media bias

Although not as hot a topic as it once was, and also not one that offers a really good way to choose among presidential candidates, I nonetheless decided I would share some thoughts.

I don't offer any thoughts of the form "the media on the whole has a liberal bias" or "Fox news has a conservative bias". Rather, I just say a few words on perhaps how we should understand the concept of media bias. (These are thoughts I formulated over five years ago when engaging in brief e-mail correspondence with my brother-in-law about the topic of media bias. I have not carefully reviewed them since, so I might no longer be entirely happy with them. But since my main goal is to get people thinking about this issue of concept understanding, and since I have other things to write, and many non-campaign things to do, thought I would go ahead and share.)

This attempt at concept understanding is important, because: if we understand "media bias" one way, it could turn out that media bias is very common but not a bad thing; but if we understand "media bias" another way, it could turn out that it is obviously a bad thing, but arguably nonexistent (or at least much less common than is often claimed).

(This is similar to how, four years ago, when my brother jumped on the Swiftboat -- John Kerry betrayed his fellow soldiers in Vietnam; betrayal is bad; therefore John Kerry is evil -- I tried to get him to slow down by noting it is important how we understand "betrayal". I wanted to get him to see that: if we understand "betrayal" one way, it might turn out that John Kerry did betray his fellow soldiers in Vietnam, but that then betrayal is not obviously or necessarily a bad thing; but if we understand "betrayal" another way, it might turn out that betrayal is obviously and necessarily a bad thing, but that Kerry did not betray his fellow soldiers. His reaction was to claim I was "playing with words" and attempt to mock me. It is sad when someone as freakishly smart as my brother comes to think [because of really unfortunate cultural attitudes] that this is an appropriate argumentative reaction to discussion of that sort.)

Okay, here we go....

The following is the beginnings of an attempt to analyze the concept of bias as it applies to media outlets. This is important, because people make accusation of bias without clearly understanding bias.

A media outlet M is biased iff

(i) M claims to be neutral, and
(ii) M is not neutral.

This is important because, for example, a magazine (such as Z magazine) whose clear purpose is to offer articles defending extreme left-wing views is not biased simply for offering such articles.

A media outlet M is neutral iff

(i) M chooses the topics/questions it addresses in accord with the actual interests of its intended audience, and

(ii) M’s discussion of views on/answers to these topics/questions is fair, i.e.,

(a) M chooses what views to express, who to interview, etc., in accord with actual views of experts on the chosen topic/question (answer neutrality), and

(b) M’s own presentation in this discussion implies/implicates no claim which violates answer-neutrality (and no claim which is likely to be construed as supporting a claim which violates answer neutrality).

Comments:

(i) – Given the reference to intended audience, one might think the analysis need not go through the middle step of “neutrality”; e.g., Z magazine’s intended audience is not all Americans, whereas it is for CBS, etc. Actually, I’m not sure this is true, at least for its hoped-for audience – its intended audience maybe can’t be so broad only because it’s not in a position to justifiably believe its actual audience will in fact be all Americans (or at least Americans which cut across all interesting categories). But even if it is, this middle step is still required because Z magazine does not claim to achieve answer-neutrality – since it doesn’t claim this, its failure to achieve it should not count as bias. To put the point in dramatic (though imperfect) fashion: what’s wrong with a cash-strapped magazine publishing far-left views, when readers are not led to believe this is neutral reporting, and when readers interested in other views have many other magazines they can turn to?

(ii,a) – When it comes to the simple occurrence of events, there will be no controversy, or at least they themselves, as reporters, journalists, etc., will be as much an expert as anyone else. Consequently, (ii,a) will be trivially satisfied (though not necessarily (ii,b) since its presentation could still be unfair by implying a claim which violates answer-neutrality when it comes to a topic/question not of this sort). But all other topics/questions will be non-trivial in this sense, including questions about events long ago, non-moral interpretation of events (causes, motives, larger trends, etc.), moral questions, both theoretical and those applied to events, interpretation of events, etc.

(ii,b) – Here I have in mind, for example, a reporter’s labeling all conservatives as conservatives, but not likewise for liberals, thus implying it is specifically conservatives who are outside the mainstream (see Goldberg). This violates (ii,b) (if it does at all), by suggesting conservative views are wacky (or something like that), thus implying a claim which violates answer-neutrality when it comes to those topics/questions at dispute between conservatives and others. (If this makes for unfair reporting simply because it implies a false claim – namely, that it is specifically conservatives who are outside of the mainstream – then (ii,b) will have to make reference to any implied false claim. But this strikes me as too strong for the concept of bias. A reporter can get something wrong, say, someone’s age, without thereby exhibiting bias. Maybe to ensure my analysis doesn’t have such a false implication, I need to explicitly refer in (ii) to the non-trivial topics/questions in the sense I explain in my comment on (ii,a) above.)

(i) and (ii,a) – I speak of a media outlet’s choice being “in accord” with something. Given time-constraints and like issues for media outlets, the point maybe could be put more exactly by saying that attached priorities are in positive linear relationship to degree of actual interest (i) or actual popularity of view (ii,a).

healthcare

In accord with my "policy details" entry under "issues", I don't really have any details to offer when it comes to health care. But, still, I have some thoughts:

1. As I've noted in a few spots elsewhere, I endorse some sort of national healthcare system which provides at least minimally decent health care for every US citizen. This includes US citizens who, for whatever exact reason, do not (or would not, absent this universal coverage) have independent coverage because they are lazy or irresponsible (or stupid). This explicit inclusion of the lazy and irresponsible has in particular been mentioned in a few previous blog entries, most recently and importantly in "more on taxes" under "issues". I have no remotely firm views on whether this universal coverage should be (because most efficiently) achieved through relatively direct governmental provision, or instead something that is provided through employers or in some other private fashion, just in accord with governmental requirements. Offhand, though, I must admit, it seems like certain desirable features of an individual's health care, such as portability, would be more efficiently achieved through some more kind of direct governmental provision. But this is just my best guess (and nothing more than) about one of the very many considerations that would need to be taken into account to decide this practical issue.

But the relevant high-level view is: minimally decent universal coverage that is ultimately governmentally required and funded. (As discussed in "policy details" under "issues" - and in a few other spots - it's in part on the basis of these sorts of claims that I think a careful and responsible voter should choose her candidate.)

Thankfully less in fashion right now, it wasn't long ago when you were apt to be branded a "socialist" for endorsing such a view. Here's what I have to say about this.

A. Let "strong socialism" label the view that there should be no private legal property of any sort. Let "weak socialism" label the view that there should be no private legal property in the means of production. So understanding these terms, universal health coverage is socialist in neither the strong nor weak sense.

B. Let "super-weak socialism" label the view that the government should provide certain goods and services to its citizens, something funded by taxation (and so, in most cases, something funded by taking money from some to pay for goods and services provided to others). (By the way, I offer this label out of generosity to my opponent; it is not really socialist in any traditional or interesting sense. The proper label is "welfare capitalist".) Then, in that case, universal health coverage is super-weak-socialist. But, at the same time, the United States has then been a super-weak-socialist country for quite a long time. Granted, it's establishing universal health coverage (while changing nothing else) would mean that the US comes to be a bit more super-weak-socialist than it previously had been. But I'm fine with that, and it would be silly to let a mere label (even one containing the word "socialist") to stand in place for a real argument.

My basic thought is simply: on the whole, the United States is quite wealthy; even if some do (or would, absent universal coverage) deserve their situation of having no health coverage (say, due to laziness, irresponsibility, stupidity, etc.), it still would be a morally good thing if they were to have coverage; so the United States should providing universal coverage to its citizens.

Some may object that it is still bad/wrong, since it involves taking money from some (money they own and/or our money they earned and so deserve) and giving to others, but I have dealt with such objections in "more on taxes" under "issues".

Others may object that significant taxation for this or any purpose is just overall bad (because a detriment to the economy, yadda yadda, ..., ..., ... trickle down ..., everyone (supposedly) suffers), but I've dealt with such objections in "taxes" under "issues".

2. non-US citizens, e.g., legal and illegal immigrants

3. 2-tier

4.
5.
6.
7.
8.

TO BE FINISHED VERY SOON

policy details

This blog entry actually concerns many issues that I have written about/will write about, but none in particular.

As already discussed elsewhere in at least two blog entries, I will not be offering blog readers/potential voters very detailed policies. There are two main reasons for this.

1. I simply don't have the expertise to formulate such policies, and refuse to pretend to know where I don't. And, unlike candidates such as McCain and Obama, I don't have the money/clout pre-Election Day to hire/attract advisers who can formulate detailed policies that (whether or not they are good or bad ideas) at least use the right words so that they "sound right" or "make sense" in terms of the relevant subject matter.

2. I don't think this fact (just mentioned above in 1.) is at all a mark against me as a presidential candidate.

It does not mean that I MYSELF am an intrinsically inferior candidate to (because would have less to offer as a president than) McCain or Obama. Neither of them came up with such details themselves - THATS WHAT THEIR ADVISERS ARE FOR. Like them, I would have advisers as president (indeed, would start to acquire them immediately after Election Day were I to win).

It also does not mean that MY CAMPAIGN is inferior (on the grounds that voters then won't know what they are voting for when they vote for me). Three points in explanation.

A. It's not as if the other candidates, such as McCain and Obama, are going to stick to all, let alone very many, of the actual details that they now offer (when they do offer them, which even for them seems not to be that often). Of course, none of them are detail-wise going to go completely in the opposite direction or anything else like that if they are elected. But what this means is that, whatever details they actually offer during the campaign, all they really succeed in doing (something any careful and responsible voter will realize) is to give you a sense of their high-level goals. This leads to....

B. Like other candidates, I will be offering my high-level goals on various issues. (And, unlike them, as explained in "why vote for me", both shorter and longer versions, under "basics": I will be precisely explaining and defending these high-level goals, and situating them within a systematic philosophy, to a much greater extent than any of the other candidates.)

C. Voters are rarely remotely competent to judge on the details, and so should instead be choosing candidates based on:

i. high-level goals, PLUS
ii. evidence of/demonstrated ability to effectively choose details given those high-level goals.

And when it comes to these....

i. I will in the entries on this blog be defending my high-level goals.

ii. Concerning ability to effectively choose details given high-level goals: as I've explained in "why vote for me", you want the candidate with the best general thinking skills and the candidate who will, in choosing details as president, apply those thinking skills to advice and empirical information culled from issue-specific experts - experts both inside and outside of his/her administration, and experts on all sides of the relevant issue. I am that candidate.

---------------

I will end with a little further explanation of the point that, with rare exceptions, voters are simply not competent to judge on the policy details relevant to an issue. I did talk about this at fair length in "Nader's 2008 presidential bid" under "commentaries", but I will go ahead and share some of that discussion here.

The ordinary voter is not remotely competent in the various intricacies relevant to, e.g., the health care issue WHEN IT COMES TO DETAILED POLICY. The ordinary US citizen knows little about the various costs of ALL the various kinds of health care, which sectors of the population tend to use which kinds of health care, what kinds of preventative healthcare can plausibly reduce the need for other kinds of palliative health care later, the proportion of health care costs that are ultimately due to administration, liability coverage, and the like rather than ultimately due to the actual provision of health care services and health care products (broadly construed, thus including pharmaceuticals, hospital gowns, MRI machines, etc.), what are the current legal rules governing HMOs, let alone what an HMO actually is. And these are just some of the very many things one has to have deep knowledge of in order to reasonably have a view on what the best DETAILED governmental healthcare policy would be. (I myself have deep knowledge of none of these things, and so -- as a candidate with no money/clout and thus presently no issue-specific expert advisers -- make no pretense of now knowing what the best detailed governmental health care policy would be.)

Given this point, as illustrated by the healthcare example, I think that voters should choose their political leaders on the basis of something that they can more plausibly be said to reasonably have some opinions on, namely, high-level goals. For example, here is a statement of a possible high-level goal: "the US should have a national health care system which provides basic health care to every US citizen, no matter their wealth and no matter whether or not they are responsible (and so at fault) for failing to procure independent healthcare".

For further examples, given recent woes in financial markets, consider the (pretty obvious) fact that (with very rare exceptions) no voter could competently judge a candidate on the basis of his/her saying something like:

"As president, I will do what I can to institute a lending policy where what a lender is allowed to lend (the amount and at what interest rate or interest rate plan) in any given case is such-and-such complex function of six factors: three general economic indicators (inflation, average performance of the NASDAQ over the last year and a half, and the value of dollars in comparison to pounds, euros, yen and rubles), and three other factors (the proportion of money the lender has already lent overall to their actual monetary holdings, the nature of the other loans the lender has already made, and the lender's own five-year history in getting back money loaned) - all of this additional, of course, to standard individual criteria (such as income and credit history)".

Or something like:

"As president, I will do what I can to institute a lender bailout policy where the proportion (if any) of debt (suffered by a lender facing bankruptcy) that will be paid off by the federal government is such-and-such complicated function of four general economic factors (the three from above PLUS average unemployment over the last three years), together with four other factors (the federal government's own budget and treasury deficits, the financial health of the top seven lenders aside from the one in question, the degree to which US citizens on the whole are putting income into savings rather than consumption, and the demand on the part of US citizens for loans [with demand for home mortgages in particular receiving such-and-such extra weight])".

more on taxes

All the arguments I considered in my previous "taxes" entry under "issues" are consistent with utilitarianism (on which what matters morally ultimately is just the level of overall happiness).

There are also arguments of an anti-utilitarian sort, which take a more principled stand against taxation, to the effect that there is something intrinsically wrong or morally bad about "taking people's money" through taxation.

When individuals (as the result of income, gift, etc.) are in physical possession of money (or quasi-physical possession, given things like modern bank accounts), or would have been had it not been for taxation, they often quite naturally feel that it's in some sense wrong for that money to be taken out of their physical possession at threat of force (which, in one important sense, is all taxation is, where the threat is usually one of additional monetary penalties and/or imprisonment).

(What's usually at debate in the tax rhetoric between liberals and conservatives is the level of taxation, not whether to have any at all. But libertarians - true moral libertarians who apply their view to politics - have an argument against all taxation. The natural attractiveness of this argument is something I try to help my students see by using my thumb and index finger to simulate a gun, walking up to a student, and pretending to demand their money upon pain of being shot. And then I note to my students that, even if I were going to take that money and give it to Oxfam [or otherwise do something very morally good with it], and even if my "victim" were to know this, they would all initially react in moral horror. Admittedly, this little illustration is somewhat unfair to anti-libertarians about taxation, since, as normally practiced these days, there is nothing remotely like immediate threat of death, and, further, when I engage in my illustration, my "victim" has already lost tax money to the legal authority presently in charge.)

But the only theoretical explanations on offer as to why this really would be wrong appeal to claims about property/entitlement or claims about desert (i.e., deservingness, what people deserve). (Or, of course, both - someone could quite intelligibly think that both are relevant.)

1. I'll began with the latter, namely, desert. Often, an appeal to desert in the context of taxation simply just amounts to comments about "hard work". But this clearly will not suffice. Suppose one night I jumped the fence, got into your vegetable garden in your backyard, and worked really hard picking and collecting all sorts of ripe vegetables, and then the next day I succeed in selling them for lots of money. Surely I can't reasonably complain about the physical taking of "my money" on the grounds that I worked really hard to get it. So let's go ahead and put aside these obvious cases where hard work does not generate desert (even without demanding from the desert-proponent a theory of what distinguishes these cases from others). Putting aside these cases, I will make three observations.

A. What one gets (in terms of money) out of one's hard work (or, more generally, one's level of work, whatever that happens to be) is a function of a hell of a lot more than just that level of work. Things like background economic circumstances, background state of technology, circumstantial moral constraints (e.g., family circumstances), level of education, level of native ability/talent, and luck, are all very crucial. (Even if we treat level of native ability/talent as something which can generate desert, there are still all those other things which very plausibly do not, and they can all vary dramatically while holding level of work AND level of native ability/talent fixed.) So, minimally, for example, the white male American with the (at least comparatively) high-quality education who ends up with an upper-middle-class paying job in Silicon Valley cannot reasonably complain (on grounds of hard-work-generated desert) when the government takes some of that money he is in physical possession of in order to give it to a female Cambodian with almost no education who ends up growing rice for money (so as at least to marginally increase her quality of life). So, minimally, appeal to desert cannot ground a reasonable objection to taxation for humanitarian purposes (humanitarian purposes which could, of course, be intra-US).

I fully admit that this is not at all like the comparison between two white male Americans with the same opportunities, when those are evaluated by paying attention to availability of education, luck, etc. (By the way, all this illustrates, despite my not having given a general explanation, how it is COMPARATIVE desert judgments that are by far the most important when it comes to taxation. This is different from the issue of punishment, where it is ABSOLUTE level of desert that is more relevant.)

B. There is a very important sense in which personal identity changes over time, especially over many years and decades, such that (despite strict numerical identity, as philosophers would put it) it is extremely implausible to say that a person now deserves his very low quality of life for decisions he made four decades ago. For example, suppose someone made very bad decisions in his early 20th, took a lot of drugs, totally ruining for the next four decades (at least given current politics) his ability, however hard he might work, to acquire anything much above a very low level quality of life (at least by American standards). It would be extremely implausible to claim that this state of affairs is justified because he deserves it, on grounds of his choices for decades earlier. So, further, desert cannot ground a reasonable objection to taxation for purposes of helping people out in these sorts of circumstances.

C. Even if someone deserves her plight (even fully deserves it, which has to be the very rare case), surely it cannot be denied that it is still a morally good thing if her quality of life can be raised. For example, suppose someone was very lazy and made some very bad decisions over the course of several months, and at the end of the few months is in a very medically compromised state (whether injury or illness doesn't matter) but has no health insurance to cover it. Even if, in the circumstances, she deserves her plight, it is still extremely plausible that it would be a morally good thing if her situation were to improve (say, by the government paying for her health care). It is for this very strong reason that I endorse at least some level of minimal government health care even for the lazy and irresponsible, and why there is no reasonable appeal to desert as a ground for objecting to such governmental expenditure of tax revenues.

2. Let's now turn to appeal to property/entitlement. Someone might argue: forget about desert; it's MY body (not just something I bear a physical relation to, but something I bear a very important moral relation to), and, using it to work on things I am entitled to work on (e.g., things owned by other people who gave their consent to my so working on them), I performed some services and/or produced some goods which led, via antecedent informed and consensual agreement by all involved parties, to my having physical possession of some amount of money; so it's MY money, i.e., money I'm entitled to, money I have ownership over; so it's just wrong for anyone or anything else to forcibly take any of it away from me.

This, I will most certainly grant, is an intuitively compelling line of argument. Nonetheless, once you really pause to think over it, it turns out to be seriously problematic.

There are two important things to note in this spirit.

A. Let's go ahead and temporarily grant the (admittedly very natural) idea of "MY body", i.e., the idea that one bears a very important moral relation to one's body such that, when one uses it to work on things one is entitled to work on, one is then entitled to the results of such work as determined by antecedent informed and consensual agreement. (Philosophers these days would use the term "self-ownership" for this moral relation supposedly holding between oneself and one's body.) Since pretty much everything ultimately has some natural resource input (e.g., no one's body comes equipped with completely internal powers of TV creation), whether or not one is ultimately entitled to work on the things that one does, so that, as just explained, one is entitled to the results, depends upon whether the initial use of natural resources (in particular, the distribution of those uses) was morally proper. And - here is the punchline - it is simply very implausible to claim that this condition of moral propriety on initial natural resource use is met. Saudis (or at least some Saudis) are rich because of very unequal access to natural resources in the form of oil. Turning to the US, all sorts of historical facts crucial to our current economic, political, and technological state such that people can get jobs paying nice 5 and 6 figures salaries involve blatant violations of this moral propriety condition. Think of historical facts concerning military action against Native Americans and how the US acquired all the land it now has, something very crucial to our current state. And think of how, already having leveraged itself into a superior bargaining position, the US gets itself even further unequal access to various kinds of natural resources (rice, bananas, oil, etc.). Given an enormous multitude of such historical facts, it actually turns out to be rather absurd to claim that one is morally entitled to whatever one gets out of one's standard American job. And so, as a result, there can be no reasonable appeal to entitlement of this sort to claim that there's got to be something intrinsically morally bad about taxation.

B. Further, even if there is something to this "MY body" idea, it would be implausible to exaggerate its significance to the level of saying "whatever is in conflict with it/'MY body' is intrinsically morally wrong, period". For example, imagine four people living on an isolated and very technologically underdeveloped island. Further, suppose everyone needs blankets to survive the cold of the night, and the only source of adequate blanket material is the especially long and robust hair that grows on the head of one of the individuals, Mr. Hairy. In that case, surely Mr. Hairy could not reasonably refuse some of his hair to the other three individuals on grounds of "MY body". And if, in the face of Mr. Hairy's refusal, the three other individuals took some of his hair at threat of force (in particular, threat of imprisonment of some duration), surely he could not reasonably complain on grounds of "MY body". Perhaps in both cases Mr. Hairy could reasonably appeal to "MY body" if the others wanted his hair merely for trivial decorative purposes. But, as we are actually imagining it, where the others want it because they need the hair for nighttime blankets without which they will die, such an appeal would be very unreasonable. What this shows is that, when the cause or project is morally worthy enough, taxation can be fully morally proper even when (if it were somehow ever to actually happen in the real world) it infringes to some extent on "MY body".

If you are interested in further discussion of these topics, I recommend:
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(By the way, my island/Mr. Hairy example is a modification of an example that originally comes from this last work, Otsuka....)

(A final parenthetical comment: I actually don't really believe in either desert or entitlement/"MY body", since I'm a pretty hard-core utilitarian. But I have not tried to argue for these extreme views here, since these extreme views are NOT NECESSARY to establish what I'm claiming about taxation. The basic point of what I've been arguing above is that, EVEN IF we grant the relevance of both desert and entitlement/"MY body", it is extremely implausible that these have the nature and significance needed to reasonably claim that there is something intrinsically wrong with taxation.)

taxes

I cannot claim to be anything remotely close to an economist (though neither can McCain or Obama). Still, some (to some extent unconventional) very high-level thoughts about taxes - thoughts not having to do with complicated graphs, econometric data, etc. (and so high-level thoughts I have a hard time seeing refuted by complicated graphs, econometric data, etc., though I'm open to being corrected on that).

1. The level of taxation only affects WHO will be spending HOW much money (in particular, private individuals generally vs. private indivuals who get money from the government vs. the government itself), and so only affects WHICH sectors of the economy get stimulated. As a result, there is nothing intrinsic to leaving money in the hands of private individuals (so that they can spend it) such that doing so necessarily leads to more/better economic stimulation. And, at least when it passes through the hands of the government -- IF the government does a good job -- it can consciously and intentionally direct where money gets spent so that the economy is overall more/better stimulated.

2. The traditional, Adam-Smith-type, "invisible hand" argument for leaving private individuals alone to spend money how they wish has nothing to do with economic stimulation. Rather, it has to do with with efficiency in satisfaction of needs/desires on the part of goods and services produced by the economy, whatever its degree of "stimulation". And where (unlike old Soviet 5-year plans, which involved the government itself placing [very enormous] orders for goods and services) the government simply takes tax money and gives it to other private individuals (almost always with restrictions, of course, e.g., Medicare), it seems less like a question of WHETHER needs/desires successfully get met by goods and services, but rather WHOSE. (So the "redistributive taxation" of welfare capitalism is, in at least one very important respect, very different from the spending of Soviet-like centralized governments.) In other words, when it comes to the issue of "information transfer re. needs/wants across various sectors of the economy", there is nothing intrinsically inferior when it comes to welfare capitalism (as compared to pure free-market capitalism).

3. Another argument for leaving money in the hands of private individuals that I often hear is: when this happens, many private individuals will save some of that money, leading to a larger supply of money in the lending market, reducing interest rates, increasing entrepreneurship, etc., stimulating the economy. But (and here is in effect a very special case of point 1 above) absolutely nothing prevents the government, after acquiring money through taxation, from itself putting money into the savings market.

4. Taxation does inherently involve unavoidable money lost due to administration and transaction costs. However, that does absolutely nothing to show that more rather than less taxation inherently involves unavoidably greater money lost due to administration and transactions costs. E.g., however high or low taxes are, the IRS will get the same number of tax returns in the mail every year. If anything, all these exceptions and special cases ("loopholes") which help to reduce taxes for some (much of this "some" being very rich individuals) only add to administration and transaction costs.

5. A different argument I often hear is: taxation disincentivizes, i.e., people are less likely to work harder (in order to get that promotion, or whatever), since what they might possibly get from working harder, namely, higher income, will be compromised by money lost to taxes. Undeniably, taxation disincentivizes IN THIS RESPECT. But if, e.g., the government directs more money towards healthcare, there becomes a greater demand in various labor markets related to healthcare, increasing salaries with such jobs, incentivizing them. So there can be no general argument that taxation necessarily disincentivizes OVERALL. And, when the government is consciously and intentionally directing where large-scale amounts of money go, it can, in principle (at least if it knows what the hell it is doing), direct it in ways which do better by way of incentivizing overall. In fact, nothing at all stops the government from "reverse taxation" for some individuals, i.e., adding some (relatively) fixed percentage to their income, for purposes of incentivizing.

6. Another very common argument is empirical: examination of historical cases of tax increases and decreases shows an overall boost to the economy when taxes are decreased and an overall hit to the economy when taxes are increased. I agree that examining the empirical economic evidence is very important. But:

A. Uncontroversial empirical economic evidence is very hard to come by, since, in these matters, cause-and-effect is extremely hard to distinguish from mere before-and-after. Did the tax decreases two years ago really lead to the increased economic performance now, or is that instead just an accidnetal fact, as the increased performance is really due to those huge newly discovered oil reserves in northern France (or the revolutionary technological innovation in computer design, or the recent very good weather seasons [fewer hurricanes, and just the right amount of everything else for crops to grow extremely well], or ..., or ...)?

B. Even when there is uncontroversial empirical economic evidence, one can still question how economists make the value judgments necessary for proclamations of the "OVERALL better/worse sort". Is it just a wash (i.e., neutral), or rather good (or even bad), when some economic cause has the economic effect of causing 100,000 rich people each to lose $10,000 a year income, but 100,000 poor people each to gain $10,000 a year in income?

C. To the extent that I have any sense of what the empirical economic evidence has to say on the matter, it points only in the direction of CHANGES IN TAXES having effects: a decrease in taxes will give the economy a temporary overall boost, an increase in taxes (at least given how those tax revenues have traditionally been spent) will give the economy a temporary overall hit, but a CONSTANT HIGH LEVEL OF TAXATION is NO BETTER OR WORSE than a CONSTANT LOW LEVEL OF TAXATION. (My sense about this comes from my macro-econ class at College of Idaho as an undergrad. I'm quite confident that, minimally, my professor was being very honest [i.e., had no agenda in reporting such putative empirical economic evidence] since he was very explicitly and unabashedly an extreme financial conservative. In fact, for this reason, he seemed a bit unnerved when telling us about this.) So, as president, while I would increase taxes (at least for some individuals), to the extent that empirical economic evidence suggests any negative consequences at all, they will be temporary.

7. Perhaps the most common argument is: government simply spends tax money stupidly. I won't deny there is a large degree of truth in this. For example, if the government spends $1 billion funding a pointless bridge, then (although there WILL BE stimulation to the "bridge-building" part of the economy), to that extent, it will do very poorly by way of efficiency in satisfying needs/wants. But there can be no general, exceptionless argument of this sort. It depends on the composition of the government, i.e., who is in the government doing the spending. And I say to you: as president, I will spend tax revenues in ways that are VERY EFFICIENT when it comes to satisfying needs/wants, in ways that OVERALL stimulate the economy more/better, and in ways that OVERALL incentivize (rather than disincentivize).

By the way, I fully recognize that none of this is an argument FOR higher taxes. Instead, it's a way of saying that all of the most common standard, general arguments against higher taxes seem extremely problematic.

My argument for higher taxes will come in other places, where I talk about very worthwhile projects, etc. which can only get off the ground and succeed with funding that ultimately comes from tax revenues.

the (likely) near singularity

For my first entry under "issues" (finally!), I'm going to talk about something I'm almost completely sure no other candidate will talk about at all.

Almost everyone is now in recognition of the fact that technology is moving at a very fast pace. And some, given this recognition, are pointing out that we should be doing more by way of preparing ourselves for the new kinds of dangers that this poses.

But what almost no one recognizes is that there is a very compelling argument that technology in the next many decades will actually move a hell of a lot faster. I never even thought about this until I read Ray Kurzweil's THE SINGULARITY IS NEAR (Viking 2005). This is, in large part, a book-length argument for this conclusion. But the core idea is actually rather simple.

Before turning to the core idea of the argument, it will help to remind ourselves of the idea of exponential growth. LINEAR GROWTH has to do with growth by way of a constant ADDITION FACTOR, per unit of time. (Strictly, the unit with respect to which we are measuring growth need not be time, but, except for an analogy/example to come very soon, I think it'll be easiest if I put it particularly in terms of time.) In contrast, EXPONENTIAL GROWTH has to do with growth by way of a constant MULTIPLICATION FACTOR. In the beginning, linear growth and exponential growth look rather similar, but as things progress, exponential growth begins to outpace linear growth in a rather extraordinary way.

An example (THE stock example) can illustrate both facts. Consider a standard 8x8 chessboard, which thus has a total of 64 squares. Put one penny on one of the squares in a corner. In both cases (linear growth and exponential growth), we will move square by square, increasing the amount of money on each square, until we have hit the 64th square. (It will help to imagine that we fill up one row, or column, before moving on to the next.)

For linear growth, our money will grow by a constant addition factor, let's say +2. Since there is one penny on our first square, there will be three pennies on our second square, five pennies on our third square, and so on. This means, at the end of our first row, we will have 15 pennies (15 cents) on square 8. And this means, at the final end of all of this, we will have 127 pennies ($1.27) on square 64.

In contrast, for exponential growth, our money will grow by a constant multiplication factor, let's say x2. Since there is one penny in our first square, there will be two pennies on our second square, four pennies on our third square, and so on. This means, at the end of our first row, we will have 128 pennies ($1.28) on square 8. Although quite a bit more than 15 cents (= what we have on square 8 with linear growth), it's not crazily different, and the initial stages were very similar (1,3,5,7 for linear growth, 1,2,4,8 for exponential growth). However, at the final end of all of this (of all of this exponential growth), we will have 10,223,391,840,850,775,808 (2 to the 63rd power) pennies ($102,233,918,408,507,758.08). I'm assuming everyone can agree this is amazingly gigantic (and shockingly larger than 127 pennies = $1.27).

(Not being able to find a traditional or online calculator that would give me all the digits, I had to do a significant portion of the calculation by hand, so this figure might involve a very small human error. But even so, this still gives the basic magnitude, namely, well over a quintillion dollars. It goes: thousand, million, billion, trillion, quadrillion, quintillion. Which gives us about one-tenth a trillion trillion, or one hundred thousand billion billion.)

Having reminded ourselves of the power of exponential growth, we can now understand the three claims that together make up the core idea of Kurzweil's argument.

FIRST, up to now, technology has been growing at an exponential rate.

As I understand it, almost anyone with decent knowledge in (as I'll here put it) technology studies will grant this fact. This is mostly the result of empirical historical knowledge. But there is also theoretical explanation to back it: the latest technology, which works better and faster than the previous generation of technology, can be used in creating the next generation of technology; so technology builds on itself in cumulative fashion.

SECOND, there is very good reason to think technology will continue growing at an exponential rate.

Some commentators have offered reasons for thinking that this is not true, but Kurzweil very carefully and elaborately offers rebuttals to all of these, almost always in part by way of reference to new technologies already in development (often in the prototype stage, though sometimes only in the conceptual development stage).

THIRD, there is very good reason to think we are about to approach the "knee" of the curve that represents all this exponential growth of technology from the past to the current time to the future. This "knee" is what Kurzweil and others call "the Singularity" - it is the transition period from slow exponential growth in early stages to extraordinarily rapid exponential growth in later stages.

When represented visually/graphically, every exponential curve has a "knee": a short transition from slow growth (graphically: low slope) to rapid growth (graphically: high slope). For actual graphs of a helpful sort, see some of the early pages of Kurzweil's book.

(This part of Kurzweil's arguments is less clear. But, given that the multiplication factor involved in [perfectly regular] exponential growth is constant, whether or not we are at the so-called "knee", I really don't see that Kurzweil needs this third claim. Which would be especially nice since, as far as I can tell, the perceived location of the so-called "knee" will depend on arbitrary scaling factors when we represent the exponential curve graphically. I'm well aware that some mathematical background is needed to make full sense of what I've said in this parenthetical comment, so if it seems obscure to you, just ignore it. You can do that and still fully digest the basic gist of what Kurzweil is getting at.)

Given the speed of exponential growth, and given some of the examples Kurzweil gives of future technologies already in various stages of development, I claim that the US government should be doing a hell of a lot more in preparation for protecting US citizens (and all people around the globe more generally) from the following worries and dangers:

1. One to two decades: easily biologically engineered pathogens.

2. Two to four decades: easily synthetically engineered pathogenic nanobots.

3. Three to six decades: evil (or at least un-human-concerned) artificial intelligence at human-level or beyond-human-level intelligence.

These three are actually three that Kurzweil himself pays close attention to near the end of his book. (I would give you the exact chapter except for the fact that my copy is currently out on loan to a friend.)

But there are other things to worry about:

4. Privacy: I here don't have in mind US e-passports which are very easily read by not-necessarily-benevolent-or-even-neutral third parties (as reported in Scientific American, Sep 2008 pp. 72-77, where all sorts of very important privacy concerns are discussed in very helpful detail), though such things are definitely a big concern that the US government is mostly ignoring.

Rather, I have in mind the following question: is the US government doing anything now to prepare for the possibility, for example, that within one to three decades super-spy-satellites will allow the government (or other agents/entities who have their own such satellite, paid for rental time on such a satellite, or hacked into such a satellite, etc.) to know virtually anything it wants about anyone at any time? Not at all.

5. The disappearance of sleep: is the US government doing anything now to prepare for the possibility that within one to three decades, scientists will have figured out ways to make it so that humans don't need to sleep, drastically changing the economy and human nightlife? Not at all.

6. Eternal life: is the US government doing anything to prepare for the possibility that within one decade (no joke - if you doubt, do some of your own research into the science of aging) the knowledge will exist to indefinitely extend human life (and canine life, and feline life, etc.), and the extreme likelihood that within three decades this knowledge will exist? Not at all.

7. Pleasure machines: is the US government doing anything to prepare for the likelihood that within one to three decades, droves of people will be spending enormous amounts of time hooking themselves up to machines which either directly produce pleasure, or indirectly do so by way of providing the machine-user with fully-life-like experiences of the user's choosing (these could have any nature: sexual, athletic, musical, intellectual, even political)? Not at all.

8. Boundless energy and cheap replication machines: is the US government doing anything to prepare for the possibility that within this century economies (or the one global economy) will be shockingly different in virtue of the fact that -- given the existence of boundless energy (say as the product of ultra-efficent and ultra-cheap solar panels, or as the product of genuinely effective fusion reactors) and cheap replication machines in the spirit of Star Trek (no joke, check out what Kurzweil has to say about some nanotechnology applications that are already in fairly detailed stages of conceptual development) -- almost no one will need to work in any traditional sense? Not at all.

9. Genetic engineering: is the US government doing anything now to prepare for the likelihood that within one to two decades the knowledge will exist allowing people to have their children genetically engineered to have all sorts of features (including "non-natural" ones from the relatively minimal, like purple irises, to the quite dramatic, like an extra functional appendage)? Not at all.

10. Non-evil, non-unconcerned artificial intelligence: is the US government doing anything now to prepare for questions that will need to be answered once we have, in the next two to five decades, produced near-human-like, human-like, or beyond-human-like artificial intelligence? Not at all.

And here I don't have in mind (as in 3. above) evil artificial intelligence and the like, but other questions like: Will people be allowed to order/purchase tailor-made artificial intelligences? Will artificial intelligences be given the right to vote, or other standard political and economic rights? Will artificial intelligences themselves be allowed to work on producing even smarter artificial intelligences (or less obviously AI artificial intelligences - think the new BattleStar Galactica)? It may seem that the answers to some of these questions are easy, but I think that reaction would be a mistake. It's one thing in the abstract to say, e.g., we should not give artificial intelligences the right to vote, it's another thing to say that when they have been given fully-human-like synthetic bodies and they have gathered "in the town square" to engage in political protest of a very traditional and compelling sort. And, it's one thing in the abstract to say we should not allow people to order tailor-made artificial intelligences with fully-human-like synthetic bodies, and it's another thing to stick with this answer in practice when droves of people, presented with the actual technological and economic possibility, want to place an order (given their failed romantic lives, or whatever), especially when you might very well be among those people tempted by such a possibility (or at least those people who find a part of themselves really wanting to exploit such a possibility, and so place such an order).

The way I have posed these questions on my list might make it seem that I am anti-technology or, at least, that I wish technology would not grow any further. This, in fact, is not at all the case. In trying to argue that the government is doing pathetically little to prepare ourselves for such technological growth, and the worries and dangers that poses, I have been emphasizing the negative possibilities that, if the government were to get its ass in gear, they could help protect us from. But all sorts of great things are very likely also on their way. In fact, many people, at least at a personal level, would welcome many of the developments on my list (such as lack of a need to sleep, eternal life, pleasure machines, etc.). And there are all sorts of other less dramatic future likelihoods: an all-purpose way to fight viral infections, self-driving cars, memory chips implanted directly in the brain, etc.

In fact, I've suspected for quite awhile now that it will be technology, not the "human spirit", that will save us from various ills. This, I hope it is clear, is not to say that there aren't lots of people trying very hard to make the world a better place. And it is not to say that humans COULDN'T make the world a better place (e.g., completely eradicate starvation) without newer, fancier technology. (In fact, as I understand it, pretty much all the evidence points in the direction of the view that starvation, right now, is completely eradicable.) The problem is that the current overall social and economic structures of the globe prevent (whether, when it comes to individual bits of the structure, intentionally or not) these forces for good from being able to properly mobilize themselves and existing resources to make it happen.

Even if Kurzweil is wrong, once you read his book, it is plainly obvious that, rather than being a crackpot, he is a brilliant thinker and has at minimum put together a compelling argument. (I am in fact right now voice-dictating this on voice-recognition software that descends from software he initially developed. In particular, I am using Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9, almost universally recognized as the best voice-recognition software on the market right now.)

And, when it comes to prediction of the future, where there can be no certainties, one has got to pay attention to likelihoods. And in these terms, I find it hard to deny that Kurzweil has presented an extremely strong argument.

He is not alone in his prediction of near future incredibly drastic growth of technology. Much of the disagreement among techno-experts themselves simply concerns how optimistic or pessimistic we should be about the results of this growth. My whole point in this blog entry has been to say the US government, completely contrary to what it is now doing (since it is now doing virtually nothing), should do all it can to make positive results as likely as possible.

In any case, I am telling you that, as president, I will do as much as I can to rectify this complete dearth of government action (indeed, government attention) in this respect. The other candidates, in contrast, will say absolutely nothing about any of this.


ADDED 9/19/08:

A BSU colleague of mine quite rightly pointed out to me that the exponential growth I described above is actually only a special case of exponential growth, what is usually called "geometric growth". Not being in physical possession of my copy of Kurzweil's book at this moment, I cannot check and let you know which term (or whether both) Kurzweil himself uses.

Basically, for the mathematically inclined, exponential growth generally is where: y = b (a constant, one which can always be e given compensating adjustments to constants c and d, which immediately follow) to the cx+d power. Geometric growth is the special case where c=1 and d=0. Usual cases of geometric growth (such as the chessboard illustration above) set b=2. In such cases, we can't get equivalent functions by letting b=e (or anything else other than 2) since we are disallowing compensating adjustments given the insistence that c=1 and d=0 for geometric growth.

Actually, treating functions simply a something like sets of ordered pairs of numbers (or mathematical entities more generally), what I just said makes me realize that we could distinguish two notions. Letting "gg" stand for "geometrical growth/growing", these two notions are: gg-functions, and gg-representations of functions. Then, at least one way of understanding the former in terms of the latter is "having at least one gg-representation". But I won't pursue this any further here. Except to say that perhaps a gg-function can be equivalently but independently defined as "exponential function where d=0". This seems intuitively right to me, but I've done no checking, and my mathematical intuitions about such matters are surely to be treated as possessing almost no trustworthiness, given how long it's been and what it was even then.