Bruce Waller has an interesting question about free will and moral responsibility. He asks, why not mix the two concepts instead of treating them as one and the same? Sounds pluralistic to me, and I’m all for the pluralism freedom gives us.
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Over at today’s Ethics philosophy blog, a ‘cute’ 3D video is featured, pitting academic moral absolutism against folk moral relativism. The argument is, folk morality is not as absolutist as academic philosophers believe it is, and that people are moral relativists.
Not one word of the video is devoted to moral pluralism, a blind spot common to both absolutists and relativists. They argue for their respective positions, when it is quite likely they are both incomplete, perhaps even wrong, since pluralism is the virtuous mid-point between absolutism and relativism.
Unfortunately, academic philosophy is still way behind how many people actually live their moralities. There is a third position, but the absolutists cannot even imagine how such a thing is possible and relativists are incapable of deciding upon a better choice.
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The ‘propaganda rate’ of unemployment (the U3 number) fell to 7.6% last month by refusing to include the many hundreds of thousands of Americans out of work who have become so discouraged for so long that they finally gave up looking for a job (the U5 number). All such people are truly unemployed, but the government doesn’t include them in the payroll numbers because excluding them serves the propaganda purpose of the government report. If the U.S. reported an honest number (U5), national unemployment would be 8.9%.
According to Business Insider, the reason unemployment is reported down while the number of unemployed is up, is due to the worst labor participation rate in 34 years:
Even as President Putin of Russia signed legislation this week giving him sole power to appoint governors, the ailing and elderly Mikhail Gorbachev gave a speech decrying the reduction of freedom in Russia. But to Mr. Putin, Mr. Gorbachev’s freedom meant the loss of empire and the rise of “gangster capitalism” in Russia, so the two men have very different views on the benefits of freedom.
Both men are steeped in Marxism during their political careers, although Gorbachev is better described today as being ‘communist,’ not Marxist, and Mr. Putin is better described as a ‘religious nationalist,’ also no longer a Marxist. There is no freedom in Marx’s thought, as both Jaspers and Arendt pointed out, so the two men are disputing freedom in the traditional argument as being merely a theme or topic of political discourse.
Gorbachev won the Nobel Prize for Peace but neither man has freedom as a philosophy, and it shows.
[Email comments welcome: duoism(at)sbcglobal.net]Today’s Discover science magazine has an article on eugenics, making the determinist’s point that eugenics is inevitable in a society that values human health. Instead of using eugenics to breed a super-race of humans, eugenics will become commonplace as the tool to discover inherited diseases before they are passed on to new generations.
Why not have voluntary vasectomies at taxpayer expense as a human health concern? Instead of throwing the divisive issue of abortion upon women, why not throw the issue upon men? If the male wants to have sex without parenting–and he is irresponsibly incapable of using a condom–why not subsidize his vasectomy? This would not eliminate the health problems associated with transmission of HIV, but it would help reduce the vast numbers of unwanted, unloved births who grow up to populate our prisons, jails, and psychiatric centers.
But then, that’s eugenics for society’s health not individual human health, and eugenics for societal health is a very slippery slope down to the self-defeating arrogance of trying to build a master race. Still, why should preventing unwanted, unloved children fall so disproportionately upon women?
[Email comments welcome: duoism(at)sbcglobal.net]In today’s U.S.A. Today, driver Danny Hamlin has been fined $25,000 by NASCAR for making critical comments about the differences between Gen 5 and Gen 6 cars. They haven’t yet burned him alive for heresy, as Christianity used to do, or behead him, as some Muslims still do, but what country and what kind of fans does NASCAR think it is in and has? If there are more freedomphillic fans than at a NASCAR race in America, I’ve not met them.
Clearly, the ‘authorities’ at NASCAR do not use the philosophy of freedom as a personal guide to obtain a robust, flourishing life.
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In today’s Japan Times, Brahma Chellaney warns from New Delhi of impending tribal and ethnic war in Afghanistan after the U.S. completes its 2014 withdrawal from the longest war in its history. The report focuses on two conflicting factors: the modern world wants the “stability” that it believes comes from fixed borders and established governments, while the competing view is that uniting different ethnicities in one nation-state is self-defeating, because the tribal identity is itself a separate nation.
The ‘stability’ view wraps itself in the pluralist mantle; inclusiveness reduces hatreds and engenders peace. The ‘identity’ view believes this is a foolish form of pluralism, certain to result in perpetuating centuries of tribal conflicts and killings. Instead, the ‘identity’ view sees pluralism as diverse peoples having diverse nation-states, as expressions of multiple autonomies.
From the map above the problem becomes obvious. Afghanistan is a amalgam of tribes; it is not a nation-state of one people. The northern border regions of Afghanistan consist of tribes which have a same-tribe nation-state immediately contiguous. Why not simply re-set Afghanistan’s northern boundaries to allow Turkmenistan and Tajikistan and Uzbekistan include its tribal peoples within their expanded nation-state boundaries? Give the majority Pashtuns of south and eastern Afghanistan their own Pashtunistan, and permit the Hazara and Almak in mid-Afghanistan to form the united autonomous region of Hazmakistan.
Pakistan will resist. It, too, is a tribal amalgam, not really a nation-state. The central government has no control over its Afghanistan border; the two Wazir border provinces long ago were declared to be the independent Islamic State of Waziristan by the Taliban and their tribal (Pashtun!) allies. An independent Pashtunistan creates huge problems for the “stability’ of Pakistan, which is half Pashtun.
So what? Pakistan is already the least stable nuclear-armed country in the world. It has long been a ‘bomb-a-month’ country, where tensions are unrelenting and murderous. Tensions are so enduringly bad in Pakistan that perhaps breaking it up into tribal identities would help reduce the sectarian violence. In both Afghanistan’s and Pakistan’s case, ‘stability’ might be achieved by their dismemberment into tribal-based nation-states.
This would undo Winston Churchill’s creation of modern states where none existed, but why not just admit that his creation of Afghanistan is a house of cards myth, and it is time to recognize that pluralism in tribalism means self-identified autonomy, not imposed unification. Let the philosophy of freedom guide pluralism.
[Email comments welcome: duoism(at)sbcglobal.net]Economist Brad Schiller has an Op-Ed in today’s Washington Times detailing the 200 year history of federal government debt in the United States. As troublesome as the nation’s debt history has been, wars and depressions et al, it is getting much worse. Rapidly worse. Debt is now 100% of GDP and still climbing.
Dr. Schiller points out that every attempt by Congress during the past thirty years to bring government debt under control has failed. Debt limits were established, only to be ignored by the expedient of raising the limit…77 consecutive times. Deficit limits were fixed, only to be completely ignored. Republicans ran up record deficits during Mr. Reagan’s presidency; Democrats have new record deficits under Mr. Obama.
Tax increases are one way to pay down government debt, but the increases instead are used to finance new and existing spending. Spending cuts are another method of paying down debt, but neither political party is capable of making the substantial cuts required because they both use spending as the tool to get themselves re-elected.
Here’s a pragmatic possible solution. “No Firing, No Hiring” of federal non-military employment; gradually and incrementally “Freeze, Shrink & Shift” duplicating federal expenditures to the States (such as the federal departments of Agriculture and Interior), since the States are mandated to balance their budgets; and restore the United States to a top-five ranking in Economic Liberties so that natural economic growth slowly pays down the debt. If a Balanced Budget Amendment is a political impossibility, then certainly a Presidential Line-Item Veto Amendment should be implemented.
But if 200 years of national debt problems teach us anything, it is that without accountability for the President and Congress for fiduciary irresponsibility, the debt problems will continue. The debt debacle is a problem of toothless ethics. We need an amendment to the Constitution which fires Congress or impeaches the President for fiduciary irresponsibility.
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This is Silvio Berlusconi, three-time former Prime Minister of Italy, now making a political comeback to be Italy’s next Prime Minister. Slick and suave at age 71, he is famous for his personal wealth and his conservative politics. Are those hair implants and hair coloring? If so, no doubt the latter is to put on his best appearance for the bevy of beautiful very young Italian women he is also famous for ‘squiring.’ He obviously has a strange kind of conservatism.
According to The Telegraph today, EuroStat just announced that Europe is now in a ‘double-dip’ recession. England and France were already in recession, but now Germany’s drop in GDP pushed the entire Euro area into economic decline. Italy? No one can really say if Italy was ever out of recession during the past six years.
Mr. Berlusconi’s “strange kind of conservatism” was on display this week when The Hindu newspaper in London reported yesterday that he defended the practice of Italian corporations bribing foreigners to win contracts to sell Italian made goods and services. To hear Mr. Berlusconi tell it, bribery is routine and endemic all over the world, so Italian CEO’s must bribe in order for their companies to be competitive in the world markets. He is quoted as saying bribery is not a crime; the business executives are simply paying “commissions” on the contracts which then provide jobs to Italian workers.
I’ve said it before and it should be said again: Just as there is no longer such a thing as a natural famine, there is no longer such a thing as a natural recession. Ever since the 20C, governments create famines, and I am increasingly coming to believe that governments create recessions. Regardless of the government, regardless of the culture, regardless of liberal or conservative ideology, the occurence of recessions is correlated with the level of official corruption, whether the ‘corruption’ is commissions on contracts in Italy or ‘bribing’ voters in America. Someone at a noted university needs to do a rigorous study on whether it is official government interference in the economy during our post-industrial era which is creating economic recessions.
[Email comments welcome: duoism(at)sbcglobal.net]In a famous psychology experiment measuring the ability of unchaperoned children to resist eating a tempting marshmallow, researchers discovered that the ability to ‘defer gratification’ correlates with better academic performance, more stable adult relationships, higher incomes, levels of happiness, longevity, just about everything positive in a person’s life. The inability to resist temptation is called ‘immediate gratification,’ and since just about every measure of life satisfaction and happiness is worse in children who demonstrate ‘immediate gratification,’ it measures emotional immaturity.
Capitalism is built on ‘defer gratification,’ while socialism is built on ‘immediate gratification.’ If the capitalist consumes now instead of saving for the future, she will never accumulate the capital surplus which grounds capitalism. No surplus, no building wealth. The socialist, however, encourages spending now, even borrowing against future income, in order to satisfy immediate needs. Famously, John Maynard Keynes, the world’s most influential Fabian socialism economist, quipped that borrowing now instead of saving for the future was the correct policy because “in the end, we’re all dead anyway.”
This cavalier greed in socialism is glaring in school district financing. Education in America is a socialist monopoly, the government-owned supply of a mandated service. School districts for the past several years have been using a borrowing vehicle known as ‘Capital Appreciation Bonds’ to finance building or renovating school structures. These particular bonds permit the school districts to borrow money now and not pay the interest or principal for many years in the future. Sounds like a future housing bubble.
Two problems. The eventual payer of the debt is the local property owner. They will be taxing their properties in the distant future for the money the school district borrowed today, but they have no tax increases until the bonds mature, which can be as long as thirty years. Hurray! Free money! Many property owners will be dead within thirty years, and many more will have simply moved away to another city. This is ‘immediate gratification’ in spades.
The second problem is, the math. By not paying the debt as it is incurred, the immediate gratification runs an unpaid clock. Compounding unseen–’unseen’ because payment is deferred while gratification is immediate–is the interest on the debt. When you add up the final cost, the total cost is as much as ten times the amount borrowed.
In real terms, according to yesterday’s article in The New York Times, the Poway School District in southern California will have to pay back $1,000,000,000 (one billion dollars) for the $100,000,000 (one hundred million dollars) it borrowed in Capital Appreciation Bonds. Another school district will pay back 350 million for the 35 million dollars it borrowed. The Orange County Register newspaper reports that local Placentia-Yorba Linda school district will pay back 13 times what it borrowed: $280 million for $22 million borrowed.
Wrong! The property owners will have to pay the billion dollars! The school district merely will send the bill to the property owners who live locally, thirty years from now. Ten times future cost for today’s money is certainly ’immediate gratification,’ and that is simply a measure of emotional immaturity…or it measures socialism’s “death spiral economics,” otherwise known as GREED.
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Theofacism:
Relocate Israel?
Due: 3-31-13
Duoism: The Philosophy of Freedom
Due: 12-12-12
Qutb & Rawls:
Two Myths of
Social Justice
Due: 12-13-14
Duoist Diet: The Philosophy of Dieting
Due: 11-12-13
The Craving
(a crime novel)
Due: 1-6-16
Blue!
(sports/crime novel)
Due: 1-5-15
G2
(a stage play)
Due: 1-7-17
David's Lament
(a stage play)
Due: 1-8-18
The Second Texas Secession
(a political novel)
Due: 6-1-16
Sophrosyne:
The Philosophy
of Self-Mastery
Due: 1-9-19
Nietzsche's Herd: Voluntary Totalitarianism
Due: 1-12-21
Objectivity & Its Objections
Due: 2-20-20
Omnivore:
Consciousness &
Self-Destruction
Due: 2-22-22
Amoral
Morality
Due: 12-22-22
