The earlier post on doggy death benefits got me to thinking: what are the debates that I recognize as legitimate pluralistic disagreements? There are lots of issues where I am pretty sure that I am right, but recognize that the people on the other side have valid value judgements that they are calling differently from me. I'm not talking about technocratic disputes over adverse selection or regulatory capture--I mean core arguments about deeply held values.
On my list:
1) Abortion. I'm pro-choice, but I think that it's a really, really difficult call between the rights of women to control their bodies, and the rights of fetuses to get born. I think there are narrow, self-obsessed ideologues on both sides of the debate, but I think that most people in the middle are doing their best to wrestle with a hard issue.
2) Gay marriage. I'm basically pro, but I take the Burkean arguments seriously.
3) Immigration. Again, I'm pro--but while I think the anti-immigration side makes often ridiculously ahistorical arguments about how current immigration differs from past waves, I think that more-open-borders folks like me don't give enough respect to the real cultural frictions that immigration causes.
4) Affirmative action. I think it's a bad idea, for multiple reasons. But I also understand those who think that we need to do something about the racial mess that slavery has left us in, and think that this is the best something we're probably going to get.
5) Taxes. I don't have any very well thought out position on the optimal level of taxation in society. I take seriously both the justice arguments of the libertarian absolutists, and the notion that anyone living in a wealthy society owes their prosperity at least as much to the wealthy society as they do to their own skill and hard work--and if you doubt this is true, I suggest you go try to deploy your rugged individualist talents in Zimbabwe. I think society has a duty to care for those who genuinely can't care for themselves, but I am against an ever-expanding notion of what constitutes "can't".
6) Intergenerational equity. I don't mean social security, which I think is largely a stupid program. I mean questions about how we should privilege the interests of people who exist now over those who will exist in the future. The environment is the most obvious, but not the only, area where these questions come up. To me, health care is another one; the core issue is that we can probably help some people by moving to a single payer system today, but only by destroying the innovation machine that will help many many more people down the road.
7) Humanitarian intervention. I am often tempted by the isolationist stance, the cool purity of its single-rule decision making. Then another Darfur rends my heart. I don't mean to address the prudential, utilitarian calculus, but rather the question: if there's a good chance that we could make things better, should we? And under what circumstances?
8) What value to put on art? Nature? These are intangibles. Yellowstone would not exist without substantial government intervention. Am I libertarian enough to think that's a bad thing? Ask me an easy one . . .
I'm sure there are others. What about you?
I think the Burkean arguments opposing gay marriage would be more substantive if heteros had not already so degraded marriage contracts with regards to child rearing. When it gets to the point that there is hugely reduced social shame asscociated with dissolving marriages with children, even multiple times, well, it's hard to assert with a straight face that gay marriage would weaken the institution all that more.
Who needs national parks? I say cut em all down for lumber!
Well, might as well toss in the most hotly debated, vein bulge-inducing, scream producing argument of the era, having to do with a certain country called Iraq. I don't think the issue has ever been honestly debated, by any of the major politicians, or by most people in forums like this. The pro war contingent tended to underestimate the horrible costs of war in blood and treasure, and to overstate the immediate dangers posed by the Baathist regime, and the anti war contingent tended to underestimate what it meant to continue to extract oil in the Persian Gulf under the paradigm employed since early in the 20th century, and to overstate the odds of being able to use diplomatic and economic measures to constrain the Iraqi Baathists in the future. To this day, the centrality to this conflict of having an oil based global economy has yet to be honestly discussed very much. And everybody pretends to be able to read the history books which be written decades from now.
Megan,
By the way you mentioned social security as a stupidity I infer you have written about it before. Can you offer a link or two about it? I fell on the opposition camp when Bush tried to privatize it but I am open minded about the whole thing.
Criminal sentencing, and in particular the death penalty. Much of the "mandatory minimum" revolution does, imho, more harm than good. It arrogates to the legislature decisions that have for good reason been made by judges with individual knowledge of each case. It's bad enough that Congress sets wildly divergent minimum sentences for equivalent crimes (e.g. crack vs powder cocaine possession); it's worse that a rational system is mucked up by political overreaction to isolated incidents (e.g. "Megan's Law"). All that said, I do understand the problems that motivate people with a contrary view; they can't be dismissed as merely emotional overreactions.
Re the death penalty, I support it in principle -- people who commit certain crimes do forfeit their right to live, and have no claim to lifelong support from the rest of us. It's also important to have a weapon of last resort against, say, the life-sentence convict who kills in prison. In practice, I worry about (1) the irreversibility in case of mistake, (2) the refusal to invest more in systems to prevent those mistakes by time of trial, and (3) leaving a very threatening tool in the hands of the state.
#0: Remember personal info isn't working, very annoying. Minor, however.
#1: Abortion. It has little to do with a woman "controlling her body" and has mostly to do with a woman freeing herself from the burdens of motherhood. It surprises me how few people debate the topic who have not read the majority decision from Roe v Wade:
"This right of privacy, whether it be founded in the Fourteenth Amendment's concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action, as we feel it is, or, as the District Court determined, in the Ninth Amendment's reservation of rights to the people, is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy. The detriment that the State would impose upon the pregnant woman by denying this choice altogether is apparent. (1)Specific and direct harm medically diagnosable even in early pregnancy may be involved. (2) Maternity, or additional offspring, may force upon the woman a distressful life and future. (3) Psychological harm may be imminent. Mental and physical health may be taxed by child care. (4) There is also the distress, for all concerned, associated with the unwanted child, and there is the problem of bringing a child into a family already unable, psychologically and otherwise, to care for it."
Notice that 2, 3, and 4 can apply to either gender.
#2: Marriage, in and of itself, is a farce. The definition of marriage has changed from a bargain between man and woman to a system of entitlement for women where the man has no benefits.
#3: Immigration is fine. It's illegal immigration I have a problem with. And yes, there should be controls on who gets to get in here.
#4: Want to fix "the problems from slavery"? Tell black people to pull up their bootstraps and fix themselves rather than blaming their shortcomings on something other than themselves. Other groups of people have come into our country with less than the current generation of blacks had and did more. The problem is attitude and entitlement, and the coddling (affirmative action) which the government does that allows them to remain weak instead of requiring that they strengthen themselves.
#5: Taxes? Our government ran fine on 3% of GNP from birth till 1920.
Coddling people keeps them weak. The only way to truly help someone is to teach them how to help themselves... otherwise you've turned them into a slave to your assistance. (But, hey, it buys votes, right?)
#6: One of the few things I haven't really pondered.
#7: "I don't mean to address the prudential, utilitarian calculus, but rather the question: if there's a good chance that we could make things better, should we? And under what circumstances?"
Under the circumstances that we realize "doing good things" is a luxury of the successful, and doing so uses up some of our success. We must have some sort of interest involved to justify the cost, intrusion, and potential loss of citizen's lives.
#8: *points back up to "luxury" discussion*
An honest question: Why do you take the Burkean argument against gay marriage so seriously but (seemingly) not the Burkean argument against other social changes? (No-fault divorce, for example. Or simply the relaxation of countless cultural mores during the latter half of the 20th century?) Should those be on your list as well?
Drew, I believe those are now moot points, whatever their merits.
What value to put on art? That's completely irrelevant, unless you're planning on buying a piece. If you think it costs too much, it definitely does.
Nature? If this is an oblique attempt to get at the whole man-made climate change issue, I think it's safe to say that the leaders of the G-8 have no clue either......so don't hold your breath looking for an answer to that one.......
Demonspawn:
So what would you do with the Jesse Helms' of the world? Also, it really comes down to one thing: jobs. Job creation under Bush has sucked and government stats(as corrupted as they are) back that up.
Regarding #3, I see this still burns: janegalt.net/archives/009851.html At that page, Jane Galt tried and failed to respond to this list of differences between then and now.
And, contrary to what's written above, there's no valid, pro-U.S. argument for anything other than either no or limited, legal-only immigration. Anyone who argues in support of anything other than that is not putting the interests of the U.S. ahead of other concerns, and is almost assuredly lying or making misleading or incomplete statements. The only way our leaders manage to do that is by some form of shutting down debate, such as when BHO offers a FalseChoice between MassDeportations and a MassiveAmnesty, and no one is willing to call him on it.
Click my name's link and scan my archives to see all the very many things Jane Galt doesn't know about this issue.
Death penalty: The biggest and most important change we can make is to not allow plea-bargaining to take the death penalty off the table.
I know it sounds entirely counter-productive, but the truth is the threat of death causes many innocent people to plea out rather than take the risk of dying for being unable to defend themselves successfully. And besides, if the CRIME is heinous enough to be punished by death, then that should be the case if the guy admits to it or not! Instead, it's become a coercion tool.
Affirmative Action has nothing to do with fixing the problems from slavery.
At the university level, it has to do with increasing the admit rate of whites (slave-buyers) and African immigrants like Obama (slave-sellers), at the expense of Asians.
Poor blacks aren't helped in the slightest by AA in college (check the grad rates for specifically poor blacks, as opposed to African/Caribbean immigrants). It does, on the other hand, make life awful nice for white legacies.
And it makes life hard for Asians.
Which is why I'll be voting McCain '08.
A re framing off 3) and 5) I guess
open border vs welfare, you can have one or the other, but not both.
Science: Can one be truly scientific beyond the empirical? Should hypotheses which have not yet been observed, proved or repeated be treated as religious belief? If it cannot be measured (yet), is it faith?
What is the material difference between the Higgs-Boson (right now) and God, from the Heisenberg Uncertainty Sideline (imagining that construct to be true so we can attempt to answer)?
I agree that no-fault divorce and calling adults by their first names are now moot. Gay marriage will be moot soon too. But why the sudden return to Burke on this issue and not other similar changes to vital social institutions?
The tension in libertarian appeals to Burke is not a new story--you need a pretty convincing reason to deny a population their liberties (and in this case, their equal rights). After a while, as gay unions and even gay marriages have become more common and the sky stubbornly refuses to fall, relying on an evolved-wisdom explanation gets harder.
Despite Stanley "Correlation = Causation" Kurtz, there doesn't seem to be any social damage from gay marriage. (And I don't regard a marginal increase in the rate of homosexuality as undesirable--although I suppose I would say that.)
Frankly, we have quite a lot of new data since Megan wrote that blog post more than three years ago and the case against gay marriage hasn't advanced much beyond Julian Sanchez's tongue-in-cheek Queer Tachyon Hypothesis. I guess I just hoped that a reevaluation with in the offing.
The definition of marriage has changed from a bargain between man and woman to a system of entitlement for women where the man has no benefits.
Yeah, if only we hadn't given women the right to vote. They didn't realize how good they had it. Such a bargain!
What can be done? If he didn't faithfully represent the wishes of his constitutes, they would of voted him out of office.
There's a flip-side to that argument, and that is what is better for the institution (society, nation, government, business... whatever is in question). There is also the question of fair competition. For example, women in business. Were women honestly that good for business, they'd be there... once one woman broke the barrier, all companies would have to hire women to be able to compete otherwise they'd be beaten by those who do and go out of business. Instead, the value of women in the workplace is artificially raised by government actions (allowing lawsuits, requiring quotas, etc.) that make women "more equal" than men so that women are more favorable to be hired.
I mean, it's great that women have "equal opportunity" to enter medical school, but is the doctor shortage crisis (already in the UK, coming to the US) worth it?
Quit thinking in terms of "Right" and "Wrong" instead of the real truth: Choices and Consequences. "Equality" comes at a price. Can we bear it?
No, they really didn't.
Chew on that one for a few, I've got some other things to attend to for a while.
I find it obnoxious that women can absolve themselves of all legal and financial consequences of motherhood by depositing a newborn at any firehouse or hospital within three days of birth in most states, but that fathers have no analogous right. This right has nothing to do with a right to privacy or whatever. It's about the "safe haven" laws which are only another female privilege in family law.
The father should have a right to disclaim the child within three days of official notification from the mother to him. Said notification could be delivered before birth, at birth, or any time thereafter [with assumptions made as to notification time in the case of a married couple where the husband is, in fact, the father]. This would meet fairness, and it would take away from the mother the incentive to conceal fatherhood from the father to that point a couple of years after birth where no judge will award significant parental rights but will still sock the father for child support.
If the mother is of a mind to bring the baby to term if and only if the father is willing to take paternity obligations, she can deliver the notice well before the end of the abortion window.
If the father has been notified, and the mother decides to disown the baby at the local fire house, the father should be told and then have the right to claim the baby.
-dk
You Megan is a liberal with an annoying but unheeded conservative conscience? Quelle Surprise!
There is no "fair" outcome on the abortion / rights of fathers debate. Presently, if a woman does not want the burden (inc financial) of having a child, she can simply abort at her discretion and the father has no say. If a man wants to assure himself that he will not have the burdens of fatherhood thrust upon him he can get himself sterilized, become a monk or go gay. Otherwise he is always a potential father with no say in the matter.
Wow an abortion discussion really brings the misogynists out in force. I agree with Megan that people who sincerely believe in the personhood of the fetus are reasonable, but its really disgusting to listen to the misanthropes who are upset that a woman can get out of child support post conception while they cannot.
Get over it. Society cares a lot about not forcing people to undertake extremely intimate personal responsibilities(being pregnant, giving birth, raising a child). It, rightly, cares a lot less about forcing a person to part with cash (which they can earn in whatever legal way they choose). Women have an out to the personal responsibilities that sometimes out of necessity gives them an out to the financial ones. Men have the exact same right to refuse to take over the personal responsibilities of raising a child. This settup is not unfair to men.
The real problem is the large number of women raising children without any support from the fathers.
Many of my political views are of the "on the border" type. I recognize the validity of other viewpoints and might possibly be swayed by good arguments. The main exceptions, in other words ones where I flatly refuse to consider any other viewpoints, related to national security. I am resolutely opposed to the war in Iraq and do not believe that Islamic fundamentalism presents any but the most trivial danger to America.
Will and Drew, go read that post that she linked to under the gay marriage section ("A really, really, really long post about gay marriage that does not, in the end, support one side or the other"). It's a fantastic post, and it answers all your questions.
Right there with you on everything but 2 and 8 (and only 8 because I just haven't given it any thought.)
I struggle with the boundaries of religious freedom, particularly the extent to which the right of adults to practice their faith includes a right to impose their faith and its practices on their children.
You're so full of the crap that you've been fed I doubt you'll even listen to the truth.
Want to know why they let women off the hook but not men? There's no money in forcing women to keep children. In fact, it costs the state in the programs that support those women and children. Therefore, if women want out, they can get out.
On the other hand, the state IS GIVEN MONEY BY THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT FOR ENFORCING CHILD SUPPORT based on the percentage they collect and the amount. That's why they don't let men off the hook. In fact, California had a bill that would let a lot of fathers off the hook, but it was vetoed as that would likely have cost CA $4.2BILLION in federal title IV funds.
You think the states give two shits about the kids? It's all about the money and getting reelected.
The truth is not a pretty thing.
Wow, Demonspawn - accurate tag for yourself.
Why do you think the Feds passed the laws that way! Kids have to be supported. You make one I have no problem taking money from you to do it. However, I, and most other sane people, would not enslave you and make you raise the kid yourself if you insisted on not doing it. While we usually have child support from Fathers because they usually aren't the primary custodian, there isn't any objection to tracking down those Mothers that aren't and getting child support from them.
Face it, you just are a misogynistic jerk. Grow up.
To get the female vote.
Really? They do? So there is some level of money that the custodial parent (mother) has to earn lest she goes to jail? Mind you, the mother is the one who actually CHOSE to have the kid, she can't be forced into parenthood.
Funny that fathers are so much less likely to receive child support from mothers than the other way around, in percent that have order and in amount granted.
And why is that? Best interest of the child?
Mothers are 2x more likely to kill their children than their fathers. Mothers are much more likely to abuse their children than their fathers. Single-mother households have abuse at 3 times the rate of single-father households.
Actually there is. Women are much less likely to have child support orders enforced with punishment.
Wow, you know how to call names. Makes for such a great argument.
There needs to be a correction in reproductive rights: either give both genders the freedom from parenthood that women enjoy, or enforce on both genders the burden of responsibility with no excuses that men endure.
Or, we just accept the "misogynistic" truth that women can't be held as accountable for their decisions as men can. Really, which one of us holds women in a lesser regard: me, who thinks the same standards should be applied to both genders, or you, who thinks women should be granted special privilege because they just can't handle responsibility like men can?
Again, the truth is not a pretty thing.
Withnail, I read that post when it was first written, and it is very good, but it doesn't really address my point, which is that marriage has already been so greatly weakened, by many of the actions Megan described, that homosexual marriage wouldn't have much effect. People who wanted to save the instituion of marriage lost the battle a long time ago.
How about vice? Drugs, prostitution, gambling, etc. The prohibitionists make two main arguments: the externalities costs such as drug users committing other crime to pay for their drugs, prostitutes spreading disease, gamblers corrupting legitimate sports, etc. The other is the argument that these behaviors are destructive to the practitioners themselves, and if legalized, even more people will engage in those practices and be destroyed.
I disagree on both counts. Just look at the incredible societal costs of fighting the drug war. The astronomical resources wasted on fighting that useless battle. And then we try to save the users from themselves by jailing them and stigmatizing them in a way that can haunt them for the rest of their lives.
Anthropogenic global warming is a hoax!
Thank you for your attention.
the anti-immigration side makes often ridiculously ahistorical arguments about how current immigration differs from past waves
Megan, dear, you really have to stop doing this. Every time you bring it up, you get pummelled...by your own readers.
I see this still burns: http://janegalt.net/archives/009851.html. At that page, Jane Galt tried and failed to respond to this list of differences between then and now: http://immref.com/spin/immigration-of-yesteryear
Yep.
Very thoughtful. I wish others, including the few responders who think they know it all about everything apparently, would be so wise to understand that there are some very complex and two sided debates.
I'd find most of your list to be genuinely hard. (Not abortion, where I think "controlling your own body" is properly before consenting to pregnancy and not after).
The one not on your list that I find genuinely hard is the community/public question. How much should government try to change the behavior of communities? How much should it try to enable communities? (Using Berry's helpful distinction between a community and a public--a community is made of of particular people, with their relationships; a public is made up of people in general, as individuals.)
Back to Adam Smith, I say:
"It is but equity that they who feed, clothe and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably well-fed, clothed and lodged. . . .It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense not only in proportion to their revenue but something more than in that proportion." --Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations
Not that anyone from Cato would ever quote that. . . .
Back to Adam Smith, I say:
"It is but equity that they who feed, clothe and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably well-fed, clothed and lodged. . . .It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense not only in proportion to their revenue but something more than in that proportion." --Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations
Not that anyone from Cato would ever quote that. . . .
Well, a flat tax would be "in proportion" to their income and a flat tax with a standard deduction or rebate (As is what I belive Cato proposes)would have the rich pay "somewhat more" than the proportion of the poor.
So although I have never seen Cato use that quote, there proposals certainly fit with it.
Can someone explain the logic behind a pro-choice vegan? I can understand either one, but not both together.
I mean, you're so concerned about exploitation of other living things that you won't consume an unfertilized chicken egg but you're OK with destroying a fertilized human egg. You don't want animals to suffer but it's acceptable to destroy a human fetus?
That's got to create some cognitive dissonance. How does one resolve the contradiction?
Whether a flat tax is proportional depends on how it is structured. In order to be proportional the tax would have to be on both income and capital gain, as much of the cash flow of wealth is structured to be return on capital. If the tax was on income alone it would be no where near proportional to receipts of the wealthy.
Yellowstone would not exist without substantial government intervention.
Huh? Didn't it exist for about a billion years without government intervention? Where would it go without the government?
Actually, most of the answers are quite simple... it just requires that one scrape away all the BS that's been piled on top for "justification" to get to the core issue.
However, for some, there is the possibility of reasonable debate. I've even alluded to them: "That is a luxury, can we afford it?" which can/should be followed up by "Can we get more benefit from this other luxury?"
The value of art: Bach was an employee of the city of Leipzig, and there was a member of the town council who kept trying to get him fired, on the grounds that "we don't need a composer, just someone to teach the kids to sing." It's hard to argue with him, at least if you assume that a large percentage of the citizens of Leipzig weren't music lovers. What value did a non-music lover get from Bach's (relatively expensive) presence in the town? Yet I am enormously grateful for the injustice that forced the citizens of Leipzig to pay for all those cantatas, just as I am for those repulsive Renaissance popes who sold indulgences to pay for the works of Palestrina, Raphael and Michelangelo.
It is a hallmark mistake of believing there to be a clear cut solution to a complex problem that you think a problem much simpler than it is. The BS you are referring to are real and practical complications to these issue. For example:
You noted "Were women honestly that good for business, they'd be there... once one woman broke the barrier, all companies would have to hire women to be able to compete otherwise they'd be beaten by those who do and go out of business. Instead, the value of women in the workplace is artificially raised by government actions (allowing lawsuits, requiring quotas, etc.) that make women "more equal" than men so that women are more favorable to be hired."
This makes a huge assumption that businesses can not be innefficient in ways and still effectively compete, which they indeed are and do in many sectors of the economy. You may not believe it, but if less than optimal employee productivity were some businesses only innefficiencies, they would be in fantastic shape. It also assumes that market corrections if any would not take years to play out.
It also makes a huge assumption that businesses can accurately value and measure a persons productivity and therefore only consider the best person for every job. The reality is that its not that easy to value a persons future potential to contribute and understand how that translates into bottom line profitability in a given business. And once you hire someone its a huge cost with potential liability risks to fire them and revisit. Also, as to measuring future profitability contributions, its no easy task to measure any overhead employee's contribution to productivity - you have to be a sales or direct bill employee (like a consultant) to easily measure that.
On top of that, there are many other significant factors in a hiring decision that implicate policy concerns the government should at least consider. For example, is the person likely to be on the job long term or may they have a societal benefiting reason (such as having children) to leave temporarily or early - a cost to employers that lowers the value of a woman that gives birth; And do prejudices about people and their abilities also predominate as a factor with some of the deciders (i.e. part of the do I like this person and can I work with them (a significant factor in many hiring decisions)). As a side note, if you have significant prejudice your businesses bottom line is probably not going to trump that in your decision. Also, there is some productivity value to people getting along with those they work with, even if they are otherwise each individually less productive. These factors (and there are definitely others) tend to reduce the chance a woman would be hired even if her skill set and ability to contribute was equal to or greater than a man.
So the argument that "if women were good for business they would be there" -- that the market would work to remedy their unequal status -- fundamentally must ignore many practical realities and legitimate government concerns to be such a simple solution.
Yellowstone would not exist without substantial government intervention.
Huh? Didn't it exist for about a billion years without government intervention? Where would it go without the government?
Mining, ranching, forest clearcutting. An overwhelming amount of touristic junk. Maybe houses or condos.
Yeah, the the physical land itself would still be there, it's the non-rock layer on top that gets destroyed if nothing prevents it.
Tell me this, how long did it take most baseball teams to start hiring black players once Jackie broke the barrier? And why? Because those who didn't lost games because they weren't pulling talent from the entire pool. And that's an enviroment where "going out of business" is much more difficult than in the normal commercial sector!
So, yes. There are some pretty simple answers to the questions.
And what, FORCE our businesses to take that cost? That's all fine and dandy, until we get into the global competition market and compete against businesses in other countries which don't force those costs on their corporations. Can we afford that luxury of increasing the cost of labor on our corporations? The current crop of outsourcing would say otherwise.
Yes, because she is, overall, of less value to the business by the criteria that the business uses! Instead, we are going to force these businesses to hire them by artificially increasing the value of women which makes business in America more expensive to run. Again, can we afford this luxury? Mind you, women in the workplace has increased the cost in other ways as well... is "equality" more important than having jobs in America? At what point will we finally decide that this luxury is costing us far too much?
Again you are trying to make a complicated issue simple, probably because it fits the answer you want (apprently here that women in business are not as valuable and unfairly more protected than men).
The economic criteria businesses use are neither measureable or clear in practice. Its really easy to figure out if someone hits a baseball, runs the bases or fields better than another person. These are easily measureable statistics. The amount that a single employee is worth to a business is entirely more complicated and grossly harder to measure (certain direct bill and sales employees possibly aside).
Also, the criteria hiring parties use in practice do not necessarily include only a guestimation of future value. Its too easy to use certain economic reasons as a pretext for discrimination. Read the Supreme Court cases enforcing gender and racial discrimination to fully see this.
Additionally you are not considering that there are interests of the government (e.g. not to disincentivize birth and birth rates, to lessen discimination (including disparate impact of such)) that without any government intervention may be undermined by employer and personal self interest.
Finally, the shareholders and directors that are concerned with a businesses profitability (and even the CEOs and CFOs that implement it) are not the same people making the hiring decisions. Therefore, even if market economics and employee profitablity was easily measureable and translatable (which it by no means is - if you could do it accurately, I advise you to open up a consulting business because you would have innumberable clients and become very wealthy), the people who have the incentive to act upon it are not the same people who do the actual hiring, and those people in paractice consider far more that bottom line profitability as you suggest.
As to your final point, there are so many other interrelated and superceding issues when it comes to U.S. job loss (ie. labor laws (including min wage and work hour laws), standards of living, health costs, liability laws, tax rates, environmental regs, worker regs, etc.). It is completely underanalyzing and oversimplifying matters for you to suggest that somehow by removing the laws, regulations and practices that may help minorities, women and others obtain "equality", a significant number jobs would somehow come back to the U.S.
There is a host of issues that fall under the umbrella: "Equality of condition" vs. "equality of opportunity".
I'm an opportunity guy. But those who disagree also hate any policy that allows for winners and losers. Here are a few issues along with the opinion opposed to my own:
Vouchers vs. public education: Competition will hurt the losers. (IMO, the current system creates mroe losers IMO
Right to work vs. Unions: Unions ensure security and standards of living that may be competed away.
Local vs. uniform statewide funding of education: Again, allowing rich towns to overinvest in education hurts poor towns, relatively speaking.
Apart from opportunity vs. condition, there are other issues that relate to people's relative preference of freedom vs. equality:
- Hiring/firing based on looks in sales, service, and customer facing roles. (Hot Miami clubs would cool down if ugly porkers slinging martinis.)
- Zoning: At what point does one's private property rights give way to a neighborhood's right to ban skyscrapers, retail stores, night clubs, and garish monstrosities?
- Religious tolerance vs. right to hire/fire/joke around as one sees fit. Must an employer allow yarmulkes, turbans, beards, crucifixes, etc? Should it be illegal to joke about chosen religions at work? Should a shopkeeper be responsible for the emotional protection of a cashier if customers poke fun?
Plus there are a bunch of issues that pit liberty against negative externalities...
- Drugs / gambling / porn / prostitution
- Risk of fire vs. the right to have backyard BBQ's, smoke in one's apartment, etc.
- Right to engage in unhealthy behavior vs. society's obligation to pay for medical care (assuming we maintain Medicare / Medicaid / etc.)
"Women have an out to the personal responsibilities that sometimes out of necessity gives them an out to the financial ones. Men have the exact same right to refuse to take over the personal responsibilities of raising a child. This settup is not unfair to men."
The way I read the "safe haven" laws, if the mother gives up the child and the father somehow finds out about it and claims the child, he gets custody, but if he tries to get child support from the mother he loses, at least in California.
-dk
I think society has a duty to care for those who genuinely can't care for themselves, but I am against an ever-expanding notion of what constitutes "can't".
If most people agree with you, then they can take care of such people through private institutions and voluntary donations, with less rent seeking as to how the money is spent. If most people disagree with you, the issue will not be voted into law.
So the issue is not whether "we should help the unfortunate," but whether the government is more effective at it than private institutions.
Re: If most people agree with you, then they can take care of such people through private institutions and voluntary donations
If most people agree with Megan than we can do it through public means as well, since, with some limitations to protect the civil rights of minorities, our system of governance is based on translating the will of the majority into public policy. True, some minor fraction of the population will be unhappy with the results, but that's life, deal with it-- the alternative would be utter governmental paralysis since there is no such thing as public policy that could command unanimous consent.
Can someone explain the logic behind a pro-choice vegan?
I can certainly attempt to do so, being both a vegan and pro-choice myself, though naturally I cannot speak for Megan or anyone else who might happen to share my views on these issues. I'll try to avoid going into too much detail as the arguments for against both issues have been detailed elsewhere by better hands than mine.
Veganism for me is about avoiding financially contributing to suffering. I don't need to eat that unfertilised chicken egg and if I buy it, I am financing the battery cage that produced it. My choice to be a vegan only affects me (and, theoretically, the animal-product industries).
If I had to, through some convoluted circumstance, kill a chicken in order to save my own life, I would. This, to me is a somewhat different choice to whether or not I want an egg salad. I don't want a chicken to suffer for my lunch, but I still value my life more than a chicken's. Is this a contradiction? I do not see it as such, but others may disagree.
In the case of an unwanted child, who suffers? Potentially: the mother, the child, society as a whole. I value the mother's choice not to have a baby more than I value the cluster of cells in her womb which has the potential to become a child eventually. Much like Leonard Peikoff, I see pro-abortion rights as being genuinely pro-life. Hence I do not see any contradiction, personally, between veganism and being in favour of abortion rights. As I said, I can speak only for myself. Hope that this is helpful.
I'm noticing that you are so desperately attempting to keep the BS on top of the issue (for whatever reason) but allow me to scrape it away again.
Listen, if you want women to make more babies, then keep them out of the career track. If you want to imagine that women can make babies AND stay in the career track by enforcing massive productivity penalties through forcing employers to take these women back and give them special privilege, that will lead to employers to discriminating against ALL women of childbearing age because they are too expensive or risky to hire and/or just getting their labor from another nation where such asinine laws don't exist.
Well, I don't have to go into that business. Apparently the government (by direction of the 52% female voters.. strange coincidence that) have already figured this out and are forcing women to be more readily accepted by the workforce.
So, the ENTIRE CRUX of your argument (women are as valuable in the workforce as men) is something you just admitted is basically impossible to measure.
Thank you for contradicting yourself so nicely as to prove my points for me.
Underanalize this: When the price vs quality ratio favors hiring workers in America vs. other countries, jobs will return to America. We can do that by either increasing the quality of American workers (very hard to do) or by reducing the cost of hiring American workers (which we are doing the opposite).
Is there any more BS you'd like me to clear away?
To a new point:
The difference is private charity is a gift while government enforced charity is an entitlement. There is a significant difference between how gifts and entitlements are received and treated.
Equality of opportunity is capitalism. Equality of condition (results) is communism.
Did we forget which system leads to advancement?
People do what they perceive to be in their best interest. That is determined by sicks and carrots. Sticks are much more motivating than carrots.
Their is no CRUX, much less an ENTIRE one. This is much too complicated for their to be a CRUX. There are too many practicalities and difficulties to slot such a decision conveniently into the capitalism model. People make hiring decisions, not companies.
Thats kind of the missed point here, although not quite a pivotal one.
And what happens when said person makes too many hiring decisions that the higher-ups in the company disagree with?
They'll decide that said hiring manager is no longer in the best interests of the company.
The company still makes the decision as a collective unit.
And, again, the problem is quite simple: There MUST be a compelling reason to adjust the market value of workers based on gender. Is there one, or will this idiotic venture into continual adjustment to grant desired results (50% of women in high level positions) go until either it is achieved or American business is destroyed in the process?
Right now, that "compelling reason" is so that the politician in question gets reelected. So yes, this will continue until American business is destroyed.
The reason he gets reelected is because 52% of the voting population are women, and women's votes are much more predictable and self-entitled than male votes.
So women, doing what is in their own best interests (voting for entitlements) get politicians to do what is in their best interests (pass women-favoring laws to get reelected) create a situation where American businesses do what is in their best interests (find workers from outside the US where said expensive women-favoring laws don't apply). Anything more you need simplified?