The Lack of Major Wars May Be Hurting Economic Growth

Not enough broken windows lately, The New York Times reports some supposed economists saying. Sort of. They claim what they mean is that people get fat and lazy during peace, and the threat of war keeps everyone on their toes better.

Maybe we should start using the death penalty on people who don't produce over $20,000 of wealth per year in order to better motivate them. What do you think?

Explanations of how destruction results in economic harm are easily available. (I suggest Economics in One Lesson.) Advocating war for its own sake, and own intrinsic benefits, is disgusting. The only legitimate purpose of war or other uses of force should be defense (including indirect defense).

These people are advocating death and destruction – literally – because of their half-baked theorizing. They don't think about human suffering, or how the equivalent of whipping people to motivate them might not work well in reality. It's ivory tower "intellectuals" at their worst.

Tim Cook, Making Apple His Own from The New York Times:

By comparison, Microsoft says that, on average, it donates $2 million a day in software to nonprofits, and its employees have donated over $1 billion, inclusive of the corporate match, since 1983. In the last two years, Apple employees have donated $50 million, including the match.

The dishonest implication here is the Microsoft employees donate over 20 times as much money to charity, compared with Apple employees. Over $1 billion compared with $50 million. But the time periods compared are 31 years against 2 years. The per-year figures here (in millions) are over $32m/year for Microsoft against $25m/year for Apple, a much smaller difference.

A more meaningful comparison would compare the same time periods. It would also consider the number of employees of each company as well as their salaries. That would have made for better reporting.

The New York Times presents Microsoft's employee culture as being over 1900% more charitable than Apple's, but their own figures make the correct statistic 29%. By comparing absolute numbers from different time periods, they misled their audience by a factor of 65 in terms of the percent difference.

http://www.theobjectivestandard.com/2014/06/homosexuality-bible-rational-morality/

The fact that the Bible advocates the murder of homosexuals (as well as the murder of “witches,” of those who worship other gods, of blasphemers, of children who “curse” their parents, of adulterers, and of non-virgins whose husbands hate them—among others) indicates that the Bible, far from being a guidebook for morality, is largely an absurd book of mindless and evil prohibitions and commandments rooted in nothing more than ancient superstitions.

In the original, six of those claims about the Bible saying to murder people are linked with sources. One is non-virgins:

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Deuteronomy+22%3A13-22&version=ASV

What the Bible actually says is she needs to be a virgin when they marry. If a man hates his wife and accuses her of shameful things and says she wasn't a virgin when they married, then she is to be stoned. (Unless it was a false accusation and she actually was a virgin when they married, in which case the man is fined and has to keep her as a wife. I'm unclear on how it's to be decided whether she was a virgin or not using a garment.)

Armstrong said if a women is hated by her husband and a non-virgin (now), then the Bible advocates her murder. But the Bible actually only advocates her murder if her husband hates her and she was a non-virgin when they got married. The difference is her husband's taking of her virginity doesn't count against her.

After finding this scholarship error, I decided to check the other four claims using Armstrong's own links. The witches, children cursing parents, blasphemers, and adultery ones are accurate. The worshipping other gods one is wrong.

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Deuteronomy+13%3A6-10&version=KJV

This Bible passage is saying if a family member or friend tries to "secretly" "entice" you to "serve other gods", then don't do it and kill him. So it's specifically about people who worship other gods and try to convert you. Armstrong misrepresented it.

To be clear, in none of these cases do I agree with the Biblical position.

Two misrepresentations of the Bible out of six references is a really bad error rate (33%). And this is basic stuff. Did Armstrong click on the links he gave, and read them? I'm not even sure. I don't think Armstrong should tell people they "must discard" a Bible he misrepresents and misunderstands.

Armstrong claims to offer Objectivism as a rational alternative to the Bible. But bad scholarship is irrational. Reason demands using methods of scholarship that are good at avoiding error and finding the truth. Armstrong linked this on twitter. I've tweeted him back informing him of the problem, and will update my post if he fixes his mistakes.

Alex Epstein wrote:

In the US, 30 years ago the average household had 3 electronic devices—today it has 25, overwhelmingly thanks to fossil fuels.

For a source, he linked this youtube video from "Alphanr" (Alpha Natural Resources). It's titled "Did You Know" and has no description. It's 89 seconds long and packed full of factual claims including the one Epstein asserted, but lacks sources. It ends with a link to their website. Searching for "Did You Know" on the site to try to find extra details results in an error. Their site says, "Alpha is a leading global coal company and the world’s third largest metallurgical coal supplier". I doubt they have expertise at surveying household electronic device usage.

Sourcing your assertion to someone else's unsourced assertion isn't scholarship. It's how lies spread.

I've investigated this topic. Several studies have been done about electronic device usage in U.S. households. However, none of them would be acceptable sources. All the ones I found have a large methodological error. For example:

Of the 37 CE [Consumer Electronic] devices surveyed, the average U.S. household owns 24, the same number as last year, and spent $961 on consumer electronics over the past 12 months, down more than $200 from last year. The average adult individually reports spending $552 on CE in the past 12 months, down $100.

They are surveying how many devices U.S. households have from a list of 37 devices. That list is incomplete. The number of devices from the list that a household has is different than the number of consumer electronic devices the household has.

There is an additional problem here. When the surveys use a specific list of devices, they change it over time. Today we would expect smartphones to be on the list. Thirty years ago, they would not have been. Changing the list of which devices count means the surveys from different years are not comparable because they measure different lists.

When you pretend what's being measured is "(consumer) electronic devices", then it would make sense to compare studies from different years, because they appear to measure the same thing. But really one survey is about list A and another survey from another year is about list B, and calling the two lists by the same name doesn't make them the same thing. Epstein's comparison between the present and thirty years ago, using two different surveys of two different things, is a mistake.

I informed Epstein of these scholarship errors and he did not fix them. He should not repeat unsourced claims from Youtube that are presumably based on misusing the readily available invalid research. The truth matters.

In part 1, we took a look at some "He said, she said" reporting. (Read that first.) It was poor reporting because it didn't do any research into which claims are true, nor did it suggest the reader investigate. It left people to simply listen to the claims of whoever fits their political affiliation. It's not a rational approach to listen to and believe the unargued, uninvestigated claims of Democrats if you're a Democrat, or of Republicans if you're a Republican. But Fox News didn't aim for anything better.

Correctly understanding a political issue like power plant emissions regulations requires philosophical background knowledge. Most political pundits do not have this knowledge and therefore do their jobs incompetently.

A good example of philosophical background knowledge is an understanding of the role of government in society. Without a concept of what the purpose of government regulations is, and when and why they should (and shouldn't) be created, the issue cannot be rationally evaluated.

This raises a tricky issue. Everyone has philosophical ideas. They are not avoidable. Political commentators do have ideas about the proper role of government. The problem is they don't treat their ideas about the proper role of government as a major issue to talk about. So the topic doesn't get an appropriate critical examination. Unexamined (and sometimes even unstated) philosophical ideas are no substitute for ones which are stated clearly, critically considered, and integrated into one's explanations.

I know where my philosophical ideas come from. I know which authors I'm agreeing with, and why. I know the history of ideas I've accepted. I know what the competing philosophical claims are, who advocated them, their history, and why I disagree. This is what it means to take a serious philosophical approach, as opposed to just having some philosophy you picked up somewhere and don't think about much. Everyone should do this, especially people involved in intellectual pursuits like politics. Most people do not do this. (I don't know every detail of everything. But I know a lot about this stuff, especially for issues I write about.)

The proper role of government in society is to protect its citizens from force. That is my philosophical position. Arguing for it in full would take a long time, and I don't want to go into that right now. I want to illustrate how to use this philosophical position to sort through political claims. Fortunately, arguments on this topic have already been written down. If you're interested, you can read The Virtue of Selfishness by Ayn Rand, especially "The Nature of Government". Atlas Shrugged also helps explain. If you read those two books and still have any questions or arguments, contact me and I'll be happy to talk about the issue more.

Now let's look at some of those political claims:

The Obama administration claimed the changes would produce jobs, cut electricity bills and save thousands of lives thanks to cleaner air.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce argues that the rule will kill jobs and close power plants across the country.

The group is releasing a study that finds the rule will result in the loss of 224,000 jobs every year through 2030 and impose $50 billion in annual costs.

At face value, it's hard to tell who is right. I don't know the details of these proposed power plant regulations, and I doubt you do either. Different prestigious groups are making directly contradictory claims. At least one group must be mistaken. Many people would decide which group is mistaken by political affiliation, but that method is incapable of figuring out the truth.

However, this issue is easy to evaluate using an understanding of the role of government. The key issue here is not whether it will create or destroy jobs. The key issue is not whether it will cut bills or cost billions. A more fundamental issue is whether the government is acting according to its proper role.

Creating jobs is not the role of the government. The free market should take care of that. The government is like a giant bureaucratic company with 20 levels of management, except way bigger and with less accountability. The government is huge, heavy-handed and clumsy. I don't mean that as an attack on the government, merely facts (for details, see the books mentioned earlier). That is OK. The government doesn't have to be agile and efficient. It has a particularly hard job to do; as long as it does that job decently then that's good enough. It should not try to do everything well, it should stick to its purpose.

Given this perspective, we can ignore a lot of claims being made. Given that its government action designed to hinder companies from making the choices they think are economically best, I would expect it to do economic damage (that's another philosophical issue, though I've just mentioned it briefly and don't have space to explain today). However, that isn't the point. The government should not be in the business of creating or destroying jobs, raising or lowering bills, or otherwise trying to control the economy. The government should stick to protecting people against force.

The only defense of a regulation is that it protects people against force. The Obama administration does mention this by saying, "save thousands of lives". Saving lives is a legitimate purpose of government. The political commentary should focus on whether the regulation will or will not protect people. (This is complicated because doing economic harm does cost lives in the big picture, e.g. by leaving less wealth left over that can be used for medical research. As emotionally awkward as it may be, saving specific lives in the short term does not have unlimited value.)

So, key issue: Will burning less coal in power plants save lives? Will it protect people? No. (And neither side of the political debate is focusing on arguing this key issue.)

Coal power plants provide electricity which saves lives. Coal-based electricity helps people better control their lives and environment (for example, air conditioning saves lives during heat waves), and do less back-breaking manual labor. It dramatically improves quality of life. Reducing access to electricity does not protect people, it hurts people, so the government shouldn't do it. In part 3, I elaborate more on this view of electricity, and the related philosophy.

in the social popularity game, criticism is a negative.

in the truth-seeking game, criticism is a positive.

you can get an idea of which game people are playing by their reactions to criticism.

if someone wants public praise and private criticism, they may be trying to play both games. but the games contradict, and the contradiction will destroy them.

What could your share of the national debt buy? The Ayn Rand Institute says 5558 iPhones.

ARI is using $199.99 as the price of an iPhone (16gb 5s). That is not what iPhones cost. They cost $199 (not $199.99) when you sign a contract agreeing to pay more money later. "Bill Me Later" type plans are not lower prices. The actual price is $649, meaning you could buy 1712 iPhones for your share of the national debt. (Which is still a ton, so why fudge the numbers?)

ARI's purpose is to complain about the large US national debt. By pointing out how big it is in concrete terms like 49 cars per American, they hope to help people understand it better. Campaigning for smaller government is a good cause. It should have the truth on its side. But using bullshit stats ruins that. Please don't taint good causes with irresponsibly sloppy, false claims.

In a competition with only true claims allowed, ideas like capitalism, liberalism, science and reason can win. In a competition of who can tell the most appealing lies, true ideas lose their inherent advantage. If you want to help promote the truth, stick to rational competitions only. Don't sanction irrational truth-ignoring competitions based around the most shocking headlines, popularity, social status, etc...

Obama to announce controversial emissions limit on power plants. Coal-state lawmakers rally against power plant emissions crackdown. Fox News' prominent reporting of this major issue, unfortunately, falls short.

"The Environmental Protection Agency will ask existing plants to cut pollution by 30 percent by 2030". Major changes to power plants is a big deal, which could affect our use of power and the economy. But Fox News reports on it poorly. (In fairness, I don't think their major competitors do better.)

The first problem is visible in the headlines. Obama's attack on the free market is not objectionable only to people living in coal-states. It will hurt everyone. Fox News incorrectly treats opposition to Big Government as a special interest group issue only affecting the particular market segment under attack. (It's an "attack" because it's ultimately backed by government guns if disobeyed.)

It may be true that Coal-state lawmakers are rallying. However, plenty of other people are concerned too. By framing the issue in terms of a single biased group, Fox News discredits the opposition to Obama's expansion of government regulation.

Obama claims his policies will benefit everyone. "We don’t have to choose between the health of our economy and the health of our children". He's lying and we all know it. His policies will at least be bad for the coal industry. He's trying to sacrifice some to benefit others. Fox News reinforces Obama's approach by giving the more realistic claims Obama doesn't want to personally admit to. Fox News is helping spread the idea that there is a conflict between the coal special interest group, and everyone else, and that Obama's policies could sacrifice a few to benefit the many.

Fox News fails to point out that this is not an issue of favored or disfavored groups. We aren't dealing with a special interest group. Coal accounted for 39% of US electricity production in 2013. We all need power, and coal is providing power to the country. Without coal, there would be a massive electricity shortfall and we would all suffer.

There are bigger problems with Fox News' reporting than shoddy thinking that plays into Obama's storytelling. Fox News presents the issue as a "he said, she said" debate. This treats which side you take as arbitrary (or perhaps chosen by class interest). It leaves readers confused, without knowing how to objectively evaluate the issue. Treating issues in this way always helps the people who do not have the truth on their side.

Fox News reports:

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce argues that the rule will kill jobs and close power plants across the country.

The group is releasing a study that finds the rule will result in the loss of 224,000 jobs every year through 2030 and impose $50 billion in annual costs.

[Obama said] “As president and as a parent, I refuse to condemn our children to a planet that’s beyond fixing.”

Among the plants that have to comply will be hundreds of coal-burning plants, which has resulted in strong opposition from the energy industry, big business and congressional Democrats and Republicans, who argue Obama’s green-energy agenda is tantamount to a “War on Coal.”

Coal-state lawmakers, accusing President Obama of using a back door to impose strict emissions limits on power plants, are rallying to slam that door shut -- claiming the plan would cost jobs and jack up electric bills.

(Note again the implications that opposition to this regulation is biased by being part of the energy industry or big business.)

"We have a moral obligation to act," EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said, in announcing the plan Monday morning.

"We will introduce bipartisan legislation that will prevent these disastrous new rules from wreaking havoc on our economy in West Virginia," Rahall said in a statement.

On Saturday, Obama tried to bolster public support for the new rule by arguing that carbon-dioxide emissions are a national health crisis -- beyond hurting the economy and causing global warming.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, who represents Kentucky, called it a "dagger in the heart of the American middle class" -- and predicted higher power costs and less reliable energy as a result.

The Obama administration claimed the changes would produce jobs, cut electricity bills and save thousands of lives thanks to cleaner air.

Can you tell what's true from these contradictory assertions? I can't. It's a mess. Fox News simply lets people claim whatever they want, and then repeats it if they're prestigious enough. Fox News should investigate the issues and provide some useful research or context to help readers understand the actual facts.

By presenting a "he said, she said" debate and implying that respected Americans take sides according to bias, Fox News is doing a disservice to the truth.

Imagine for a moment, hypothetically, that the claims on one side of this issue are largely true, and the claims on the other side are largely false. That'd be important, right? And useful writing on the topic would help readers learn about that and make intelligent judgments. And when Fox News discourages rationally considering the issues, and promotes acting on bias, then it would be betraying the side which is speaking the truth, and aiding the side which is in the wrong.

Instead, Fox News repeats assertions without investigating whether they are true. It even does this with factual assertions, which is inexcusable. And if Fox News doesn't want to take sides or do research, it could at least hint that maybe its readers should. Does Fox News have no respect for the human mind?

This is not just the fault of Fox News. Everyone quoted could have made better statements. No one is attempting to guide the public to use rational thinking methods to find the truth of this issue. No one is bringing up the key philosophical issues which allow a person to correctly work out arguments like this. In part 2, Applying Philosophy to Politics, I use philosophical methods to sort out the confusing mess of competing claims. In part 3, I discuss philosophy, progress and coal.