I think I'm voting for Obama

I'm still wary of his policies. But yesterday, to paraphrase Jon Stewart, Obama spoke about race and class to Americans as though they were adults.

Obama gets a lot of flak for campaigning on a supposedly nebulous rhetoric of meaningless hope and dangerous bipartisanship. I think his speech yesterday should (not will, unfortunately) finally refute that criticism. Obama's hope and unity is much the same as King's was. From `I have a dream':

This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

The hope is that, despite our conflicting interests, the emotional tension, and the deep-seated grudges, a real conversation, and the real understanding that comes with it, is still possible. Black and White, rich and poor, native-born and immigrant -- even progressive and conservative -- aren't so different that we can't live together as a community. To say that it's going to be awkward for a while is an understatement. (The dramatisation the Daily Show did last night was fantastic.) But we can, and should, still try.

The seven deadly sins test for institutional corruption

Here's the idea: you pick an institution of choice, and run through the list of the seven deadly sins/cardinal virtues. The ratio of vices to virtues exemplified by the institution is a rough (and tongue-in-cheek) indication of how corrupt the institution is.

For example, let's take the American news media. I'll bold the one in each pair exemplified by the media, and give a little explanation of what the pair means, just in case you haven't seen Se7en lately.

1. Pride or humility
   
   Pride is the desire (or belief) to be better and more important than others. Pride can be exemplified as vanity (pride of appearance or physical beauty), as pride of intellect, or by some other standard of dessert.
   
2. Envy or kindness
   
   Envy isn't a desire for material goods (that's greed, covered below). We don't have a good English term for this vice, I think; the German Schadenfreude is better. Roughly speaking, envy is the desire (satisfied or unsatisfied) for others to suffer.
   
3. Wrath or forgiveness
   
   Wrath is an uncontrolled hatred, anger, or desire for (disproportionate, unjust, or undeserved) revenge. The media don't typically exemplify this vice directly (except when it comes to immigration and powerful women), but do encourage it.
   
4. Sloth or diligence
   
   Sloth is laziness, but also idleness and a lack of zealousness more generally -- being unwilling to pursue and lacking enthusiasm for one's vocation.
   
5. Greed or charity
   
   Greed is the desire for material goods, especially wealth. The object of desire need not be owned by another, and greed need not be accompanied by a lack of concern for justice (although it often is).
   
6. Gluttony or temperance
   
   Gluttony is the wasteful over-consumption of consumable goods, especially food. Gluttony is exemplified both in the act of over-consumption itself, but also in anticipating over-consumption. Like wrath, gluttony is not typically exemplified directly by the news media, but it is certainly encouraged in viewers.
   
7. Lust or chastity
   
   Strictly speaking, lust is any form of love for another creature that is given precedence over love for God. As such, it's more of a `qualitative' vice than the `quantitative' ones of greed and gluttony. But today we tend to think of lust as another `quantitative' vice -- an excessive desire for sex, in particular. I prefer to understand lust as the objectification and commercialisation of love, especially sexual love.
   

Final tally for the American news media: 7-0.

Two election notes

1. It's going to come down to the convention

I've had a feeling this was going to be the case since before Super Tuesday, but now enough states have voted to see just how tight the race is. CNN has a delegate count applet that lets you fiddle with the delegate pledges. I started by giving Clinton 55% of all the delegates in each of the states whose votes have not yet been counted. (Ohio, Vermont, Rhode Island, and Texas haven't been entered into the set of fixed counts yet.) I chose 55% as a healthy and statistically significant (large enough to drown out the noise from sudden minor emergencies, people forgetting to vote, the polling machine craps out, that sort of thing) but still not overwhelming victory.

Clinton ends up with 1,899 pledged delegates; Obama with 1,898. That leaves Clinton the front-runner by a hair, and 126 delegates short of the number required to secure the nomination.

Now swing the 55% victories the other direction. Clinton ends up with 1,800, Obama with 1,997. Again, the front-runner is still short -- although in this case only by 28 delegates.

There have been plenty of victories with larger margins than this, of course. So Pam is simply wrong when she says `the math doesn’t favor any possibility of a Clinton win on the delegate side in the remaining contests'. First, it's far from mathematically impossible for either candidate to win. And, second, while it is unlikely that Clinton will secure a sufficiently large number of overwhelming victories, it's about as unlikely that Obama will secure a sufficiently large number of overwhelming victories.

I'm tempted to say: The primaries in the remaining states will just make the intraparty fighting more acrimonious and drain resources that would be better used squashing McCain like the pandering warmonger he is. Democrats should call off the remaining primaries, just cool off until the convention, and let the superdelegates decide who the nominee will be, since they're going to be doing it anyways.

I'm going to say: The primary in Indiana (exactly two months from today, if I remember correctly) is just going to continue this stalemate. So I don't feel obligated to choose between two slightly-left-of-center candidates whose campaigning has left me pretty disgusted. I'll either vote for Edwards (he's been getting a handful of percentage points in primaries over the past month, so I'm guessing he'll still be on the ballot) or Kucinich (ditto, without the handful of percentage points) or not at all.

2. I wish John Edwards hadn't dropped out

And not just because I genuinely wanted him president. Before Edwards dropped out, the media were (unfairly) focussed on Obama and Clinton, but there was little antagonism between them or their partisans. Clinton (and Edwards) partisans criticised Obama for the gap in his health care plan, Obama (and Edwards) partisans criticised Clinton for not renouncing her vote for the invasion of Iraq, and so on. Occasionally some issues of racism or sexism came up (some reactions to Clinton getting a little misty-eyed right around the New Hampshire primary were, to put it mildly, weird), but things were civil.

Then Edwards dropped out, we had Super Tuesday, and an all-out Democratic civil war errupted. Blogs I normally have the utmost respect for have degenerated, and do little more than repeat the disingenuous (and often racist or sexist) spitballs generated by the campaigns and right-wing lunatics. Rational discussion -- whether over the small but critical policy differences, the quality of campaign strategies, or the significance of racist or sexist comments -- has become virtually impossible.

I don't think Edwards leaving the field caused this to happen. Eight years of Bush has made Democrats jumpy and, quite naturally, they project the qualities of their ideal presidential candidate onto one name or another, even despite evidence to the contrary. (Aside: The NewsHour has been interviewing potential voters from highly contested states once or twice a week since before Super Tuesday. At first I watched these segments with interest. After a few of them, though, I realised that everyone involved was simply repeating the talking points handed down by their campaign, and many of the interviewees demonstrated spectacular factual ignorance. For example, there was one woman in Ohio who supported Obama because, she said, his health care plan covered more people than Clinton's. Another woman in Ohio claimed that, if Obama had been in the Senate five years ago, he would have voted to invade Iraq. I still watch these segments occasionally, but mostly they're just depressing.) The media ... well, are simply insane, and have badly fucked up this phase of the campaign in innumerable ways for over a year. And suggesting that you'll stoop to less-than-honest technical manoeuvres to secure the nomination (Florida and Michigan from the Clinton side; effectively eliminating superdelegates from the Obama side) that prompt accusations of `changing the rules in the middle of the game!' haven't helped.

What Edwards could have done, even if he was consistently getting only 10% or so of the votes in each state, is play mediator. There's no major public figure willing to honestly call out both Obama and Clinton when they or their campaigns pull inappropriate shit. There's no-one who can say `Obama's domestic policies have some serious problems and Clinton's foreign policies have some serious problems' and be taken seriously by everyone. Or that the media's sudden realisation that they've been giving Obama a free pass doesn't mean it's time to suck up to Clinton instead. And, most importantly, Edwards could have told people to calm down. Democrats can do a lot of good things in this country if, and only if, they learn the difference between constructive internal criticism and a circular firing squad.

Quick debunking: The college education gender gap

Myth: Colleges are facing a `man shortage'

Example: Weekly standard, 2006:

At colleges across the country, 58 women will enroll as freshmen for every 42 men. And as the class of 2010 proceeds toward graduation, the male numbers will dwindle. Because more men than women drop out, the ratio after four years will be 60--40, according to projections by the Department of Education.

The problem isn't new-women bachelor's degree--earners first outstripped men in 1982. But the gap, which remained modest for some time, is widening. More and more girls are graduating from high school and following through on their college ambitions, while boys are failing to keep pace and, by some measures, losing ground.

Response:

The percentage of men 25 years and older with a Bachelor's Degree or higher has risen steadily since 1940, and continues to rise. In particular, while only 7.3 percent of men 25 and older in 1950 had at least a Bachelor's degree (that would be around the time all the WW2 vets who went to college under the GI Bill started to graduate), in 2000 26.1 percent of men 25 and older had at least a Bachelor's degree.

For comparison, in 1950, the percentage of women 25 and older with at least a Bachelor's degree was 5.2 percent; in 2000, 22.9 percent.

Education is not a zero-sum game; the statistic is only alarming if you think that, for every woman who has a Bachelor's degree, a man is prevented from having one, or vice-versa. Every decade for the past sixty years, both more men and more women have gone to college than before.

Source: US census, A Half-Century of Learning: Historical Statistics on Educational Attainment in the United States, 1940 to 2000, Table 2 (XLS).

Le tribunal FISA ? Ce ne pas du tout démocratique !

Par Glenn Greenwald:

But for decades, the FISA court -- for obvious reasons -- was considered to be one of the great threats to civil liberties, the very antithesis of how an open, democratic system of government ought to function. The FISA court was long the symbol of how severe are the incursions we've allowed into basic civil liberties and open government.

The FISC is a classicly Kafka-esque court that operates in total secrecy. Only the Government, and nobody else, is permitted to attend, participate, and make arguments. Only the Government is permitted to access or know about the decisions issued by that court. Rather than the judges being assigned randomly and therefore fairly, they are hand-picked by the Chief Justice (who has been a GOP-appointee since FISA was enacted) and are uniformly the types of judges who evince great deference to the Government. As a result, the FISA court has been notorious for decades for mindlessly rubber-stamping every single Government request to eavesdrop on whomever they want.

Mais le désastre démocratique n'est pas seulement avec le tribunal. Il est aussi avec la «fenêtre Overton». Greenwald continue:

Yet now, embracing this secret, one-sided, slavishly pro-government court defines the outermost liberal or "pro-civil-liberty" view permitted in our public discourse. And indeed, as reports of imminent (and entirely predictable) House Democratic capitulation on the FISA bill emerge, the FISA court is now actually deemed by the establishment to be too far to the Left -- too much of a restraint on our increasingly omnipotent surveillance state. Anyone who believes that we should at the very least have those extremely minimal -- really just symbolic -- limitations on our Government's ability to spy on us in secret is now a far Leftist.

C'est formidable, la démocratie américaine, non?

Doing Moller Okin one better: Self-ownership is inconsistent

In the process of writing and reflecting on a recent post, I realised that libertarianism is inconsistent with a reasonable assumption about the existence of unwilling dependency workers. This post is a self-contained presentation of that argument.

Libertarianism, as that is understood by the political philosophers who call themselves libertarians, is based on two principles: self-ownership and non-interference. First, all persons own themselves.

(x)(Person(x) -> Owns(x,x))

Second, if x's claim of ownership of y would interfere with z's self-ownership (for example, x steals z's car), then x does not own y.

(x)(y)((Person(x) ^ (Ez)((Person(z) ^ Owns(x,y)) -> -Owns(z,z))) -> -Owns(x,y))

Call the conjunction of these two the general principle of self-ownership (GPSO).

Suppose Helen is an unwilling dependence worker: she does not want to care for Ben, her adult son with muscular dystrophy. However, without Helen's care, Ben is trapped in bed, and cannot exercise self-ownership. Hence, if Helen owns herself, Ben does not own himself. On the other hand, if Ben does own himself, it is because Helen was somehow forced, against her will, to care for him. So then Helen does not own herself. In either case, the second conjunct of the GPSO then implies that the first conjunct is false. This can be formalised:

(UDW) (Ex)(Ey)(Person(x) ^ Person(y) ^ (Owns(x,x) <-> -Owns(y,y)))
UDW + GPSO |- -GPSO

Strictly speaking, this does not show that the GPSO is inconsistent. But it does show that it is inconsistent with a fairly obvious fact about humanity: without care, often from unwilling dependency workers, dependent individuals cannot exercise the autonomy on which libertarianism rests. Given this fact of dependency, GPSO has to be rejected.

A short argument for political correctness

(1) One is being politically correct if one is deliberately avoiding using language that others find offensive or derogatory unless one has a good reason.
(2) In general, one should deliberately avoid using language that others find offensive or derogatory unless one has a good reason.
(3) Hence, in general, one should be politically correct.

Let's take a look at the good reason clause, since it's actually doing some important work here.

Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor said many things that others found offensive. I don't think they said many things that others found derogatory, but maybe that's just because I haven't listened to enough of them. But, without the good reason clause, one would come to the conclusion, from 2, that Bruce and Pryor did not act as they should have. And I don't think that sounds right.

We could fix this by dropping the offensiveness condition, so being politically correct amounts to only avoiding language that is derogatory. But not everything offensive is derogatory -- a crude comment about your coworker's breasts might be meant as a compliment, but would still be offensive, and would not be politically correct. Similarly, to talk about lynching a black person doesn't seem to be derogatory, but it's still offensive.

So leave the offensiveness condition in, and the good reason clause. Bruce and Pryor had good reason to be offensive, I think -- they were challenging a racist, classist, and sexually repressive social order. On the other hand, there doesn't seem to be any good reason to use (as opposed to mention) the phrase `nappy-headed hos'. There was no good reason for Imus' use of that phrase, in particular, so we can still say that he did not do what he should have.

One might try to claim that challenging the oppressive social order of political correctness itself is a good reason to use offensive or derogatory language. This seems to be the typical strategy when someone complains semicoherently about political correctness -- that liberals who insist on political correctness are being intolerant, or some such. This claim assumes that it's oppressive to say that one should deliberately avoid using language that others find offensive or derogatory unless one has a good reason. That is, it assumes that 2 is oppressive. If the opposite of `oppressive' is `liberting', then the claim assumes that there's something liberating about offending or derogating people without good reason. This sounds downright bizarre to me; at the very least, it can't be assumed.

Formalising Moller Okin

In chapter 4 of Susan Moller Okin's Justice, gender, and the family, she gives a feminist argument against Nozick's Lockean/libertarian/free market account of property. Libertarians have tried to respond to this article, but often seem to fail to understand its structure. Formalising Moller Okin's argument will help us get a grasp on how, exactly, it presents a problem for libertarians.

Libertarians, as a general rule, want to argue from a conception of individual liberty and autonomys as self-ownership to a fairly robust right to property. Let's start with two predicates, Person(x) and Owns(x,y). Person(x) means that x is a person -- as opposed to just a thing, like a hammer or a pizza -- while Owns(x,y) means that x owns y. The full depth of the property right involved is not so important here. But to get a feel of what libertarians want to show, here are two quotations that start to cash out the Owns relation:

`x is A's property' means `A has the right to determine the disposition of x'

Narveson suggests the following set as giving some sort of full ownership: (1) exclusive use, which includes the right to permit or refuse the right [sic; I think this is supposed to be `use'] by others; and (2) transfer in the form of sale, exchange, gift or bequeathal.

What's important is that, if x owns y, then no-one besides x (or another owner of y) can use y (presumably, in any way) without x's consent. We will also need a predicate for the relation of x gives y to z; Gives(x,y,z) will work nicely.

Of course, capitalism isn't just a system of free exchanges. It's also a system in which people make things. As part of the property system, libertarians want to say that, if something is made in the right way (with resources that are either unowned or acquired through fair exchange, and a few other so-called Lockean provisos that aren't important quite yet), then it is owned by the maker. So our last predicate is Makes(x,y), meaning x makes y in the right way.

The ultimate, fundamental principle on which libertarians attempt to ground their justification of private property is a right of maximal liberty:

(L) people have a non-overridable right to such liberties as do not interfere with those of others

This, they claim, can be read as a principle of self-ownership:

(S) one owns oneself

Formalise this as

(SO) (x)(y)(Person(x) -> (Owns(x,y) <-> x=y))

Moller Okin's argument focuses on the purported inference from this to a principle of original acquisition. And so shall we. Narveson states original acquisition in this way:

things acquired in ways that meet the initial (Lockean) conditions are indeed the property of those who acquire them, for precisely the same reasons that we have the general right of liberty, and as a straight implication thereof

Formalise the first clause of this as

(OA) (x)(y) ((Person(x) ^ Makes(x,y) ^ -(Ez)Gives(x,y,z)) -> Owns(x,y))

The final clause of the quotation from Narveson is the claim that SO implies OA. Formally, this is false -- Makes and Owns don't show up in SO, so it can't imply OA. However, presumably there is some set of definitions and/or axioms D that, Narveson thinks, will, when combined with S, imply OA. That is, Narveson's claim is

(1) SO + D |- OA

Moller Okin's argument is an attempt to show that 1 is false. Her counterexample is based on the fact that mothers make their children -- literally. She carefully works through Nozick's version of original acquisition, and describes a scenario in which all of the Lockean provisos have been satisfied: the mother was freely given the sperm, say, and procured all the resources necessary to maintain herself and (this bit varies from version to version) give birth to a healthy infant/raise a healthy child to adulthood according to free exchange and the principles of original acquisition. But then she doesn't give her child away -- either to another person or to himself. Instead, she keeps him as a slave. Hence the subtitle of Moller Okin's chapter: `Matriarchy, slavery, and dystopia'.

Let's formalise this counterexample as follows: there is a person, x, who makes another person, y, in the right way, and does not give y to any z.

(MOC) (Ex)(Ey) Person(x) ^ Person(y) ^ Makes(x,y) ^ -(Ez)Gives(x,y,z)

Moller Okin's criticism is that MOC, with OA, implies the negation of SO.

(2) MOC + OA |- -SO

Hence, either SO is inconsistent, or SO implies the negation of at least one of MOC and OA.

(3) SO is inconsistent
(4) SO |- -(MOC ^ OA)

Cashing out (4) gives two possibilities (which are not exclusive): either SO implies the negation of MOC, or SO implies the negation of OA.

(5) SO |- -MOC
(6) SO |- -OA

Of course, if SO implies the negation of OA, and is consistent, then it can't imply OA. And throwing in D won't help things, either.

(7) SO+D |/- OA

So, to sum up, the libertarian wants to claim that self-ownership implies an account of property that includes original acquisition (1). Moller Okin's counterexample shows that at least one of three things must be true: (a) self-ownership is inconsistent (3); (b) self-ownership implies that mothers do not make their children in the right way (5, roughly); or (c) self-ownership does not imply an account of property that includes original acquisition (7). Clearly option a is a disaster for libertarianism. I don't think b is all that promising, either -- at the very least, a libertarian who chooses to take this route would have to work through Moller Okin's discussion of how mothers make their children in exactly the right way just as carefully as she worked her way through Nozick's account of original acquisition. A libertarian cannot, as Narveson does, simply dismiss Moller Okin's counterexample by asserting that `What parents do is initiate a process that eventuates in human organisms, which grow up' and concluding immediately that `We should ... deny that children are `made' by their parents'.

Note that libertarians also cannot simply dismiss Moller Okin's argument as `absurd' -- again, as Narveson does. Anyone who knows a little about formal validity will agree with the analysis I gave in two paragraphs ago. The only option for a libertarian, then, is c.

Denying 1 might seem like a serious blow to libertarians. But is it? What if libertarians don't want OA, but instead want some more sophisticated principle of original acquisition? Recall that OA, the property right, wasn't the original principle. Rather, S, a basic right of self-determination, was. And Nozick is quite clear that, when property conflicts with self-determination, property must yield. Hence he introduces `side constraints', that limit property rights. These can be nicely incorporated into my formalism. For example, suppose we want to replace OA with a qualified version: so long as the made thing y isn't a person, x owns anything she makes in the right way.

(OA') (x)(y) ((Person(x) ^ -Person(y) ^ Makes(x,y) ^ -(Ez)Gives(x,y,z)) -> Owns(x,y))

This can be generalised: if C(x,y) is a predicate formalising a side constraint (or conjunction thereof, etc.), then let

(OA/C) (x)(y) ((Person(x) ^ -C(x,y) ^ Makes(x,y) ^ -(Ez)Gives(x,y,z)) -> Owns(x,y))

We include the side constraint in the antecedent, and so it blocks an inference to ownership in bad cases. Indeed, it does so in Moller Okin's case: MOC and OA' do not imply the negation of SO.

MOC + OA' |/- -SO

Hence Moller Okin's counterexample does not cause problems with this argument.

But there are, I think, at least three problems with this side constraint strategy. First, Nozick (I'm not sure about Narveson) believes that there's nothing wrong with selling oneself into slavery. That is, a side constraint concerning personhood does not show up in the principle governing free exchange. But why should it show up in the principle governing original acquisition, but not in the principle governing free exchange? That seems ad hoc. But, since the idea that there's nothing wrong with selling oneself into slavery is kind of weird, perhaps this isn't a serious objection.

Second, adding qualifications to OA makes it trickier, in general, to derive from SO. We haven't looked at the set of definitions D that libertarians will use to bridge the formal gap, so perhaps SO does indeed imply OA'. But showing this will require more care than I have seen libertarians giving.

Third, and most importantly, adding side constraints seriously compromises the robust property rights that were supposed to be implied by self-ownership. Consider the following side constraint: there should not be a person z such that x's ownership of y interferes with z's self-determination (self-ownership). This seems to be a good way of capturing the non-interference on which libertarians want to base side constraints. We'll call it C*(x,y), and formalise it as

C*(x,y) =df (Ez)(Person(z) ^ (Owns(x,y) -> -Owns(z,z)))

Now we plug this into OA/C.

(OA*) (x)(y) ((Person(x) ^ -(Ez)(Person(z) ^ (Owns(x,y) -> -Owns(z,z))) ^ Makes(x,y) ^ -(Ez)Gives(x,y,z)) -> Owns(x,y))

Note that OA* does just as nice a job of avoiding Moller Okin's counterexample as OA'. It also applies more generally -- it blocks ownership in any case where this would interfere with the self-determination of anyone, not just the purported `owned thing'.

But what does it mean to interfere with someone's self-determination? Suppose Maria has just baked a loaf of bread, using ingredients and an oven that she procured using free exchanges, and Jorge, just outside the door to her bakery, is starving to death. Without Maria's bread, Jorge will surely die in the near future. It seems clear to me that her ownership of the bread -- in particular, her right to refuse to give it to Jorge -- would interfere with Jorge's self-determination, as he certainly cannot determine the course of his life if he is dead. If this seeming is right, then OA* does not imply that Maria owns the bread. (Note that it does not imply that Jorge owns the bread, either, as he did not make it and has not been given it.)

This thought experiment can be generalised. First, let's formalise. If there is a person x such that x owning (or, more generally, using or having) y is necessary for x's self-determination, then no-one but x can own y.

(N) (x)(y)((Person(x) ^ (-Owns(x,y) -> -Owns(x,x))) -> (z)(z=/=x -> -Owns(z,y)))

Now, N is not implied by OA*. However, with the additional assumption that original acquisition and free trade are the only ways anyone can own anything, which libertarians all seem to endorse, N does follow.

Now consider Jamal, who is homeless. It is a bitterly cold night, and without the use of a small house nominally owned by Tasha, Jamal will surely die. It follows from N that Tasha does not own the house -- indeed, no-one except possibly Jamal owns the house. If Jaime nominally owns a course of treatment of a drug, and Lorenzo will surely die without taking it, then Jaime does not own the course of treatment of the drug.

Services are more difficult, because it does not seem like there is a thing that is owned or transferred in the case of, for example, a teacher teaching a student. It is also difficult to generalise to cases in which a suffering person needs any one of a variety of things. For example, Jorge will surely die if he doesn't get some food in the near future, but he would survive for at least a while if he had Maria's bread, or Michael's pizza, or Dana's apples, and so on. But, with the examples above, it is clear that OA* seriously compromises the libertarian's property rights: she does not own anything which is materially necessary to sustain the life of anyone nearby.

Economics is tricky II

Okay, let's talk about externalities. In a nutshell, an externality is something -- good or bad -- that you don't pay for. For good reason, the examples that always seem to get trotted out are instances of pollution. For example, without the EPA around to correct things, a factory that pollutes a river generally doesn't have to pay to clean up the river. Either the state, and hence the taxpayers, do, or no-one does, and the people living downstream `pay' for the pollution by getting cancer and dying.

The contemporary environmentalist's favourite examples of externalities are `cheap' fossil fuels and `cheap' beef. Both are `cheap' because the cost -- as in, dollars the oil baron/cattle baron pays -- to procure these goods (in the economist's sense, not the ethicist's sense) is much lower than the selling price -- what people will pay to consume them. But, in the quantities which we consume and produce, respectively, both fossil fuels and beef release horrendous quantities of greenhouse gases. Fossil fuels release carbon dioxide, as per Part I, and cows release methane as waste (as well as consuming even more fossil fuels, using up lots and lots of water, and so on).

And yet, because these costs are externalized, it is rational (again, in the economist's sense of maximising one's self-interest) for people who can produce fossil fuels and beef to do so. Which is where carbon taxes and cap-and-trade schemes come in. Since carbon taxes are simpler (cap-and-trade schemes amount to a market on carbon tax thresholds, and that means the analysis is an order of magnitude more complicated), I'll focus on those. From an economic point of view, the idea is quite elegant: if emitters of carbon dioxide (and other greenhouse gas compounds, eg, methane) are required to pay at least a significant fraction of the externalized costs, they will generally shift production to processes and products that emit that much less carbon dioxide. It's no longer rational for (former) carbon-emitters to emit carbon.

I'd also like to argue that carbon taxes can be justified on libertarian grounds. This seems entirely straightforward to me: for every metric ton of carbon dioxide you release, you do US$12 of harm to everyone else. (IPCC report, summary for policymakers, 24) Rather than collecting these damages individually and retroactive to the damage suffered, it makes far more sense (in terms of avoiding the legal costs of everybody suing everybody else) for the state to collect them proactively, and hence use them as a deterrent.

A horrifying realisation

For those of you who don't know this, I was born in 1980. The earliest distinct memory I have of a major political event was the August Coup that destroyed the Soviet Union. So I became aware of the world outside my school and my house during the first Bush presidency and the first Gulf War, the democratisation (more or much, much less) of the former Warsaw Pact countries, and the end of apartheid in South Africa. It was a time in which the dynamic and rhetoric of the Cold War was replaced by the dynamic and rhetoric of decolonialisation, democratisation, and universal human rights.

So let's say 11 years old is the typical age at which children start to become aware of events happening on the world stage. (If anything, I think I was precocious in this respect. If 12, 13, or older is more accurate, this doesn't cause a problem for my argument.) My students (and my step-sister) were born in 1989-90. This means they were starting to become aware of events happening on the world after 2001 -- a time in which (and sense which) the dynamic and rhetoric was dominated by paranoid, defensive imperialism and the unitary executive.

I'm not sure why I find this so disturbing. There's certainly no direct causal link between the political climate in which one's identity as a citizen is formed and, say, one's political values. Perhaps my worry is this: If these ideas, in some sense, make up the basic conceptual framework with which they analyse politics, then how well can they understand the dangers of totalitarianism?

Economics is tricky I

Some bad news about ethanol:

Researchers led by Timothy Searchinger at Princeton University said their study showed greenhouse-gas emissions will rise with ethanol demand. U.S. farmers will use more land for fuel, forcing poorer countries to cut down rainforests and use other undeveloped land for farms, the study said.

Searchinger's team determined that corn-based ethanol almost doubles greenhouse-gas output over 30 years when considering land-use changes. Bob Dinneen, president of the Renewable Fuels Association in Washington, said the study used a flawed model and overestimated how much land will be needed.

The intuitive case for ethanol is based on the fact that the carbon you release in burning it was trapped in the corn just a few months ago.

Let's back up. The oxygen combustion of carbon fuels, no matter how efficient (ie, no matter how little particulate pollution is produced) produces carbon dioxide. Yearly averages of carbon dioxide levels are rising because we burn lots of fossil fuels -- essentially, highly compressed prehistoric swamps. This is carbon that was in the atmosphere millions of years ago, but has been out of the atmosphere since the beginning of human civilization. Hence we say that fossil fuels result in a net emission of carbon dioxide.

The intuitive case for ethanol is based on the fact that, rather releasing carbon that was trapped by plants while our shrewlike ancestors were trying to steal eggs from dinosaur nests, burning ethanol releases carbon that was trapped by corn a few months ago. So, over the scale of a couple years, ethanol results in zero net emissions of carbon dioxide.

However, you can't just magically find some unused tract of land and grow lots and lots of corn for use in producing ethanol. At least, the land that's not currently being used is in environments that are too hostile for corn to grow -- the middle of the Sahara, the tundra, etc. You have to take land that's currently in use -- namely, for growing corn or other crops for food -- and change its use -- to growing corn for ethanol.

This results in an increase in food prices -- nothing's changing the demand for food (if anything, it grows as the global population increases), and the supply's just dropped a few percentage points. And, because of globalisation, an increase in food prices in the US increases food prices in places like rural Brazil.

The people of rural Brazil are, generally speaking, already quite poor. So if food prices go up, there's now a (larger) gap between how much food they can afford to buy (it's not like they've gotten any less poor) and how much food they need to survive. It's a lot easier for them to clear-cut another X number of acres of rainforest and grow enough food to fill that gap than it is for them to scrounge together enough additional money to maintain their level of food consumption. But the X number of acres of rainforest would have absorbed a certain amount of carbon from the atmosphere. This counted against the net emission of carbon from burning all the fossil fuels (and, I might add, raising all the methane-producing cattle we do). Effectively, a mandate to switch a certain amount of US land from food production to ethanol production does actually increase net emissions of carbon.

The question is how big of an increase, and how that compares to the decrease in net emissions from burning ethanol instead of petroleum. And the answer, it appears, is enough to double the emission rate in 30 years.

Part II, on externalities, when I feel like writing it. Link from Paul Krugman.

The telos of the Randian humanum

I promise, this will be my last post on Ayn Rand and Objectivism.

As a eudaimonic theory, Rand's ethics is teleological: an action is good if, and only if, it contributes to or is part of a certain good end. This good end is eudaimonia, the good life. But what is this good life? Considering these questions reveals an equivocation in the Randian argument.

To be more specific, I want to look at a piece titled `Nozick and the Randian argument', by Douglas Den Uyl and Douglas Rasmussen. This piece was published in what is apparently a libertarian journal, The Personalist, in 1978. I like this piece better than anything I've actually read by Rand, as the argument is both more systematically worked-out and actually presented in premiss-conclusion form (although it's frequently unclear how their conclusions are supposed to follow from their premisses). I'm going to focus on just the following part of the argument, which is roughly the first half:

1) Life is an ultimate end, an end in itself, for any living thing.
2) To be a living thing and not be a living thing of a particular kind is impossible.
C1) Thus, life as the kind of thing it is is the ultimate value for each living thing.
4) A human being is that kind of living being which can be designated as a rational animal.
C2) Thus, life as a rational animal is the ultimate value for each person.
5) A rational animal is an animal whose mode of consciousness is characterized by ... conceptual awareness.
C3) Thus, conceptual awareness must characterize one who lives as a rational animal, and one only lives as a rational animal in so far as one engages in conceptual activity.
6) The conceptual mode of cognitive contact with reality is man's [sic] only means of determining how to deal with reality so as to sustain his own existence.
7) Actions taken in accord with judgments of how to deal with reality are man's only means of dealing with reality so as to sustain his own existence.
C4) Thus, living as a rational being means, minimally, acting in accordance with conceptual judgments.

Note that I've skipped some bits that weren't relevant to the subject of this post.

Initially, (1), life is understood simply as a matter of continued existence. It must be, because Rand is talking about living things in general here -- and the primary difference, Rand thinks, between living and non-living things is that the existence of the former is precarious. A living thing's existence can be terminated. Hence, she argues, it must act (voluntarily in some cases, involuntarily in others), in order to preserve its existence.

Moving on, in context, (4) is actually a conclusion derived from (5), (6) and (7). For now, ignore (2) and everything that follows from it -- focus just on the argument involving (1) and premisses (4)-(7):

1) Life is an ultimate end, an end in itself, for any living thing.
6) The conceptual mode of cognitive contact with reality is man's [sic] only means of determining [forming judgements of] how to deal with reality so as to sustain his own existence.
7) Actions taken in accord with judgments of how to deal with reality [so as to sustain one's own existence] are man's only means of dealing with reality so as to sustain his own existence.
5) A rational animal is an animal whose mode of consciousness is characterized by ... conceptual awareness.
[C2'] Thus, living as a rational animal is the only means by which a human can achieve her or his ultimate end.
4) [Thus,] A human being is that kind of living being which can be designated [defined] as a rational animal.

The argument to (4) narrows the scope: we're not just thinking about living things in general, but humans in particular. Unlike other living things, humans use rationality to survive. Note that (6) and (7) regard rationality in a purely instrumental way. In both of these premisses, rationality is a means to the end of sustaining one's existence. Rationality is the primary instrument by which humans achieve their ultimate end, viz., life, understood as simple existence. Call this the instrumental attitude towards rationality. Only bare existence is the end in itself, for the instrumental attitude.

(C2') bears some resemblance to (C2). Both speak of the importance of living as a rational animal for a human being. However, while (C2') reflects the instrumental attitude towards rationality of premisses (6) and (7), (C2) asserts that living as a rational animal constitutes the good human life. Call this the ethical attitude towards rationality. On the ethical attitude, humanity's ultimate ends are defined by the exercise of our capacities for rational thought.

Now, (C2) is supposed to depend on (4) and (C1). If I'm right, and (4) is, not a premiss, but a conclusion that depends on (6) and (7), then somehow the Randian argument has moved from the instrumental attitude to the ethical attitude. Maybe (C1) bridges this gap.

C1) Thus, life as the kind of thing it is is the ultimate value for each living thing.

No, clearly this is the ethical attitude. The move from the instrumental attitude must come earlier. Since (1) is ambiguous, the only place this move can be accomplished is at (2).

2) To be a living thing and not be a living thing of a particular kind is impossible.

This is again ambiguous. Here's another statement of (2), from elsewhere in the text:

It is impossible for a living being to be and not be a living being of some kind -- there is no such thing as unspecified life, ie, life existing in some abstract way. Thus, the nature of a living thing -- the kind of thing it is -- determines whether the life of the entity is achieved. (192-3)

The authors then go on to assert (C1). So the second quoted sentence is just a statement of (C1), with the ethical attitude. The first clause of the first sentence is (2), leaving the second clause, after the dash, to explain (2).

There are two problems with this explanation. First, it is built on a gross failure to understand the type/token distinction -- they have confused the general concept of life with all its instances. Compare this assertion with the following:

It is impossible for a human being to be and not be at some specific place -- there is no such thing as unlocated humanity, ie, humanity existing outside of space and time. Thus, the location of a human being -- its particular cultural context -- determines whether the life of the human being is achieved.

This conclusion is a sort of relativism that Rand strongly rejects. Second, the juxtaposition of the two sentences in the quotation shows that the move from the instrumental attitude to the ethical attitude is nothing more than an equivocation. Living being, in the first sentence, means bare life, mere continued existence, not flourishing. This has nothing at all to do with the normative notion of flourishing life in the second sentence. Consider the `unlocated humanity' passage again: the fact that every instance of humanity is located at some specific place in space does not imply that one's particular cultural context determines what it means for one to have a flourishing life.

Whosajiggawah?

From a DK diary, via Paul Krugman.

The UnFair Tax

I know I link to Ezra a lot, but well, he writes some good stuff. Anyway, he's got an article up about why Mike Huckabee's "Fair Tax" proposal is not very fair. Next week he's promising to have a post exploring some ways that you *could* do a fair consumption tax. I think it's a safe bet I'll be linking to those as well.

Let's just top that racism off with a nice big scoop of sexism, too

NYT:

Though women and men have roughly the same credit scores, the Consumer Federation of America found that women were 32 percent more likely to receive subprime loans than men. The disparity existed within every income and ethnic group. Blacks and Latinos are also more likely to get subprime loans than comparable white borrowers.

Unlike earlier analyses that revealed clear racism on the part of lenders -- Black and Latin@ applicants were actively encouraged by loan officers to apply for larger mortgages than White applicants of the same income and credit score, and hence got worse terms for their loans -- this article does not suggest explicit racism. Instead, blame is laid on the fact that women are generally poorer than men.

Which is rather dumb, since the analysis controls for income.

“The striking thing is that the disparity between men and women actually goes up as income rises,” said Allen J. Fishbein, director of credit and housing policy for the Consumer Federation of America. Among high earners — defined as people earning twice the median income — black women are as much as five times more likely to receive subprime mortgages than white men.

A better explanation? Not structural sexism, but good old fashioned misogyny.

Mr. Fishbein said that even at high-income levels, mortgage brokers may assume that women are less confident to negotiate or shop around, and so offer them higher rates. A survey in 2006 by Prudential Financial found that two-thirds of women graded themselves at C or lower in their knowledge of financial services or products.

The payments rates are astounding. One woman bought a $130k house four years ago. Her initial payment was $841 a month, which is about 0.65% of the principle. Assuming a 30 year mortgage, at that payment she would pay the bank just under 232% of the principle. But her payment more than doubled after 2 years, to $1769 a month. That's 1.36% of the principle. Over 30 years, she would pay the bank just under 472% of the principle, or about $613.6K.

Nearly two-thirds of a million dollars, for what sounds like a dinky little townhouse in a lower middle class neighbourhood. At an average $15 an hour, 40 hours a week, 51 weeks a year, it would take someone 20 years worth of work just to earn that much money. That's half of your life's wages, just to buy a house.

And lest you argue that `they shouldn't be buying a house if they can't afford it':

Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, which buy loans from mortgage lenders, have estimated that 15 percent to 50 percent of the subprime loans they bought in 2005 went to borrowers whose credit scores indicated they were qualified for prime loans.

Yes, they couldn't afford the usurious subprime loans. But their credit scores say a significant percentage could have afforded prime loans.

This sounds familiar

From a comment on an article in the Chronicle of higher education:

MIT does not really tenure for excellence in research. Like other top-of-the-top universities, MIT tenures for reputation of excellence in research. (Forget about teaching or service; neither factors into the equation.)
This means two things: First, cutting-edge research, risky research, or what the corporate-types like to call “thinking outside of the box” is not viable when faced with a grueling tenure process, based so heavily upon peer review that—in order to garner outstanding reviews—one must cater to the preconceptions of one’s peers at other top institutions. Thus, much like that Other university up the road, MIT is forced poach its very best scholars who first proved their genius elsewhere, because the tenure process does not allow its own junior faculty the time or intellectual flexibility to excel at that level.

What does this have to do with gender (or race)? Well, peer review might claim to be an “objective” analysis of research, but any psychologist or sociologist worth their salt will tell you that evaluation of one’s peers is a social process. And look at the gender and racial breakdowns of these “peers.” White to a man. MIT’s unyielding adherence to reputation can and will only reproduce the social circle (white, male) of those called upon to evaluate the reputation. Meanwhile, there is a myopic and simple-minding insistence, pervasive throughout the institute, that this tenure process is somehow “objective” (tossing out a century of social science on the impossibility of such a thing), which leaves the Institute unable to address the problem.
Only after women and minorities (and white men with numbers of women or minorities in their social circle) have broken into other top and just-below the top institutions, and occupy positions of power in the profession, will they then advocate for those in their social networks in tenure cases at MIT. And only then will MIT’s tenuring process be physically able to recognize these one-time outsiders as worthy of tenure.

Most of the other comments are simply odious. For example, the way the next comment flatly denies that sex and gender play any role any the tenure process and raises the specter of -- oh noes! -- people getting things they don't deserve. The commenter is, evidently, completely ignoring decades of research that the same CV is consistently rated as less impressive when there's a woman's name at the top. S/he certainly misses the entire point of the previous comment.

Yes, these data show that the number and percentage of female faculty receiving tenure at MIT is increasing slowly. However, by themselves, these numbers do not prove that gender discrimination took place. In order to prove this, it would be necessary to provide evidence that female tenure candidates achieved the research record necessary to attain tenure, but were turned down because they were women (i.e., because of their genitalia or feminine attributes) .... It seems logical to believe that the vast majority of highly educated people would not turn down a candidate that has achieved the necessary record of accomplishments for tenure because of their genitalia or femininity. The flip side of this is whether a candidate without the necessary record of accomplishments should be granted tenure because of their genitalia or femininity so the percentages improve more quickly and become more equal? Those who use identity politics to try to leverage power and resources for individuals who may not merit them would say yes.

Now, I actually don't agree entirely with the first comment. S/he says that an objective evaluation is impossible. I think that an objective hiring process is possible. Or, to be more specific, an evaluation in which the consideration of candidates' races and genders and the fact of historical and ongoing discrimination against members of certain races and genders are considered specifically at certain points, would be more objective than the current system. When it comes to junior faculty, for example, measures could be taken to make sure the initial stages are completely anonymous (or as anonymous as possible), and gender, sex, and racial identity could be used to choose between candidates considered to be of the same quality by the initial stages.

What's the difference between an attack ad and legitimate criticism?

The Edwards campaign has a new ad out, presenting Clinton contradicting herself during a(?) recent Democratic debate:


I came across this ad on Tennessee Guerilla Women, where the blogger accuses Edwards of `cut[ing] and past[ing]' a `scathing' and `nasty' ad, and implying that he has thereby, and unlike Hillary, `gon[e] negative'. There's also a link to a discussion on another blog that, from the excerpt, appears to be accusing Edwards of hypocrisy. I want to bracket the issue of hypocrisy, since it could be that Edwards is making a legitimate criticism that applies just as well to both himself and Clinton. Note that I also assume some criticism is legitimate. While we're rather fond of accusing politicians of `going negative', part of the process of campaigning is pointing out the failings and flaws of one's opponents. Indeed, going negative has gained such prominence that accusations of it are popular and often unfair and illegitimate attacks -- it's a way to shame one's opponent for revealing one's own flaws and failings.

Attack ads and legitimate criticisms lie on opposite ends of a spectrum. In the murky middle are ads that might be illegitimate and unfair attacks and might be legitimate criticisms. Which one is this -- attack ad, legitimate criticism, or in the murky middle? It's clear that the blogger I quoted in the last paragraph thinks it is clearly an attack ad.

But it's not so clear to me. First, the ad doesn't contain vague and emotionally-loaded descriptions of her policies and past actions. It's showing clips of her speaking. Next, we might worry about context -- perhaps these remarks were made in contexts that change their meaning. But they mostly seem to be pretty clear, so that means that it's at least not clearly an unfair attack. Third, we might worry about the fact that Clinton is speaking extemporaneously rather than carefully and precisely stating her views. She's speaking on her feet at a debate to explain her views in a general way rather than formulating policy in a precise way for implementation. So, again, there might be subtlety and nuance to her views that are being unfairly neglected. The portion of the ad on immigration might be especially worrying in this respect.

Let's think about that immigration portion a little more carefully. The ad wants to suggest that Clinton is being inconsistent. It seems to me as though she might be trying to avoid answering an obviously stupid question -- giving illegal immigrants driver's licenses isn't an issue that can be settled with a `yes' or `no' answer in thirty seconds. But then I wonder why she didn't just say that it's a stupid question, and far too complex of an issue to be settled so simplistically. Hence, she might be saying inconsistent things, and she might be caught off-guard with a spectacularly stupid question. It's not clear either way.

So, with respect to the immigration portion, it's not clear whether the ad is an unfair attack or a legitimate criticism. With respect to the other two reasons I can think of for calling an ad an attack ad rather than a legitimate criticism, it's at least not clearly an unfair attack, and probably a legitimate criticism. I can't think of any other reasons for calling an ad an attack ad rather than a legitimate criticism. So, considering these three reasons together, I conclude that the ad is in the murky middle, but very, very close to being a legitimate criticism. It's at least not clearly an attack ad.

Addendum: There's a fourth respect in which an ad could be an attack ad, and that's if it's promoting or appealing to some odious ideology (racism, sexism, heterosexism, ablism, xenophobia, and so on). This ad is clearly not doing that by any ordinary standard. It's not, as one commentator on the source post suggests, going after Clinton `on the basis that she's female'.

What's wrong with Ron Paul?

David Neiwert and a diarist on Kos have very, very disturbing series of posts on Paul. The three major points of Neiwert's post:

Most of his positions today -- including his opposition to the Iraq war -- are built on this same shoddy foundation of far-right conspiracism and extremist belief systems, particularly long-debunked theories about the "New World Order," the Federal Reserve and our monetary system, the IRS, and the education system.

[...]

While I think the evidence that Paul is incredibly insensitive on racial issues -- ranging from a racially incendiary newsletter to his willingness to appear before neo-Confederate and white-supremacist groups -- is simply overwhelming, it isn't as simple to make the case that he is an outright racist, since he does not often indulge in hateful rhetoric -- and when he has, he tries to ameliorate it by placing it in the context of what he thinks are legitimate policy issues.

[...]

Note, if you will, that the interviewers' questions are all predicated on a belief in old far-right conspiracy theories about "banking elites" [read: Jews] are secretly out to control the world -- and Paul clearly accepts those premises as valid.

Phenry's diary is its own rundown. Here are some highlights that, I believe, will generally disturb my libertarian friends: Paul is anti-abortion (and not just anti-Roe v. Wade), is pro-shielding oil companies from contamination lawsuits, is so anti-immigrant that he wants to repeal birthright citizenship, voted against reauthorizing the Voting Rights Act of 1965, voted for a bill that would require `proof of citizenship' -- producing a birth certificate, passport, or naturalisation certification -- at the polls, supports the Defense of Marriage Act (indeed, he cosponsored a bill that would bar federal courts from considering challenges to the federal DMA), does not believe in the separation of church and state (though he does believe in the `separation of school and state'), introduced a bill that would prohibit the federal court system from hearing any equal protection case involving religion or sexuality, refuses to acknowledge that there is genocide in Darfur, hates unions and voted to make it harder to file class-action lawsuits.

And that's a selection from one post in a series of four.

This does not sound like the set of beliefs of a man whose political philosophy is firmly grounded on a principle of respect for individual liberty.

A question for every Democratic presidential candidate

Over the past seven years, we've seen the Bush administration systematically and continually assault the Constitutional doctrine of the separation of governmental powers. This assault has resulted in one of the greatest expansions in Executive power in the history of the United States, and is widely regarded as the single most pernicious effect this administration will have on the American way of life. Simply put, the presidency of George W. Bush has threatened the rule of law in this country.

Bush's Democratic successor will have an opportunity to use this Executive overreach to undo much of the more immediate harms the current administration has inflicted on the United States. Between executive orders and signing statements, the next President will be able to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, roll back the Bush tax cuts, and rebuild our health care system without the co-operation of the Congress. But this successor may well be the last chance this country has for restoring the separation of powers. Should you win the nomination and then the election, you will therefore be presented with a historic moral dilemma: Will you sacrifice your policy goals for the sake of restoring the rule of law, or will use the nearly unchecked power of the Executive to achieve policy reform?

Pretending that economics is the right way to think about problems of justice

Background: NARAL PCA wants to use text messaging to send action alerts to members who sign up to receive such alerts. Verizon, citing a longstanding internal rule prohibiting text messaging about `controversial' topics, refuses to let NARAL PCA run this program with Verizon customers. (Cont'd below the fold.)

What's to be done? One response suggests expanding something called the common carrier rule to include text messaging, now that text messaging has become a major form of interstate communication.

Professor Wu pointed to a historical analogy. In the 19th century, he said, Western Union, the telegraph company, engaged in discrimination, based on the political views of people who sought to send telegrams. “One of the eventual reactions was the common carrier rule,” Professor Wu said, which required telegraph and then phone companies to accept communications from all speakers on all topics.

But this isn't the only response.

Some scholars said such a rule was not needed for text messages because market competition was sufficient to ensure robust political debate.

“Instead of having the government get in the game of regulating who can carry what, I would get in the game of promoting as many options as possible,” said Christopher S. Yoo, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania. “You might find text-messaging companies competing on their openness policies.”

Well, yes, you might find text-messaging companies competing on their openness policies. Just the same way you might find organic foods being served at McDonald's and Burger King. Or the way you might find $500 in your winter coat next week.

The supply and demand model (which I presume Prof. Yoo is utilising here, the Times not having quoted him citing any more sophisticated model) assumes, among other things, that the marketplace is in a state of perfect competition. Primary features of this state include perfect and complete information (everyone knows everything), equal access (it's easy for consumers to move from one producer to another, among other things), free entry (it's easy to start up a new company in the market), and the independence of consumers and producers (the fact that my best friend chose to go with company A in no way influences my choice between companies A and B).

It should be clear that none of the assumptions made in the previous sentence obtain in the case of today's telecommunications giants. A quick Google search isn't turning up a nice chart or graph, so I don't have evidence, but AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint (I might be forgetting one or two prominent others) have almost complete control over the cell phone network within the United States. Critically, this includes the infrastructure, the physical network itself. A new carrier trying to enter the market must either pay one of these companies to use their infrastructure, or invest billions of dollars (and, most likely, engage in tedious legal fights) to build their own infrastructure. The big telecoms require customers to sign two-year service contracts, so buyers cannot easily move from one service to another. And, of course, the service contracts are specifically designed to encourage customers to use the same network as their friends, family, and co-workers, with significant discounts for in-network communications.

Again, a quick Google search isn't turning up the information I need to make good on this claim, but I think the cell phone networks in the US would be better described as an oligopoly. If this is the case, then both competition and collusion are likely, and a simple model can't predict with any reliability. For example, the telecommunications giants might start competing with each other to let NARAL PCA send action alert text messages. Or they might just as well all decide to ban NARAL PCA from their networks. Critically, in neither case do consumers have any real say over what happens. The ability of NARAL PCA to effectively communicate with its members using text messages depends on decisions made at the highest levels within the big telecoms.

Which leads to the real problem I have with Prof. Yoo's suggestion that we just let the invisible hand sort things out. There's a difference between NARAL PCA communicating action alerts to a list of members and what kinds of frozen pizzas we can find at the local megamart. The Times reporter recognises that difference, albeit only in one short sentence: `Messages urging political action are generally thought to be at the heart of what the First Amendment protects.'

The real, effective ability of citizens to express their political beliefs is at issue here. It's true that there are plenty of other ways for citizens to engage in political speech -- NARAL PCA has a website and sends out messages to its members by both e- and snail mail. But if Verizon is allowed to prohibit the communication of controversial ideas over its network, then mutatis mutandis so is FedEx, and so are landline phone companies and television stations and cable television and internet companies. Hence, by contraposition, if we accept a principle requiring these other common carriers to give NARAL PCA access to their networks (whether that principle is grounded in the First Amendment or something else), then we must accept a principle requiring Verizon to give NARAL PCA access to its text messaging network.

Finally, once we highlight this aspect, we realise that Yoo's economic argument (such as I assume he had; the Times just quoted his conclusion, not his reasoning for that conclusion) is a huge red herring. When we start debating the proper economic policy, we end up completely ignoring the deeper, and far more important, issue of justice: What impositions can and should we place on members of our society to ensure that everyone has a real ability to express their political beliefs?