Judgment!

Judgment. It’s a pretty naughty word these days. Everywhere I look, I see a message that I should “stop judging people.” Usually the act of judging is made synonymous with puritanical motivations, fundamentalist religion, or bigotry. Here are just a few articles on the matter, all of which point the finger back at the judger for his or her own failings:

http://www.positivelypresent.com/2009/05/stop-judging.html

http://tinybuddha.com/blog/3-causes-for-judging-people-how-to-accept-yourself/

http://dalepartridge.com/please-stop-judging-people-heres/

We’re told not to judge people for a host of things they wear, do or proclaim:

http://hellogiggles.com/lets-stop-judging-women-tattoos

There are also acceptance movements, to help you get over judging particular books by their relative colors. Fat Acceptance is a good example:

http://ineedfatacceptance.tumblr.com/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/fat-acceptance/

There’s tumblrs dedicated to stopping judgment:

http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/stop-judging

http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/stop-judging-people

There’s even a wikihow to help you stop:

http://www.wikihow.com/Stop-Judging-and-Criticizing-People

There seems to be a lot of social pressure out there to “stop judging,” but just what does that mean? Are such sentiments valid? Those of you who know me best know that I’m not going to just echo the sentiments of the writers above. It’s time to dig a bit deeper.

I actually consider judgment one of the fundamental ways we interact with the world and with others. Judgment is how we make pragmatic decisions, evaluate risk, and choose social relationships. Judgment isn’t always negative either. When we choose to do business or be friends with somebody, we have a made a positive judgment; we have not failed to judge.

Because it is so ingrained in the human experience, judgment is something that we are very unlikely to avoid. Doing exactly what we want and expecting nobody to have a negative reaction to it is not a realistic attitude. No matter what, people are judging you, and you are judging them. I don’t think there is anything wrong with that.

Minimum Wage: Moral, Amoral, and Practical Arguments; Ad Hominem Non-Arguments.

The minimum wage as a political issue has long been a dangerous one to oppose. Recent trends have included phrases such as “living wage” in addition to a minimum, though the sentiments are much the same as they were when the minimum wage was first enacted back in 1933 (a law the Supreme Court later found unconstitutional). Proponents of wage controls generally make moral arguments, primarily that wages should reflect some correlation to the cost of living at some level of affluence, and that failing to pay such a wage was an immoral act. Opponents, however, tend to focus on practical arguments, noting that minimum wage laws create unemployment among low-skilled and young workers. These arguments do not meet each other very well, for moral arguments require moral rebuttals, and vice versa.

I. Employer and Employee: An Amoral Relationship

Let’s break down the moral arguments for wage controls, whether you choose to define them as “living wages” or “minimum wages.”

Argument: People require a certain amount of money or income to live. As such, denying to any person the level of income necessary to live victimizes them; it is immoral. Therefore, companies that pay low wages are acting immorally.

Rebuttal: This argument makes an assumption that individuals and corporations that employ others for productive purposes have a moral obligation toward some preferable condition. This is not true, for several reasons. Whenever an employer and employee work together it is toward some end of production, either a good or a service that is sold to a third party. Their relationship is voluntary; either party may exit the relationship when they choose. The worker is not a slave of the company, so the company has no moral obligation (in a biblical sense) to see to his end needs.

Businesses pay workers based on the amount of production they bring to the end goal, not based on the needs of the worker. Indeed, it would be very difficult to even determine what the end needs of all the employees are attempt to meet them. The goal is to produce a product for consumers at a particular price point. This is a thoroughly amoral condition.

Attempting to prescribe wages based on the many consequences and costs of life is also a consequentialist endeavor. The act of paying a worker a low wage is argued as immoral not because of some universality of preference in wage, but because the consequence is not a preferable condition. This bad condition is also not universal; minimum wage may be a boon to one person, who has low living expenses, and be a very low wage to another who has high living expenses. It’s not quite future crime, but fairly close to it.

Not addressed in the argument is the option to not hire somebody at all, which is the result of wage controls. If a company refuses to hire somebody at all, are they acting immorally by denying the person a living wage by denying them a job?

Argument: If employers are unwilling to do what is right, the government must step in and force them to pay their employees a living wage.

Rebuttal: The most important moral argument against minimum wage is the means by which it is achieved, justified in the above argument by the fact that companies do not voluntarily pay their workers what they are entitled to. Minimum wage laws make the government a silent third party in any agreement between two individuals, with the threat of force (death) the consequence for acting outside of the wage control. If somebody wants to work for less than the minimum wage, they are legally prohibited from doing so (if you are wondering why anyone would want to work for less than minimum wage, remember that philosophically wants are always part of a realm of possibilities, not part of imagination; an individual with no skills might prefer to work for a low wage rather than be unemployed). In essence, enforcing minimum wage is an act of violence against the worker and employer.

II. “Right to Life”

Behind both arguments above is the concept of entitlement, which can be called a “positive right.” As a matter of philosophy and semantics, I consider all authentic rights to be negative, in other words, “freedom from” things like theft, murder, or interference in your personal affairs. Entitlements, which are sometimes called rights by proponents of such, are usually expressed as a “right to,” such as a right to healthcare, security, etc. Sometimes, as was the case when Franklin Roosevelt was promoting the “worker’s bill of rights,” these entitlements are expressed as reflexively negative, such as the “right to be free from unfair completion,” or the right to be “free from hunger,” and so on. Of course, freedom from hunger really means entitlement to food, not freedom to buy food, as freedom requires no special condition; it is the default.

This concept is important when understanding the moral claim for a “living wage.” Some argue that it is an extension of the “right to life,” in so much as you must be able to eat and find shelter to live. However, an authentic “right to life” really means a freedom from being murdered by others, and if it is extended beyond such, the argument becomes self-defeating; you must threaten murder in order to use state power to tax in order to provide entitlement.

Even ignoring the double-think involved with such a position, in order for something to be provided, someone must do the providing. Wage controls place this blame on companies, organizations whose collective purpose is a good or service, not the welfare of people everywhere, as stated above. This extension of the right is also difficult to determine, or make universal (also stated above), because of the variance of needs across geographic lines and across the myriad of individuals’ choices. Contrast this to a negative right, in which somebody’s right not to be murdered is very easily determined. You have either been murdered or not; there is no grey area.

III. Practicality

If the minimum wage were some cure for poverty, then seventy years’ worth of experimentation in that department should have yielded some claim to that effect. Instead, poverty continues as it always has, though the people who are considered poor today are substantially better off than the middle class when the law was enacted. If it were really possible to help people out by controlling wages, we could just all make 100,000 dollars a year and be perfectly happy. Even those who are proponents of such programs would not go that far, for they know that wage controls cannot have such an effect. That is why minimum wage rates have hovered at or slightly below the market equilibrium base rate for unskilled labor for the past 20 years or so.

The truth is that the minimum wage does not have a great effect at the moment, positive or negative, because inflation has made it mostly irrelevant. Even large “evil” companies like Walmart employ only a small percentage of their workforce at the minimum rate. If wages were actually raised above the market equilibrium, the effects would be mostly negative, such as they are. For those near the bottom, some might see a slight raise. Others, above that wage, would likely see no change whatsoever. The middle and upper classes would not see their wages go up, for setting a market minimum for wages does not cause all wages to go up.

The negative is that those who have low skills, or who are young (these are usually the same group) will find a tougher job market waiting for them. Employers are less likely to hire an employee when his or her productive output will not match his wage for some time while he acquires skills. They may take a chance on an investment of human capital, but they will need convincing.

IV. You Hate the Poor!

First, I can only feel emotions toward individuals, not whole classes of people. Second, if I did hate the poor, I’d be pretty self-hating, as I’ve made far below what the US government considers the poverty line for the last few years (and I’ve never collected a dime in entitlements, in case you are wondering, though I would have if it were possible, given how much I still pay in taxes as a self-employed person). I don’t hate anyone, which is why I am an advocate for freedom. Yet this is one of the arguments given against proponents of freedom, the ad-hominem that we “hate the poor.”

Minimum wage is actually very bad for the poor and the young, who are usually the same category. It makes entry into the job market harder, because when you set a minimum wage, you also set a minimum of production. Workers who do not meet that minimum of production, usually because they lack skills, have a harder time finding work. This is the way in which price controls on labor create unemployment.

A worker can gain skills two ways: through education, or through work experience. The latter must be paid for in advance, or else financed as debt, making the worker start behind when he enters the workforce. Of course, if he can gain training and experience through work itself, he can increase his human capital while making money. Once he has skills, he can demand higher wages from his employer, of find another who will pay him according to his value. The minimum wage, therefore, would only serve him for a limited time while he increases his human capital.

Minimum wage laws are also of note because, unlike things like direct entitlements, they act violently against both the poor person and the rich person, buy preventing the poor person from working for a wage he might find agreeable, at least for a time.

V. Just Like Peter Schiff, You Think the Intellectually Disabled are Worthless

I’m referencing, of course, a horribly dishonest Daily Show feature of an interview of Peter Schiff (an economist and CEO, as well as radio host and advocate for freedom), in which a four hour interview is reduced to a ninety second heavily edited interchange that makes Peter sound like he said “mentally retarded” people are worth two dollars an hour. I could explore the moral problems of the presentation, such as the fact that before that answer Peter Schiff pondered how anyone could have such little value, or how the daily show keeps on interns that are unpaid, but since it is from a comedy show and subject to its own farce I shall make just a single point.

Of the two people sitting in that room, only Peter Schiff sees any value with individuals who have intellectual disabilities. If a company must hire a person with Down syndrome, with its cognitive impairment component present, at some sort of “living wage,” then that person will essentially become unemployable, since he or she may not have the productive capacities to produce that equivalent wage. Schiff, on the other hand, sees them as valuable to the degree that they can produce, even if it is limited by their disability. A free market means that every individual, whether disabled mentally or physically, has the capacity to contribute to society.

With a living wage, many disabled people may become effectively worthless to society, which they aren’t. Allowing disabled individuals to work is good for society, even if production is not great, because it frees up other human capital and also provides a meaningful service to consumers. It is good for the individuals who are hired, who may have the opportunity to develop skills, get paid and have financial goals of their own, and make social connections when they would otherwise be marginalized in society because of their disability. The disabled don’t have to be a charity case; they can contribute meaningfully to society, if only they are permitted.

VI. Walmart as Welfare Queen

I’d like to address another point that is often thrown around by advocates of things like “living wages,” and that is the notion that companies who hire unskilled labor for relatively low wages are somehow gaming the system because their employees consume entitlements. If you hunt you can probably find the practical data in support or rejection of the notion, but as a principled argument, you cannot pin upon McDonalds or Walmart the cost of entitlement spending.

Even if they benefit somehow from programs such as food stamps, companies that hire low-skill workers did not create the law, or carry it out using violence. The fact remains that employees are paid based on their ability to produce; external factors are not relevant. If there were no entitlements, would workers be able to demand more? The answer is no, because their pay is determined by how they contribute to earnings.

When making the argument for a living wage, the question must be also be begged: why should cost of charity (for that is what paying a worker more than he produces really is) be placed wholly on those who choose to employ others in productive activities? We as individuals have the capacity to help the poor directly, no violent state intervention necessary. If violence is somehow justified (for those of you willing to sacrifice the means of violence to the end of egalitarianism), why should it be upon the people who are employers, and not everyone? We could just as easily (perhaps more so) accomplish the same thing using a negative income tax, which does not cast into the role of robber-baron those who wish to employ others.

VII. Conclusion

I hope my points have made you think, however you may value the minimum wage and its role in society. One thing to consider when thinking about the raising of the minimum wage is how much it has been raised in the past, and how much inflation has lowered it over the years, and how much economic efficiency has in turn prevented the devaluing of labor. In 1963 the minimum wage was $1.25, but was payable in $25 worth of today’s dollars in silver (I will provide a useful link to some organized data on the subject at the bottom). It may seem like we are being quite stingy with today’s money, but in the past fifty years the economy has become exponentially more efficient, and that $25 worth of silver will by more goods and services of a higher quality than existed in the past. The free market, with its ability to produce more and more for less and less, has been the saving grace of the poor, not the government regulators, who only have the ability enact violence, even between two people who have already agreed on a price for labor.

External links:

Don't Bother Raising the Minimum Wage

(I'm not linking to the Daily Show, or the Huffington Post. They don't deserve the traffic.)

Inequality in America

I've seen the above video linked quite a bit on social networks during the recent past, and while I don't usually stop to pick up every pebble in the road, I felt a little compulsion to do so with this bit of misinformation today. I don't have time to debunk the many, many problems in this video, so I'll just hit the big points. The first and most important is the sources, which are not sources of actual data, and he mixes them inappropriately, producing a graphic that is factually inaccurate. He also mixes the terms "money," "wealth," and "income" as if they are interchangeable terms and concepts, which they are most definitely not. He also talks about wealth or income "distribution," but none of these things are distributed; they are earned by producing goods and services. He doesn't really talk about just what "equality" is, or why it is important, or to what degree; nor does he make any significant moral argument for it as preferable condition. He just assumes his audience believes it is a preferable condition and speaks as if the point had already been established, or else is so obvious as to deny the time to argue for it. He doesn't address how any one person becomes "wealthy" (again, a problematic term because he confuses the meaning with other terms like money), but infers that somehow the rich are rich at the expense of the poor, but this is just untrue. The vast, overwhelming majority of the rich are rich because others have voluntarily given them their money in exchange for something they found useful or valuable. 

Although the video prescribes no solution to circumstances of "inequality" that he dislikes, any actual "solutions" would involve violence, and ugly means must be taken into account when considering any circumstance, whether they are part of a moral condition or amoral condition. 

If you are interested in a more thorough video, please take the time to watch at least the first half (the second half is all debate) of 5th part of Rose and Milton Friedman's Free to Choose, "Created Equal." It's telling of our society that the video from the top has 15 million views, and a sound video making actual moral arguments and using real economics has but 15 thousand. 

Prometheus weeps. 

Future Crime: The Moral Difficulties of Indeterminate Consequentialism

http://youtu.be/wEkIJb12GVA

Above is a video I made as a companion to this piece for those who prefer speaking and video to reading. The content covers the same rough areas but is spoken in different words. The essay begins below.

            “Future crime” is not a term of my own making; it’s one I lifted from the Spielberg movie “Minority Report,” which was based on a Phillip Dick story of the same name. In it, there are three mutants who are able to see the future, specifically murders, which are most disturbing to them. The police react to these visions by arresting those responsible before they commit the act, thereby creating a time paradox. The individuals responsible are not murders, as they have failed to commit the acts the mutant “precogs” have envisioned for them, but are kept interred because of the understanding that without intervention they would have committed those acts. The nature of free will is brought into question as the policeman in charge of the program sees himself committing a murder in the future.

            Many people might view the film and find it an interesting hypothetical, but think no further on it. The reality is that many of our laws, regulations, and statutes rely on the concept of future crime for legitimacy of their workings. Everything from seat-belt laws to safety regulations to drunk driving laws require making illegal conditions which have not yet generated any consequences. The last of those, a particularly politically charged law area- one might even say politically suicidal to oppose at this point in time- I will attempt to dismantle at the end of this article.

            Whether such laws are effective can be taken into consideration when passing them, but first I always consider first the moral conditions a law creates or relies upon in order to be legitimate in the eyes of voters or law-makers.

I. Consequentialism

            Consequentialism, as a broad ethical theory category, concerns itself with categorizing action into moral or immoral areas based on the consequences of the act. Many philosophers, including Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill attempted to create systems of rational morality based on consequence, notably the “hedonistic calculus.” I personally do not consider consequentialism a good basis for any rational system of ethics, preferring instead to work within the confines of action-local moral reasoning or deontological systems, but the fact that actions have consequences is important to legal processes beyond the simpler workings of morality.

            Extremely thorough discussion of this might require its own article, but I will attempt to summarize. I dislike consequentialism for two reasons. First, it ascribes moral status to actions that are accidental or otherwise amoral, that is, would not be considered moral in another circumstance that produced different results. This was Immanuel Kant’s general objection to consequential moral reasoning, that it eliminated the concept of will, thereby making all investigations into moral action mostly irrelevant. The second reason is that it either qualifies moral or immoral status of an action after the fact (when consequences occur) or it asks the actor in a situation to predict the future, with the possibility of miscalculating the results and still acting immorally. This makes it difficult or impossible for a moral actor to determine the morality of his actions prior to acting them out, the point of moral systems being to inform decisions about actions prior to their occurrences.

            In minority report, the problems of the second reason above are mostly taken care of, at least in the concept of murder. The future consequence is certain, and so the police can act in accordance with it, saving lives all the way. We, however, are not precogs; any attempt to predict the future is a best guess, and so we may be wrong or right. This does not mean we should never try to predict the outcome of our actions, quite the opposite. We frequently and necessarily use predictive means to infer outcomes, usually quite well. We know that when we put our foot on the gas the car will go. We guess that when we buy stock in a company it will not go out of business. Our lives are based around predictions.

II. Consequences and Responsibility

            Even if we operate according to action-local principles and ignore consequentialism as a system of ethics, consequences are still very important. In our legal system (I live in the USA), and indeed in the common law system in England for the last few centuries, people are able to seek compensation for damages, that is, consequences of the actions of others. When an electrician fails to install wires properly, regardless of the condition that might have caused him to do so, he may be asked to pay for the expense of having it done correctly, or face penalties when his condition causes the house to burn down. A man may be driving the speed limit, but fail to see a pedestrian in a residential area, and hit and injure him. He did not commit crime per se, but may have to pay restitution for negligence, his failure to pay attention.

            Consequences in these cases, and many others, are subject to civil and common law, which may operate using written law or just based on sound principles. We may require the police to enforce the legal decisions of court, but we do not need a universal law to deal with particulars. This is the concept of extra-moral responsibility, the idea that our actions have consequences that we ourselves own, both positive and negative, regardless of any consideration of morality.

            To ascribe morality to such mechanisms, however, is not so easy. The man who invests his own money poorly may be pitiable, but not evil. A man who invests his family’s money poorly we may find less mercy for, once we see his destitute wife and children on the streets. Do we make a law to prevent men from investing their money unwisely, thereby preventing the negative consequence? What about the man who makes risky investments that pay off? The law may then impose a less-good outcome on him and his family. There are definite problems to creating universal prohibitions on situation-dependent outcomes.

III. Future Crime as a Category of Law

            Consequentialism has been used greatly in the history of my country to outlaw a host of objects and behaviors as well as force people into other sets of behaviors, listing possible outcomes as the justification for the use of force in making such things illegal. Just a few of these are: Drug Prohibition (and alcohol prohibition in the 20s), gun control, motorcycle helmet laws, seat-belt laws, many building codes, restrictions on purchasing pseudoephedrine, most laws regarding the sale and use of alcohol and tobacco, lots of anti-piracy laws (such as the DMCA), the Patient Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), Social Security, Medicare, and most licensing laws.

            If were to show how each of these represents future crime it would be a very long article indeed. As a litmus test, you can ask whether the law seeks as justification for its existence to prevent some condition or action that might exist in the future, or is part of prohibiting some condition which is believed to lead to undesired consequences. Laws restricting pseudoephedrine are a great example. The vast, overwhelming majority of people who purchase pseudoephedrine do not do so desiring to produce methamphetamine with it (meth itself represents future crime), and so the law supposes to stop people from making a “bad” substance in the future by restricting all purchasing of it in the present. In this case, the drug itself is not bad at all, its abuse is non-existent as it is, and the negative conditions feared as well as the benefits are entirely hypothetical.

            The last point, the negative conditions and benefits being hypothetical, requires some expansion. As with the case of most future crime laws, the benefits exist only in the negative of some other condition. Supposedly there is less methamphetamine available because of restrictions on pseudoephedrine, but it is unprovable whether this is a positive. If less meth is available, so what? We do not have a parallel universe to compare the two availabilities of meth and determine that the lack thereof produces a better result (except for those that consider meth itself to be an evil- more on that later). Those of us who oppose the concept of this future crime are left trying to do what is logically impossible- disprove a negative. We can’t see the future, which makes future crime laws seem effective; you lock someone up for something, and he is unable to perform evil, but there is no way to know whether he would have done the evil action at all in the absence of intervention. He is punished for something he has not done.

IV. Morality and Trade-offs

            I usually make an argument that moral conditions are part of a universal law that is centered on actions, or means, not their consequences, or ends, with the addendum that people are still responsible for the results of their actions, whether achieved through moral or immoral behavior and yielding good or bad results. However, it is important to acknowledge that not all people share my vision of a rational action-local morality. If they did, the government buildings and police stations would stand empty, a testament to the moral difficulties of initiating force against others. In acknowledging such a view, I must also explain, and perhaps challenge it.

            Those who believe in the capacity of law to create good conditions (as opposed to law addressing bad conditions, such laws against theft or murder) fit into two categories: the constrained and the unconstrained, to lift terms once again from Thomas Sowell. The constrained viewpoint believes laws that seek to restrict future ills are valid and worthwhile, but only as part of a prudent trade-off. If the cost of enforcing a particular law, either in monetary terms or social ones, is higher than what it prevents, the law should be discarded. In this way the focus is on particulars, and reform happens a piece at a time.

            The unconstrained viewpoint views the ends as the center of judgment; process costs are not taken into account, for in order for the end to justify the means, the end must be achieved. Therefore the cost is always worth the result, for the result is the only moral condition and the only way to value any action. What shall I say to those with the unconstrained vision? I can either attack their moral system or not. No amount of cost-benefit analysis will persuade them, and our principles are at deep odds. For those with a constrained vision, the best I (or we, if you too consider yourself a liberty-minded individual) can do is to convince them of the process costs involved in future crime.

V. Application: DUIs and Other Hazardous Conditions

            Applying the points I have made in explaining future crime could be a book in itself (and perhaps it will be, once I have tired of fiction), but I will limit myself to one truly suicidal argument: drunk driving. The villainy of drunk driving has risen to prominence in the public eye over the last few decades, and the trend has continued as states continue to lower the legal blood-alcohol limits, set up unconstitutional drunk driving checkpoints and even detain bar patrons before they even drive (talk about future crime!). Organizations such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) continue to push for tougher laws, creating political consequences for those who do not vote according to their maxims. Before I go further, let me say that I do not approve of driving while intoxicated (with alcohol or any other substance), nor is my aim with criticizing the nature of the law to fill the streets with drunken lunatics; my sole purpose is to show how DUI (driving under the influence) laws constitute future crime, punishing individuals for crimes they have yet to commit. Driving while intoxicated is a bad idea, is still illegal no matter what I say, and I would not expect any jury in the country to nullify the law based on my arguments.

Before we begin, let us examine the nature of crime. Crime (or immoral action) generally consists of an action (as opposed to inaction, though that division has been tackled by greater philosophers than myself, and the debate marches on). It may have conditions that allow it to happen or to exist, but those conditions are not moral or immoral in themselves. A person can wear a ski mask and carry a crowbar, and these things are not crimes, but conditions that might allow him to commit an actual crime, breaking and entering or theft. If he is arrested for carrying a crowbar, it is future crime, as he has yet to break into anyone’s home.

In the same way, driving while intoxicated is a condition, not the locus of moral action itself. Though there are few alternative scenarios we could imagine for a masked man carrying a crowbar (perhaps he has to break a crate in his backyard for firewood, and it is cold outside), there are very few indeed we could think of as allowable for a drunk driver. Perhaps he is on his own land, perhaps an empty field, and therefore a danger to nobody (Drunk driving has also been studied on closed courses, so the condition known as drunk driving cannot be called universally immoral). Regardless of whether the condition can be justified in some way, the fact remains that it is just that: a condition, and not the locus of moral action.

The actual locus of moral action occurs when the driver, regardless of conditions affecting him, causes harm to another through his own negligence. The real crime is destruction of property, or manslaughter (if you hit someone), or reckless driving. The individual is responsible for their actions whether they have been drinking, smoking cannabis, or were talking on the cell phone. The conditions (the cause of the negligence) merely help explain actions, not excuse them. When you arrest someone, or cite them (in the case of cell-phone driving laws), you are punishing them for an immoral action which has not yet occurred.

Even as a practical matter, DUI laws are mostly unnecessary, with the actions that drunk drivers initiate being predominantly illegal themselves. If they crash their car into some else’s they should have to pay damages (and they would, whether intoxicated or not). If they hurt someone, they should be subject to civil and criminal penalties (indeed they are, even if not intoxicated). Adding another layer of punishment on top of such does not change the consequences of the actions, but instead punishes the same actions in two different ways.

DUI laws also have severe process costs. They cost a great deal of money to enforce, and have also allowed erosion of liberty through things like DUI stings and drunk driving checkpoints (which are equivalent to asking someone for their “papers,” and actually catch more people for suspended licenses and registration errors than drunk drivers). It also imposes costs on individuals who may not have committed any actual crime, costing them time, money, reputation, and employment because they happened to be at an arbitrary blood alcohol level.  These are people who become part of the criminal system without having actually impact anyone else as of yet. They are future criminals.

Most importantly, we cannot logically ascribe any positive effects to the law. We have no way of knowing whether arresting someone for drunk driving prevented that person from hurting someone else’s body or property.  The benefit is hypothetical and a negative, which means it cannot be disproven. We simply have no idea what the outcomes of the uninterrupted progression of events would have been, positive or negative. Advocates of the law cannot meet the burden of proof of benefit, much less morality.

We can apply the same kind of reasoning to other things which might be part of a hazardous condition, including talking on the phone, driving on bald tires or bad brakes, driving in the snow or rain, being high while driving or riding a bike, driving in high heels, getting on the road as a student driver, etc. Conditions don’t matter, actions do.

VI. Conclusion

            Thank you for reading this short exploration of what I like to call “future crime,” the act of punishing individuals for actions they have yet to commit. I hope you will think deeply about proposed legislation that justifies itself with the prevention of negative conditions or tasks itself with the prevention of a future consequences. If you believe in trade-offs, consider all the process costs involved in prohibiting a condition or substance, including the cost to society and the individuals themselves. If your moral sense is like mine, do your best to oppose the expansion of the state through future crime. After all, if a policeman arrests me for something I will do in the future, how will I them prove him wrong?

A Gross Oversimplification of Monetary Theory Through Hypothetical Monetary Systems

Monetary theory: everyone’s favorite dinner topic? Probably not. Monetary theory can seem complicated to a non-economist, and even when it is understood by parties over dinner, it is likely to fall into the two most forbidden categories of conversation: religion and politics. I realize writing this that I am probably a terrible dinner party guest, an incorrigible lunch time acquaintance, and a downright nuisance at family functions, because religion and politics is the only thing I really prefer to talk about. Well, from my perspective it’s philosophy and truth, and I consider politics merely the game of sociopaths and the morally contemptible, but we have not the time for such digressions; it’s time to jump into some monetary theory.

The truth is most people would benefit greatly from a deeper understanding of what money is, how it works, who controls it, and what outcomes monetary policy has on their daily lives. They might be more willing to change the way they spend and invest, how they feel about political spending, or more willing to see politicians as the slimy, corrupt, evil psychopathic busybodies most of them are. I’m going to do my best to shy away from often-used and more often misunderstood concepts like “inflation,” “deflation,” and “gold standard.” and instead talk about the kind of things that happen, or may happen, under different sorts of money systems.

What is money?

http://youtu.be/EtF_zbI5j7M

Above is a very straightforward video explaining what money is, and also giving a few criticism of the current American model. I’ll use a much simpler definition to speed things along, but if you have the time, it’s worth the watch, as well as Shane’s Bogosity series.

Money, quite simply, is anything that is used as an intermediary of exchange instead of direct barter. It is the middleman between production of one good or service, and consumption of another. It allows finer and more graduated division of labor, which increases efficiency across an entire economy. Without money, you would have to trade your services directly for other services, limiting your ability to provide services only to those who had a service you desired, and vice versa. If you were a basket maker, you could only get your plumbing fixed by a plumber who wanted baskets, or you would have to invest time and energy learning the skill yourself. With a system of currency, you can sell your baskets to whoever wants them in exchange for money, then use that money on whatever you need, either that day or later on.

This allows a lot more division of labor, especially as markets become broader. You can specialize in something very niche, like writing gay erotica or making pants out of hemp, and not worry about whether or not the owner of the corner store wants to trade you milk and bread for your novels or pants.

Contrary to common belief, money is not the root of all evil. It’s just a medium of exchange. It could be anything, as long as it is commonly accepted in trade, though different things can make better or worse money. Currency can be a commodity with its own value alternative value (like gold), a series of hashes, like a bitcoin, or be printed on paper. It’s nothing magical, and it’s nothing desirable for itself. It’s not wealth; wealth is things, not money. Money is only useful in helping you turn your specialized production into the many diverse goods and services (wealth) that you need and use.

So now, let’s take some time and run through a few different types of monetary systems, and see what we can expect from an economy using them. In the examples that follow we will take a few things for granted:

Divisibility- How divisible the money is, meaning how finely we can chop up the individual units and still find the medium useful, is important when currency becomes very valuable. With certain modern commodities, such as gold, lack of divisibility can make the currency unusable by those who are conducting transactions below the divisibility threshold (the point at which the currency can no long be divided). We will assume either infinite or near infinite divisibility of the money.

Counterfeiting- We will assume that counterfeiting is not present in sufficient enough quantity to make an impact.

Banking systems- We will assume a free banking system, capable of making high-risk and low-risk loans, using either full or partial reserve according to market demands.

Condition 1: Static Money Supply

In a static money supply, the total quantity of money, whether divisible or not, is fixed. This means that no new money can enter the marketplace, and zero growth of the money supply occurs relative to all other factors. With this condition, we can expect the following things:

Money increases in value relative to goods and services- this is because the amount of “stuff” available grows over time, the amount of producers providing services grows over time (typically), and the demand for goods and services typically increases over time. There is less money per person, or per unit of demand, and so money is more valuable relative to everything else.

Prices generally fall- The inverse to the above, the prices of goods and services fall over time due to increased and additive production of goods (the quantity of cars or working TVs, for example), as well as because economies over time become more efficient at producing goods and services. Capital improvements such as mechanization cause the production per capita to increase and thus further drive down prices.

Interest rates vary- Interest rates are variable between a negative amount (for full reserve banking, which is viable in a static currency situation) and a high amount depending on risk. Since money increases in value over time, it may be worth it to a person to pay a bank to keep their money secure (a negative interest rate) in a full reserve bank, secure that its buying power will be stable even if they end with less money than they put in.  They may accept very low interest rates for partial reserve systems, or take risks for higher interest rates in capital investments and bank-proctored loans.

Banking- Banks generally serve consumer demands, since people can avoid the banking system entirely with no loss of value in their money.

Is this kind of money possible?- Yes. It could technically be possible in a fiat system, though highly unlikely given political machinations, and is the end state of bitcoin’s (a type of electronic crypto-currency) “soft cap.”

Condition 2: Precious Metal Money.

There are several advantages to the use of precious metals such as gold and silver as money. First, the money has value besides being currency, meaning its value is more secure than fiat currency. If the value of the money as currency falls below its industrial usefulness, the money will be melted down and used, thus stopping the devaluation. Second, the cost of extracting the metal from the earth will keep a check on the amount of money introduced into the economy. If it costs more to mine gold than what you can get out of it in the market, it won’t be mined. With this condition, we can expect the following things:

The value of money fluctuates, but is stable over the long term- Due to the supply checks listed above, the value of money relative to other things will rise and fall according to the supply, but in the long term, say over several years, the value of money will be consistent and stable, if not increasing slightly over time.

Prices fluctuate, but remain stable over the long term- The inverse of the above, prices will generally stay stable. Producers of currency (miners, in this case), are motivated to create more money when there is high demand for it from growing consumer bases, or the price of goods falls due to efficiency, giving the money new buying power.

Interest rates- Interest rates are generally low to high; generally higher than a static system. There may be some full reserve systems due to the easy theft of money metal, but because prices are stable, consumers may be just as inclined to put their money into high-reserve or low risk investments over the short term. Investments require even payout or slightly more to be worthwhile, causing interest rates to be slightly higher than in the static system, but still variable according to risk.

Banking- Banking is a more attractive option under a metal standard, partially because of security concerns, but mainly for the divisibility factor. Since physical gold cannot be divided enough to be used on small-cost goods such as food or drink (think about trying to buy a soda with 1/1000 of an ounce of gold), a mixed system would likely emerge, consisting of some physical gold with a majority of currency being issued as bank-backed notes. The banking system would, therefore, be more present than in a static system.

Is this kind of money possible? Yes. This was the preferred standard for economic trade for thousands of years. Unfortunately, once the government took over the money trade during the 20^th century, making it illegal for banks to print gold notes, the system’s demise through mismanagement was inevitable.

Condition 3: Monetarist System.

In this proposed system advocated by the great economist Milton Friedman as an alternative to the actions of the Federal Reserve, the growth of money would be regulated centrally, and be at a predictable rate each year, say 3%. This system presupposes either a fiat currency, or total control over a commodity system. The point is to produce a high degree of market confidence in the predictability of the money supply, solving the fluctuation problems associated with a metal standard, and having the additional advantage of providing alternate utility to the economy the resources that would be invested in digging metal out of the earth. Under this condition we can expect the following things:

The value of money is highly stable relative to other things- ideally the rate of growth would be pegged in such a way to the money supply at an equilibrium with growing demand, thus making the value of money stable even over long periods. However, even if the rate is off, and the value of money increases or decreases, it will be by a fixed, predictable amount.

Prices remain very stable over the short and long term- Since the money supply is growing, and not fluctuating, it will off-set the lowering of prices due to increased efficiency and supply, making items like candy bars cost the same years apart. Some argue this has “consumer confidence” benefits, allowing people to predict revenue streams better.

Interest rates are moderate to high- Because the money supply grows over time, and the price of goods remains stable, investors must receive a better than even return on their money. Usually, the lowest interest rates, for the safest investments, will be slightly more than the pegged rate of monetary growth.

Banking- Banking will seem very attractive to savers and investors under the monetarist system. Since the value of money stays the same or goes down over time, full reserve systems will be rare or non-existent. Partial reserve systems with a high reserve rate will seem most attractive for short-term savings. Savers are motivated to “put their money to work” with investments to maintain or grow its value over time.

Is this type of system possible? Yes, although it is unlikely given that it necessitates a central authority to plan monetary growth and central authorities generally have a terrible track record when it comes to being trusted not to print money. Depending on who you talk to, monetarism was tried under the Reagan administration, but this mostly false. Interest rates were raised and the inflation of the 70s stopped, but a full monetarist system has never been implemented, nor is it likely to be.

Condition 4: Fiat Money

Fiat money is money, usually printed upon paper or made of cheap metal coins, that is declared to have value by a central authority. The current US dollar, and most other world currencies, fit into this category. The usability of Fiat currency can only be maintained by force. The central authority makes it illegal to use competing currencies, and declares that anyone doing a business transaction must accept their fiat money in lieu of other things. If you look at a US dollar, it will say, “This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private.” Fiat money is generally the least appealing to the average consumer, but is the world standard because it is the most attractive to those in power. There is no need to mine gold, or have legitimate rates of taxation when you can print up the money you need and force the population to give you goods and services for it. The government also has an advantage in not suffering the effects of inflation; since they are the first ones to spend the money, it has the value of the money before the new currency enters circulation. Even a totally devalued fiat currency is still attractive to use by the population, since people must accept cheap money instead of dear money. The US uses a special variation of fiat currency that we will get into next. Here is what you can expect from Fiat Money:

Decreasing value of money- Because more money exists every year (in the vast majority of fiat systems), the value of that money decreases relative to other things. This can be by a little or a lot, depending on how much money the government is printing to finance things.

Increasing prices- The inverse of the above, prices generally increase, even as the economy gets more efficient over time. This can upset or confuse consumers, who cannot reasonably plan for future expenses, or who think revenue streams will always increase when they actually may be losing money to inflation.

High interest rates- Because inflation is high, bonds, loans, and other investments must promise high rates of return to make up for value lost to inflation. High risk endeavors become more promising as a means of recovering lost value.

Banking- Full reserve banking will be non-existent, since all savers will require a rate of return on their money just to match inflation. Partial reserve systems will tend toward more risk and lower reserve rates in order to meet the demands of savers for their returns. Bank failures can happens swiftly and catastrophically as small reserves can be quickly depleted by a sudden need for liquidity.

Is this kind of money possible? Possible, yes. Sustainable, no. Eventually the money printing process will so deface the value of the currency that it must be revalued, or new currency introduced that is more valuable, and begin the cycle again. This is the current world standard due to the huge advantages it gives governments in the political process, but can only be maintained using violence.

Condition 5: Debt Money

This is the monetary system that is currently in use by the United States, and offers some significant value to the government over other types of fiat. Under most fiat systems, the government prints new money, then spends it on goods and services, increasing the money supply (I’ll leave dismantling the Keynesian argument of the benefits of this for another article). Under the debt system, all new money enters the economy as loans from the central bank (the Federal Reserve in the United States), which is owned by the government and has the power to print money. The government gets a great deal of its money, the money it would like to spend but taxpayers are unwilling to pay for directly, by issuing bonds. The vast majority of these are purchased by the central bank using newly created money. Money has been moved from one hand to the other, obscuring the inflation spending the government relies on to maintain its size. In this way, it is little different from a standard fiat system. The extra advantage (from the government’s perspective) comes from the fact that the central bank can also make artificially cheap loans to the banks and private parts of the economy. These entities also benefit from the lack of inflation that comes with being a first spender, and entices them to support the continuance of the debt system. Many of these loans actually have a negative real interest rate, meaning the value of money has gone down enough by the time they pay it back that they have made money just by taking out the loan. Eventually, the system can be expanded to include voters, who receive cheap home and auto debt, among other things. Here is what to expect, and some of the current conditions of the US economy:

Decreasing value of money- The value of money continues to go down as more debt is issued, but the value decreases fastest for the consumer, and the slowest for the government and banks, which are the first spenders of the new money.

Increasing prices- Prices generally increase, sometimes enough to entice consumers to purchase things with debt in anticipation of increased value. This was especially true of the housing boom of the 2000s. Prices increase slowest for the government and the banks, since they are first spenders.

Low interest rates- This is very beneficial for banks, who can acquire loans from the central bank for a very low price and invest the money accordingly. It is good for the government, since it has to spend little of tax revenue and new debt to service the interest on old debt. It may be good for people who acquire a home through debt, since debt will make a smaller amount of the cost of the home than it otherwise would if inflation were taken into account. It is, however, very bad for those who wish to save and invest. Since banks can acquire funds from the central bank very cheaply (often at far below inflationary rates), they have little incentive to offer savers the high interest rates that are necessary for them to maintain the value of their money. At the same time, more people are forced into banking to minimize their loss due to inflation, even willing to put up with rates far below inflation. Risky investments are very attractive as a means of maintaining the value of money.

Banking- Full reserve banking is non-existent. Partial reserve banking is the norm, with less and less held by the bank in reserve, since the money necessary to pay depositors can be acquired cheaply from the Federal Reserve. Almost all individuals must use banking systems or lose even more value on their money.

Is this kind of money possible? Yes, and the United States has been using it for decades. Lots of people get concerned about the national debt, but the number really just represents the amount of money that has been printed to finance the government. This amount of money will never be repaid. This, of course, amounts to a tax, since subjects lose the value of money they already have. The sustainability of the system is uncertain at best, but at some point the value of the currency will become so defaced that it will have to be re-valued to some degree.

Conclusion

There you have it! Over three thousand words of monetary theory, as clear as I can explain it. What system do I recommend? Free currency, of course! This allows the collective marketplace to make all relevant decisions at the point of sale. Metal, bitcoin, or other currencies all have their relative advantages, and the marketplace can decide how to use them. Bitcoin is cheap and transportable for online transactions, gold and gold certificate for in-person transactions. If one type of currency becomes unfavorable, there are many competitors to step in and be used instead, leading to true monetary stability, and above all, economic freedom.

Thank you so much for reading!

A Little Bit on Anecdotes

I came across a plea today on Facebook, asking for people to send to a particular individual stories about the negative impact of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), colloquially called “Obamacare,” for the president who signed it into law.  I pointed out that anecdotes are not good evidence, and I had objections to their use as such, since I feel it is emotionally manipulative and therefore not totally truthful.  I was met by a lot of opinions counter to my own. The arguments were fairly varied, there were some ad hominem attacks, but most seemed to take my use of the word “anecdote” as some sort of insult, so I thought I’d write a short piece explaining anecdotal evidence, appeals to emotion, and the part I often see them play in politics.  Here is the post:

https://www.facebook.com/Corie03/posts/4789775441622

I saw it because it was shared by Julie Borowski, who does some great videos on libertarian issues on youtube, check her out:

https://www.facebook.com/JulieBorowski

http://www.youtube.com/TokenLibertarianGirl

I. Anecdotal Evidence.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anecdotal_evidence

Anecdotal evidence isn’t really evidence, at least in the clinical or scientific sense.  It is a story, or an example, usually involving a real person or a particular case. Moreover, it is often used in the place of evidence, supporting or intending to lead to a particular conclusion. Facts only become evidence in the context of a conclusion, like saying “smokers die of heart disease at a higher rate than non-smokers” supporting “People should not smoke.”  Telling a story about a particular negative impact of the ACA, like saying, “This is Dan and Rachel. Obamacare cost them $10,000,” is an anecdote; a story.  It might make you feel bad, but it doesn’t represent the negative impact of the ACA for anyone beyond them. I could tell you a story about my father being killed by a truck. Would you be persuaded to ban trucks?  It’s an anecdote, and isn’t sufficient for the support of most arguments.

II.  Confirmation Bias.

            Anecdotal evidence tends to contain elements of confirmation bias, which is a logical fallacy where one ignores evidence that is contrary to one’s argument or conclusion. The woman in the link was essentially asking for such.  She did not ask for positive stories about the ACA, she asked for specifically negative ones. If the stories were truly evidence, they would be neutral to the collector, who would then form a conclusion from it, not the other way around.

III.  Data and Presentation.

            Somebody asked, “What is the amount of stories of people being affected [that would] drive us over the hump of "anecdotal"? 10,000 stories?” (brackets added by the author of this article). The short answer is that stories cannot be evidence until they are put in context of an argument, and then, who would read them? When dealing with statistics it is the commonalities that matter and must be presented; the facts of the story are superfluous beyond the commonality they have with one another.  Here is a fact:

Under Obamacare, 30-year-old men face average premium hikes of 260%

Source: http://americanactionforum.org/research/premium-increases-for-young-invincibles-under-the-aca-and-the-impending

This is data that would be common to all the people affected, including myself.  They may live in New York or Florida, be gay or straight, be black of white.  What matters about the data is the commonality that allows us to put it in context.  If I said, “I’m seeing a 260% increase in my health insurance premiums,” you could not consider it evidence that the AVERAGE 30 year-old man would see a jump in his premiums.  Only data collection can support that.

II.  Emotional Manipulation.

            Why do we tell so many stories?  Why are there so many human interest pieces on the news?  In short, they are effective, or the news providers wouldn’t use them. Politicians would abandon all appeals to emotion if voters did not respond to them well. That’s really what anecdotes are; They aren’t evidence.

            Is emotional manipulation truth?  The story might be true, on some level, but is the decision that is a reaction to that story based on truth.  Essentially it is not, or it would be made with reason and evidence instead of just emotion. The story does not create an honest relationship between the speaker and the listener. In fact, the speaker has made an assumption on some level that the listener will not respond to evidence alone.  At this point the rationalization for engaging in emotional manipulation is the ends: convincing someone of the correct position for the wrong reasons. 

IV.  Moral Arguments.

Whether or not the end justifies the means has been a topic in morality and ethics discussions since the dawn of time.  Those of you who know me know my opinion on it: action is always the locus of discretion in morality.  When you make an ends-justifies-means argument, or imply it through your actions, you are representing an entire moral system that moves the locus of discretion away from the actions themselves to the consequences (or intent, if you are a Kantian).

What is interesting about the above the appeal for stories is that they desire to show the negative impact (the consequences of means) of the implementation of the ACA when the originators consider such consequences as being justified by their perceived ends. They are essentially making a moral argument that the end does not justify the means while simultaneously utilizing actions that support the opposite conclusion. The moral argument is self-contradictory if you yourself are unwilling to apply it.

A true moral argument against the ACA is actually quite easy to make, especially if you use libertarian morals:

Killing people is wrong.

If you don’t get health insurance, the government will tax/fine you (for the purposes of this argument those actions are interchangeable).

If you don’t pay the fine, the government will eventually arrest you.

If you feel the arrest is unjust, and refuse to be imprisoned, you will be killed.

The ACA is immoral/evil.

V. A Fight With Mike Tyson.

            The left has been doing the emotional manipulation game a very long time. The image of the right as being heartless automatons is mostly a product of how good the left is at evoking emotion in people. Emotional appeal is their world, and you better be prepared if you want to step into the ring with them, because it will be like jumping into a fight with Mike Tyson in his prime. If you were wanting to knock them out, you would have a very hard time of it, especially in the health care debate.

This is ultimately the problem with exchanging stories: there is no end to them, and the listener is left to decide the merits of them on a one-to-one basis, rather than as a whole field of evidence. You can tell a very touching story about the financial hardships brought on by the ACA on a particular family, but the other side can merely tell their own story about someone who died because they didn't have health insurance (I used Chuck Schuldiner of Death as an example).  If you weigh these two stories on their own, and believe that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or that greater needs outweigh lesser ones, than even logically you will lose the argument.

The real argument attempting to be made is that the amount of pain inflicted by the law is greater than that it prevents. One can only make this argument beyond anecdotes, in the world of real, large-scale evidence.  You could certainly add anecdotes to real evidence, but what does that accomplish?  Either someone is persuaded by reason or they aren’t; I don’t believe you can add reason and emotion together and reach some threshold that tips the scales in your favor.

VI.  Summation

Define your position. Make real arguments with meaningful evidence and avoid biasing it. Follow through with consistent moral ideology. Make pragmatic and trade-off arguments with evidence, not appeals to emotion. Don’t resort to tactics that are intellectually and morally inferior to reason. 

The Mike Tyson reference is one I see used a lot by Stephan Molyneux, a brilliant libertarian philosopher, and it is usually quite a good analogy.  Check him out at: http://www.freedomainradio.com/

More Words That Emanate From the Hindquarters of Male (Genetically Modified) Cattle

1. GMO/Monsanto/etc.  Let’s be honest, most people who post on Facebook about Monsanto (you know who you are) have no flipping clue what they are talking about; they’ve never set foot on a farm and have no concept of how the food industry works. They have probably never seen a live domesticated chicken (hint: was it white?), or have no idea what the fertilization process of corn is. Unless you eat exclusively wild game, all the food you eat is genetically modified.  ALL OF IT.  Cows didn’t just evolve into oversized meat-bags producing an excess of milk.  Those phenotypes were carefully selected by humans over countless generations.  Likewise corn is a man-made food.  It literally cannot reproduce without human intervention. Somehow the approach of waiting for genetic mutations seem different and less frightening than just finding the code for the protein you want and inserting it into a genome, as if God is some celestial Microsoft, angry at you for transposing his source code. Unfortunately for a reasoned position like mine, the collusion of government with entities like Monsanto (which was a fervent Disney sponsor for a long time- fun fact) pollutes the facts of science by inciting a host of conspiracy theories.  Let me also mention that giving an animal drugs does not make it genetically modified any more than Bob Marley and Ronnie Coleman became genetically modified.  At the heart of the objection lies a distrust of science, which is (for the most part) founded on the greatest enemy of the typical American:  OBJECTIVE REALITY.  If you are one of these anti-GMO types let me help you steer clear of a few more evil man-made biological entities: insulin, vaccines, aspirin, antibiotics, cochlear implants… the list goes on.

2. Organic Related to the above, organic farming is a rather nonsensical term; the product is still organic insomuch as it is alive.  The label was created by the USDA to certify particular things, most notable the exclusion of “synthetic” substances from production.   This has the “benefit” of raising costs, lowering yields, lowering crop quality, and increasing risk of food-borne illness (due to heavier use of organic fertilizers such as manure).  As a choice of trade-offs, organic is a fine label, but most often when I see it heavily promoted it is to a regulatory end; that is, banning all non-organic (oxymoron) produce.  As an end, this would crush those with low incomes or small food budgets, raising the price much higher than that of current organic produce by creating a crippling food shortage.  If you want to buy organic that’s just fine; I’ll be over here enjoying an apple that is twice as big, twice as shiny, twice as crispy, cost half as much, and won’t give me lower bowel disturbance.

3. Faith in Humanity Humanity can accomplish nothing; only people can accomplish things. The airplane wasn’t invented by humanity, it was invented by the Wright brothers.  If you take away all the accomplishments, acts of kindness, or goodwill  of individuals and assign them to “humanity” you are doing a disservice to those people and also setting yourself up for disappointment, because lumped in with those great things will be the atrocities committed by humans: The atomic bombs (250,000 killed), world war 1 and 2 (90 million more killed), not including the The Holocaust (6 million murdered), Russian communism (20-50 million murdered), and Chinese communism (over 100 million murdered).  Just in the last century humanity has murdered the equivalent of the entire population of the United states.  Why on earth would you have faith in a race with that kind of track record?

4. Patriot/American Pride/National Pride/Proud to be an American

Patriotic American Heterbro: Aren’t you rooting for America in the Olympics?

Stew the Great: In the ideal contest the best individual wins.  They may not be American, and I’m okay with that.

Patriotic American Heterbro:  Don’t you have any AMERICAN PRIDE?!

This age-old appeal to tribal loyalty is even more hollow in the ethnically, racially, and geographically diverse United States, and yet its use persists, convincing people to sacrifice to the collective for some sense of belonging.  I am only proud of the things I have done, I cannot, and will not, feel pride for the accident of my birth or the great works of my forbearers. I may feel thankful, but that feeling is quite distant from pride.  Likewise I may appreciate the athletic display put on by a team, but I will feel no personal pride from watching them win.

5. Cis.  This is a Latin prefix, not actually a word, meaning “same as,” and while it is often used on its own, it is usually used in a host of nonsensical ways, such as “cisgender” (which literally means “classification the same as”) “cisprivilege” (the privilege of being the same as), and the very strange “cissexual” (which is used as a homonym for “heterosexual,” but is technically a homonym for “homosexual).  My first experience with “cis” was in the word “cisgendered,” used as an antonym for “transgendered,” and in that context it somewhat makes sense, though as it has become co-opted it has started to be less and less rational, degenerating into almost a degradation of all members of hetero-normative society.  I most encounter the word as a homonym for “normal” or “typical” in situations where calling typical as what it is might offend somebody by forcing them to acknowledge themselves as atypical, and as we all know, truth should always take a back seat to people’s feelings.  Other than that, it gets used derogatorily to cast me into the role of privileged masochistic oppressor, as in “chauvinist cis white male,” which brings me to my next word:

6. Privilege. Why not another feminist term?  After all, I have the privilege of speaking my mind.  This word is most often used to denounce the accomplishments of men as consequence of their genital arrangements, and that equal rights do not go far enough.  According to this point of view, I was only able to write my book or all my music because I have a penis, and the 3 nights a week I spent performing were all facilitated by my testicles.  Likewise great businessmen don’t experience success due to productivity or added value, but because people respect their penises and categorically push all vagina-having humans the to the side. Women like Ayn Rand (the most influential writer and philosopher of the last 100 years, and arguably the most influential woman who ever lived) and Margaret Thatcher (the first woman to lead major country) only experienced success because they bought into and supported the male hegemony.  Not included in the list of male privileges are: the draft, paying for dates, shorter life expectancy, child support and alimony, and prison rape.