Orton's Arm

This has got to be the first time I've been called a hippie and Adolf on the same thread. When I realized this had happened, I envisioned Hitler wearing a tie-dyed shirt, shouting at Germans to make love, not war! But despite your best intentions, you did manage to point out something useful--the fact that eugenic goals for governments are associated with the Nazis, and therefore are considered socially unacceptable. This wasn't always the case. Before WWII, eugenics was embraced by Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Winston Chuchill, Alexander Graham Bell, Margaret Sanger, Luther Burbank, Leland Stanford (founder of Stanford University), H.G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw, and other intellectual luminaries. We now know that, given a basic standard of living and nutrition, intelligence is determined primarily through genetics. Despite this scientific support, the theory is considered socially unacceptable. New social conventions were established in the aftermath of WWII. People were shown ghastly video footage of starving concentration camp inmates, and were told that Jews unfit to work had been gassed to death. They were told they must reject all things Nazi, in order to prevent similar tragedies from taking place in the future. However, the Nazis had many beliefs. Because people weren't informed about non-Nazi genocides, and because they hadn't been taught critical thinking skills, they were unable to isolate the specific factors that lead to genocide. I'll mention four other genocidal acts: the marches of Sherman and Sheridan, the Ukrainian famine, the extermination of the Tibetans, and tribally-based genocide in Africa. During the Civil War, Union generals Sherman and Sheridan marched through the South, destroying whatever food supplies they could lay their hands on. In addition, they burned down people's homes; thereby letting the civilian populace die of hunger and exposure and disease. Far from being motivated by any theory of racial supremacy, the victims were the same race as the perpetrators. The Ukrainian famine and the Tibetan extermination effort took place because the communist governments in question had established hostile relationships with specific ethnic groups. Not only do communist governments reject the idea the government should be improving the gene pool; they even reject the concept that one's genes have anything to do with one's potential. So strong was this belief the Soviet Union suppressed research into genetics. As for the tribally-based killings in Africa, it's doubtful the governments and rebel groups responsible had formulated any systemic view of heredity. So what opens the door to genocide? All government types are capable of it, including Western democracies (the Union during the Civil War), communist governments, and traditional Third World dictatorships. Moreover, governments with very different ideas about heredity--including a dogmatic rejection of the concept--engaged in genocide. The common thread among the four genocides I mentioned is that the governments in question were hostile towards specific ethnic or cultural groups. To prevent nearly all genocides, all you have to do is to ensure governments don't rule over groups of people towards whom they feel hostile. Would this maxim have prevented the Nazis' concentration camps? Absolutely. It would also have prevented countless genocides that had nothing to do with Nazism. The Nazis believed in physical fitness. But if you join the local gym, nobody warns you about getting on a slippery slope that will someday end in a gas chamber. Nobody tells you that by embracing something the Nazis also embraced, you become like them. Well, maybe Mike Williams feels this way about physical exercise. Eugenics is the same way. There's nothing wrong with giving smart people big tax breaks or other incentives to have more kids. There's nothing wrong with the government creating financial incentives to discourage stupid people from having kids. Such actions are reasonable, prudent, and humane. They are also vitally necessary. Some would say that while these measures may be reasonable in themselves, they represent a slippery slope. That argument doesn't hold water with me. The fact of the matter is we're already on a slippery slope. As the quality of the gene pool declines, our political system becomes increasingly vulnernable to demagoguery. The two most recent presidents--Clinton and W--are demagogues. As long as the genetic decline at the root of this problem continues, its symptoms will inexorably worsen.

On the one hand, I could have spent hours digging through pages of AD's one-line put downs in an attempt to identify his political views. On the other, I could ask him to summarize his political beliefs. Which makes more sense? As far as I'm concerned, the main purposes of government are as follows: 1. Maintain and improve the quality of the gene pool. 2. Fight terror with terror. Foreign armies should be afraid to invade, and would-be criminals should be too afraid of police to commit crimes. 3. Help establish fair play. This means having a simple, fast, inexpensive, fair, and predictable legal system, as well as addressing negative externalities and other flaws with the free market. (For instance, a pollution tax would force polluters to internalize the pollution cost they impose on everyone else. The government needs to get tax revenue somehow, so it may as well get as much of it as possible by taxing bad things.) 4. Ensure protection of human dignity. Liberals use this as an excuse to create a cycle of dependence and poverty. Such a cycle is not consistent with human dignity; and must be broken by requiring recipients of social services to have their tubes tied. 5. Common goods such as roads, bike paths, national forests, funding for basic scientific research, education funding, that sort of thing. I strongly feel school choice would be superior to the farce we call the American public school system. A government which fulfills each of these tasks will enhance the strength and dignity of the nation it serves.

Let me start by saying I'm not happy with the Whitner pick. Maybe I don't hate it with the same intensity as Bill from NYC, but by no means do I like it. That said, it's tough to sign free agent players in their primes. There are a lot more teams chasing those kinds of players than there are players like that to be signed. Just because you have enough money to fit an Ed Reed on your roster doesn't mean you'll get an Ed Reed. Suppose you were a top-tier free agent. Would you want to sign with a team that had an 87 year old owner, an 80 year old GM, a losing record for 2005, no QB, no offensive line, and on top of all that, was too cheap to sign its own first round draft pick to a contract? That last part screams to any would-be free agent that the Bills lack either the interest or the ability to fix their losing ways. The players on the roster would begin to doubt Marv's long-term plan. Those interested in winning games would become more difficult to re-sign. I'm not happy with the Whitner pick. I agree with every word of Bill from NYC's post about it. But now that we've made our bed, we have no choice but to lie in it.

The article said the Bills had offered Whitner a 5 year deal, which I have a problem with. I hate seeing successful draft picks leave the Bills in free agency. Not that Whitner has yet proven himself a success, but it's good to be prepared.

Shame on you for encouraging AD in his uninformative ways! Your own response communicated the kind of information I'm interested in.

I disagree. A political ideology is--or is supposed to be--an internally consistent worldview. Take liberalism for example. One of its implicit assumptions is that people are a product of circumstances rather than genetics. So there's a strong effort to improve people's circumstances via social programs, but no effort whatsoever to improve, or even preserve, the gene pool. Or take libertarianism. The core tenet there is that government involvement is far more likely to do more harm than good; so government interference should be kept to a minimum. Then there's Puritanism. The Puritans came here because they wanted a more moral society here than they had in England. To them, the purpose of government was to create a moral community; and they passed a number of laws to achieve this effect. In each of the three cases there's a clearly defined purpose for government (improving people's circumstances, staying out of their way, or enhancing the morality of the community). To define the purpose of government is to define your own political ideology. If you can't define government's purpose, you've got problems.

You're even worse than eyrnthered. That post conveyed almost no information at all about your political ideology. If you're ashamed of your ideology, or if you're unable to articulate it . . .

Hopefully Darin's answer will be more informative.

Just out of curiousity, do you consider yourself a conservative or a libertarian?

I want to come back to this comment now that I've had the chance to think about it. I wondered what it would be like to follow your advice in a literal sense. Granted, I'd need a much more flexible spine and a much larger rectum. What if I had these things, and what if I succeeded--literally--in following your advice? With a small flashlight clenched between my teeth, I'd be able to examine a part of my body I've never seen before. But this is reality, and most people will never have that kind of a view. The closest they'll ever come is to witness the end result of a liberal social program.

This wasn't a classy post.

This was a classy post.

You've convinced me. Government bans are bad. Let's put lead back into gasoline. While we're at it, let's get rid of the government ban on slavery.

And it sounds like Ronald Reagan's drug war to me.

As the health effects of secondhand smoke become better understood, it becomes increasingly unreasonable to ask people to be subjected to these effects simply to eat a meal in a restaurant. The second part of your post isn't very convincing. I've already stated restaurant owners should be allowed to exclude children, non-couples, and non-celebrities if they so choose. I don't want the government to decide everything. I just want restaurants to be required to have a high standard of public health.

Yes, coal mining is a dangerous job. Typically the pay is much higher in dangerous jobs, to compensate people for the danger. My concern for that specific coal mining job is that employees were being subjected to a far greater level of danger than was standard for the industry, and that they were neither aware of, nor being compensated for, this extra danger. Obviously, it's in people's interests to do research about the companies they intend to work for. But I'm guessing the average coal miner doesn't know how to do thorough research about a company he intended to work for. Well, you say, all he has to do is to go on Google and do a search. But if the company is smart, they'll create a fully owned media subsidiary, which would basically be one guy typing things out on his computer. He'd write a number of glowing articles about this company, and then he'd contract with some web developer to use linking to get this corporate propaganda to appear near the top of the Google search results. Larger companies wouldn't have to go through this. If you buy full page ads in Newsweek on a regular basis, there's a pretty good chance Newsweek's coverage of you will be favorable. Personal responsibility is important, but it's not some magic wand capable of making the effects of market inefficiencies and information asymmetries disappear.

Talking loud to get your thunder back I see. You ask how I can favor banning secondhand smoke in public places such as bars without also wanting a ban on alcohol. I agree with you the world would be better off without alcohol. The harm it does in terms of drunk driving, babies born with fetal alcohol syndrome, spousal abuse, alcoholism, etc. more than makes up for whatever good it might do. But however much I may favor a ban on alcohol personally, proposing such a ban on a football board didn't seem like the surest path to agreement.

The inefficiency I described goes far beyond the effort of changing jobs. You may also need to change cities, to uproot your family, to have your spouse change jobs, to leave your friends behind, to have your kids switch to a new school . . . well, you get the point. Someone might go through all that to avoid being buried in a coal mine. But let's say you were a coal mine owner who didn't want to install reasonable safety measures. You could simply advertise in the help wanted sections of out-of-town newspapers. People ignorant of your abysmal safety record would sign up for the higher pay. The problems I described in the first paragraph prevent people from putting real pressure on their employers with respect to anything but the most dire workplace circumstances. But as I illustrated in the second paragraph, an employer can exploit information asymmetries to avoid eliminating these dire circumstances.

You say the racism analogy doesn't apply, because the racism thing is about people being banned. But say a restaurant chose to not serve children; or suppose it chose to only serve couples, or only celebrities. These things should be legal, even though it's a restaurant refusing to serve someone. Having established the general principle that it's okay for a restaurant owner to decide to ban certain types of people, the question becomes whether said owner has the right to ban them because of race. If the restaurant owner doesn't get to decide his or her own racial policy, why should the owner have the right to ignore a reasonable standard of public health?

It sounds like you've thought long and hard about this issue, so I doubt anything I could write will change your mind. So without trying to argue with you, I'll just tell you how I see things. In a perfect market, employers would be forced to adopt high health and safety standards. A perfect market means that there's complete information transparency, that there are numerous small companies employing small numbers of people, and that it's easy for people to switch jobs because the job search process is so easy and efficient. Unfortunately, we don't live in a world that's anything like this. Many employers are large; and therefore have considerably more negotiating power than individual employees. The job search process is inefficient. For these reasons, government regulations with respect to health and safety have, in the past, created improvement that otherwise wouldn't have taken place. I know that regulation can often go too far, or be too complex or too costly. While I see the danger in this, I also see danger in letting health and safety issues take their natural course while hoping for the best.

Suppose a business wanted to serve whites only? Would you still feel the same way about business owners having the liberty to conduct their own businesses? Or do you feel that business owners shouldn't get to decide their own racial policies, but should be able to ignore reasonable public health standards?

That's the first time in a long time I've been called a hippie. Thanks for giving me something to chuckle over. I'll have to start using lines like, "Even a hippie like me can see the wisdom of the death penalty, the need to radically curb Third World immigration, and the need to force someone who wants to collect social services to get their tubes tied." As for this discussion, I know the Declaration of Independence isn't a legally binding document. Still, we should be guided by its principles, including the protection of the right to life. In this case, the right to life means people have the right to breathe air that's as clean as it can reasonably be made to be.

Show me anywhere in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, or the Bill of Rights where it says there's any such thing as "smokers' rights." There ain't no such animal. The right to life, on the other hand, is protected, which means my right to clean air trumps a smoker's right to obey his addiction. Let's move on to Economics 201, shall we? Restaurants already differentiate themselves along two axes: price/quality, and type of food served. In a small or mid-sized town, a restaurant that tried to differentiate itself along a third axis would be overspecialized. That's why such restaurants didn't exist in my neck of the woods before the smoking ban came along. Instead, restaurants had smoking and non-smoking sections, usually with no walls between them. This was what smokers wanted, and was considered "good enough" for non-smokers.

Are you opposed on principle to the government mandating workplace health and safety measures? Do you think employers should be the ones to choose how much exposure employees have to mercury, lead, and other toxins, and that any employee who doesn't like the policy should just quit?

I welcome the ban on smoking in bars and restaurants. If that ban became even more comprehensive in the future, fine with me. I couldn't care less about some smoker's "right" to subject me to secondhand smoke. According to the Declaration of Independence, the purpose of government is to protect people's right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Being constantly subjected to secondhand smoke shortens one's expected lifespan, and is therefore an infringement on one's right to life. It's the duty of government to protect people from things like this. Well, you say, if you don't like secondhand smoke, eat in some other restaurant. Fine--assuming I can find a close restaurant that differentiate itself by having clean air. (Yeah, right!) But what about the salesman who's taking his smoker client out to eat? Or what about a junior employee who's being taken out to eat by a smoker who's higher up in the company? There are many social situations where the participants have unequal power. This lack of power shouldn't have to result in involuntary exposure to toxic substances. In addition, you have to think about the people who work in restaurants. In general, people should be able to work in conditions that are as healthy as possible. Circumstances permitting, the government has the right and the duty to legislate reasonable workplace conditions. Being involuntarily subjected to secondhand smoke every day you come to work is not reasonable. Nobody is forced to receive an injection of heroin each time he comes to work, or to snort cocaine, or to eat a marijuana brownie. Why should people be forced to internalize nicotine into their systems?