More federal observer arguments.

My alter-ego InviQtus fighting the good fight at Federal Observer. The author of the article I'm criticizing was unusually nice to me, so he gets his due at the end. It's weird- they tolerate my insolence for a time, then get pissed and delete all my stuff, then later I'm able to post there again. Anyway, it's fun for me, but I'm sure ultimately fruitless. I don't think they hold their views for intellectual reason. But still I try...

“The “poor-me-I-deserve-what-they-have- because-it-just-isn’t-fair-and-I’m-certainly-NOT-going-to-lift-a-finger-when-we-can-tax-them-more” crowd is really grating on my nerves. There is a solution to every problem if you are willing to find it and work toward it.”

I couldn’t agree more with this sentiment. But of course that’s because it is no where near a fair representation of the views that I hold. Some government services are essential (national defense, police and fire services, maintenance of the justice system, public education, at a minimum) and have to be paid for with tax payer money. I would just like everyone to be made to pay their fair share of taxes. In a nation like ours where the top 1% control 40% of the wealth and large companies pay less in taxes than a bus driver, you can’t argue that the system is operating fairly. That’s what is grating on my nerves.

One of my main problems with you guys is that you complain about socialism when we are actually rapidly becoming a plutocracy. Why does government do so many things that you guys don’t like? When you consider how much large corporations and moneyed interests contribute to election campaigns and when you consider what then comes to be the priorities of government, and when you see who benefits most, it ought to be clear that government does what it does because of the undue influence of big money in the political system.

I think you guys ought to realize that government is not the only threat to liberty and prosperity. It is suppose to be the bulwark against those other threats, but only if it functions as it is suppose to and acts in the interest only of the will of the people. Failing to realize that crucial fact, as I think many in the Tea party camp do, and focusing efforts just on attacking government succeeds only in making the problems you are trying to solve worse.

Now, the issue of the proper extent of the welfare state has also been raised in this discussion. I don’t want to skirt that issue but first I would like for someone to address the argument I just made and let me know where you think I am wrong. By the way, Rick, thank you for the kind response. You are the wind beneath my wings.

On the value of nuance in political and economic discourse

The 20th century economist Fredrick Hyack in his book The Constitution of Liberty, arguing in the vein of liberal theorists of the past like John Locke and John Stuart Mill, states that liberty ought to be preeminent among all our values because it is a necessary precondition for the pursuit of any of our other values. This defense of liberty he takes as his starting point for advocating for limited government and free-market capitalism. After the fall of Communism this view has held sway in the minds of economists and political theorists since. Indeed much of the current contempt for government is motivated by just such reasoning.

While I do believe that understanding Hyack’s arguments are vital, I think that they are only vital as a defense of individual rights and particularly the rights of minority groups, and not as a basis for an economic or political system, as such. For, considering the individual in isolation, as liberal theorists do, is not realistic. Individuals must be considered in the context of societies as well as in the context of the natural world. While liberty is necessary for the pursuit of other values, flourishing and happiness will not be possible in the context of a dis functional society with high amounts of crime and poverty and disease. Likewise flourishing and happiness will not be possible in the absence of clean air and water and a stable environment. However, if we forget the arguments of Hyack, e. al. and the pursuit of the greatest amount of happiness and flourishing becomes our primary goal then we risk trampling individual rights in the process.

If we accept this much then we can see that there is a continuum here and that those speaking in absolutes are not helpful to conversations about how best to design our political and economic systems and institutions. They are inclined to plant their flag at one end of the continuum and castigate those at the other end- but it can be even worse that that, because they also have no tolerance for those with more nuanced views who accept that both ends grasp part of the truth. And when the conversation is about politics and economics at a certain level nuance cannot be avoided.

No entries since November. I'm an awful person. Truly subhuman.

I have not written much online at all in recent months. I haven't felt much urge to since the internet is literally a vast repository of unread crap. I do plan to change this, however (the part about me not writing much). First I have several book reviews that I want to do. Also I feel like maybe there is some value, for me at least, to creating unread crap. There is much that angers me and much that concerns me and it might be a worthwhile past time to let it out some how. If it makes me feel better, that alone may be enough.

On the value of being offended

What you think you know on a subject you care very deeply about is wrong.

Over a year ago when I started my blog I suggested in my opening post that being offended is not a bad thing. I said I would expound on that and so I am. Better late than never.

First a distinction: some bits of information we come across, like slurs scrawled on a bathroom wall are meant to offend and to do nothing else. Many other times when we find ourselves reacting emotionally to something we read or hear it is because that information is across the battle lines from views we hold as obvious, valuable, and central to our worldview. Most of us can think of times when we have read views that we disagree with, expressed in a dispassionate and thoughtful manner, and felt a warm surge of disquiet or anger. Too many people, judging themselves to have been made offended, will read no further. This is a mistake and this reaction is directly opposed to the philosophical mode of thought that one ought to be working to cultivate.

It is a sad commentary on the state of mind of the average person and the degree to which many people are failing to cultivate the philosophical mindset, that when you present someone with information that counters their view on something, even something of little relevance, they tend to double down on that view. You have to begin an encounter like that by identifying a point on which you and your interlocutor agree, and proceed gingerly from their. Even then you may have little hope of swaying the other. Begin at all aggressively and all hope is lost.

So if the philosophical mindset is our aim, what is it and how should we proceed? First we must acknowledge the fact of human fallibility. Our knowledge is always tentative and we must always be open to the possibility that we might be wrong about anything. Our brains evolved under selective pressures prevalent in the environments our ancestors encountered. So none of us are the dispassionate, purely rational actors we take ourselves to be. Only a very small part of human cognition takes place at the level of consciousness. Our conscious thoughts are always very intimately tied up with our emotional systems. This causes our thinking on many subjects to go astray and accounts for the fierce resistance put up when faced with counter evidence to our core beliefs.

From an acknowledgment of human fallibility we move to the banishment of all sacred cows. If we want to have true beliefs, we must always be willing to pull anything into the light of critical scrutiny and abandon what is found to be inadequately supported. We should value most, then, information we find from thoughtful people, arguing in good faith against what we take to be the best view on a subject. Though at first you may feel like you have just laid eyes on a scurrilous slur on a bathroom wall, you should be able to set that aside and know that you are actually have the most valuable experience you can have in your journey into the world of ideas and you are sure to be better off.

I haven't written much lately. Neil and Dakota have both decided to ignore my replies from now on because they don't like my take on their religion. I can't imagine why not. Anyway, here is something that I wrote from July 4th.

“Those two statements taken on their own should be enough to convince anyone that our founders did believe in the existence of some sort of a Creator, or God, therefore disproving the statement that there was no mention of Him in our founding documents.”

Of course, I’ve never said that there is no mention of God (though not specifically the Christian God) in any of our nations founding documents. I have said that there is no mention of God, Christianity, Jesus, etc. in the US Constitution. If you want to know just how essential the founding fathers really thought belief in Christianity, or even theism generally, was it might be illuminating to consider the most important document they ever wrote. Article IV section 3 says that no religious test shall ever be given to hold public office. Given the fact that many colonists came to the new world fleeing religious persecution it would make sense that the founders would not desire to have a religious test favoring one sect or denomination over another. But article IV section 3 says NO religious test, NOT EVEN A TEST FOR THEISM. Clearly they understood, as most of the religious right does not, that a non-theist could be just as fit or more so to lead the country than any believer could.

"John Adams stated, “The general principles upon which the Fathers achieved independence were the general principals of Christianity…”

You almost seem to be laboring to show that the American system never would have come to be if not for Christianity. Clearly that cannot be the case. Christian hegemony over western thought spans close to 1500 years before we see any of the vital concepts central to our system- i.e. constitutionalism, the separation of powers, equal rights, etc.- find a foothold. The bible doesn’t mention any of those things. The Bible tells us that we shouldn’t make graven images and that you shouldn’t covet your neighbor’s ox. If anything Christianity has been a roadblock in the way of human progress. Had the dark ages not set in and had people been free to pursue topics of political philosophy first expounded by the ancient Greeks, as Montesquieu, Locke, Hume, et. al were able to do only once again in the Enlightenment age, July 4, 1776 might have come much, much sooner.

“And for those who believe the Ten Commandments have no place in our lives…”

Yes, and how many of those Ten Commandments are currently serving as the basis of any of our laws. If the answer ain’t ten, you have some explaining to do. We are to believe that they are divinely inspired, remember. And the are commandments, not suggestions!

“How is it that we as a nation can support a President who hosts a gay, bisexual and transgender event to celebrate Gay Pride Month?”

Uh, because “we as a nation” includes gays, bisexuals and transgendered peoples, as well as a large percentage who understand that these people have the basic right to conduct their private lives as they see fit.

“I understand that there are those who do not believe as I do, and I can accept that fact. However, I cannot accept the fact that there are those who would prohibit me from freely expressing myself because my viewpoints stem from my religious beliefs.”

I couldn’t accept that either. However, if you are going to present your religious beliefs in the public sphere you had best not expect them to receive any special deference just because they happen to be religious beliefs, or because they happen to be “personal” beliefs, or because they are based on blind faith. People deserve respect, Neal, beliefs do not. Also, as I said before, if you can’t prove it you don’t get to call it truth.

Happy fourth, by the way.

I was polite. I wished him a happy 4th. I don't see what the problem is. Oh well...on to better things.

Oil spill in the Gulf is a good (horrible) thing.

"The extinction of the human race will come from its inability to EMOTIONALLY comprehend the exponential function." -- Edward Teller

Specifically, I would add, to emotionally comprehend what happens when the exponential function meets a finite resource.

My radical thesis is that the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is ultimately a good thing, and the bigger and uglier it turns out to be the better. In the essay below I aim to explain why.

We desperately need to develop a clean, renewable energy industry in this country for the following reasons: 1) Climate change. The vast majority of the worlds scientist accept that climate change is occurring and is almost certainly caused by the release of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere as a result of human activity, primarily the burning of fossil fuels. Every major scientific organization of repute in the world, including the NAS the AAAS, and the Royal Society (UK's version of our National Academy of Science) have issued official statements accetping this position on climate change. So any apparent "controversy" on the issue is not among scientists, it is between the community of the worlds scientists and the community of conservative pundits and commentators who dismiss the science of climate change for purely ideological reasons. The scientific consensus is clear and unless you are privy to knowledge that refutes the scientific consensus, then the most prudent thing to do is to accept the consensus as most likely being true. If the community of conservative commentators does not accept the scientific consensus, their recourse ought to be to produce sound science that will overturn the consensus. That is how responsible inquiry is done. Any other course of action on this issue is pure demagoguery.

2) Fossil fuels are a finite resource. This is simply a fact that no one disputes. That being the case, it makes no sense to base our way of life and any future growth on a nonrenewable energy resource. However, the technology needed to transfer from a fossil fuel based economy to a renewable economy is not fully available yet. On existing technology such a transfer would be a massive engineering endeavor requiring the bringing to scale of massive amounts of new infrastructure, what has been referred to as Renewistan. Clearly such a transition would require a major reorganizing of national priorities and resources. It would not be easy, but it is simply necessary, and the longer we wait to begin, the more painful it will be.

3) An early commitment to developing a clean renewable energy industry and becoming a world leader in this new industry provides possible economic benefits. For the two reasons explicated above, the world has no choice but to make the transition to clean, renewable energy. As I stated above this will require a large scale commitment to technological innovation and will create a need for a large scale manufacturing and technological base that could create thousands of new high-paying jobs that could not be outsourced. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman has referred to clean energy technology as "the next great global industry" and many other experts share this view. China is just beginning to recognize this fact. If we do not make a commitment to pursuing this technology now the United States may well loss it's role as the leading world economy.

4) National defense. Most of the worlds oil now comes from countries that do not share our ideals of political freedom and equal rights. If a regime is able to maintain a strong economy simply by pumping oil out of the ground it has no incentive to invest in the education and welfare of it's people. The political process in these countries suffers as a result and despotic and dysfunctional regimes can emerge. The result of developing a clean, renewable energy industry would be an undermining of such regimes. Also being independent from these regimes would shield us from vicissitudes that might result from them.

So here we have four reasons for developing a clean, renewable energy industry in this country. More reasons may be available but these four reasons are remarkable in that at least one of them ought to appeal to most everyone, regardless of their political leanings. So why, then, is their such little political will in this country to begin making this transition? I can think of a few: 1) Everything seems fine right now. We can go about our lives giving little thought to our nations energy policy. People do not deal well with problems that are in the distance- we feel no emotional pull to do so. 2) Initially things will not be easy. The technological research needed will most likely not be done without large scale government funding. Venture capitalists and other investors will not endeavor to bring new technologies to scale without the assurance of demand for such technologies, thus the need for taxes on fossil fuel to ensure demand. 3) High levels of animus in the political discourse. Neither party is willing to advocate for anything that might require increased taxes or increased government involvement or regulation or short term sacrifice from the American people for fear of political repercussions, no matter how thoughtful or needed those policies might be. Our political system is essentially broken with no hope of making progress on issues requiring any degree of sacrifice, unless in the face of large scale, visible disaster. And therein lies the point of this essay.

No one was willing to accept sacrifice to improve our nations health care system despite the fact that health care spending was on pace to consume a quarter of our nations GPD within the next few decades. Why? The disaster was far off and not visible, so the rational arguments fell flat. Juxtapose that with the political climate following 9-11. Watching unmitigated evil unfold on our TVs nightly left the American people ready to make any sacrifice necessary to prevent anything like that from happening again. This willingness was squandered, of course, by inept and short sighted leadership in place at the time. The unmitigated disaster that will ensue if humanity continues to base it's entire way of life (transportation needed to maintain economic activity, energy needed to maintain functional food systems to support current and future population densities, etc.) on a finite and nonrenewable energy source would be horrible beyond anything experienced thus far in human history (exponential function meeting finite resource). Up to this point you have been reading the rational arguments and have been left, most likely, unmoved. What is necessary to produce the needed political will, unfortunately, is a truly massive and ugly visual spectacle. The oil spill in the gulf just may well be that ugly spectacle, but only if it is big and ugly enough.

The few days of no response from me led him to believe that he had fended me off with his logical acumen and command of the facts. Well, not quite...

“Kinda hard to argue with huh? I figured.”

This may be indicative of your problem here. You assume that my absence is due to the strength of your arguments (I will be kind and refer to them as “arguments”), whereas other, just as plausible, explanations are available such as- which is in fact the case- that I have a job and other responsibilities to attend to. If you happen to make a good point and I am around to see it and I have time to respond to it, then you can be assured that I will give you the credit you deserve. It hasn’t happened yet.