Category Archives: Philosphy

The Role of Government

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In my previous posts, I came to this conclusion:

We need government because it is in everybody’s best interest to have an institution that handles the situations where having everybody acting in their own best interest doesn’t work.

With this in mind I suggest that four areas are definitely in the role of government:

  • Public Safety – On the national level, this is national defense.  On the local level, this applies to police and fire departments.  On a broader level this would include building inspections and sanitation inspections.  It would be totally impractical before stepping into any building for each person to make an individual inspection to verify that it is safe.  We rely on government for this function to protect us all.
  • Infrastructure – We can’t individually build each road we travel on.  We rely on government to provide the core infrastructure that we all share.  This includes roads, public transportation, and utilities.  Government does not need to provide these services directly.  It can contract them out to private companies.  We all benefit from a good infrastructure, even from the parts we don’t use directly.  I may not ride a certain subway line, but I benefit when, for example, the person who cooks my meals in a restaurant can get to the restaurant because of the subway.
  • Public Investment and Amenities -I group these together as it is often difficult to separate them out.  A public park is an amenity but it also is an investment as it makes the community more attractive to others who may move to or invest in the community.  The chief form of public investment is education.  I benefit not just from the education of my own children but in the education of all children.  To qualify as a public amenity/investment is should be available to most people and it should be recognized as desirable through a majority vote.
  • Enabling a free market – Society benefits whenever there is a voluntary transaction, where both parties believe they will be better off from the transaction. Government does have a role in enabling this free market.  The government needs to provide a adjudication system to settle disputes.  The government can regulate that the transaction must be framed in a matter where both sides understand it and that there is no deception.  The truth in lending law is an example of how government can help make the transaction clearer.   The government can also protect us from involuntary transactions.   When a factory pollutes, the factory gets the reward and the neighborhood bears the cost.  This “externality” is an involuntary transaction.

The level of government for each of these services should be the level that affects most people using the service.  It is appropriate for the federal government to fund the interstate highway system.  If is not appropriate for the federal government to fund local roads.

There is one other role of government I have not yet discussed:  helping people who cannot help themselves.  That will be the topic of my next blog entry

Why People Should Make Their Own Decisions

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In my last blog entry I gave my view that the purpose of government is:

We need government because it is in everybody’s best interest to have an institution that handles the situations where having everybody acting in their own best interest doesn’t work.

I then said I would use this next to discuss the role of government.  I decided now though that we need another step first.  The core assumption here is that by default it is better for people to make decisions for themselves instead of government making decisions for them.   This contrasts with Plato’s assumption in his republic that people are not capable of making their own decisions and require elite “philosopher-kings” to make decisions for them.  There are two three reasons why I think it is better for people to make their own decisions:

  • There are just too many decisions to be made for a few people to make these decisions well.  Millions of people make countless decisions.  Even if the elite are all extremely intelligent, superbly trained, and totally beneficent, they just don’t have the time to thoroughly understand and wisely decide every issue.  When conditions change, the experts most likely won’t be there to access the situation and determine what needs to be done.
  • Decisions tend to be better if the person making the decision is better off when the decision is good and worse off when the decision is bad.  If the decision maker is unaffected by the decision or only partially affected, the decision is most likely to be poor.  For example, if a bureaucrat turns down a health insurance claim to save money, he doesn’t suffer if the person dies as a result.
  • I believe in freedom.  We have the right to make the decisions that affect our own lives as long as we respect the same rights of other people to lead their own lives.  We may not always make good decisions.  We frequently don’t.  We should be able to make them for ourselves.

With this assumption better explained, I will in the next blog talk about the role of government.  Really I will.  I promise.

What is the purpose of government?

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What is the role of government?  How big should it be.  Opinions on this vary greatly.  An extreme anarchist would say there should be no government at all.  An extreme communist would say that the government should do pretty much everything.  Most of us are somewhere in between.  Before we discuss the role of government, I think we need to go back to an even more basic question.  What is the purpose of government?  Let me start by sharing some of my core underlying values and assumptions.

  • Freedom is good.  In an ideal world, I would be able to do whatever I want and you would be able to do whatever you want as long as my exercising my freedom doesn’t stop you from exercising your freedom.  To use the old line, my right to swing my fist stops where your face begins.
  • A key aspect of freedom is that I can make my own decisions about my life.  If I make a good decision, I should have the right to profit from this decision.  If I make a poor decision I should suffer the consequences and not make you suffer for them.
  • Another key aspect of freedom is that two people can choose to make a voluntary transaction where each person believes that the transaction will make him or her better off.
  • There are people who are unable to help themselves through no fault of their own, most notably small children and some people who are ill.  It is good to help these people.

In the ideal world we would all do what we want while respecting the rights of others , mutually interact to prosper, and would voluntarily share some of our proceeds to help those who cannot help themselves.  In this ideal world, we would need no government.  Unfortunately, we do not live in an ideal world.  The following realities intrude:

  • There are people who will not respect the rights of others.   We want to be protected from these people.
  • Even well meaning people will have honest disputes.  We want a fair way to adjudicate these disputes.
  • The world is full of externalities.  An externality is any event where one person receives the benefit and another person unwillingly pays the cost.  For example if a factory pollutes, the factory owner receives the benefit of higher profits but the surrounding residents pay the costs by suffering from the pollution.  We want to minimize these externalities.
  • We want to have community investments where everybody benefits.  For example, we all benefit from a national defense.  If we make payment towards national defense voluntary we have a problem.   We all benefit equally from national defense even if our contributions are unequal.  It is to my benefit to not contribute to national defense and let everybody else contribute.  Unfortunately, if everybody acts in their own best interest here we have no national defense and everybody is worse off, not better off.
  • Voluntary contributions may be insufficient to help people who cannot help themselves.

Due to these problems, we need to have government.  In short, we need government because it is in everybody’s best interest to have an institution that handles the situations where having everybody act in their own best interest doesn’t work.

I believe that is the one and only purpose of government.  To repeat:

We need government because it is in everybody’s best interest to have an institution that handles the situations where having everybody acting in their own best interest doesn’t work.

With this purpose in mind, my next blog will focus on what is the proper role of government.

P.S.  As a side note, it should be obvious that in my value system the core ideal focuses on freedom.  Other people have different starting points.  Many people would start by focusing on fairness.  In my opinion, the fairest situation is where everybody is equally free.  This is a good example of a core assumption from which everything else derives.

Problems, Concerns, and Annoyances – Keeping Your Perspective

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As human beings, we tend to spend a fair amount of time feeling upset about one thing or another.  As being upset is typically not the most pleasant way to spend the afternoon, I try to keep perspective by dividing anything that might upset me into one of three categories:  problems, concerns, and annoyances.

  • A problem is an imminent threat that if it goes poorly it could significantly effect your life or the life of someone you care about one year from now.
  • A concern is a threat that if it goes poorly it could significantly effect your life or the life of someone you care about one year from now, but it is not imminent.  It could occur but it probably won’t occur.
  • An annoyance is anything that if it goes poorly will not affect your life a year from now.

Here are some distinctions:

Problems

  • My spouse has been diagnosed with Stage 3 Cancer.
  • My company just had layoffs.  I wasn’t in this round of layoffs but we expect more layoffs later this month.

Concerns

  • My spouse has unhealthy eating habits.
  • My company may do poorly if the economy takes a downturn.

Annoyances

  • My spouse didn’t do the dishes last night.
  • My co-worker messed up at work so now I have to work all weekend.

Most of us spend much of our time getting ourselves all worked up over annoyances.  Yes, annoyances are annoying but they won’t kill us.  Annoyances aren’t worth the mental anguish of upsetting ourselves.  We just need to tell ourselves that in the long run, it doesn’t make any difference then just get past it without wasting our mental energy.

For concerns we should spend some mental energy to try to make sure our concerns don’t become problems or to mitigate the problems if they do occur.  For example, we might prepare healthier meals or learn a new job skill that could be useful if your current job goes away.  We should not waste our mental energy getting upset over things that are unlikely to occur.

Save your mental energy for the true problems in life, the ones that count.  And if by some chance you are at a time in your life that you don’t have problems, just concerns and annoyances, take a moment to savor it.  We tend to get so caught up in our annoyances and concerns that we forget to appreciate the times our lives are truly blessed.

 

Books That Have Changed Me

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I love to read.  There are many, many books I have loved.  There are only a handful that have changed who I am as a person, the way I live my life or the way I think.  I’d like to share these books in the order I read them:

  • “How to Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie – This is the best self help book ever written.  Dale Carnegie himself said that his book was not filled with original ideas.  It is filled with the every day common sense methods for dealing with people that are very uncommon in actual use.  It is not a book in manipulation.  It is a book that helps you appreciate people and bring out the best in them.  It also contains wonderful stories and is a delight to read.
  • “Let’s Get Results, Not Excuses:  A no-nonsense Approach to Increasing Productivity, Performance and Profit” by James M. Bleech and Dr. David G. Mutchler – This is a book that some people get immediately and some people will just laugh at.  It starts with the premise that you have success or excuses but you don’t have both.  If you are successful, you don’t need excuses.  One path to success is to figure out in advance that if you fail, what excuses might you have for your failure.  Then you proactively work to prevent the need for excuses.  A key aspect of this is that you stop making excuses.  When you are not successful, you take responsibility.  For example, I don’t say “I was late because of traffic.”  Instead, I say “I was late because I did not allow enough time to account for traffic problems.”
  • “Atlas Shrugged” by Ayn Rand –  I have for a long time believed that capitalism was the most effective economic system, but I felt that socialism was morally superior.  Rand convincingly (to me) argues that capitalism is not only the most effective system, it is also morally superior.  She uses her fiction, most notably “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead” to argue her philosophy which she calls Objectivism.  She also wrote many non-fiction philosophical books.   Atlas Shrugged is a long, long book and can be intimidating.  If you are new to Ayn Rand, I would actually start with her short novella “Anthem” which can be read in just a few bathroom sittings.  If you like “Anthem”, you can proceed to “Atlas Shrugged”.
  • “Basic Economics” by Dr. Thomas Sowell – Dr. Sowell does an amazing job in defining economics for the layman.  Most political issues have an economic component.  Dr. Sowell teaches you how to analyze issues so you can understand and anticipate the actual effects of different policies, which are very often the exact opposite of what their proponents intended.

The last three books are from the world of investing and stock trading.  I took no interest in managing my own investments for the first 45 or so years of my life.  I therefore was oblivious to many amazing opportunities.  Now learning how to invest/trade has become a major focus in my life.  These are the best three books I have found on investing.

  • “Reminiscences of a Stock Operator” by Edwin Lefevre – This book is the autobiography of Jesse Livermore, generally considered to be the greatest trader of all time.  This is the book that first got me truly interested in the stock market. First, it is a wonderful read with amazing stories.  Second, it is a guidebook on how a great trader thinks.  Every time I re-read this book, I learn lessons that strike home that I was not able to appreciate in prior readings.
  • “How to Make Money in Stocks” by William O’Neil – O’Neill is one of the greatest traders of the modern era.  This book is basically the bible for growth investing.   Most new investors crash and burn early then give up on investing. The most important thing this  book will do for you is that if you follow its key principles, it will prevent you from wiping out.  It will keep you in the game, limiting losses as you make your initial mistakes until you have enough experience to be a profitable investor.
  • “Trade like a Stock Market Wizard” by Mark Minervini – Minervini is an O’Neil disciple and a former United States investing champion.  He spent his first eight years or so being unsuccessful.  Once he refined his techniques, he put together an amazing number of large win years without ever experiencing a large losing year.  My investing improved substantially once I began following Minervini’s principles.  

The “Right” to Healthcare

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President Obama stated that everybody has a right to healthcare and this moral statement was a primary justification for the establishment of Obama-care.  Here the right to healthcare should more precisely be stated as the right to free healthcare, the right to have healthcare whether or not one can pay for it. 

By definition, a right is only a right if everybody can exercise the right.  We say that freedom of speech and freedom of religion are basic rights.  These are rights that everybody can exercise.  My exercising my right to say what I want or to join any religion does not take away the rights of anybody else to do the same.  

In contrast, not everybody can have free healthcare.  I might be able to claim free healthcare and you might be able to claim free healthcare but unless we make slaves of the entire medical industry, at some point, somebody has to pay for the healthcare. Therefore by definition, free healthcare cannot be a right.

A right can only be a right if it does not impose an involuntary obligation on others.  If I have the right to have someone provide me with anything, whether it be healthcare or food or shelter or shoes, at some point it confers upon somebody else the obligation to provide it.  When that person is forced to provide the service for others, the obligated person is unable to exercise the right for themselves.

It may or may not be a good policy for the federal government to provide free healthcare to those who can’t afford it, but we cannot say that anybody has the right to free healthcare.

Hello World! (Part II)

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I called my first post Hello World!

I am a computer programmer and the first program a programmer creates in learning a new computer language is to display the words “Hello World!”.  In my original post, although I said hello, I assumed nobody actually read it because nobody else knew about this blog.  I wanted to get a few posts out first before I told anybody about it.

Today I am announcing my blog on Facebook.  There is still a distinct chance that nobody will read,  it but after today, maybe somebody will.

If you are first reading my blog, I suggest that you start at the oldest posts and work your way on up, at least through the February 2014 posts.   You can do this by going to the column on the right and clicking February 2014 under archives.

I state in these posts what I am trying to accomplish with this blog.  I think this background will be very helpful in reading the more current posts.  If by some unlikely event you find these posts interesting, you may want to scroll your way up.  I am trying to slowly build a perspective and the later posts build on what I said in the earlier posts.

In short, I am sharing my thoughts on philosophy and politics.  I am a big believer that most people of all political persuasions are good people and we primarily have the same goals.  We differ in our assumptions, however, and because of these assumptions, it is hard for us to hold a dialogue.  I like to examine the underlying assumptions behind the issues.  Only when we can get down to the core assumptions, down to the first path where we differ, can we hold any kind of meaningful dialogue.

In any case, I thank you for taking the time to read this today.

A Starting Point for Discussing Morality

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I previously blogged that the best way to analyze the effectiveness of a policy is if it rewards good choices or bad choices.  Effectiveness is only part of judging if a policy is good, however.  The other side is morality.   For a policy to be good, it must be both effective and it must be moral.

While effectiveness can be objectively measured, morality is much more subjective.  To take morality to its most basic level, I propose that for anything to be immoral, an offense must be committed.  An offense is anything that offends, displeases, or causes harm.   Offenses can be categorized as one or more of the following:

  • An offense against oneself
  • An offense against others
  • An offense against God

The definition of an offense against God is entirely subject to a person’s individual religious beliefs.  I spoke before of common assumptions.  If one is a Christian, one can assume that the New Testament is an authoritative source for what is an offense against God so two Christians can use this as a reference for a debate.  Even if the logic based upon the New Testament is flawless, it will have no impact on a Jew, Muslim, Atheist, or anyone who is not a Christian.  The same can be said for any religion.  My own personal belief is that I don’t believe there is any offense against God that is not also an offense against oneself or others.  This of course is 100% subjective.

In any case, my ongoing discussions of the morality of any issue will not involve any references to God.  I know there are those who believe that morality cannot even be discussed without the concept of God.  As I blogged previously, without shared assumptions, a starting point, there can be no meaningful discussion.   I will understand if this is your view and you totally reject everything I say on this subject.

I will further go on to state my belief that an offense only against oneself is not immoral.  It may be incredibly stupid, but it is not immoral.  If you make a poor choice and you are the only one injured by your choice, you have not made an immoral choice, just an ineffective choice.

Frequently, however, people who think their bad choices affect only themselves are quite mistaken.  They just don’t think things through fully.  For example, a person might say that riding a motorcycle without a helmet is not immoral, because the rider only injures him/herself.  If, however,  the rider suffers a brain injury and doesn’t have the resources to pay all the medical bills and provide care for him/herself, then the cost of this bad decision is born not just by the rider but by everyone else in society who must contribute to this person’s care.  Also, anyone who is dependent upon the rider, such as the rider’s children, are hurt as well.  Finally, the people who care about the rider may be emotionally devastated, in itself a severe injury.

With the caveat therefore that when we say we are only hurting ourselves, we may be mistaken, my analysis going forward will define as being possibly immoral only actions that hurt others.  This does not mean that any action that hurts others is immoral.  When you buy from Target and not Walmart, one can argue that you are hurting the people at Walmart.  This does not make your purchase immoral.  I am just saying that only an offense against others makes an act possibly immoral.  We can then debate if it actually is moral or immoral.

The Success Equation

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If we wish to have success, I think it is helpful to define the components of success, what I call the success equation.  As far as I know, this specific equation is my concept, but the ideas behind it do not require any particular genius so I would not be surprised at all if it has been proposed many times before.

Success = Talent x Choices x Opportunities

Here I define talent as your inborn abilities.  Choices are the sum of all of your decision.  Opportunities are what is available to you in the outside world.

By definition, talent is maximized at birth and is generally a constant.  A disability may decrease it, such as an artist going blind.  Refining and improving talent is a choice one makes.  Also by definition, a person can not create his or her own opportunities.  He or she can only recognize opportunities and then make the choice to take or not take advantage of the opportunity.

Since talent is fixed, any political policies that increase success has to do one of two things:  increase the probability that people will make good choices or increase opportunities.  Conversely, any policy that decreases the probability of good choices or opportunities will be harmful.

To some extent, all three are essential.  For example, in a medieval feudal society a peasant was destined to be a peasant, regardless of his or her talent or choices.  At this point, I would like to postulate that 21st century America is not a medieval society.  There is a multitude of opportunities, even for people who live under the worst conditions.  If there were no opportunities, as the peasant faced in medieval Europe, then nobody would be successful. However, some people are successful, so ergo there are opportunities.  I would also postulate that for a child growing up in a middle class family with a supportive, stable two-parent family, the opportunities are much easier to find and the child is more likely to make good choices.  A child growing up in a slum in an unstable single-parent household will most likely find fewer opportunities, they will be farther from home, and the child will be less likely to make good choices to take advantage of them.

The inherent unfairness of life, however, does not change the equation.  Regardless of the background, increasing the opportunities and increasing the probability of good choices will lead to more success.

In Malcom Gladwell’s book “Outliers” Gladwell demonstrates fairly convincingly that the most successful people such as the Bill Gates’s and Steve Jobs’s of the world would not be successful if they did not have amazing opportunities.  If they were born a few years earlier or later or if they did not have computer access unavailable to most kids their age, they most likely would not have had the same level of achievement.  This premise is entirely consistent with the success equation.  To achieve maximum success, all three elements of the equation,  talent, choices, and opportunities, must all be at a maximal level.   For most of us, however, we do not need to achieve billionaire status to be successful.   We just need to use whatever talent we have with reasonable choices to take advantage of reasonable opportunities and we can achieve enough success to have a fulfilling middle class lifestyle.

So how can a third party, such as the government, increase people’s probability of success?   It can promote policies that provide opportunities and provide incentives for people to make good choices.   The best way to provide opportunities for the most people is to promote a healthy growing economy.   I will discuss this at a later time.  For now, I would like to propose the idea that promoting good choices is much more important.  Even when there are limited opportunities, if a person makes very good choices he or she will find and take advantage of these opportunities.  On the other hand, even if there are fantastic opportunities, a person who makes poor choices will never take advantage of them.  Therefore, the key to promoting success is by helping people make good choices.  How do we do that?  That will be the subject of my next blog.

The First Assumption: Success is Good.

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In my last post I talked about the importance of assumptions.  My first assumption is that success is good.  We want to be successful in our lives and we favor policies that promote success, for ourselves, for those we care most about, and for the population as a whole.  The term “success”, however is a very vague term.  Success can be valued in terms of money, fame, professional achievement, impact on the lives of others, personal happiness,  etc.  

Moreover, the perception of success is highly relative, depending on our own expectations and the expectations of others.  For example, most people would say that a baseball player who makes the major leagues and plays at that level for many years is highly successful.  However, if this player was touted as the next Willie Mays and he spends his career as a bench player batting .250, many would consider him a disappointment.

When I speak of success in these blogs in terms of political policies, I am primarily referring to economic success.  Political decisions in economics help determine the overall wealth of the nation and how this wealth is distributed.  Economic success in terms of income and/or net worth is the only practical way to measure the results of economic policies.  While some may say that even though a policy is making people poorer, it is also making them happier, I think most people would be happier with a bit more money.

When I speak of success in terms of personal life, I mostly think of self actualization.  Self actualization is best described by the marine corps slogan “Be all that you can be!”.  This is extremely subjective, but here we are talking about personal decisions.  When we talk about improving the lives of others, we need to be more objective so we can measure results.  When we talk about our own life, we can use our own definitions.

In my personal opinion, success derives from setting and achieving goals.  I will talk about this more next time.