A radical idea

 

A Plan to Make Reparations for Slavery in America

 

            Slavery was practiced in the territory which is now the United States from 1619 until 1865.  The abolition of slavery in 1865 made millions of Africans and/or their descendants into American citizens.  The former slaves rejoiced to gain freedom, but most of them were treated as second class citizens.  Segregated housing, discrimination in education, employment discrimination, “separate but equal” exclusionary laws, exploitive lending practices, discriminatory housing policies, race-based voting restrictions, and other factors made life in America after the Civil War much harder for blacks than whites.

            No one can reasonably dispute these facts.  America’s foundational political rhetoric (“all men are created equal”) does not change the facts.  Nor can we hide from the results of our history.  Though we have made real progress against racism, there remains a wide gap of inequality between white and black Americans.  The lingering effects of slavery, segregation, and discrimination show up in a variety of ways, such as incarceration rates, teenage pregnancy rates, differential access to medical care, family disintegration, and overall wealth.

            Let’s look at that last indicator, wealth.  According to a Brookings study, in 2016 the typical white family in America had a net worth of $171,000 while the typical black family had $17,150.  If those numbers seem surprisingly low, remember we are talking about median wealth, the middle of the range.  The average wealth of white families is much higher—about $1 million and the average wealth of black families is about $138.000—because the wealth of very rich people greatly increases the average.  Either way, whether comparing median wealth or average wealth, white families have much, much more wealth; seven to ten times as much.  And since wealth is passed from one generation to the next, disparities of wealth persist over time.  Further, since richer people tend to invest more of their wealth, the wealth gap between the top and the bottom tends to grow over time.   Even if we could guarantee equal income for whites and blacks beginning tomorrow (impossible, given education disparities and other factors relevant to income), the inequality of wealth would continue for generations.

            Given these facts, some people have raised the question of reparations.  The argument is fairly straightforward: Since the government of the United States and the governments of the various states contributed to this vast wealth gap by overt, unjust, and discriminatory policies, those governments ought now to try to repair the gap.

            Reparations proposals are controversial, to put it mildly.  I am not going to address the many arguments and counterarguments in this debate.  I will point out that the U.S. did adopt a reparations policy for Japanese Americans who were unjustly imprisoned in internment camps during World War 2. 

            American injustices inflicted on African Americans present a vastly greater problem than the internment camps, which lasted only four years and affected roughly 120,000 persons rather than millions.  It is the enormous scale of the damage inflicted by slavery and generations of discrimination that makes reparations to black Americans hard to imagine.  How can we “pay back” such an incalculable debt?  Would a symbolic repayment merely insult the memory of past generations?

I have a suggestion to make.  First, though, a little background.

Consider the U.S. treatment of Native Americans.  Without recounting history extensively, I think we can agree that European Americans treated First Nations people as abominably as we treated African Americans.  U.S. policy toward Native Americans was to take their land, kill any who resisted the theft of their land, and try to civilize them by forcing them to adopt European culture, language and government.  In the last decades of the 20^th century, U.S. policy moved away from cultural imperialism.  Our courts have ruled that by law we must treat native tribes as real nations; after all, the U.S. government agreed to treaty after treaty with them. 

Thus, native tribes have an advantage, when compared to the descendants of slaves: official recognition as independent tribal entities.  And in many states this has conferred a practical advantage to the tribes in regard to gambling.  Most states legally prohibit or restrict casino style gambling.  (Nevada is an obvious exception; that state has long used gambling to create its unique tourist industry.)  Since the tribes have independent status, they are able to authorize casino gambling even in states that prohibit or restrict gambling.  In recent decades tribal casinos have become a familiar aspect of American life; there are more than 500 such operations.

Just to be clear: I disapprove of gambling.  There is good evidence that gambling is addictive.  Gambling straightforwardly encourages greed.  Gambling, like other addictions, harms families and children.  Gambling exacerbates problems of poverty.  Nevertheless, I submit that tribal casinos have actually benefited native tribes.  In effect, tribal casinos transfer wealth from their customers (mostly white Americans) to the tribal governments that sponsor them.  In a rough and ready way, tribal casinos make reparations to the tribes.  Native tribes document which persons are actual members of the tribes, so the financial benefits of the casinos are shared primarily with those who suffer from the historical injustice of American Indian policy.  It’s possible that tribal casinos also confer a psychological benefit to Native Americans, in that tribal governments control the casinos.  “That (the casino) belongs to us.”

Another clarification: I am not expressing approval of any particular casino or its management.  I have no inside knowledge, but I would not be surprised if there were disputes between tribal officials and casino operators; there may well be disputes over casino policies between tribal members and their officials.

            Now, with tribal casino gambling as a model, I propose a way for the U.S. government to make reparations to African Americans who suffer the enduring effects of slavery.  It starts with some facts about Major League Baseball.

            First, Major League Baseball (hereafter, MLB) is a unique industry in America.  Due to a 1922 Supreme Court decision, which was reaffirmed in the 1950s and again in 1972, MLB is not subject to most anti-trust legislation.  I’m leaving out lots of legal details here, but the result been that MLB enjoys legal advantages unknown in any other business.

            Second, in recent decades, MLB has proven to be wildly successful financially.  This is shown by the market value of the various MLB franchises more than their annual profit/loss statements.  In 2019 Forbes Magazine estimated the value of the New York Yankees at $5 billion, with the value of the other 29 teams somewhere below the Yankees.  Further, the value of these franchises has been increasing rapidly over the last three decades.  George Steinbrenner bought the Yankees in 1973 for $8.7 million; the value of the franchise has increased almost 1000 times in less than 50 years.  The growth in value reflects national and regional television contracts and many subsidiary businesses.  This year, 2021, MLB announced that if it expands to two new cities (such an expansion has been publicly rumored for years, and there are active would-be ownership groups in multiple cities), the new teams would each have to pay $2.2 billion to the league as an expansion fee.  Any new team (in Portland, some of us hope) will instantly have a market value over $3 billion.  In most cases, MLB franchises also benefit from city and county governments that use tax money to pay for state of the art baseball stadiums, a practice which greatly increases the value of MLB teams.

            Here’s my proposal.  The U.S. government should nationalize Major League Baseball and transform the various franchises (32 of them, after expansion) in semi-private corporations.  Ownership rights would be given, in equal shares, to American citizens descended from persons enslaved in the U.S. before 1865.

1.     Cost?  The U.S. would pay current ownership a fair rate.  Let’s say each franchise was worth $5 billion.  32 franchises = $160 billion price tag.  Compared to COVID-19 stimulus legislation, this is not much.

2.     Semi-private corporations?  Undoubtedly, each team would need a management team.  The owners would elect directors, similar to the way stockholders of publicly traded corporations elect board members and officers.  The legislation to nationalize MLB would establish rules and goals for the 32 new corporations.

3.     The owners of the teams would be Americans who can show they descended from slaves.  Some black Americans would not be eligible to be MLB owners; for example, Barack Obama would not qualify, since his African father immigrated to the U.S. long after 1865.  Just as Native American tribes do not acknowledge every person who claims to belong to the tribe, the stockholders in the new corporations would want to good evidence before granting voting rights to applicants.

4.     Numbers?  There are approximately 42 million African Americans in the U.S.  Some of them, like Mr. Obama, would not qualify as stockholders in MLB.  Others may not apply for shares; perhaps they don’t trust the government or they hate baseball or they would rather get direct payments or . . .  Let’s say 32 million black Americans stepped forward to claim stock.  That’s one million stockholders for each franchise.  The nationalizing legislation might limit the number of shares for each franchise to one million.

5.     White owners?  I’m sure there are Americans who are direct descendants of slaves who look white and identify as white.  (If you go back 4 generations, you have 16 great-great grandparents.  If one was a slave, you’re a direct descendant of a slave.)  I suspect that the owners of the MLB franchises will adopt rules to give preference to African Americans who have a higher percentage of slave ancestry. 

 

I do NOT offer this proposal as “solution” to the vast wealth gap between black and white Americans.  At best it is a partial solution, a tool.

I’m confident my proposal has weaknesses, and I can’t fix them, because I don’t know what they are.  You, dear reader, can help with that.  How would you improve my proposal?

           

           

 

Thoughts on Opening Day

 

Hope: Mariners, Pears, and More

 

            I became a baseball fan in 1967, the year Jim Lonborg, Carl Yastrzemski and the Red Sox won an improbable pennant before losing to Bob Gibson and the Cardinals in the World Series.  In 1969 the American League added the Seattle Pilots and I immediately adopted them as my new “favorite team.”  The Pilots were terrible, finishing with a 64-98 record.  They played in a run-down minor league stadium, drew poorly, and lost money.  After one season, the Pilots flew away to Milwaukee to become the Brewers.  I went back to rooting for the Red Sox and added the Cincinnati Reds as “my” team in the National League in 1970.  To my delight, in 1975 my favored teams met in the World Series, with the Reds winning in seven games.  I didn’t realize how rare and wonderful an event the 75 series would be.

            Threatened by a possible lawsuit from the city of Seattle, the American League expanded again to the Northwest in 1977.  I’ve been a Mariners fan since then, through good and (mostly) bad.  In 44 seasons the Mariners have gained the playoffs just four times: 1995, 1997, 2000, and 2001, four playoff teams in a seven year span.  Other than that, nothing.  They won the first round of the playoffs (what is called the Divisional Series) three times, but they have never won the league championship series—so, of course, they have never played in the World Series.  Even in 2001, when the Mariners fielded a truly excellent team, with a final record of 116-46, they fell to the Yankees in the ALCS.

            And 2001 was the last.  The Mariners have missed the playoffs 19 straight seasons, a longer drought than any other team in baseball—and football, and basketball, and hockey.  Of all the teams in the four most popular sports in America, the Mariners have the most consistent record of mediocrity (coming close to the playoffs three times), punctuated by periods of ineptitude.

            Back in the 80s, the Mariners were consistently horrible.  They never managed a winning season until 1992.  So, on the bright side: the 19 recent years of mediocrity haven’t been quite as bad as the early years.  The dark side: I’m nineteen years older than I was the last time the M’s enjoyed a playoff series, and I won’t live forever.  Will I and other Mariner fans be forever frustrated?

            My baseball fandom—and frustration—has another layer.  I am the “owner” of a team, the Peshastin Pears, in the Expansion Fantasy League.  The EFL is a wonderful of my friend, Ron Mock, and it thrives through the efforts of Dave Votaw (our league computer wizard) and our younger owners (Ryan Mock, Jamie Johnson, Mark Johnson), who give lots of time to maintaining the league website, writing almost daily updates throughout the season, and explaining the rules to less observant owners like me.  I won’t go into many details—we have free agent drafts, rookie drafts, Rule 5 drafts, trades, a salary cap, and so on—but the result is delightful. 

            Except that I never win.  I’ve been in the league for at least fifteen years, and the Pears have never finished above third.  Mark Weinert, who had the wisdom to draft Mike Trout in the rookie draft one year, has won the EFL three or four times.  Ron’s “Old Detroit Wolverines” have won, John Johnson’s “Haviland Dragons” have won, Mark Johnson has won, and so on.  But never the Pears.  (Dave Votaw has also been a league member from the beginning without taking a title.  His team is the “Cottage Cheese.”  Perhaps our problem stems from our team names?  Are foods too gentle to win fantasy baseball?)

            And now a new year is upon us.  The 2021 major league baseball season started last Thursday.  The Mariners took two of three games from the San Francisco Giants, so they’ve started well.  But every baseball fan knows three games is a mere blip in a season that lasts until October.  Mariner fans appreciate the start, but our expectations haven’t changed.  We know, based on good sabermetric reasons, that the Mariners will probably not be contenders.

            Things are much worse for the Pears.  Two of my best players (Victor Robles and the marvelous Juan Soto) have yet to play at all, because the Washington Nationals are in a Covid hiatus.  My top pitcher, Jack Flaherty, failed miserably on opening day.  I’ve had relief pitchers give up multiple runs in short outings.  My position players who have played have failed to hit.  After the first weekend, the Pears are 0-4.  I’m confident, of course, that things will get better; my team will not be spectacularly bad.  It’s supposed to be a good team.  I probably won’t win, but the Pears probably will win many games.  Possibly, the Pears can win the league.

            Probably, possibly.  As long as there is a possibility, I can hope that the Mariners will win, maybe even contend for a playoff berth.  I can hope my fantasy players will enjoy productive, healthy seasons.

            Hope involves desire and a certain belief, i.e. that the desired outcome is at least possible.  When a hope is no longer possible it is a wish.  (I might wish the Mariners had won the pennant in 2001, but I can’t hope that they did.)  Obviously, there is much more to be said about hope, which is why I’ve written Understanding Hope.  Wipf and Stock has agreed to publish; the book should be out later this year.

            Baseball hopes add zest to life.  Even Mariner mediocrity crushes my hopes year after year, I come back for more.  Who knows?  Maybe this year.

            There are other hopes, far more important than baseball hopes.  The weekend just past brought more than the beginning of a new baseball season.  We celebrated Easter. 

1 Corinthians 15:20: “But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.”

This hope is at the center of life.  Jesus, who taught us love, compassion, faithfulness, kindness, honesty—in fact, all the virtues—died on a cross, rejected by us sinners.  But he rose from the dead and defeated our rejection.  He is the first to be raised, and he promises to raise all who believe in him.  The kingdom Jesus preached will come—not by trampling its enemies, but by resurrection.

Come, Lord Jesus!

A Review Essay

 

Why a Conservative Might Agree with Bernie Sanders

 

            Today’s Oregonian included the following lead to a story:

 

A group of Democratic senators is urging President Joe Biden to support recurring direct payments to lower-income Americans, arguing that regular, additional cash assistance is necessary until the economy fully recovers from the pandemic-induced downturn.

 

            The story goes on to give details of the proposal advanced by Senators Bernie Sanders, Ron Wyden, Cory Booker, and Elizabeth Warren, among others—politicians we usually label as “liberals.”  I am not a liberal.  On some issues, such as capital punishment or war, I am a radical.  On others, e.g. abortion, I am a conservative.  But on this issue I think conservative capitalists like me should agree with Senator Sanders; at least, we might come close to agreeing.

            According to the newspaper, the liberal senators included few details in their proposal.  They don’t say how long the recurring direct payments would last.  They leave “lower-income” undefined.  Given the close balance in Congress between Democrats and Republicans, it is very unlikely their idea will go anywhere.  Not this year, anyway.

            In the long run, though, something like Bernie Sanders’ direct payment scheme will come to pass.  I explained why in a series of essays on the moral question of work in 2015.  Here are the salient points.

            From “Work, Part 1”:

The “moral law of labor” (revised): Every person who is able ought to work.

 

I said above that Paul’s words express a very nearly universal belief about work.  Not just in the first century, and not just in the West.  I’m confident that the positive moral value of labor is a universal judgment found in every culture throughout human history. 

 

From “Work, Part 2”:

Let’s return to the moral law of labor.  Can we imagine a culture that denied it?  I believe that today we can, and I will explain later.  But for most of human history it seemed obvious to everybody that people needed to work.  Therefore, every culture has had a moral preference for labor over idleness.

            Why?  Why have we always believed that people have to work?  The saying I cited above (which occurs twice in Proverbs, an indication of its importance in the minds of the ancient sages) points to the reason, an explanation obvious to everyone in the ancient world.  If you don’t work, scarcity will overtake you. 

Remember Paul’s words to Titus, which I cited in part one of this essay.  He wanted Christians to work in order to “provide for daily necessities.”  We all recognize that people have needs.  Human life is impossible if these needs are not met.  For all human history (until very recently, as I will explain) it has seemed obvious that many human needs can only be met through human labor.  And it has seemed obvious that we need to work hard; in the story of the fall (Genesis 3) God tells Adam that he will wrest his living from the ground by the sweat of his brow.  We hear echoes of an agricultural society in both Genesis and Proverbs, but the value of hard work was just as plain in pre-agricultural hunting or gathering societies.  Mercantile and industrial societies experienced the same truth.  Throughout human history, for most people in most societies, the margin for error was small.  A bad hunt, a bad harvest, a bad year with fishing nets, a plague of locusts, a plague of germs, an earthquake—peasants (i.e. most people) always lived close to economic catastrophe.  People needed to work hard to gain even a small edge against starvation.

 

From “Work, Part 3”:

The excess productivity of labor can be used in a variety of ways.  In ancient Egypt, the pharaohs decided to devote millions of man-hours of labor to construct pyramids.  In a very real sense, pyramids were physical instantiations of the excess productive capacity of Egypt’s agricultural economy.  In economic terms, we could say that some of the excess production of Egypt was “saved” and turned into “capital.”  That capital was then used to build temples and pyramids, and to support armies and a priestly class.  Egypt was hardly unique, economically speaking.  Ruling classes in civilizations around the world directed “capital”—in every case made possible by the excess production of those who labor to make necessities—to be used to create palaces, cities, roads, statues, prisons, libraries, navies, opera houses, and so on: in short, all the paraphernalia of civilization. 

Occasionally, sometimes by accident, capital was used in a way that increased productivity.  We can call this investment.  Suppose a ruler commands that human capital be used to build not a statue to his own glory but a road connecting parts of his territory.  A road, by making transportation speedier and safer, probably increases productivity in that country.  Absent natural or human caused disasters, a ruling class that consistently invested capital (saved labor) toward increasing productivity would, in a few generations, rule over a very wealthy state.  Unfortunately, rulers all around the world have burned up most capital rather than investing it; they do this primarily through war.

 

Also from “Part 3”:

Invested capital makes labor more productive. More and more, the production of goods relies on capital, not labor.  And there is apparently no necessary limit to productivity.  At one time, a farmer could feed his family and one other family.  Today, a handful of farmers can feed thousands.  There is no reason that in some tomorrow a small number of protein technicians could feed everybody.

            The “moral law of labor” says that everybody should work.  But there have always been a few people who are able to work but don’t.  Historically we have labeled them as “dilettantes,” “lazy,” “parasites,” and so on.  In current economic theory we call them “free riders.”  Notice the tone of moral disapproval.

            Some of the non-workers are independently wealthy.  They inherit so much capital that they need not work.  In popular myth, such “wastrels” fritter away their capital and come to a bad end.  In reality, plenty of independently wealthy people show enough wisdom to trust their financial advisors and live, either modestly or extravagantly, on the profits of their investments.  Given the productivity of capital, I predict that the number of wealthy non-workers will grow.

            Some of the non-workers live at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder in social welfare states.  In any country that has a sufficiently generous system of social welfare, there will be some people who choose not to work.  Given the choice between very low wage jobs and welfare, they take welfare.  These are the “free-riders.”  Economists worry that too many of them will create a drag on economic growth.  Perhaps they will.  But in the long run, the productive power of capital will increase the overall carrying capacity of national economies, to the point where the free-rider problem disappears.  I predict that in the long run the policy question will not be how to get those at the bottom to work; rather, the question will be how to get sufficient money into their hands so that they can buy things.  A capitalist economy needs consumers.

I suggest the truth is this: people do not have to work to get the “daily necessities.”  Capital is far more productive than humanity ever guessed until recently.  As capital becomes responsible for producing a greater and greater share of the things we really need, more and more human jobs are devoted to creating non-necessary goods.  We become educators and novelists.  We invent new computer games.  We write blogs.  A tiny fraction of those blogs become commercial successes; most of them earn no money.

            In the future, that is what people will do.  They will “work,” if they choose to, at an ever-increasing palette of non-necessary jobs.  Only a minority will have the privilege of laboring at jobs that produce necessities.  Mostly, that group will consist of computer specialists, who tell the robots what people want to buy for Christmas.

 

            And from “Work, Part 4”:

Objection: even if it were possible for capital to produce our daily necessities, our market economy requires that people work.  Saving and investing capital is only half of a capitalist economy.  Production has to be balanced by consumption.  A capitalist system produces goods only in the hope that people will buy them, so consumers need to have incomes.  If people don’t work, how will they have income to buy products?

Reply: we will need to invent ways of putting purchasing power into the hands of people who don’t work.  Exactly what those ways will be, I don’t know.  But already modern economies have found ways to chip away at John Smith’s order (for the Jamestown colony in 1608): “He that will not work shall not eat.”

Today we think it unremarkable that many people live as many years after “retiring” as they did “working.”  We should remind ourselves how unusual, historically speaking, that is.  Historically, most people worked until they were too ill, often dying.  Invested capital has made our economy so productive that we can afford to have millions of unemployed consumers.  We have adapted our thinking to this unprecedented situation by telling ourselves that retired people have “earned” the income they spend; thus, their condition doesn’t really violate the moral rule: all people who are able should work.

But that’s just false.  “Retired” people violate the moral law of labor just as much as the traditional independently wealthy “dilettante.”  The point is this: in both cases we have people who do not work or work only when they choose, and yet they have access to purchasing power so they can buy things in the market.  And people who live on state support—through food stamps, disability payments, and other social security payments—are yet another group of people who do not work and yet have money to spend.

We need to get used to this idea.  For a market system of production and consumption to work, those who buy things have to have money to spend on the goods produced.  If, as I predict, many will not be able to participate in producing goods, they will need to be given purchasing power even if they don’t work.

This idea outrages many of us, precisely because it finally abandons the moral law of labor. It says that people ought to have money to spend in the market even if they didn’t earn it.  I can’t pretend to make the notion easy to swallow.  But maybe it will help if we look at production and consumption from the point of view of the 1%.

Very wealthy people own much of the means of production; in many cases their “work” consists of managing investments of capital.  They look down on the economy from lofty financial heights.  Some of them “earn” enormous amounts of money simply by leveraging other people’s money.  But sometimes things go wrong.  When things go badly wrong, we call it a recession.  And when the economy goes into a recession, very wealthy people discover it is in their interests to “get the economy moving again.”  Policy makers search for ways to encourage consumer spending in the face of low consumer confidence.  Many economists point out that the most effective way for government policy to encourage consumer spending is to increase expenditures on food stamps; almost as effective is spending more on unemployment benefits.  These measures put money into the hands of people at the bottom, people who will almost certainly spend it quickly.  I’m confident you see the point: The people at the top need to recognize that it is in their interest to put purchasing power in the hands of people at the bottom.  It doesn’t’ matter whether those people have earned it.  It’s good for everybody if they have it.

 

 

 

 

Concerned for Civility

 

The Political Opponent

 

            I published The Virtue of Civility in the Practice of Politics in 2012.  On the basis of a philosophical analysis of civility in our culture, I predicted that incivility would increase.  Sadly—very sadly—I was right.

            In recent years, especially in the election/pandemic year of 2020, fewer and fewer Americans are willing or able to regard their political opponents as reasonable people.  We read, watch, and listen to news sources that reinforce our beliefs.  Opinion pollsters report that more and more people regard the other side not merely as wrong, but as evil.  Increasingly people buy into what I called the “logic of intolerance” in 2012.

1.     Truth is of infinite (at least, very great) importance.

2.     We know the lies of the liars (our political enemies).

3.     Therefore, we have a duty of intolerance.

Far from listening to the other side or learning from them, people who are trapped by the logic of intolerance want to silence or destroy or ostracize the enemy.  It is easy for such people to think: the lies of the enemy are both evil and dangerous; we must never give an inch lest they implicate us in their horrible deeds.

Imagine a national convention of an abortion rights group.  Suppose it was suggested that the organizers invite thoughtful anti-abortion people to attend and explain their views.  Conversely, imagine a parallel convention of a right to life group and a proposal that pro-choice people be invited to participate.  What would be the responses?  Quite likely, the proposals would be shouted down.  We already know what they think.  We can’t possibly listen to the propaganda of patriarchal monsters who would steal a woman’s right to her own body.  On the other side: We must never abandon the weakest and most helpless human beings.

In the abortion debate both sides claim to defend genuinely important values, personal autonomy and human life.  They are defending Truth with a capital T.  Unfortunately, contemporary political debate in the United States finds capital T Truth almost everywhere.  And so we have a duty of intolerance.  We can’t listen to those who disagree with us about the election of 2020, immigration policy, climate change (whether it is real or what to do about it), the coronavirus, and other matters.

I am NOT suggesting that such policy questions are unimportant.  We need to recognize that some policy questions are more important than others, and we need to give special care to the most important ones.  Nor am I saying that all views are equally likely to be true.  We will not build civility through relativism.

Nevertheless, we need to listen to the other side.  We need to learn from the other side.  No matter how sure we are of our political positions, we should be able to endorse a different argument.

1.     I am not omniscient, and my political opponent knows stuff I don’t know.

2.     More complete knowledge of a political problem almost always leads to better decisions.

3.     Therefore, my political opponent’s knowledge is a resource for better decision-making, and my political opponent is also a resource for better decisions.

4.     Therefore, I should treat my opponent as a good thing, a gift to be treasured.

 

Someone could skeptically refer to recent events.  Are we really to regard the rioters who stormed the capitol as valuable political opponents?  Are we really to listen and learn from Mr. Trump’s supporters, who believe the 2020 election was stolen?

In response, I might ask: what will happen if we refuse to listen?

Members of the mob that broke into the capitol, stole property, threatened congresspeople, and injured and killed police officers January 6 should be prosecuted, and in due course they will be.  But the rioters were only the tip of the iceberg of Trump voters, some 74 million of them.  It’s safe to say that many of those millions believe Trump’s baseless claims of fraud.  Can we simply ignore them?  Should we let ourselves believe we already know why they supported Trump?  What price might we pay if we do not listen?

In 2016 I quit the Republican party because it accepted Mr. Trump as its candidate.  Obviously, then, I think there are times when persons need to take a stand against wrong decisions.  But that does not mean giving into the logic of intolerance.  Even in quitting the party, I continued to listen to its leaders, including Mr. Trump.

Dear fellow American, do not think of your political opponent as evil.  Whether she is Democrat, Republican, or something else, think of her as an ally in our experiment in self-government.

A problem in practical epistemology

Co-Morbidity and the Pandemic

 

            Jack: They say Mrs. Black died from Covid-19, but she had diabetes and was overweight.  But she tested positive for Covid-19, so they put that on her death certificate.  It makes me suspicious of the numbers they report on the news.”

            Jill: “No kidding.  You don't know who to trust anymore.  I read an essay by a doctor who said the pandemic is already over, because people are developing natural immunity.  And the vaccines they are promoting are completely new; no truly long term safety studies.  So I’m not going to be in any rush to take a vaccine.”

 

            Fictional "Jack and Jill" illustrate a problem in philosophy.  They find themselves in doubt, troubled by skepticism.  In philosophical jargon, they have a problem in practical epistemology.  That is, they don't know what to believe about an important question, and that question has important implications for what they will do.  Never fear!  What follows will not be an essay in epistemology.  I will examine just one tiny aspect of the Covid-19 pandemic.

            Pretty obviously, there are many causes of death.  People die from drug overdoses, car or airplane crashes, drownings, falls, murders and other sudden causes.  Usually, diseases kill more slowly: heart disease, influenza, cancers of various kinds, strokes, and many more.  “Cause of death” gets a bit tricky when a person suffers from multiple diseases we recognize as typical causes of death.  A recently deceased person had heart disease and cancer and high blood pressure; while driving late at night he crashed into a logging truck.  What was the cause of death?  The crash?  His loss of consciousness which caused the crash?  The high blood pressure and heart disease that may have caused a stroke?

            “Co-morbidity” describes cases in which persons suffer from multiple deadly causes.  Doctors who prepare death certificates for recently deceased persons often have a clear choice.  (Dr. G wrote “uterine cancer” on Karen’s death certificate.)  But it’s easy to imagine cases in which various causes “cooperate” in killing some person.  The patient’s lung cancer probably would have killed him in a few years, but because his breathing was so impaired what should have been a mild case of flu ended his life.  Which killed him, the underlying cancer or the flu?

In cases of co-morbidity the right answer could be either.

            Most cases of Covid-19 death are cases of co-morbidity.  From the beginning of the pandemic, medical experts have warned that the disease is most dangerous for people with pre-existing conditions.  This is why most Covid-19 deaths have been among the elderly; they have lived long enough to accumulate pre-existing conditions.  In the United States there have been more than 350,000 Covid-19 deaths; it is no surprise that lots of people “know someone who knew someone”—cases in which the official cause of death was Covid-19 for a person with some other deadly disease.  My fictional Jack knew such a case.

            Does this mean we should be skeptical of reported Covid-19 deaths?  No.  Doctors and statisticians at the Centers for Disease Control are well versed in co-morbidity.

            But suppose you are like Jill.  Skepticism clouds your attitude toward authorities like the CDC.  How can they know which deaths are properly attributed to which disease?  Aren’t their totals subject to the prior decisions of attending doctors?

            Well, no.  There is a different way to analyze the problem.

            In recent years the United States deaths have numbered around 2,700,000 or 2,800,000.  The number of deaths increases almost every year as the total population increases.  In raw numbers, deaths increase by about 20,000 or 30,000 each year.  But in 2020, the total number of deaths in the US went up by at least 300,000.  The death rate in the United States in 2020 is far higher than we ordinarily would expect.  Increased gun deaths or opioid overdoses will explain some small part of the increase, but Covid-19 has to be the cause of at least 250,000 excess deaths.  (At least.  The true number will be higher.)  Now, 2020 is not the most extreme year on record.  In 1918 the combination of “Spanish” flu and deaths of soldiers in World War 1 produced the all-time spike in death rate.

            Full disclosure: the final numbers of deaths for 2020 have not been finally reported.  There have even been internet claims that deaths in 2020 are pretty much the same as 2019.  And (for those skeptical of the CDC) the official numbers are collected by the CDC.  When the final numbers are published in a few weeks, 2020 deaths will probably exceed 2019 by more than 400,000.  But if you think the CDC is inflating numbers, what can you do?

            You can wait.  The pandemic will continue to kill tens of thousands in 2021.  But the vaccines (which are, according to the FDA, safe and effective) will slow the pandemic as the months go by.  By 2022, the pandemic should be over.  And that means the American death rate should fall in 2022.  (It’s possible, of course, that a foreign dictator could launch nuclear missiles at us.  In that case, and other such scenarios, all bets are off.)  It’s fairly easy, for those of us who trust CDC experts, to predict that the raw death numbers in 2022 will actually fall.  And that’s even with the usual overall population increase.  Covid-19 has co-morbidly carried off so many people that we will actually see a decrease in death numbers.

            Of course, if you are totally skeptical, you should say deaths in 2022 is inscrutable—totally unknowable.  So what do you think?

After the Election

 

Irony for All

 

            In June 2016 I quit the Republican Party.  Here’s part of what I wrote then:

 

As far as I can tell, Donald Trump believes in nothing except Donald Trump.  According to him, he has the world’s greatest memory, one of the world’s best brains, a more than adequate penis, and an easy answer for every one of the nation’s problems.  What he obviously does not have is humility. 

Donald Trump is now the titular head of the Republican Party.  Therefore I cannot be a Republican.  I hope to someday return to the fold, but not until the party has repaired this disaster.

 

The election is over now, and Joe Biden will be our next president.  However, as I wrote a month ago, Donald Trump is so much a captive of his ego that he cannot bring himself to concede.  Instead, the president claims over and over that the election was stolen.

I’m much more concerned with the Republican Party than Mr. Trump.  One way or another, he will fade into insignificance.  As he goes, though, his ego tantrum may greatly weaken the immediate GOP future.  The irony of it must delight Democrats.

 Mr. Trump claims, with no evidence, that the election was stolen by fraud.  His own Attorney General denies this, but that doesn’t matter.  It’s safe to say that millions of people—millions of would-be Republican voters—will believe Trump.  “It’s all rigged, anyway,” they think.  When you believe that, why bother to vote?  As a result, two senatorial run-off elections in Georgia may well go to the Democrats.  The Georgia senatorial races were extremely close, so it would only take a few thousand discouraged Republican voters to give the run-off elections to the Democrats.  If discouraged Republicans stay home, the Dems win.  And if the Democrats win those races, they will organize the Senate, giving them much greater opportunities to enact “progressive” policies.

The irony gets richer.  Despite polls that suggested a strong “blue wave” in which the Democrats would take the White House, control the Senate, and increase their control of the House, the 2020 election was actually very good for Republicans.  The GOP gained seats in the House, they held their slim lead in the Senate (pending Georgia’s two seats), and they did very well in many state legislatures.  How could they lose the presidency and still do so well down ballot?  The answer is obvious.  Some voters—not a huge percentage, but a few million voters nationwide—split their tickets.  They voted for Republican candidates at the state level and for Congress, but they voted against Mr. Trump.  On the whole, the president did significantly worse than his party. 

Nevertheless, Republican leaders continue to kowtow to Trump.  They need to recognize the damage his ego is doing to their party.  They need to say out loud: You lost the election fair and square, Mr. President. 

Republican leaders need to defend the integrity of our system of elections.  (Yet another irony: the Georgia Secretary of State is a Republican.  And Trump accuses him of not stopping massive fraud.)  If they don’t restore faith in our elections, they deserve the electoral defeats that will follow.

Democrats don’t complain about electoral fraud.  Their excuse (which many believed before the election) was “voter suppression.”  We could debate at length how much voter suppression there really is.  But notice that when people believe someone is trying to keep them from voting, many of them will try harder to vote.  Worries about voter suppression motivate people to vote.  But worries about electoral “fraud” discourage people from voting.

I would like to rejoin the Republican Party.  But its leaders need to wake up and smell the irony.

 

 

 

What will he say?

The Speech We Need to Hear

 

Let’s go back twelve years.

My friends, we have come to the end of a long journey. The American people have spoken, and they have spoken clearly. A little while ago, I had the honor of calling Sen. Barack Obama — to congratulate him on being elected the next president of the country that we both love.

In a contest as long and difficult as this campaign has been, his success alone commands my respect for his ability and perseverance. But that he managed to do so by inspiring the hopes of so many millions of Americans, who had once wrongly believed that they had little at stake or little influence in the election of an American president, is something I deeply admire and commend him for achieving.

Thus began John McCain’s concession speech, November 4, 2008.  It was a gracious speech, in which he praised Barack Obama and urged his fellow citizens to work for a better future for their country.  McCain didn’t paper over policy differences.  Instead, he called for hard work and compromise.

I urge all Americans who supported me to join me in not just congratulating him, but offering our next president our goodwill and earnest effort to find ways to come together, to find the necessary compromises, to bridge our differences and help restore our prosperity, defend our security in a dangerous world, and leave our children and grandchildren a stronger, better country than we inherited.

McCain ended his remarks with a note of hope.  Ironically, Obama had made “audacious hope” a central campaign theme.

 And I call on all Americans, as I have often in this campaign, to not despair of our present difficulties but to believe always in the promise and greatness of America, because nothing is inevitable here.

Americans never quit. We never surrender. We never hide from history. We make history. Thank you, and God bless you, and God bless America.

            How distant McCain’s words seem!  In 2020 we can safely say that many people sincerely believe that only voter suppression and intimidation can prevent victory for Mr. Biden.  On the other side, many people—including Mr. Trump, apparently—think that only massive fraud can prevent the president’s reelection.  Thousands on both sides are ready to protest.  According to solid polling data, millions of voters on both sides regard the other side not just as wrong but as diabolically evil.  The election is pictured as a crusade for social justice or a last chance to stave off state socialism.  To use McCain’s words, many have despaired over our difficulties and lost belief in the promise of America.

            Election Day is two days future.  What the country needs is a good concession speech.  It is certain that one of the two candidates will lose, but I don’t think either Biden or Trump is prepared to deliver the concession speech we need.  I fear Biden is too much a captive of the “progressives” in his party to call on them to compromise and work hard with a reelected president.  I fear Trump is too much a captive of his ego to admit that he lost or congratulate the man who defeated him.

            If I am right, that neither candidate will make the speech we need to hear, what can we do?  The next best thing is to write that speech ourselves.  Suppose your candidate loses.  What should he say to the winner and the country?  What should you want him to say?

            McCain gave us a road map.  First, thank the victor for loving America enough to endure a political life and a campaign for the White House.  Second, state without equivocation your belief that local and state election officials around the country have done their best to count votes.  Remind your followers that while no election apparatus can be perfect, you accept the outcome of the vote.

Congratulate the winner for his victory.  Praise him for communicating a vision for America’s future.  Assure him that you desire that good future as much as he does.  Remind him that you are still not persuaded by his policy proposals, and scores of millions of citizens voted for you.  Pledge to him that you and your supporters will work hard for the country’s future, you expect strong differences over policy to lead to new and better proposals, and in some cases both sides will have to compromise.

            Never vilify those who voted for the victor.  Resolutely reject rancor.  Remind everyone we are fellow citizens and that we need to listen to each other.

            Conclude your speech with your heartfelt confidence that America’s best days are ahead of her.  The campaign has shown us how great are the challenges we face, but you pledge to work with the victor and the whole country to meet them.