AES - Michael Sandel: Restributive Taxation and Progressive Taxation

Continuing from arguments of utilitarianism, Sandel moves to the antithesis in Libertarianism citing Robert Nozick (1) throughout.

The main arguments in part 1:

Libertarian Government:
No one harmed, no one's rights violated
1) No paternalistic legislation ex car seat belt
2) No morals legislation ex gay marriage
3) No redistribution of wealth from rich to poor, as this is a type of coercion which violates the fundamental Libertarian Principle of Self-Possession (2).

What does this government look like?
Can have limited govt for (per Nozick) "what everybody needs, natl defense, police, judicial to enforce contracts + prop rights, but that's it"

Self Possession chain of reasoning to slavery
Nozick's argument against taxation: "taking of earnings" any form of taxation essentially forced labor = slavery principle of self-possession therefore utilitarianism is false ipso facto.

part 2

Objections to Libertarianism

1) The poor need the money more

2) Taxation by consent of the governed is NOT coerced

3) The successful owe a debt to society

4) Luck is involved in success

The exotic-looking girl puts it well, "... because I live in a society I cannot [kill another as this would be a logic end of self-possession]... it's self possession to an extent because I have to take into account I live in a society and there are people around me."

Sandel obviously himself, while attempting to remain impartial, is for this kind of re-distributive taxation or at least against Libertarianism.

When listening to the arguments and assumptions for Libertarianism, I find the idea to be just as fantastical as socialism yet more appealing to the average idiot because it has a subtext of anti-government, anti-establishment and appeal to selfishness which in my experience works very well on the average person. It's difficult to make a set of two or three assumptions by which man is supposed to live and then have a society expand on those assumptions, but in this case clearly the assumption of self-possession as an absolutism is absurd. And I'm not sure if I'm mis-understanding it, but it would seem to treat commerce itself as something different than I see it. Let's not romanticize the average person; while certain rights should necessarily be maintained, no one in a stable state of mind would think that the lone ant is not part of a larger community in the ant colony and as unpalatable as it is to say, we are all slaves to that community to some extent but hopefully we benefit more than we lose by being a part of it.

1) Nozick wiki access 5/19/11 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nozick

2) Self-ownership access 5/20/11 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-ownership

File this under: Takes One to Know One

9/11 First Responders Say It's 'A Shame' Health Bill Needed Jon Stewart's Attention To Put It In Spotlight

I particularly like the line from Senator McConnell:

“Some have tried to portray this debate as a debate between those who support 9/11 workers and those who don’t,” McConnell said. “This is a gross distortion of the facts. There was never any doubt about supporting the first responders – it was about doing it right.

Now switch the sentence by replacing "9/11 workers" with "fighting terrorists" and "first responders" with "American troops."

Or switch "9/11 workers" with either "capitalism" or "socialism" and "first responders" with "America."

Other examples?

Paradigm Shift for Religious Right

Linked is a brief Newsweek article by Lisa Miller. Read it and then let's discuss. To warm you up, the writer is suggesting that the religious Right has shifted the focus from moral issues such as sexuality, divorce, etc. to patriotism in the form of anti-socialism, anti-big government, and anti-immigration. I'm wondering if some Christians feel disenfranchised by this shift, that is, that their religion is so political to begin with, especially on issues that are ambiguous in the Bible.

http://www.newsweek.com/2010/12/09/one-nation-under-god.html

Election Disappointment

Just a brief thought on the election. I've really only been paying attention to politics for the last ten years. What seems to be increasingly clear to me is that there really is no reason to expect any improvement out of parties or legislators. Why do so if your party is swept out of office in one election, then can come back saying the exact same thing two years later and sweep back in?

To me it seems ludicrous that people should be fed up with Republicans in 2008, then think that the best option is going back to many of the same people in 2010 because they don't like what the Democrats did in those two years. If there was ever an opportunity for a third party to establish itself, it seems like this was it. Instead of a legitimate third option arising, all that we saw was what appears to be a faction of the right wing that's further away from 'center' and so doesn't really pose as a long term third option other than moving the Republican party further to the right and polarizing the process even more.

I would really like the American public to realize that politics need not be thought of as a continuum, where every issue falls on one side or the other, and the degree to which it varies from center determines how appealing it is. If you disagree with some issues but agree with others for a party, there really isn't going to be any candidate that can possibly appeal to you.

But like I said, if ever there was a time to establish this possibility, this year's election was it. As such, I suspect another method may be necessary if that system will ever change. I know we've discussed alternate voting methods before, but I suspect those will be nigh impossible to implement, as those in power are complicit in maintaining that power structure, so they have no incentive to change it.

What is the proper course of action for past transgressions?

Wellesley professor unearths a horror: Syphilis experiments in Guatemala

I don't have a lot of time to write this up very formally, but I thought this was a noteworthy article that was forwarded to everybody in SPH by another student.

My question is what is a government to do 70 years after the fact? Obama has apologized for this to the Guatemalan government, but if I remember correctly (I read this a few days ago), there was also a question of possible reparations of some sort. Personally, I don't really see what good it would do. The impression I got was that there were unlikely to be any descendants of these people. In that case, the suffering inflicted can not be undone or assuaged. The horror some may experience now is unlikely to be any higher than you or I might experience reading about this. And with a Guatemalan government complicit in the act at the time, how are the United States any more guilty than they?

What are your thoughts?

Political Trackers: Potentially benefitting society, but more likely not.

Here's a recent article on political trackers from the Star Tribune:

http://www.startribune.com/politics/state/101038219.html?elr=KArksLckD8EQDUoaEyqyP4O:DW3ckUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUycaEacyU

I haven't really heard of these people before, but it doesn't really surprise me given the ease of recording and disseminating video now.

One of the goals of tracking as listed in the article is ensuring politicians keep the same message instead of telling different groups what they want to hear, which seems to be a good thing. However, if it's more a witch hunt for the "gotcha" moment as is also mentioned, I wouldn't view it as favorably. Since people are rarely as noble as they like to make out, I tend to think it's more of the latter than the former.

Either way, I'm a bit skeptical of this tactic. It seems regardless of the intent, if this is employed successfully, the end result will be encouraging political parties to get candidates that can maintain a strict public persona without any hiccups or flaws, which is likely to mean that they're good at being fraudulent. The less politicians are able to be human and err (in normal ways, I'm not referring to corruption or anything like that), the worse off we are.

Thoughts?

MR OBAMA, TEAR DOWN THAT MOSQUE!

Before I say anything, I just want to make it clear that it is somewhat amazing to me that this even makes national news as it should have stayed in the confines of the Lower Manhattan Zoning Office, thank FoxNews in all likelihood for that.

Book Review: The J Curve

Title
The J Curve
A New Way to Understand Why Nations Rise and Fall

Author
Ian Bremmer
Adjunct Professor, School for International and Public Affairs, Columbia University
President, Eurasia Group

Publication Date
2006

Publication Information
Simon & Schuster Paperbacks; 291 pages

Reason for Reading
The author, Ian Bremmer was on The Daily Show on May 13th pitching his newest book, “The End of the Free Market.” In the interview, he seemed to be knowledgeable, thoughtful, and articulate so I thought his book would be worth checking out. While searching, I discovered a previous book of his in the bargain section of Amazon, so I thought I’d try that one first.

Book Review: On the Social Contract

Title
On the Social Contract (Du Contrat Social)

Author
Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Publication Date
1762

Publication Information
Dover (Dover Thrift Edition); 97 pages

Reason for Reading
In keeping with my goal of learning more of the American Revolution and the era in which it took place while simultaneously focusing on political theory to better understand the political system installed at that time, I picked this book by Rousseau discussing social contract theory. Given the time of publication, I would hazard a guess that many of the founding fathers of America (at least those involved in drawing up the new Constitution) would have read this. Whether or not it had any direct influence on either the Articles of Confederation or the Constitution I’m not certain. The little I’ve looked up online seems to indicate its effects on America’s founding were negligible, but it may have been more influential in the French Revolution. Regardless of this, the text remains noteworthy in the field.

Memories, Events, and Society: Not at the same level

Our minds: not prepared for today’s dialogue. Does it hurt our society?

Recently, Greg Miller from “Smithsonian.com” sat down and discussed how our brains make memories with Dr. Karim Nader from McGill University (neuroscientist). Nader talks about how memories can actually be changed each time we recall them, making accurate memories less likely with each recollection. Anecdotally, he says he remembers on 9/11 viewing on the television that night footage of the second plane hitting the second world trade center building. He later found out, footage of the incident did not become available until 9/12. But the traumatic event was played over-and-over on television and in his mind during discussion with friends and relatives that his brain actually re-wired to include that 9/12 footage into his 9/11 memories.

Now let’s apply this concept to something else. On June 15, 2010 President Obama addressed the nation from the Oval Office on live TV. His speech lasted a total of 17 minutes. However, the night and days following his 17 minute speech CNN, FoxNews, and MSNBC spent numerous hours discussing what the President did and didn’t not say, what he actually did say actually meant, and what he didn’t say says about his ideology in dealing with big business and how he handles national crisis.

Going back to Dr. Nader and what we now know about memories, it is quite possible that millions of people watching the aforementioned shows will remember Obama saying are not saying something he actually did not or did say. They will most likely remember what commentators think his words meant then the actual words the President used.

This is our mind: this is our media culture in the 21st century.

Source:
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/How-Our-Brains-Make-Memories.html?c=y&page=1

Book Review: His Excellency

Title
His Excellency: George Washington

Author
Joseph J. Ellis
Professor of History – Mount Holyoke College

Publication Date
2004

Reason for Reading
With all the talk recently about what the Founding Fathers intended for the country, I’ve had an increased curiosity about the American Revolution and the people involved in starting it. I figured Washington to be a good place to start and wasn’t disappointed in my selection. Both Washington as a topic and Ellis as an author were good. Ellis has written a number of books on the period, and his reputation seems to be quite good. He won the Pulitzer for his book Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation.

Obama Goes Nuclear!

Here's the rundown on old arguments (WSJ - provided):

• Nuclear isn't safe. The 1979 Three Mile Island accident—in which a faulty cooling valve led to a meltdown without injuring anyone—occurred when computer technology had barely penetrated the U.S. industry. In the 1970s, each reactor was an island unto itself. Industry officials barely communicated. The valve that failed at Three Mile Island had failed nine times previously, yet nobody said a thing about it.

Today, thanks to the Price-Anderson Act, first adopted in 1957 and amended several times since, each of America's 104 reactors is now on the hook for $100 million in damages for an accident at another reactor ($10 billion coverage in all). You can bet they talk to each other. Accidental "scrams" and safety outages have been reduced to nearly zero. Our entire fleet is up and running 90% of the time. That's why, even though nuclear constitutes only 11% of generating capacity, it provides 20% of electricity.

• Nuclear is too expensive. Building a 1,500-megawatt reactor will cost around $5 billion, which seems expensive until you compare it to everything else. The equivalent capacity in wind power would easily cost $4 billion because you have to build 4,000 windmills at $1 million apiece plus hundreds of miles of transmission lines and an almost equal capacity of natural gas generators to back them up when the wind doesn't blow.

Building zero-emissions coal plants that capture the carbon dioxide and bury it underground will probably cost more, but nobody really knows because it's never been done. Only natural gas is cheaper to build, but that's because 95% of the cost is in the fuel. (With nuclear it's only 26%.) Natural gas prices fluctuate. Would anyone care to predict what the price of natural gas will be in 25 years?

• A hijacked jet liner crashing into a reactor would cause a nuclear holocaust. Go to YouTube and search "plane crashing into wall." You'll see a video of an F-4 fighter jet hitting a concrete containment wall at 500 miles per hour. The plane simply disappears. The wall barely budges. Nuclear opponents argue that a jumbo jet would have a greater impact, but the laws of physics say it would be about the same. A jet is a hollow metal tube. Even at the speed of a bullet (700 mph) it could not penetrate a concrete containment wall.

• We haven't figured out what to do with the waste. Basically, there is no such thing as nuclear waste. The reason we have the controversy over the Yucca Mountain storage facility is because we gave up fuel reprocessing in the 1970s. Reprocessing reduces the volume of spent fuel—already remarkably small—by 97%. The French reprocess and store all their high-level waste from 30 years of producing 70% of their electricity beneath the floor of one room in their La Hague plant.

• We can't reprocess because that will lead to nuclear proliferation. The conceit of the 1970s was that if we isolated plutonium in an American reprocessing plant, some foreign terrorist would steal it to make a bomb. Half a dozen countries have since built nuclear bombs, none of them with stolen American plutonium. North Korea built its own reactor. Iran has been enriching uranium. France, Japan and Russia all reprocess and no one has stolen their plutonium. Reprocessing American fuel has nothing to do with nuclear proliferation.

• The nuclear revival is being forced on America by the powerful nuclear industry. There is no American "nuclear industry." Westinghouse is now owned by Toshiba. Areva is French. GE partners with Hitachi but is running in last place. Only three of the 33 proposed American reactors are GE designs. The biggest new international competitor is South Korea, which just won a $20 billion contract to build four reactors in the United Arab Emirates. China is building four Westinghouse AP1000 reactors, even though its design has not yet been approved by our Nuclear Regulatory Commission. When the first new reactors are built here, 70% of the parts will come from abroad.

So, is nuclear a viable option in America's (hopefully) green future or will the same country that had to change NMR to MRI have to find another alternative fuel?

Bad Journalism Example

This past Sunday now-VP, Joe Biden, squared off on juxtaposing political talk shows against former-VP, Dick Cheney. Both sides vehemently argued why the Obama administration was/wasn’t handling terrorism correctly.
That is the background.
Here is the topic

Monday morning two journalist from Bloomberg News published an article on the war of words (1). Throughout the article the two journalist report on the fighting and list a half dozen quotes from each person. Then it ends.

Recently, Brent and I have been asking ourselves whether some information needs to be limited to the public. This is a prime example of information I would argue should be limited. What these two journalist did was report that two people got in an argument and that they have authority, so we the public should listen. However, they did not fact check either person or give any information regarding the subject on which the two people were arguing. Is this real journalism? Did it really take both of them to read through the quotes from a 15 minute segment and write them down? Wouldn’t real journalist dug up information one what the two members were saying. For instance, Cheney argued that “Christmas day bomber” should not have been read his Miranda rights Well, journalist, tell me what the Bush administration did under a similar circumstance with the “shoe bomber” back in 2003? Was that suspect read his Miranda rights?

It is my conclusion, then that these two journalist have done nothing but complicate the matter for public. This article could have been replaced telling me that Brad Pitt and Angelina were in an argument, because as far as disseminating information that will help me, a voting citizen, make a decision, this article did nothing.

Source:
1) http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a6phLM6zkt8k

Supreme Court Case of the Week: Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission

Case

Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010)

Chief Justice
John Roberts

Background
Citizens United made a documentary titled "Hillary: The Movie" to be released before the Democratic primaries of 2008. Initially it was ruled that the company couldn't advertise the film before the primaries due to the restrictions set in place by the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA) of 2002, more commonly known as the McCain-Feingold reform bill for its two sponsors. This was to restrict corporations from using their treasury funds to openly campaign for or against candidates in elections.

Synopsis

On the basis of the 1st Amendment, the court overruled two previous rulings (Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce (1990) and partially overruled McConnell v. Federal Election Commission (2003)) and overturned the BCRA. The fact that they overruled other decisions was part of what made the decision a shock to many people. It seems laws on this topic go back nearly 100 years, starting when Theodore Roosevelt was president.

Vote & Dissenting Opinions

5-4

The conclusion of Justice Stevens, representing the dissenters (taken from the wikipedia page listed at the bottom of this post):

"At bottom, the Court's opinion is thus a rejection of the common sense of the American people, who have recognized a need to prevent corporations from undermining self government since the founding, and who have fought against the distinctive corrupting potential of corporate electioneering since the days of Theodore Roosevelt. It is a strange time to repudiate that common sense. While American democracy is imperfect, few outside the majority of this Court would have thought its flaws included a dearth of corporate money in politics."

Further Discussion
Does this give more weight to corporations than to individual citizens (who are limited to ~$2300, if memory serves correctly)? Even if corporations are restricted from donating directly to candidates, it's not as if a candidate will be unaware of who's putting multiple campaign ads out for them, and remember that during their term. However, do corporations not also deserve freedom of speech? If laws are made in regards to how they can act, shouldn't they also have the ability to speak out about it? I know many would argue they'll fill the airwaves with misinformation and lies for their own benefit, but don't normal people do that also? We don't argue to take away freedom of speech from them.

What will be the role of foreign companies in this? President Obama mentioned in his State of the Union address that this may open the door to foreign companies to play a roll in our campaigns. I'm guessing the entire law was overturned, but could it still be applied to foreign companies? It's not as if they're covered in the Constitution.

Support for this seems to be based entirely on party lines (which obviously isn't surprising) with conservatives arguing it's a blow for free speech, and liberals saying it gives corporations too much power. While corporate power in many instances does give me pause, I think according to the letter of the law, this ruling is probably accurate and in the better long-term interests of American citizens. I don't think this can just be viewed as corporations buying TV commercials around election time, as the implications of it could be far more reaching.

References & Further Reading

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary:_The_Movie

www.court.gov/arguments/Term2008/08-205.pdf

origin.www.supremecourtus.gov/qp/08-00205qp.pdf

Book Review: Problems of Knowledge and Freedom

Title
Problems of knowledge and freedom
Author
Noam Chomsky
Date
Two Lectures originally presented at Trinity College (Cambridge) in 1971

Reason
I previously read Chomsky’s “Profit over People” and greatly enjoyed his writing style as well as his insights and conclusions precisely pointed at not just interpreting our society, but also how we may improve it. While searching for additional Chomsky books to read I came across “Problems of knowledge and freedom” which offered a glimpse of Chomsky at the precipice of public admiration (or disagreement; 1971). The book couples Chomsky’s life (linguistics and politics) succinctly into two chapters (lectures) and reveals someone whom Chomsky revered (Bertrand Russell).


Synopsis
The book is two chapters; On interpreting the world and On changing the world. The first chapter summarizes Chomsky’s thesis on the acquisition and transfer of knowledge among humans (Linguistics, naturally). Briefly, a system of knowledge results from the interplay of innate mechanisms, genetically determined maturational processes, and the interaction with the social and physical environment (Chomsky’s Thesis). Herein lay the precepts from which the rest of the chapter evolves from; including our mental faculties being limited by our linguistic fecundity, neuroplasticity (use it or lose it), original thought being preempted by prior knowledge bases, and the necessity of a fully developed limbic system to give “scope and limits” to knowledge acquisition.

In the second chapter a relatively young Chomsky (41) recognizes the late work of his predecessor (Russell) and treks a similar path critically analyzing Western cultural and specifically the United States. This chapter builds nicely describing Chomsky’s phrase “consent without consent” highlighting the use of propaganda to galvanize a people into backing the concentration of power to ensure the status quo (a firm belief in the “benevolent” autocracies will be accompanied by one’s ability to accomplish the American Dream) and the chapter ends with many examples demonstrating the use and power of state propaganda (contextual; 1970s therefore Vietnam particularly). On of the more enjoyable sections in a chapter revealing subversion at the highest levels is a mental exercise Chomsky asks his readers to try reciting current United States handlings of war and inserting USSR for U.S. For an unfamiliar reader this could be a paradigm shifter.

Review
Why you should read this book. This is a Wikipedia page on Chomsky’s work. By this I mean it is brief but succinct with many references and best of all the author is Chomsky himself. I would recommend this book as a starter for those interested in Chomsky as his other readings will likely reiterate his statements here. The only criticism I might offer is Chomsky appears to be unaware of his critics or those holding opposing views with merit. This is a criticism of this particular book and not of Chomsky in general.


Quotes
“The major point that I want to show, by this brief and informal discussion, is that there apparently are deep-seated and rather abstract principles of a very general nature that determine the form and interpretation of sentences and such principles are language universals; it is plausible to attribute the proposed language invariants to the innate language faculty which is, in turn, one component of the structure of mind.”

“The systems of knowledge that underlie normal human behavior simply cannot be described in terms of networks of association, fabrics of dispositions to respond, habit structures, and the like.”

From Russell:
“There can be no real freedom or democracy until the men who do the work in a business also control its management…and the real obstacles lie in the heart of man, and the cure for these is a firm hope, informed and fortified in thought.”

Healthcare revisited

This was a hot topic last time. Now with the Senate passing its bill, what are some thoughts on the current legislation? Both the House and Senate have bills. Can we call this an accomplishment for citizens?

Power to the people?

Jean Jacques Rousseau writes in “The Social Contract” that leaders have 3 different wills. First, their individual wills which strive for self-promotion. Second, the corporate will, what Rousseau calls “vis’a’vis the will of the government” and includes the wills of other leaders. And lastly, the will of the people or sovereign will.

I will posit that in a perfect society leaders silence their individual wills, place the corporate will as a subordinate, and allow the general will of the people to dominate.

Any thoughts on whether the above is something we should strive for and ask of our leaders. Any qualms with the 3 general wills (additions, subtractions)?

McChrystal's Assessment

He's calling for a "civilian surge", among other things. He is trying to put this conflict into an historical perspective, which is nice to see. He is also taking cues from NATO, which again is nice to see (as opposed to unilateral action). Read the first 7 pages and you have enough (supposing your background is sound with the geography, history, current deployment in the region, and understanding of the current leadership).

The question really boils down to a simple one. Can America tackle a region where time and again, past powers have failed? (read for history of Afghanistan) I do not think that we can and certainly not in the short-term (<4 years). It would take 20-30 years probably and involve huge resources on our part. We'd have to build up infrastructure (including but not limited to schools, government offices, roads, and maybe even some factories) and provide HIGH levels of security the whole time. And let's not forget the Heroin-Trade.


http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/documents/Assessment_Redacted_092109.pdf

What is Justice?

Socrates would ask this question to the everyday citizens in Ancient Greece (supposedly). Today, Michael Sandel asked it in the context of the bank bailouts and societal fairness. (1) It seems we're seeing through conflict (recession) that the most basic values are reasserted and assessed. Conflict may be inevitable until we can improve human memory/learning which ironically may require instituting broader social equality itself.






1) What is justice?Broadcast: Midmorning, 11/12/2009, 10:06 a.m.

Blackwater (Xe) update

A rare picture of the devil? Okay, maybe not. Update on our Blackwater following. NY Times just reported that Blackwater spent $1 million to bribe Iraqi officials after Blackwater (unprovoked) killed 17 Iraqi citizens (1). And we still pay this firm to fight for us (2)?


Sources:
1) http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/11/world/middleeast/11blackwater.html?_r=2&hp
2) http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090817/scahill2