CCXXIX – What is the Difference between Economics and a Gun?

I was on another philosophical sprint recently when Wood applied a much needed splash of reality to my enthusiasm. Following my article about Profit Motive, I wrote a snarky quick-take about “Evil Capitalists”. In that quick-take, I made the claim that “There is no economic system which is inherently good”. Wood’s counterargument was that Communism (as an economic system) is predicated on the the abrogation of private property, which Edward Feser has noted is contrary to Natural Law. A Communist system without that abrogation would cease to be communist, therefore a perfectly formed Catholic (PFC) could not operate a communist system without violating natural law.

This lines up with something I argued in my article on Divine Mercy that every action is either for or against God, everything can be reduced to some kind of Binary. This is what ZippyCatholic refers to in the article provided by Wood in the comments, that it is a fallacy that “formalisms and methods” can be metaphysically neutral, and is one of the lies of modernity.

So, with this preamble, lets tackle the question: What is the difference between Economics and a Gun?

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A gun is neutral, because a gun exists apart from people who use guns. A gun can be used for good or evil, but only insofar as it’s operator is either good or evil. A gun thus takes on the character of it’s operator, after a fashion. A gun is evil in the hands of an evil man. A gun is good in the hands of a good man.

I have made the comparison between complex systems and tools because of the idea that a complex system is a kind of tool. Lets turn it into a gloss: Johnny uses the gun to protect his family. [Person A] uses [a tool] in order to [achieve some end]. The tool defines what ends are possible with that tool. “protect his family” is a valid end if the tool is a gun; “eat salad” is not a valid end if the tool is a gun, even if it is technically possible: that’s not what the gun is for.

If we suppose that “Capitalist systems” is a tool, then “public good” seems as valid as “public evil” as an end. The difference lies in the nature of the tool.

A gun is a discrete object that is both definite and actual. Capitalism is neither discrete, definite, nor actual as a thing. Capitalism does not exist apart from the people who are engaged in capitalist acts. Capitalism is almost better described as an emergent property of a barter market, rather than a thing unto itself. So saying that Johnny used Capitalist systems is as nonsensical as saying the gun voluntarily protected Johnnys family without any prompting from Johnny.

Capitalist Systems is more appropriately the subject of our gloss. If the gloss is [Person A] uses [a tool] in order to [achieve some end], then we can substitute in Capitalist Systems for Person A. The subject reduces the available tools, so we can say a tool available to Capitalist Systems is mortgage lending, and that reduces the available ends, so we can say the end of mortgage lending is to provide profit to a bank.

The tool is mortgage lending, mortgage lending is discrete, definite, and actual. Mortgage lending can be done in both Capitalist and communist systems. Mortgage lending can be performed by PFC’s.

Capitalist systems then are not inherently neutral, the reason they appeared that way is because they were in the wrong spot on my framework. Capitalist systems are a collection of agents, whose wills can be good or evil, and whose deeds follow the binary I described previously.

So with this in mind, the question I asked in my quick-take article was “Is there an economic system which is inherently good?” The answer is still no, but for a different reason. Capitalism, as a collection of capitalist agents, has no inherent property which is good or evil, the same way a person has no inherent property which is good or evil. A person makes good or evil choices, and capitalist agents can make good or evil choices, and so aggregated capitalist agents can effectuate good or evil outcomes through their collective actions.

The punchline still works too: If you condemn capitalism as evil, you are really condemning the culture that allows capitalist evil, which includes you. To change an evil culture requires doing non-evil acts, so I say again: Just don’t be evil.

AMDG

(d) – Afterthought on Evil Capitalists

I began my article about Corporate Imperialism by saying that any system peopled by properly formed Catholics can work to good. My recent post about Profit Motive might be seen as a critique of capitalism, but it’s more of a critique of the popular defenses of capitalism.

So there’s a natural question: Is there an economic system which is good?

Because economic systems are systems and they can be peopled by properly formed Catholics and leveraged for the true Public Good, there is no economic system which is inherently good, there are only economic systems which are used for good. Economic systems take on the character of the societies in which they operate.

Which means, when people condemn capitalism as “evil”, what they really mean is the society in which capitalism operates is “evil”. Which is a kind of self condemnation. If you want to change a culture that you consider evil, then don’t be evil.

CCXXVIII – Profit Motive Does Not Imply Public Good

Wood over at his blog “Wood Faileth” has an article that connects to a thought I’ve had but haven’t known how to introduce. If you’ve read my recent Economics thought-sprint then go read Wood’s article and come back here, then I will try to complete my point. Another helpful pre-reading is my brief series on Public Good.

In my Economics series, I pointed out that when the units used to measure everything is dollars, you lose some nuance when you discuss the value of those things. Price is different from value.

In my Public Good series, I pointed out that Good implies proper order, and proper order implies pointing to God. That which is good is ordered to God; the Public Good is that which orders the public to God. There was a separate distinction though, that public good as it is used colloquially describes those things which society likes. So I will call socially approved things “Public Like” and things which are properly ordered to God “Public Good”.

In Wood’s article, he uses the example of Madison Avenue to point out the silliness of complaining about “Evil Capitalist Greed”. Madison Avenue is hardly the paragon of the social benefits of Capitalism, yet is a striking example of a some kind of order (I make no judgement on whether it is properly ordered or not–just that it reflects some order). People use Madison Avenue as a straw man because they think it is Evil–Wood accurately points out that most people these days hate beauty, and so hate order, and so reject that order; People use Madison Avenue as a straw man because they think it is Capitalist–Wood points out that it is hardly the best example of rampant capitalism available to us.

With that as preamble, we can now dig into some of the meat and potatoes of this article.

The First Law: Markets Are Efficient

A common defense of capitalism you may have heard is that profit motive accomplishes the public good. This is half true: Profit motive accomplishes the “Public Like”. When people say profit motive accomplishes public good, what they mean is that market forces will reward those people who help society, and will punish those people who harm society. Again: this is half true. In evidence, lets look at the fact that people pay money for pornography. The profit motive here is rewarding purveyors of sin. This is not good in any way; but this particular sin is currently not objected to by society, therefore falls within the “Public Like”, and is not prohibited. Profit motive of pornographers thereby advances that which society already approves. The sum of all things which society approves is it’s culture. Therefore profit motive perpetuates the culture in which the profit motive is deployed.

A rejoinder by the capitalist interlocutor may be that Profit Motive has many other benefits as well. Wood’s article points to one: plummeting prices through competition; I will add innovation and technological advancement as another. Profit motive leads to Entrepreneurial problem solving: If you can make money by doing something better, then eventually most people will do things better, until you can’t make any money doing that thing.

In my Economics Sprint, I pointed out that Entrepreneurial problem solving is a way of utilizing available resources to solve problems, and is not necessarily a way of benefitting society. Again: the first pornographer was using available resources (shamelessly sinful individuals) to solve the problem of satisfying demand for autoerotic voyeurism. Entrepreneurship is not inherently aligned with Public Good, but is aligned with monetizing resources in a way which society approves. Competition just means resources can be monetized in a way which is also accessible to society.

This is the first law they teach in economics classes: Markets are efficient, or Markets Work. This is absolutely true, but markets are not clearly defined. One person looking for pornography represents a market. If an entrepreneur thinks he can make money from it, he can enter that market and satisfy that demand. Markets are efficient, but markets are not inherently good.

Mining for Money

An important thing to note here is that Money is itself a resource, and is not a mere unit of measure, is not mere points. In a previous article I disambiguated a things value from its price. This allows us to do two things: Look at all transactions as bartering, and to look at all transactions as exchanges of value instead of exchanges of goods and services for money.

Looking at money as a resources explains a little bit of the American Venture Capital scene these days. There are huge sums of money being thrown around to start-ups, and the reason for this can be seen in my definition of Entrepreneurship: It is a way of utilizing available resources to solve problems. Money is a resource that, in the venture capital world, is abundant. Those who seek venture capital dollars are simply trying to find a problem which that resources can be deployed to address. Because the people who control that resource are members of society, that resource will only be deployed in ventures which align with the “Public Like”.

The Alternative

The reason the axiom “Profit motive = public good” has gone unexamined for so long is because it hints at a fundamental truth without actually arriving at it. Markets seek an equilibrium, and this line of economic thought is predicated on the idea that people make strictly equal exchanges: A given product is sold for the maximum price someone is willing to pay, and that must be no less than the amount it cost to create. The value, expressed in units yap, is always exchanged at a value gain, or a yap profit. The example I used previously was that a Canoe was on sale for $100 and I saw it, wanted it, and bought it. I like canoing, so the Canoe was 5 yap valuable to me, and in order to acquire that 5 yap value, I need only hand over one paper bill, which is only 2 yap valuable to me. The net exchange for me is +3 yap. For the seller, he does not want the canoe anymore, it is 1 yap valuable to him, but with a paper bill he could pay his rent, so the paper bill is 4 yap valuable to him: a net exchange of +3 yap.

This makes logical sense: If the canoe was more valuable to the seller than the money he would get for it, he would not make the exchange. If the money were more valuable to me than the canoe I would get for it, then I would not make the exchange.

However, we cannot stop here and say simply that “Value motive = public good”. The value scenario can still accommodate a person seeking and buying pornography, instead of a canoe. This digression about Value thus is interesting and descriptive but doesn’t change the results of our analysis. We must apply additional steps to arrive at some economic activity which truly implies public good.

Can I Exchange Rai Stones for Public Good?

Public Like can be anything, Public Good can only be that which points to God. The true issue at hand is cultural, and not economic. Can economics be used to wag the dog and change a culture from one that approves of pornography to one that condemns pornography?

Regulation is not the answer, because Laws follow that which a society already believes. Economics can only be leveraged to solve economic problems, and because the Public Like currently includes sin and godlessness, that is a social–and so cultural–problem. Culture can only be changed on generational timescales, and is less of a marketplace and more of a war. One culture must dominate and destroy another in order to replace it. The alternatives are only cultural victory, cultural secession, or cultural death.

So the answer is that there is no economic motive that promotes the public good unless the culture is already aligned to God. The levers for changing culture are to either outwit or outlast the dominant culture: Outwit through conversion, or outlast through having many children.

TL;DR: Profit Motive does not imply public good, therefore have lots of kids.

AMDG

CCXVII – Voluntary Atlas

I think we like to burden ourselves to feel important. I really don’t know how to preface this idea, and I don’t mean it as an insult: it feels like a natural impulse. I can sense it in my life and can see it in others, at times. You would be right to say, “Physician, heal thyself!”, yet I don’t think that diminishes the truth of the phenomenon.

Let me break it down a little bit. What do I mean by feeling important? The highest sense is that our lives have purpose and meaning. Properly ordered, it seems to me that feelings of purpose and meaning come from God. It is not unreasonable to suggest that someone who has no reverence for God cannot well understand their role in creation. God provides the omniscient context for our lives, so without that context, it is like a unit-less number: naked, meaningless, prone to having meaning assigned to it incorrectly.

There are lesser orders of feeling important. Self Actualization is a buzzword that I run into sometimes, and to my understanding it means that we are doing everything we want to do the way we want to do it. Absent a higher order–God’s divine context–self actualization can be for good or ill. Liberalism (in the classical sense) is the idea that anything anyone wants to do they should be able to do. So a hobo living on a park bench can be self actualized if he doesn’t want anything else. This is usually where third parties enter the Liberalism equation to say that he would want something else if he had more opportunity. Yadda yadda–that’s not what I want to get into here but I wanted to note that other people have a different idea of how you should be self actualized than your own idea of your own self actualization.

Continuing the descent down orders of importance, I would say about equal are ideas of vocation or responsibility. Vocation has a couple different meanings and everyone seems to have a different idea of how exactly vocations work. I am using it in the sense of “God’s calling” for us. We all have a universal vocation to holiness, for example, but not everyone will feel equally called to, say, serve the poor. An important thing about vocations is that there is a gap between what we feel called to do and what we are doing. Responsibility functions in a similar way, but I would contrast it by saying it’s the world’s calling for us. If you have kids, you are responsible for those kids–you cannot shirk that responsibility. There can be a gap between what you are responsible for and what you are behaving responsible for.

When someone has lots of responsibilities they sometimes feel important. When someone is fulfilling their vocation they feel important. When someone is self actualized they feel important. When someone believes in the intrinsic dignity of their own life as a unique and specific of God’s creations, they feel important.

Lets talk about burdening ourselves now. A responsibility is a kind of burden: having kids is an important responsibility, and it limits the way we live because we must order our lives around satisfying that responsibility well. It is possible to take on too many responsibilities. If you have kids, are president of the Rotary club, are on the Parish Council, coach your sons baseball team, and are in charge of the Planning Committee at work–you have a lot of responsibilities. When we do not feel important enough, we are tempted to add responsibilities, seek out vocations, more perfectly self actualize until we feel important.

When our time cannot fit any more obligations, whence can we take up burdens of importance? Now we arrive at the thing on my mind when I began: We take up mental burdens.

Mental burdens are a species of burden which we worry about but cannot do anything about. Politics, the stock market, sports drafts, corporate strategy–these are all things which occupy our minds and very few of us can do anything tangibly to influence. These are things which take no time to worry about and yet which cost us greatly in terms of energy. Now, I do not mean to suggest that feeling important is the only motivation for worrying about these things. There are infinitely many reasons to worry about them. The species that I am most susceptible to is this idea of feeling important.

How does worrying about politics, the stock market, sports drafts, or corporate strategy make us feel important? Lets simplify this with an analogy. In Politics, the stock market, sports, or Corporate strategy, your “tribe” can be winning or your tribe can be losing. You naturally want your tribe to win, and so worry about the performance of your tribe. Any action taken in any of those spheres I listed will either result in a win or a loss for your tribe. A win will result in your elation, because this is something you worry about and your tribe is winning. A loss will result in your depression, because this s something you worry about and your tribe is losing. When your tribe is winning, you are winning, and so you feel more important. When your tribe is losing, you are losing, and so you become outraged, and so you feel more important.

Scenarios: Governor Dingus raises taxes: If you want higher taxes, your tribe wins; If you don’t want higher taxes, your tribe loses. A company whose stock you own releases a new brand of widget: If the stock price goes up, your tribe wins; if the stock price goes down, your tribe loses. Your sports team plays in the national championship: If they win, your tribe wins; if they lose, your tribe loses. Your company opens a Springfield branch: If you think this is a good decision, your tribe wins; if you think this is a bad decision, your tribe loses.

In every one of those examples, a person would receive emotional whiplash from external factors controlling their peace.

It is very much like we are all our own kind of Atlas and we voluntarily take these burdens on to weigh us down. What meaning would Atlas have if he didn’t have the weight of the world on his shoulders? If we have a properly ordered dignity from God, we don’t need any extraneous material things to give our lives meaning and purpose. Laying down the burden of politics frees us from the emotional whiplash of changing political fortunes. Trusting in God–beyond that, abandoning ourselves to Divine providence–frees us from all Earthly concern.

And yet: Christ calls us to pick up our cross and follow him; to accept an easy yoke and a light burden. We can shrug and lay down the world, and when we pick up our cross find importance in the only thing that really matters: glorifying God through our lives.

AMDG

CCXII – Follow Me

And it came to pass, as he was alone praying, his disciples also were with him: and he asked them, saying: Whom do the people say that I am?
But they answered, and said: John the Baptist; but some say Elias; and others say that one of the former prophets is risen again.
And he said to them: But whom do you say that I am?
Simon Peter answering, said: The Christ of God.
But he strictly charging them, commanded they should tell this to no man. Saying: The Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the ancients and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and the third day rise again.
And he said to all: If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life, shall lose it; for he that shall lose his life for my sake, shall save it. Luke 9:18-24

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I’ve got a logical argument I’d like to make based on something that has come up more than once in conversation. The conversation goes something like this:
“People shouldn’t impose their religious beliefs on anyone.”
“If you think that, shouldn’t that apply to political beliefs too?”
“No, politics are different.”
“How are political beliefs different from religious beliefs?”
and so on and so forth.

There’s a pervasive opinion that some order of beliefs should not be imposed. It’s always been a bewildering argument to me and here I propose to outline a logical refutation.

1. Beliefs are held voluntarily
   1. You can choose what you believe, on any matter. This seems like a fundamental assumption but it’s important to state assumptions plainly up front.
2. We hold beliefs because we hold them to be true.
   1. This is another thing that should be obvious. You don’t believe something that you think is false. If you say “I believe this dollar is actually worth one-hundred dollars” but put it in a vending machine for a seventy-five cent candy bar, you don’t actually believe it’s worth one-hundred dollars.
3. Our actions reveal what we actually believe to be true.
   1. I believe my chair will support my weight so I sit down without thinking about it. But more abstractly: I believe in God therefore I offer worship to God. If I believe in God and don’t offer worship, then it means I don’t actually believe in God or I don’t believe God requires worship.
4. Things that are true are always true and so should be acknowledged as such.
   1. We have a duty to acknowledge truth. Everyone has a duty to acknowledge truth. The sky is blue, we breathe oxygen, gravity keeps us firmly on the ground. We cannot deny these truths and consistently live by them. Our actions reveal what we actually believe to be true: I can say gravity is a lie but that won’t make me float away into space.
   2. The simultaneous asserting of a truth and acting contrary to that truth is what people call hypocrisy.
5. We should want to lead other people to truth and share truth with them.
   1. There is a natural human impulse to share truths. We call this “Teaching”. It’s a wonderful process to be a part of, because it’s less about imparting data into someone else’s brain but more about walking with them on a journey of discovery.
   2. Leading people to truths about the world is (or should be) the objective of Science.
   3. Leading people to truths about God is (or should be) the objective of Evangelism.
      1. Because God is the font of all truth and creator of the world, leading people to truths about the world do (or should) lead people to truths about God.
6. Religion is the set of beliefs we hold to be so true that we are per se motivated to lead other people to that set of beliefs.
   1. As established in (3), our actions reveal what we actually hold to be true.
   2. The actions we take to lead people to a certain set of beliefs reveals what beliefs we think are important enough to lead people to.

All of these logical points build upon each other to the final point, here:

If you do not consider your beliefs about God are important enough to lead people to them, then whatever those beliefs are, they are not your religion. If what you believe about politics are so important that you feel people must be led to the same political beliefs, then Politics is your religion.

AMDG

CCVI – Utalitarianism

At work, I have a friend who is areligious and (hopefully) as banter jokes that he worships the sun. He was in the military and was in a particular branch of the military that exposed him to danger and to many horrible sights. He and I have found common ground in our senses of humor and in being the only two people that go into the office these days. When I am having a stressful day, he will say, “Is anyone getting shot at? No? Doesn’t seem so bad.” It is good perspective and a good reminder. In exchange I will share trivia or look up and answer oddball questions that he thinks about. Yesterday we talked about how much Mt. Everest is growing every year ( FYI, 4mm per year) and how influential the Appalachian mountains are on whether or not we get snow (meteorologists always seem to promise a blizzard and deliver a dusting).

He also has a perfect absence of sentimentality. We were talking about the COVID vaccine and he expressed that priority shouldn’t be given to the elderly, and I suggested that it should. He felt they become an increasing burden as they get older, I felt we have an increasing duty of care as they get older. Value in his mind is measured by usefulness. He and I coined a word to satirically describe his point of view: Utalitarianism.

Utalitarianism is a neologism of “Utilitarian” and “Totalitarian”. It is a tyranny of efficiency, a strict enforcement of utility. If a person ceases to be useful, get rid of them. If a possession is broken or redundant, get rid of it. My friend is not a strict adherent to the philosophy, he just gave me the best illustration I’ve ever seen of it. This idea of Utalitarianism is widespread throughout American culture and the world.

Typically, what I have found, is that the “utility” aspect of the word is only from a narrow perspective: How useful is this person to me. Absent an underlying set of values or personal connections, it’s hard to see how an elderly individual in a nursing home adds value to society (or to me). The Totalitarian aspect of the word comes from the idea that this philosophy should be enshrined into law and enforced.

The consequence of this is that preservation of resources becomes the highest order of good. When the resources expended on a person exceed the resources produced by a person, they have exceeded their usefulness to society and are expendable. This allows us, individually and as a society, to make great heaps of all our wealth and so judge ourselves to be effective and efficient, and so good.

In this worldview, there is nothing intrinsic about life that is worthwhile and nothing valuable about suffering that is redemptive. It is materialist in the strictest possible sense.

The challenge then, is how do you teach that life has intrinsic value given to us by God to a society which measures value by usefulness? Probably the only thing is by living out the perplexing and counterintuitive behavior of caring for the sick and elderly, serving the poor, and other works of mercy. The greatest antidote to Utalitarianism is the indisputable fact that when we die, we have to leave all our stuff here.

AMDG

CXCIX – What The World Doesn’t Want to Hear

This is the fruit of a conversation with Hambone about a variety of topics. The main thrust of it was along the lines of “what would be the most effective thing the Church could preach”. Hambone phrased it differently but for my purposes that is a useful paraphrase of our conversation.

If your parish is anything like mine, you hear a lot about peace and love. Peace and Love are great, and of course should be preached. A pulpit that didn’t profess peace and love would be a poor one indeed. Of course, that is the problem: Peace and love are perfectly unobjectionable concepts. At some point The World^TM caught on to peace and love and made it it’s own. Catholics may wonder why their brand of peace and love isn’t getting traction. The World^TM started preaching peace and love and the Church started preaching it back, and the world just laughed at us because ours has rules.

The Church can’t compete on peace and love. It’s like negotiating to get your new brand of soda put into a vending machine: sure, it might taste better or be cheaper but you see, they’ve already got soda and it’s selling just fine. In other words, you can’t sell a different kind of the same product and expect people to change behavior: You have to sell them a different product.

So what is that different product? I don’t know, but I can tell you what I think it is.

If there’s one thing that The World^TM likes, it is individualism. This concept has even entered into Catholic circles, and it is dangerously acidic. The Catholic answer to that should be obedience to authority. The yoke is easy and the burden is light! Christ is our King, and we owe him a duty of obedience. In that same vein, we owe a duty of obedience to truth. Christ is our King, and we accept this because it is true.

We can tie it back to peace and love if we wanted: The only way to truly have peace is to accept the laws of our King obediently. There would be no conflict if everyone was perfectly law abiding–obedience is peace. We do this because it is true, and God is the perfection of Truth, God is Truth itself, and we love God, therefore we love Truth.

If we heard from our pulpits that we must accept the yoke, I think it would pop a lot of brains. It is counter-intuitive, certainly counter-cultural. Everyone has already heard peace and love. How many people believe that Obedience and Truth are perfectly unobjectionable? That’s what would make it an effective message.

AMDG

CLIX – More on Public Good

I want to focus here on the idea of government as an emergent behavior from society.

Lets build this model carefully. An individual is a unit within a family. A family is a group of people connected through blood. A community is a group of families connected by geography. A society is a group of communities connected by culture. We know that behavior of large groups is somewhat different from behavior of individuals. The fact that a society shares a culture implies that there are certain behaviors which are preferable, and which they agree to reward; and other behaviors which are not preferable, and which they agree to punish. “Lord of the Flies” is a great example of looking at emergent behaviors in an isolated community. If society all agrees on some priority, nothing more needs to be said about it, the society will align itself with satisfying that priority. It is when a society has disagreements internally about it’s priorities that it needs a formal conflict resolution structure. In “Lord of the Flies”, the Conch was the inception of proto-governmental formality and conflict resolution–or would have been, if everyone agreed to it as a local custom. The system of Judges were established by God through Moses to mediate disputes among the Hebrews before they arrived in Israel. The root cause of government, we might say, is conflict resolution.

Recording every outcome of every judgement is what became the English system of common law. The American system expanded on the idea of the Magna Carta by outlining some fundamental precepts in the form of the Constitution, which are prior to common law judgements and inform the basis for judicial and legislative resolutions. Specialization is the driving force behind Government as an institution. If a few can resolve the resolution of conflicts, then the rest of Society can take care of itself and all those priorities which Society agrees need to be satisfied. We get a picture of a society wherein, on all those things society agrees on, they are managed multiply and separately by society; and on all those things society disagrees on, they are managed by a few appointed for the purpose of conflict resolution in what we call government.

There are a couple fundamental truths we can add into the discussion at this point. Society does not have it’s own interest, but each subset within society does. An individual we can generally assume will act self-interestedly, likewise a family, and a community. It’s this interaction of self-interests that form the culture that underlies society. Government, as a subset within society, also follows its own interest. It is no longer an emergent property of society, but an institution unto itself, and as such interested in it’s own self preservation.

None of this leads to social discord unless or until some of these subsets begins having priorities that are contrary to the priorities of other elements of society. When one community feuds with another over some issue, they both agree that Government is the appropriate means of conflict resolution. But what if the Government is at odds with a community? Who arbitrates?

There are a few possible answers. 1) The disagreeing parties can come to some sort of compromise, and that can be documented and added into the corpus of common law, hopefully avoiding a similar dispute in the future. 2) The non-government party can overrule the government party, and impose it’s priorities on the government. 3) The government party can overrule the non-government party and impose it’s priorities on the rest of society. 4) The two parties go their separate ways; the government keeping those elements of society whose priorities align with it; the disagreeing party forming it’s own government that more closely aligns with it’s priorities.

When Are You Going To Get To Public Good?

I’ve argued previously that Public Good is that which leads people to God. I’ll amend that by saying that Public Good ought to lead people to God. Otherwise, public good tends to just be that which the public considers good. The government reflects society insofar as it governs and legislates in a way that aligns with what Society already values, and it’s fundamental purpose is to arbitrate disputes within that society.

I’ll add one wrinkle: I’ve been thinking of Government as if it were a Liberal Democracy. How is this different if we were dealing with a Monarchical sovereign?

Food for thought. To be continued!

AMDG

CLVII – Presented Without Comment (No. 12)

For a War Memorial – GK Chesterton

(SUGGESTED INSCRIPTION PROBABLY NOT SUGGESTED BY THE COMMITTEE)

The hucksters haggle in the mart
The cars and carts go by;
Senates and schools go droning on;
For dead things cannot die.

A storm stooped on the place of tombs
With bolts to blast and rive;
But these be names of many men
The lightning found alive.

If usurers rule and rights decay
And visions view once more
Great Carthage like a golden shell
Gape hollow on the shore,

Still to the last of crumbling time
Upon this stone be read
How many men of England died
To prove they were not dead.

CLIII – Media Bias

After my recent posts about how I have decided not to care about politics, then my subsequent post about politics, and then further still my post about the simplicity of the Peasant Faith, you might be surprised to see this headline about Media Bias. Hopefully it goes better than you think.

Media Bias is an oxymoron. If a person is speaking, they are biased in favor of their own views. This is just a given. Sometimes the person speaking is in front of a camera. Sometimes they’re standing around the coffee machine. In this sense, bias is just another word to describe a persons preference for their own opinion. There are a lot of rightists who argue about liberal media and there are a lot of leftists that argue that particular outlets are propaganda. Both of them are right! This is the Twitter Problem. If the Media is supposed to not present bias, then it requires intervention from outside of the Media–probably government– to enforce that. If we don’t want government intervention in private organizations like news media, then we have to accept that the news media will be biased in favor of their own opinions.

What’s funny about this dynamic is that it’s small-government rightists arguing for government intervention, and it’s big-government leftists arguing for the unrestrained operation of private corporations.

What inspired this whole article is that there is an online service now that seems to be designed to track bias. It’s more fodder for internet arguments, but when I saw it I was intrigued because it presents information but not interpretation. This is why it’s effective at pouring gasoline on internet based discourse. So I wanted to think this through a little bit.

Consider the Following

Lets say there is a news story about a man standing on the roof of a house and he has a megaphone and he is shouting something through it. We can create a grid and consider the options.

There’s a factual nature of what the man is actually saying. He’s either supporting rightist ideology, leftist ideology, or some kind of centrism whatever that may be–“Can’t we all just get along?”

And then the news media can choose the degree to which they cover it. What they say about it doesn’t really matter, because the coverage itself is going to influence how important people perceive this event to be.

Lets first look at the media’s perspective. Lets simplify this and say that the media can either Agree or Disagree with whatever he is saying–there is no neutral option because I have just argued that there is no such thing as objective news media. So the questions that I’m going to ask are basically, why would a media that agrees choose each coverage option, and why would a media that disagrees choose each coverage option?

An organization might decide not to cover an event if they judge that the event does not rise to the level of news-worthiness, and so consumers of media do not need to know about it. But again–that’s presupposing that the media is concerned about informing the consumers of their news. The real consideration is: Will this drive clicks? Will this drive revenue? And finally: Does this fit the story we are telling? (NB: Implicit in the nature of bias is that it is the story we tell ourselves and repeat to others). News-worthiness doesn’t really matter any more, if the answer to any two of the above questions is yes. So an organization might choose not to cover a given story if it has a poor business case (revenue), poor customer interest (clicks), or contrary narrative (story). Regardless of what the man on the roof is actually saying, and regardless of what any given media organization thinks, this is the decision they are making. Not seeing a story does not imply that they “don’t want you to see it” or that they are “suppressing the story”. It means that it’s just bad business.

This same consideration goes into the other two coverage decisions as well, with the added element of considering their competitive position in the news marketplace. There’s a possibility a media organization would cover a story that makes their competitors look bad. This would give their own customers a feeling of satisfaction at having made the right choice, thereby growing and reinforcing brand loyalty.

Pop Quiz

What does this tell us? In my opinion, arguing about media bias presupposes that the objective of the media is to inform the populace. Information is a de minimis benefit of watching the news, but what they really want from you is money. This is part of why the Trump Phenomenon has been so polarizing in the Media, is because the coverage calculation is most different. What he says is on the “Right”, and the media gives him intense coverage because it fits the calculation. The starting point is that Trump is an unusual figure in American politics, and so people are interested in him. Covering him drives clicks. Clicks drive revenue. And the coverage has the potential to make their competitors look good or bad. Trump is the macguffin, competitive advantage is the game.

The only problem that I can see with the whole premise here is that the populace, at large, still believe the job of the media is to inform. So people take them seriously, and it gives them that power (whether they realize it or not) to engage in social engineering by customizing their narratives. I don’t believe social engineering is an intentional coordinated effort, but in my opinion it is more likely an emergent behavior given the competitive landscape. Trying to solve this requires either grappling with the Twitter problem described above, or the populace at large changing their relationship with news media, which happens over time the same way fads and preferences change.

The Real Question

After watching all this, maybe you have this question in mind: “How can I stay informed?”

If we accept that there’s no media outlet whose objective is to inform, then this can seem dire. However! There is good news, and it comes in the form of two recommendations.

1. You can still consume whatever news media you like. The grid above shows that underlying the stories they tell are the actual events as they happened. If you can peer through the narrative they are telling you, you can see the facts of events. You cannot see stories they don’t show you, so often times people say you should consume media far and wide. It takes effort and practice to see the story behind the story, but it can be done. The first step in doing this is acknowledging that the media is trying to tell you a story and get money from you. The second step is in believing it.
2. Another alternative, which I have chosen for myself, is to decrease the amount of news you consume. Important things worth knowing will break through the bubble. I don’t feel uninformed, but I am behind the curve. Then you can go do targeted research about a topic, thus giving you control of what news you consume and how you consume it.

Having said all of this, I ask you to remember that this is the narrative I tell myself and I am biased to prefer it. I’m not making any money from you though, so I hope that aids my credibility.

AMDG