Spheres of Justice #14

This is my final post on Spheres of Justice.

I saw the book and decided to give it a try. Well before reading it I had the idea that morality is a contextual matter. I even wrote a journal article, Egoism and Others (link to abstract), to that effect. This came from considering the differences between being in a public place among strangers, with family or other kin, in the workplace, action on behalf of somebody else, or working for the government. I continued reading the book because of its unique perspective on justice and morality that differed from mine. We are social creatures, but the social contexts vary. Walzer calls them “spheres.” I believe “domains” is a better term, but that is not material. He also invokes the concept of membership in social groups as material, something that I had not considered.

Advocates of individualism, e.g. Ayn Rand, tend to take a simpler perspective -- the individual versus society or its government. Social relations aren’t segmented into different spheres or contexts.

Of course, I didn’t agree with everything Walzer says, but the book was quite often thought-provoking. That is the main reason I continued reading the book until the end.

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Mathematician solves computer science conjecture in two pages

Link to article.

A nearly 30-year-old conjecture about the structure of the fundamental building blocks of computer circuits -- Boolean logic -- has been solved. Mathematician Hao Huang found a solution using the abstract mathematical tools matrix, eigenvalues and submatrix. 

Spheres of Justice #13

Chapter 13, the final one, is titled Tyrannies and Just Societies.

Men and women claim justice, and resist tyranny, by insisting on the meaning of social good among themselves. Justice is rooted in their distinct understanding of places, honors, jobs, things of all sorts, that constitute a shared way of life. To override that understanding is to act unjustly.

No account of buying and selling, no description of free exchange, can possibly settle the question of justice in a capitalist system. What is decided to be just requires knowing a great deal about other distributive processes and about their relative autonomy from or integration into the market. The dominance of capital outside the market makes capitalism unjust.

Tyrants are endlessly busy. There is so much to do if they are to make their power dominant everywhere, in the bureaucracy and the courts, in the markets and factories, in parties and unions, in schools and churches, among friends and lovers, kinfolk and fellow citizens.

Complex equality is the opposite of totalitarianism: maximum differentiation as against maximum coordination.

Contemporary forms of egalitarianism have their origin in the struggle against capitalism and the particular tyranny of money. State officials will be tyrants, we are told, whenever their power is not balanced by money. Capitalists will be tyrants whenever wealth is not balanced by a strong government. Still, the tyranny of money is less frightening than the tyranny with origins on the other side of the money/politics divide.

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Spheres of Justice #12

Chapter 12 is about political power. One of the things that men and women pursue is state power. It is also the means by which all different pursuits, including state power itself, are regulated. Hence the simultaneous requirement that state power be sustained and inhibited – mobilized, divided, checked and balanced. Political power can protect its constituents, but it may also tyrannize them.

Politicians act on our behalf and arguably with our consent. But in most places and times, political rulers function as agents of husbands and fathers, aristocratic families, degree holders, capitalists, or the wealthy. The agents may be tyrants.

Walzer lists several ways that political power may be blocked.

- Sovereignty does not extend to enslavement.

- State officials may not control marriages or interfere in personal and familial relations, including raising children.

- State officials cannot violate shared understanding of guilt and innocence, corrupt the system of criminal justice, use political repression to punish, or employ cruel and unusual punishment.

- State officials cannot sell political power or auction of decisions.

- All subjects/citizens are equal before the law.

- Private property is safe against arbitrary taxation and confiscation.

- State officials cannot control religious practices.

- State officials may legislate a curriculum, but not interfere in actual teaching.

- State officials must guarantee free speech, free press, free assembly.

Power is not a private matter. It has be exercised to be enjoyed, and when exercised, the rest are directed, policed, manipulated, helped, and hurt. Who should hold it? Two possible answers are (1) those who best know how to use it, and (2) those who most immediately experience its effects.

Public offices, paid for from public funds, provide public services. Hence, relocating an office is an exercise of political power over the taxpayers. A private firm is different. Its relations with its customers are more like brief encounters. Requiring a private firm’s relocating be made a public matter would impinge upon the sphere of money and commodities with its attendant freedoms. Marx’s idea that ownership of the means of production should be a public and political matter would also impinge upon the sphere of money and commodities with its attendant freedoms.

Whereas feudal property was founded and sustained on armed force, capitalist property rests upon activities that are intrinsically non-coercive and non-political.

Walzer includes a section about the Pullman Company, which made train-cars, and the “company-town” of Pullman, Illinois. The chapter’s final section is about democracy. It describes the Athenian Lottery and addresses political parties and primaries.

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Spheres of Justice #11

I am skipping Chapter 10 about divine grace. Chapter 11 is about recognition. As preface, humans want recognition from other humans in one form or another, be it for their character, achievements, respect of their rights, rank, and so forth. Walzer explores this in several ways, beginning with the feudal era.

“In a hierarchical society like that of feudal Europe, a title is a name of a rank attached to the name of a person. To call a person by his title is to place him in a social order and, depending on the place, to honor or dishonor him. Titles commonly proliferate in the upper ranks where they mark off fine distinctions and suggest the intensity and importance of the struggle for recognition. The lower ranks are more grossly titled, and the lowest men and women have no titles at all but are called by their first names or some disparaging name” (249).

If we know everyone’s title, then we know the social order; we know to whom we must defer and who must defer to us; we are prepared for all encounters. This sort of knowledge is easy to obtain and widely diffused.

Higher ranking people can behave badly, and when they do, their social inferiors are likely to notice and comment on it among themselves. The comments may be more public, but short of rebellion or revolution, they have little choice but to yield to the honor, respect, or deference that come with higher rank.

Thomas Hobbes took disputes of aristocrats, particularly the duel, as one of the archetypal forms of the war of all against all. Such battles are fought only among equals. When the lower ranks challenge the higher, it’s rebellion or revolution instead. Democratic revolutions represent an attack on the whole system of prevailing social judgments. If the struggle is broadened, the social good at issue is more diverse – honor, respect, esteem, praise, prestige, status, dignity, etc.

Recognition must be won, sometimes from people reluctant to give it. It can be fleeting, such as of celebrities by the mass media. Not all agree. Some may regard a public recognition as undeserved, a matter of luck or the result of being in the class of people most valued for the time and place. Often the flow of recognition or honor is shaped by the dominance of other goods such as wealth, power, or education. Regardless, a simple equality is unobtainable; it would leave all without recognition of being persons regarded for their individual characteristics.

Punishment is the most important example of dishonor. It may take the form of ostracism. Prolonged unemployment and poverty are a kind of economic exile.

Democratic citizenship is a status disconnected from every kind of hierarchy. Being a citizen is a simple form of public recognition.

Self-esteem depends in part on comparisons with others.

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AOC strikes out

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez questions Facebook's David Marcus about Libra.

I disagree with the author's view of AOC and believe that David Marcus, Facebook's cryptocurrency boss, did not handle the exchange very well.

"Ocasio-Cortez made the point that the assets backing the Libra currency that set its value would be determined by corporations, most of which are profit-driven."

The paragraph prior to that shows AOC's error. "Libra will be backed by real financial assets, specifically a "basket" of existing currencies — such as the US dollar, the euro, and government securities — that will serve as the digital currency's 'reserve'." Strike one.

Since when are profit-driven corporations the only thing that determine the value of the US dollar, the euro, and government securities? What about the Federal Reserve, investors, non-profits, and anybody who receives and spends money? Strike two.

AOC asks twice, "Do you believe currency is a public good?" AOC merely assumes currency is a public good and the article paraphrases her saying so -- "a nation's currency is something that functions as a "public good" in the purview of a government, not for-profit corporations."

To the contrary. Currency or money is not a "public good" as explained here. Wikipedia gives several examples of public goods, and money is not one of them. A typical economics textbook definition says a public good is something one person's consumption of it does not reduce that available to another person, such as radio waves and air. Money doesn't qualify. AOC majored in economics. She should know that. Strike three.

ProPublica Targets TurboTax Again #3

Trump’s Tax Law Threatened TurboTax’s Profits. So the Company Started Charging the Disabled, the Unemployed and Students.

Oh my. It’s more deceptive reporting from ProPublica, along with 100% blame for Intuit (maker of TurboTax) and 0% blame for the tax filer.

In ProPublica’s narrative Kristan Obeng gets and deserves no blame, despite the following:

1. she waited until the last minute to file

2. she ignored or didn’t understand the caveats for using the Free Edition

3. if she had heeded the caveats, she would not even tried using the Free Edition

4. she plowed ahead anyway, only to find a roadblock

5. rather than seek out other alternatives that would have let her file for free – Free File Alliance, VITA, AARP Tax Aide, the IRS’s Free Fillable Forms, do a paper Form 1040 – she took the easy road of following Intuit’s prompt, which is not a command, to use a pay version of TurboTax.

Substitute “ProPublica writers” for “she” in #2 - #4 and #2 - #4 describe perfectly what the ProPublica writers have done with every example in their articles in order to try to vilify Intuit. And again, their narrative omits mentioning any of the alternatives in #5. And, of course, the IRS gets no blame for eliminating Form 1040A and Form 1040EZ starting with the 2018 tax year.

Edit: I put the above as a comment on ProPublica (linked above).

Previous posts about ProPublica and TurboTax:
ProPublica Targets Free File Tax Preparers
ProPublica Targets TurboTax

    TurboTax, Forbes, ProPublica

    ProPublica and "prefilled filing"

    ProPublica Targets TurboTax Again

    ProPublica Targets TurboTax Again #2