creation of data centers, although the rulers of the AI corporations seem intent on making every aspect of life worse in their quest to make their apocalypse bunkers a necessity. I mean, if you have an apocalypse bunker it would be a shame not to ensure that it gets used.

There is also the moral aspect of water, which is distribution: determining how the available water will be used and who will benefit. As noted above, the growing of meat and other animal products is water intensive relative to growing plants. While there are practical grounds to move away from animal agriculture, the decision is largely a matter of ethics. After all, decisions about who is entitled to the water resources and how these resources should be distributed are moral decisions. If, for example, it is decided that water resources will be allocated to the beef industry, then this means that less water will be available to grow more water efficient foods, thus potentially reducing the food supply while also creating food that is more expensive for the consumer. The beef industry has done an impressive job getting people to accept eating meat as part of their identity, although the screw worms clearly have a vote in the future of the industry.

As our population grows and the climate changes, the moral concerns about water will become even more serious. After all, it is certainly worth considering that the demand on water resources will eventually be high enough that choosing between growing beef and raising more water efficient crops will be a choice between providing the more affluent few with a luxury food and providing the less affluent many with the food they need to survive.

The obvious response is that we have always found a solution to past problems, and we will surely find one (or more) in the future. After all, the doomsdays predicted in the past all turned out to be as mistaken as the culture war prediction that same-sex marriage would destroy marriage. While this response is reasonable, there must be a point at which our ability to solve the water problem reaches its limit and the fact that we have not gone extinct yet does not prove that we will never go extinct. But being a fan of science fiction, I am amendable to solving the water problem by crashing space-ice into the earth. As a philosopher, I am comfortable with solving problems by creating more problems.

It is also worth noting there are many practical (rather than theoretical) problems that could prevent us from solving the water problem. The droughts that affected the United States back  in 2012 impacted food production and if droughts become more common, then distributing water resources will become even more pressing. Ironically, flooding is also a growing problem in some areas—climate change can make some places dryer and other places wetter.

There are also the political considerations of the people controlling the distribution of water to serve their own ends. Even the United States has political conflicts over water distribution, and these will only worsen as water distribution changes as the climate changes. And, I am obligated to say, data centers will just make this worse.

As a final point, it must be said that water is is almost endlessly reusable. Unlike oil, our use of water generally does not destroy the water. Roughly put, most of the water that goes in eventually comes back out. But contamination can render water useless to us and some contamination, such as radiation, can last a long time. Fortunately, we can purify water (although this can be costly) and purification also occurs naturally. Unfortunately, we have damaged many of the natural purification systems and have been very busy contaminating water. Also, unfortunate is the fact that being “pro-environment” (favoring the preservation of natural purification systems and being in favor of limiting water pollution) makes a person a target in the manufactured culture wars of the right. Like the beef industry, the fossil fuel industry has done an impressive job making fossil fuels an integral part of the identity of some people, making them useful idiots in the fight against renewable energy and protecting the environment.

There are, however, practical economic reasons for preserving and restoring the natural purification systems, not the least of which is that nature does for free what would cost a fortune to do artificially. These same reasons apply to avoiding water contamination as much as possible. After all, cleaning water is generally more costly than avoiding polluting it. For example, keeping feces contaminated runoff from agriculture out of the water supply is much cheaper than removing the contamination. While I used to think that these economic arguments should have weight, I missed two obvious facts. First, natural purification of water and keeping water clean would save money, but do not make a profit for vested interests. But being a science fiction guy, I can imagine corporations buying land to preserve and charging people for the water it purifies—which would be oddly both dystopian and utopian. The second is that I did not fully grasp the fact that inflicting suffering and making life worse for other people is the goal (along the lines of how cruelty is the point). The billionaires paying the politicians so they can burn the planet are busy building bunkers because they know how this ends.

 

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The euphemism “right to work” is a useful rhetorical tool beloved by anti-labor politicians. A euphemism is substituting a positive or innocuous term for a more negative one.  It is like sprinkling sugar on something unpleasant as suggested by Mary Poppins, “Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down in a most delightful way.”

Euphemisms are also used outside of politics. For example, in my youth people bought used cars. Now people purchase pre-owned vehicles. People used to be fired. Now they are downsized. Secondhand clothing is now vintage.

Euphemisms are often used when naming laws to conceal the awful things within. One example of is calling anti-union laws “right to work” laws. These laws, not surprisingly, are part of the larger attack on unions, including educators’ unions. “Right to work” sounds good and some people probably mistakenly think these laws somehow address real obstacles to employment, such as discrimination. Which is the point of the name. The “Get Rid of Unions” law would not sound as good.

While there are many arguments for the “right to work” laws, one is that they will have an economic benefit for the state. If such laws were beneficial to workers, then it would be rational for workers to support them. Likewise, if they benefit employers, then it would be rational for employers to support them.

Interestingly, the premise is both true and false. By this, I do not mean that it is some sort of violation of the usual laws of truth. Rather, the claim is true for some and not true for others.

For employers, “right to work” laws can yield economic benefits, but precisely because these laws inflict economic costs on those doing the work. Darrel Minor, a professor of mathematics at Columbus State Community College did a 2012 analysis of “right to work” states relative to other states.

One focus was the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of each state. This is a measure of the goods and services produced in the state. Based on the 2009 data, the GDP of “right to work” states was $38,755. For other states, the GDP was $43, 899 which is a 13.3% difference. Interestingly, this indicates that the “right to work” laws can hurt both the employed and the employers— states with “right to work” laws are less productive than other states, thus undercutting arguments based on the claim that these laws enhance productivity. However, it is also worth noting that salaries in “right to work” states are 9.4% lower than those in other states. While this is bad for workers, it can be advantageous for employers who want to pay less for the same work.

Another focus of the analysis was on poverty rates. Eleven of the fifteen states with the highest poverty rates were “right to work” states. In contrast, nine of the eleven states with the lowest poverty rates were not “right to work” states. In 2008, 14.4% of the population of “right to work” states lived in poverty. In the other states, the number was 12.4%. As Minor noted, if the poverty level of the “right to work” states was extended to all 50 states, this would mean 3,670,000 more people living in poverty. This data suggests that “right to work” laws contribute to increased poverty. Minor also found that life expectancy in “right to work” states was lower If this data is accurate, then there are good reasons to oppose “right to work” laws. At least if you think it is bad for poverty to increase. For those who are pro-poverty, “right to work” laws are great.

To be fair and balanced, proponents of “right to work” laws point to different statistics and claim there is higher employment and lower costs of living in states with “right to work laws.” If these statistics are true, then the “right to work” laws might have some benefits in addition to the harms they seem to inflict and these should be weighed against each other.  The weight given to each will depend on the values of those doing the assessment. So, for example, someone concerned with poverty and life expectancy would weigh these laws as more harmful than beneficial. Someone focused on the advantage of lower salaries in attracting businesses would see them as beneficial. Someone who enjoys the poverty of others would also favor such laws; sometimes the reward of a law is the suffering of other people.

It is reasonable to consider that the alleged effects (positive and negative) of “right to work” laws are not solely caused by the laws but are the result other factors. For example, perhaps “right to work” states also have inferior education and hence more poverty and lower wages. Also, which is weird but worth considering, some “right to work” states like the Free State of Florida get regularly hammered by hurricanes and these have enduring and surprising detrimental effects.

 It is also worth considering the “right to work” laws are an effect rather than a cause. For example, a state with higher levels of poverty might pass such laws in the hopes of reducing poverty. It is also worth considering that the laws and their alleged effects are both the result of a third factor. States with extensive and strong business interests would tend to have higher employment rates and these business interests would tend to support “right to work” laws because of their perceived usefulness in combating the threat of unions. These should all be considered, although the simplest explanation is that the laws designed to hurt the unions that help workers end up hurting workers.

 

Across the United States, public education has been under consistent assault. K-20 budgets have been cut, teachers’ unions have been attacked, political agendas have been pushed onto education, and educators have been vilified. One reason for this assault is to open the education “market” to allow opportunities for profit. As such, the rise of for-profit schools is hardly surprising. I last wrote about the for-profit university Full Sail back in 2012 and thought I would check and see how it, and other such schools, are faring.

We need to distinguish between the traditional private school, such as Marietta College, and for-profit schools. While for-profit schools are privately owned, they are operated differently than the traditional private schools. The most obvious difference is that their focus is profit.

There is the beloved myth that the profit motivated private sector can out-perform the allegedly inefficient and bloated public sector. However, the facts show that for-profit schools often stack up poorly against public schools and traditional private schools.

Back in 2012 Mitt Romeny praised Full Sail University (whose chief executive was a major campaign contributor). I also checked in on Mitt; he seems to have settled into a quiet retirement from being meaningful in politics.  Back when Mitt praised Fulll Sail, I looked up their statistics and found that some Full Sail graduates were defaulting on their college loans at a rate of up to 60-75%. Back then, the government pushed for for-profit schools to achieve a graduate loan repayment rate of 35%, which is not an onerous requirement. As for why Full Sail graduates had a bad repayment percentage, the average debt of a graduate was 300% to 800% of her income. The 2026 data from the Department of Education reports that Full Sail has a 46% graduation rate, which is lower than the 58% midpoint for 4-year schools. The average cost is $38,875 while the midpoint for 4-year colleges is $20,077. Median earnings for graduates are $40,367 and the midpoint for 4-year colleges is $60,377.  To be fair to Full Sail, students at public schools are also graduating with debt, which provides an excellent reason to be critical of the cost of education in general.

Under Obama, there were attempts to regulate repayment benchmarks and income-to-debt ratios for for-profit schools. Schools that could not meet these would no longer be eligible for federal funds. However, these regulations were struck down in July of 2012.

In contrast, public schools are subject to intense scrutiny from state legislatures. Back in 2012 Florida public universities were the target of then Governor Rick Scott and the legislature. The professed reason was, of course, to ensure that education funds are being well spent. It is, of course, a point of concern that public schools are subject to intense scrutiny while for-profit schools are allowed to, some might claim, exploit students and taxpayers. By way of comparison, my university has a graduation rate of 63%, an average annual cost of $13,739 and median earnings of $52,657. As you would suspect in the Free State of Florida, my university is always under the state’s microscope and subject to the moving goalposts of performance-based funding. To be fair and balanced, this applies to all public universities in the state.

One obvious reply is that for-profit schools are privately owned and should be less regulated. After all, one might argue, the market should decide (via the invisible hand) what education should cost and what jobs should pay. As such, if students of for-profit schools have debts that far exceed their income, then that is just how the market works.

While this does have some appeal, the easy and obvious response is that these for-profit schools get over $30 billion a year in taxpayer funds. Interestingly, the 15 publicly traded for-profit college companies get 86% of their revenues from public money. This includes federal financial aid, the Post-9/11 GI Bill and the Department of Defense Tuition Assistance money. These “private” schools get most (an average of over 70%) of their income from federal funds. As such, these “private” companies are mostly public funded. This would justify the right of the state to regulate these schools and subject them to the sort of strict performance-based funding standards imposed on public schools. After all, they are publicly funded institutions. This also helps explain the ongoing attack on public education—the for-profits are competing with public universities for the same money and every dollar that goes to a public school is a dollar that a for-profit school does not get. Naturally, the for-profit schools also compete with traditional private schools. However, the traditional private schools are less vulnerable to the efforts of politicians to transform education into a for-profit ideological indoctrination.   

There is also a myth that the private sector can provide better services at a lower cost. In the case of for-profit schools, their B.A. degrees are generally more expensive than those of public universities. The for-profit schools also compare unfavorably in 2 year degrees—they charge more than public non-profit schools. Given that the cost of public education has increased significantly (in part because of budget cuts to these schools), for-profit schools are very expensive and compete poorly with public schools. The reality is the opposite of what the free-market fetish ideology claims: the for-profit institutions underperform and overcharge relative to public schools. But the free-market is, as we all should know, about maximizing the enrichment of the rich. By that metric, for-profit schools outperform public universities.

It might be replied that for-profit schools charge more because they are providing more for the money relative to public schools. However, a look at how the money going into for-profit schools shows this does not seem to be the case.

Based on a 2009 study of 30 for-profit companies, 22.4% of their income goes to marketing, advertising, recruiting and admission staffing. 19.4% goes to profit, which is rather impressive. In contrast, 17.7% goes to actual instruction. As such, these schools charge more than public schools and spend less on education. This suggests they are not providing students with a good value for their money.

While top public university administrators are well paid (for example,  the president of Florida A&M University make $650,000 a year plus bonuses and perks), the CEOs of the for-profit schools have an average salary of $7.3 million, while delivering an inferior product at a higher price than public schools.

Our education system is under concerted attack with one purpose being redistributing wealth from high-quality public and private schools to inferior for-profit schools. It was ironic that Obama was attacked in September 2012 for his 1998 remarks about redistribution. After all, the for-profit schools are the recipients of a $30 billion dollar redistribution of wealth from taxpayers to the wealthy. It was also ironic that Mitt Romney, the man who accused the 47% of Americans who do not pay taxes of being irresponsible dependents of the state praised the for-profit schools. After all, they grow fat on public money.

This reality is concealed under deceitful rhetoric used to mislead the public and garner support for what is an attack on a bedrock of a democratic state which is an effective system of affordable and accessible public education.

Ironically, the way to counter the problems presented by the for-profit schools is to apply conservative principles to them. They need to be removed from public welfare, they need to be held responsible, and they need to be forced to compete in a free market (one in which their allies do not use the state to impede the competition). This situation exposes the lie of conservatives: they are what they profess to hate, only on larger scale.

 

Taking a moral position comes with a price. Or, more accurately, prices.  The cost of holding a position and the cost of acting upon it are usually different prices.  There is also the cost of professing a moral position because one might hold a moral view in secret or lie and profess a moral view that one rejects.

This assumes someone can hold a moral position while not acting upon it, which raises questions about what it is to hold a moral position. Intuitively, it does seem that people can do this.  For example, a person might believe they should help others in need yet drive past someone in need because it is raining a bit too hard. It might be objected that a person who does not act upon a moral position does not hold that position, so the driver in question thinks they believe in this principle but are lying to themselves.  But we could see morality as analogous to law: a law that is not enforced is still a law. Or maybe it isn’t really.  

The price of holding a moral position usually varies between people. For example, the cost of holding and acting on a belief in free speech is usually low in the United States and higher in China. While the notion of cost in this context could be discussed at length, I now turn to discussing the cost of the anti-abortion position.

The cost of holding and acting upon an anti-abortion moral position obviously varies. In some cases, the cost could be very high. For example, imagine a young girl living in poverty impregnated by rape who is morally against abortion. For her, the cost of acting on her moral position will be very high. After all, the “pro-life” Republican party and the “pro-choice” Democratic party have done little to help single mothers. But, to be fair and balanced, Republicans are often actively hostile to helping mothers in need while Democrat tend to be merely indifferent.

In other cases, the cost could be absurdly low. For example, an elderly wealthy man who has no children could be anti-abortion at no meaningful cost to himself. But it must be said that the cost of a moral position can be inflicted on others. For example, an elderly wealthy man who is a politician could see to it that his view became law and thus his moral position would impose a high cost on women and girls while costing him nothing.  

In the United States, most Americans have consistently supported legal abortion. But in the United States of Oligarchy and MAGA, the majority does not rule. As would be expected, while 55% of men claim abortion should be legal, 64% of women hold that view. As would also be expected, most of the politicians who are anti-abortion are men, although there are female politicians who also have that view.  But women are still in the minority when it comes to holding office or being a national pundit.

It is also interesting, but hardly surprising, that those who take the anti-abortion view tend to be social conservatives or religious (or both). For people in these categories, the cost of their position varies.

For example, the Catholic Church takes a strong stance against abortion. However, the Catholic Church pays a tiny price for this position in that Catholic charities do provide aid and support to girls and women who seek help from them. As such, the church has been willing to bear at least a tiny fraction of the cost of holding and acting on their anti-abortion moral position. Obviously, the Catholic Church can still be criticized for its position.

Many of those who hold to the anti-abortion position are social conservatives. They also profess to be fiscal conservatives, at least when it comes to social programs aimed at helping those in poverty or need—such as infants, pregnant women and girls.

While some women can afford to have children without undue hardship, there are many women and girls who cannot. For example, girls in the lower economic classes will struggle with cost of pregnancy and raising a child. There is also the matter of the cost of an unwanted pregnancy in terms of a person’s life. For example, an unwanted pregnancy can put an end to hopes of an education or career. There is, of course, also the matter of pregnancy inflicted by rape and the potential costs to the victim. While even most conservatives will allow abortion in the case of rape an incest, not all will.

When the anti-abortion politicians prevent, cut or eliminate funding for programs aimed to help pregnant women and girls, this imposes the costs of the anti-abortion position of these politicians onto the women and girls. That is, the females are paying the price of the politician’s “moral” positions. I am, of course, being charitable here and assuming these politicians are anti-abortion as a moral position and not just anti-abortion because they are misogynists.

The anti-abortion view is generally cheap for conservative politicians. After all, they are unlikely to be in a situation in which they or someone they care about is experiencing an unwanted pregnancy and lacking financial support (or to be cynical, lacking access to abortion).  As such, they can hold their view with little chance of having to pay a significant price. It is effectively a free moral stance for them. However, for the women and girls who experience an unwanted pregnancy and lack adequate means of support, the cost is high when the anti-abortion and anti-social support views became instantiated in law.

One interesting (and ironic) way to characterize the approach of conservatives who are anti-abortion and anti-social support is that they are engaging in ethical parasitism: they are holding to moral positions they expect others to pay for. A milder characterization is that they are living on ethical subsidies: the costs of their moral views are subsidized by those who pay the actual cost. Since I am opposed to such freeloading, I am morally opposed to these moral welfare kings (and queens) who are unwilling to pay for their own ethics.

 

 

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Alternative reality fiction involves, as would be suspected,  a fictional world like the actual world except for some key differences. In the case of alternative history fiction, the key differences arise due to some change in historical events—thus creating an alternative fictional timeline. One popular example of this is changing the outcome of WWII.

The idea the world could have been different is not just something for science fiction, but is also of interest in philosophy and science. Philosophers have long written about possible worlds and scientists got into the game relatively recently. From a philosophical standpoint, writers who create alternative histories are using counterfactuals in that they are describing a world that is counter to fact.  For example, an author might explore what might have happened if the American Civil war ended with a Southern victory and a permanently divided United States and Confederacy.  As another popular example, an author might change WWII.  One example of this sort of counterfactual alternative history is the movie Inglourious Basterds.  This is a clever piece of science fiction in which Jewish soldiers assassinate Hitler. There are, of course, also more extreme versions that are in the fantasy genre, such as the tale in which Lincoln hunts vampires. But counterfactual alternative realities are not just limited to entertainment; they are now a fundamental component of American politics.

While political narratives often distort reality by including straw men, modest lies and partial truths, some narratives present entire counter factual worlds. In some cases, the extent to which a politician or propagandist crafts an alternative reality would seem to make them a science fiction author. After all, they are describing a world somewhat like our own that does not exist, except in the imagination of the creator and those that share the creator’s vision.

While critics of Trump often present him as a departure from traditional Republicans because of his relentless untruths, this was an established well before Trump. One example of a Republican alternative reality is their narrative about the Obama administration.  Paul Ryan’s 2012 speech is an excellent example of this sort of pre-Trump narrative. The world he describes is somewhat like our own and there is someone called “Obama” who was president of that America. However, the world of Ryan’s speech differs from the actual world in many important ways, as presented by Sally Kohn over at Fox. Another callback is when Clint Eastwood blamed Obama (or rather a chair standing in for Obama) for the invasion of Afghanistan—which happened long before he was president. Reagan was also skilled at presenting an alternative reality, one in which welfare queens drove the streets in Cadillacs. But these all seem quaint and restrained when compared to the alternative realities being presented by Trump and his Republicans today. In the Trump Continuum, leftists are attacking the reflecting pool with knifes, grocery prices are low and he keeps winning the Iran war. While I could list examples almost without end, to keep up with the latest truths, lies and distortions from politicians and pundits of all stripes, PolitiFact is a good place to visit.

While I suspect that Trump supporters do not read my blog, they would agree with me that politicians spin alternative realities. However, they would claim that Trump is describing the real world and everyone else is writing science fiction about an America that does not exist.

In the case of science fiction, the authors are aware they are creating fiction and, in general, the audience gets that the works are fictional. Of course, there can be some notable exceptions when fans lose the ability to properly distinguish counterfactuals and alternative histories from truth and history. One of William Gibson’s stories provides a fictional example of reality failure in which a photographer assigned to take pictures of surviving 1930s futuristic architecture begins to slide into an alternative reality, the Gernsback Continuum. This is a continuum in which the world of 1930s pulp science fiction became real. This story can now serve as a metaphor for what is happening now in American politics: there are people who seem to believe they are living in an alternative America. If you are critical of MAGA, they are the ones who think they are living in the Trump Continuum. MAGA folks presumably think everyone else is living in the Woke Continuum. But someone must be living in fictional political worlds that are populated by fictional political characters. The fight is over who and one key question is why they are doing this.

One obvious explanation is that people who do not know better and are not inclined towards critical thinking can be deceived by such fiction and accept it as reality. These people will, in turn, attempt to convince others of the reality of these fictions and will also make decisions, such as who to vote for, based on these fictions. As might be imagined, fiction-based decision making is unlikely to result in wise choices. Even when a belief is shown to be an error, people who believe because of their ideology will usually double down in the face of this disproof. This can make true believers almost immune to corrections. While this is a problem for those who are concerned about facts and logic, it gives the tellers of counterfactual narratives perfect audiences: believers who will reject challenges to the narrative in which they live and thus are willful participants in their own political continuum, be that the Trump Continuum, the Woke Continuum or whatever. For these people, art does not imitate life, nor does life imitate art. Life, at least is art—albeit bad science fiction.

 

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Way back in August of 2012 Ted Akin, a Republican representative from Missouri, created a stir when he said, “First of all, from what I understand from doctors, (pregnancy from rape) is really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work or something. I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist and not attacking the child.” While such ignorance was striking then, it is the order of the day in today’s political reality.

Such ignorance raises concerns both ethics and epistemology. Akin’s claim that the female body can “shut down” a pregnancy in cases of “legitimate rape” raises the question as to whether a member of congress who gets to make decisions about women’s health is morally obligated to make the effort to know what he is talking about. This also raises a general question about officials and knowledge.

On the face of it, someone who is in a position to create and pass laws regarding rape and abortion seems obligated to know the facts about rape and pregnancy. After all, passing such laws from a position of ignorance will usually do more harm than good (and any good done would seem to be a matter of chance) since they would not be based on reality. In the case of rape and pregnancy, anyone who has taken a high school level class in anatomy and physiology (which I did) or a competent sex education class would know the female body lacks these “shut down” mechanisms. It hardly seems unreasonable for a congressman to have at least a high school level knowledge regarding the human reproductive system.  Interestingly, the right now asks everyone “what is a woman?”; if only this was a good faith quest for knowledge.  

Of course, it could be argued that such classes do not typically explicitly state that the female body lacks these mechanisms, and someone might claim that pregnancy from “legitimate rape” is very low. However, this claim would be at odds with facts. Way back in 1996 the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston conducted a large (4008 women) study over three years and found that there is a national average of a 5% rate of pregnancy among rape victims. This resulted in an estimated 32,101 cases of pregnancy per year in the United States. As such, Akin was wrong about the facts.

While having one congressman being wrong is a matter of concern, there is also the general concern about the extent to which views about abortion are based on false beliefs.  After all, to the degree that opposition to abortion in cases of rape is based on the mistaken belief that women are all but immune to being impregnated by “legitimate” rape this opposition is unjustified. Naturally, there can be other justifications presented, but clearly Akin’s “shut down” view failed to justify his view that abortion should not be allowed even in cases of rape.

Akin did allow that the “shut down” mechanism might fail, thus allowing for a slight possibility that a woman could be impregnated by “legitimate” rape. However, he asserted that even in such cases abortion should not be permitted. As he saw it, “there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist and not attacking the child.”

I, not surprisingly, agree that rapists should be punished. I am reasonably sure that this is a non-controversial position. However, the matter of not “attacking the child” is more controversial.

As Akin presented the matter, a woman who has an abortion after being “legitimately” raped is “attacking” and presumably punishing the child (Akin seems to be saying that the rapist should be punished and not the child). While the idea of punishing a child seems horrible, there is the question of whether this occurring.

One key point is whether the entity in question (which might be just a fertilized egg) is a child. This, of course, is a matter that is disputed during the larger debate over abortion and addressing it would expand the essay far beyond its intended scope. As such, let it be assumed for the sake of this argument that the entity is a child. Let it also be assumed, obviously enough, that abortion kills this entity.

As might be suspected, casting abortion as punishing the child is a clever rhetorical move since it is terrible to punish a child for the crimes of someone else. It also allows those who oppose abortion rights to cast abortion in the case of rape as a woman punishing a child rather than a woman deciding not to bear the child imposed on her against her will by a rapist. While this has some rhetorical punch, it falls apart under examination.

While the entity (or child, if one prefers) is killed by the abortion, it is not being punished. Punishment entails a response to wrongdoing and requires that the entity in question be capable of being punished (and not merely harmed). In the case of the entity, it has done no wrong—mainly because it lacks the attributes needed to be wrong doer. To use an analogy, a kitten who accidently scratches a person and infects him with cat scratch fever is not a wrongdoer—it has no understanding of what it is doing nor intent to cause harm. To use another analogy, cancer cells might cause a person harm, but they are not doing wrong—they have no moral agency. Naturally, a person can inflict harm on the kitten or destroy the cancer, but neither the kitten nor the cancer is being punished. They lack the attributes needed to understand that they are being punished and hence cannot be punished, although they can be harmed or killed. This can be disputed, perhaps by arguing that punishment is in the hand of the punisher, so to speak.

Likewise, a zygote and even a fetus lack the agency and understanding to be wrongdoers. They can, of course, be harmed but they cannot be punished. After all, they lack the attributes needed to understand that what is being done is punishment and hence they can be harmed but not punished.

Naturally, it can be countered that although the claim that the entity is being punished because of the crime of the rapist is a rhetorical point, what matters is that the entity is being harmed. That is, a woman who is raped should not be allowed to have an abortion because doing so would harm the entity (or child, if you prefer). It must be assumed the fact that the woman was raped is morally irrelevant, which is an extreme position. However, it is worth considering because people like Akin and Paul Ryan held that view.

Roughly put, the principle that Akin and Ryan seemed to be operating on is that it does not matter how the woman was impregnated, what matters is that she is pregnant and that the abortion would kill the entity. More generally, it does not matter how an innocent life got there, the right to life of that entity overrides the rights of the host. One interesting way to look at this matter is to look at illegal immigration in the United States.

Suppose that the United States is analogous to a woman. The children that migrants bring with them or give birth to in the United States are, obviously enough, analogous to the child in a pregnancy. Given the principle that Akin and Ryan seemed to be operating on, children that end up in the United States cannot be deported if doing so would harm them. After all, this would be comparable to aborting a child in a woman’s body

The obvious counter is, of course, that the migrant children have parents that can take care of them and hence the abortion analogy breaks down because the United States cannot be expected to take care of children when there are parents who can do that. After all, to expect Americans to bear the cost of raising someone else’s children would be wrong.

Of course, Akin and Ryan were expecting women impregnated by rape to do just that—that is, to bear the cost of taking care of children they did not choose and that were forced upon them. Naturally, it could be morally commendable for a woman to elect to raise the child—but it hardly seems reasonable to say that a woman is obligated to do so. Yes, I do see that this analogy could be turned against people who are pro-migrant and anti-abortion.

To use another analogy, the principle that Akin and Ryan seemed to accept would seem to oblige people to raise any child that someone was able to get onto their property. So, if someone managed to sneak into Ryan’s house and leave behind babies, then Ryan would be obligated to raise them. After all, while the trespasser broke it, the rights of the babies trump the rights of the property owner. It would not do, of course, to attack the babies because of the crime of the trespasser.

 

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In his famous quote about standing on the shoulders of giants, Sir Isaac Newton credited at least some of his success to others. While most of us will not see as far as Newton, we also stand upon shoulders. We are born into human civilization and have access to centuries of human accomplishments such as language, technology and society itself. As such, the success of any individual is just an addition to a vast structure of human achievement (and failure) and is built upon well-established foundations. For example, the language I am using to write this was developed long before my time. The computer I am using to write this was made possible by past achievements in theory and technology, including philosophy. As such, any success I acquire from this work involves a debt to all those folks who made it possible for me to sit in front of a screen and type out words in English.

Of course, the contributors to our successes (and failures) do not just include people who are long dead. Obviously enough, a person’s existence and survival depend on other people who are (or recently were) alive. Much of a person’s education depends on others and there are many other debts (for good or for ill) owed to others. Naturally, I am making a distinction between the state (which is just people) and other people in this context. For this essay, the other people would be people who are not acting in their capacity as state officials or agents.

For example, I would not be able to write this if it were not for the education I received from my parents and the teachers at Lewis Stairs Elementary school. I would not be a philosopher without the education provided by the professors at Marietta College and The Ohio State University. Naturally, some of the failures I have experienced can also be attributed in part to others who have impeded me (intentionally or not).

It seems clear that some of a person’s success (and failure) is due to the contributions of other people. The interesting question is thus not “do people owe others for their success (or failure)”, but “to what extent do people owe others for their success (or failure)?”

It seems easy to show that at least some of a person’s success is due to her own efforts. After all, if a person’s success had to depend entirely on the contributions of others, then an infinite regress would seem to arise, thus making success impossible. So, it seems reasonable to infer that people can contribute to their own success (unless, of course, all success and failure is ultimately attributed to God, the un-helped success).

As might be suspected, the degree to which other people contribute to an individual’s success (or failure) will vary deal. For example, a businessman who was born to wealthy family in the United States, was provided with the best education money can buy, and was then helped throughout life by family connections shares most of his success with other people. As another example, a great poet who was born into poverty, was abandoned as a young child, and taught herself poetry from scavenged books would owe far less of her success to others. Interestingly, the wealthy businessman would probably be more inclined than the poet to claim that his success was mostly of his own doing.

One area in which the division of success (and failure) is of special interest to me is in education. Obviously, teachers have a role to play in the success or failure of a student. It seems equally obvious that the student also has an important role to play. As I have mentioned before, students often tend to blame teachers for their failures (“she failed me”) and accept credit for their successes (“I earned an A”). While this is natural, sorting out the contributions of each is a important. After all, there is a growing tendency in the United States (and probably elsewhere) to place most of the accountability on the shoulders of educators. One practical reason for this is, of course, that teachers can be fired or replaced while public schools tend to be stuck with their students, making changing teachers an easier approach to the problem. This does not, however, show how the responsibility is divided between teacher and student. There are also the endless culture war politics of the right against education which has long demonized education and educators.

My experience as a college professor suggests that exceptionally good and exceptionally bad students are affected less by professors. After all, the very good students take an active role in their education (and will often compensate for bad teachers) and very bad students generally do not pay attention on the rare occasions they attend class (and hence largely negate the impact of teaching). As such, an educator probably cannot take a great deal of credit (or blame) for the success of the best and the failure of the worst students. There can, of course, be exceptions.

Not surprisingly, educators have the most impact on those who are not exceptionally good or bad as students. Of course, even then there is a question of how much the teacher is accountable for their success or failure. Also not surprisingly, education policy (especially such things as firing and merit) is usually made without understanding of how the responsibility for success and failure should be divided. This is but one example of why the division of responsibility between people matters.

 

 

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