Another topic I tire of writing out opinion on

The Pledge. 

This comes up often in discussions with atheists. While I share some of the discomfort of other secularists in a ritual which implies an affirmation of belief in a deity, my main objections to the entire enterprise are more complex than simply finding "under god" offensive to those sensibilities, or more accurately, that lacking those affirmations makes one "unpatriotic". The pledge itself is more objectionable than the precise wording including a religious phrase to be uttered. Both to the notion of religious belief involved and to the associations of "patriotism" with "nationalism", in a profane exercise of confusing the two in the minds of (usually) impressionable children.

While it appears that if we ask a populace aware of the history of this pledge and ritual practice, and the changes of its language, far more recently in both its origins and current design, that that populace is more comfortable (but not popularly comfortable) abolishing the "under god" from the recited lines required, this is not the biggest problem I have had with the issues surrounding the pledge. I never felt that it was in some way requiring an affirmation of belief in a deity to mouth words. This is because the far bigger problem was the affirmation of a ritual requiring a declaration of patriotic duty in a particular way. The exercise of putting everyone in a room together to "support" or "respect" "our troops", as it was recently declared, and other affirmations of what is implied by one's patriotic responsibilities as a citizen is the offensive quality of the pledge. Patriotic duties are wide and varied, and the implication is not the same as blind nationalistic sentiments. The pledge is primarily about the latter. It is not a statement for the love and fostering of growth, prosperity, and peaceful development of a nation-state and its people, but obedience to its symbols, authority, and leaders that it is celebrating and developing.

We can see this in the manner that it is conducted, led by an authority figure (a teacher or school official), with a variety of methods of condemning or shaming those who do not comply. Among the student body, if not done by the teacher. We can see this in the number of complaints and court cases filed, not necessarily and not often by atheists who object to the language, but by co-religious figures who find the nature and coerced expression of patriotism offensive in its design. We can see this in the violence that was perpetrated against those who refused, out of a strongly held religious belief rather than its absence, not to accede to the standing and reciting of some words (even before those words included the sometimes objectionable phrase "under god").

A free society without room for disagreement and debate does not last long in a peaceful state with itself. A society that seeks to provide space for its people to decide how best, or even whether to, love and improve one's nation and the state of its people should not start the lives and days of its youth with the premise that its people and residents owe love to that country and its leaders. That would be earned out of the respect for the ideals of that society as they are practiced in providing that liberty, not out of a declared and recited oath of fealty to a nation that will strive, and not always succeed, to reach those ideals. Obedience is not a quality that should be enjoyed in a democratic society without it having been earned through a level of trust in the obedience of its people and leaders to protecting and fostering the values of a democratic society and it is definitely not a quality that should be enjoyed and fostered by rote and ritual presentation for children to participate in by fiat and requirement.

As a final, and perhaps more annoying note. The "under God" phrase itself is objectionable not merely for its religious elements. But because it is grammatically awkward. It was clearly inserted as a half-measure when it was done so in the 1950s and as a way to reference Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. But Lincoln's speech used the phrase in an entirely different way, something akin to a request say "god willing", that we might aspire to that goal of a unified and free nation (certainly in his time, and ours in many ways, still a very uncertain prospect). This does not appear to be the presentation of the words used in the pledge, which appear to be a purposeful inclusion of the sovereignty of a deity over the land. As opposed to the communists who opposed us when it was inserted. In order to make such a statement, the phrase is ill-suited.

The appropriate response of secularists, or people of a humanistic ethic generally, isn't really to demand the language be changed so they too can participate in this curious ritual. The appropriate response is to remain seated when the pledged is to be uttered. Do not participate in it at all. Submit to authority where it is warranted, not where it is only demanded.

Empty shells of wordless speeches

Pages turned through the dust
Ink has spilled across the paper
Words. So they say.
To deeds never done
To speeches never made
Toasts of places never seen
and people never met

Stay a while and listen
Or fill the empty space
of others with nonsense
cleverness or viciousness
Attention. Hero at work
Nothing happened
No one needed saving
Indifferent possibilities abound

An empty shell out
for a stroll
Filled the bottle with
a dreadful need
a purposeful hatred
on a voyage to a horrid
place to visit
with no one to speak to
and a song that never ends
blasting on the radio

ALS and ice

I've been trying to form some opinions on this for a while. It seems a complicated issue to talk about, for reasons that I wasn't quite sure of. I believe I figured out why people are annoyed to have an adult conversation about it, so I will say a few words.

I don't mind that people are suddenly giving money to this as a cause. I would think other causes will be trying to adapt it and will catch up. They will learn how to make viral and invasive messages about their own serious matters too. This was just one of the first to make it that way in the internet age (Susan Komen and others with the colored ribbons would be one of the first to make it that way in the pre-internet age).

I'm a little disturbed that it is inefficient. The utilitarian calculator in me is really annoyed that there are dozens of other things that would be less wasteful as a display of viral contests. Dumping clean water and ice on your head is a pretty obvious "first world" thing to do, and screams "look at me!", I care about X and will do something silly to prove it. That's a little irritating but not so much so that I find it necessary to object to it out of hand. It feels more like an itch brought on by extroverts and their need for attention and overt displays than actual narcissism.

There are also causes more likely to produce a considerable net positive social and global good by giving to them (malaria research, basic genetic research, clean water, or general cash donations to the poor). I think this is the general feeling of a lot of people who are mildly annoyed by this "contest" or challenge or whatever is an offense against other causes is being caused. And it is true that some, perhaps even most of the money is exclusive rather than freshly produced charity. Meaning that some other very worthy causes won't be getting as much money for research of cures or prevention or treatment of the sick, the infirm, or the otherwise at risk.

That point of view however has been expressed rather poorly and reacted to with enormous vitriol. As though anyone who says it is a) completely unaware and unconcerned of the suffering imposed by ALS or b) doesn't want it to be cured. If I thought these donations would reduce the suffering imposed by leading to a cure or prevention/treatment method, we'd be in some major hot water there. It's possible they will, but not very likely. It's much more likely giving someone in a third world country 100 dollars in start up capital will do something, or a 100 dollars of water or water cleaning research or technology to a town in Central Asia or Africa, etc. So I would rather do that.

I don't know why that PoV complaint should matter. If people, like me, are applying some utilitarian logic and are actually annoyed the money is going to ALS instead of something else conceived of as more productive, give the money to something else, and ask others to do the same. We are not required to obey to give money only to this one thing. This is the part that seems to be missing from commentary on the subject. If dumping ice on each other's heads is the transmission vector, dump ice on your head for some other reason and try to use what's working now for that cause instead. This isn't a legally binding requirement that once challenged, our money is locked into this donation. It's a blank check. Treat it as such.

Charitable giving and "awareness" generally are not inherently bad objects. It is desirable that we should be concerned with the suffering of others, even those unknown to us, and attempt to help them in indirect ways if necessary. We should avoid criticizing people for doing this, which I believe is one reason people are annoyed with anyone saying "eh" at their giving to ALS now is a perception of criticism.

Giving is often an excuse to do wasteful or immodest or even immoral things elsewhere in one's life though. Philanthropy isn't necessarily something corporations or the wealthy do simply to "be good". These actions are reputational adjustments they can point to when people complain about something else they are doing (which may actually be worse). Altruism isn't really a big thing for most of us. It is usually more important to be seen caring about something than to produce an effect on the problem we are proclaiming loudly to care about. This is what I think most pro-life/anti-choice people are doing, as an example, trying to express concern about abortion without working to make it less likely to occur. Because that would be too hard and require listening. This as a cause isn't quite in the same category. It isn't necessarily doing damage to us as a society to loudly express concern in this way about this thing instead of something else of deeper and more significant damage to our own society and well-being (say, the war on drugs, or expanding birth control accessibility, or dealing with miscarriages, or diabetes, and so on down our litany of woes). A few million dollars for this instead of a few other charities isn't a big deal in the scheme of things.

But it's in the same variety of action and could be twisted quickly to something that could be damaging. Which is a little worrisome. One of the biggest problems is that the point many use to justify is "awareness". Awareness is useful if it can be combined with something that we can do to mitigate. Awareness and understanding of depression is, for example, something we can act upon as an individual to be attentive and listen to others, or otherwise be present. Awareness of AIDs is something that allows us to try to prevent it from spreading and afflicting others. Awareness of police brutality or violence allows us to gather together to try to reform our system of oversight so that it might be punished accordingly or at least transparently. Awareness of ALS would be kind of like awareness of an impending alien invasion. There's not a whole lot we can do about it right now and it's been worked on for decades. Maybe these donations will have long term impact. I hope they do and I think most everyone involved hopes they do. They aren't being malicious by giving. But "raising awareness" isn't really a way to deal with a long-term problem like this. The reason is that once people feel "aware" of a problem, and maybe do something like dump ice buckets on their heads, they may feel they have absolved themselves of the responsibility to do much else about it, and passed it on to others to act. They have met their "I care" quota for the day and can let something slide. I have very little "I care" as a quota to go around, so I find that dispensing it in this way is not very effective in actually demonstrating whether I care about something or not. This is a serious problem. It deserves serious attention. It is difficult to do much about it though, so I find it is a better use of time and money and energy to go "care" about something else instead.

I find it curious that other people don't recognize that, but I don't think it is necessary to judge them for this decision. And I think much of the commentary has come off as a judgment that they are doing something wrongful by acting in this way. Which should justly make people mad.

Missouri

I have consumed a large quantity of analysis and footage and news concerning the protests, riots, looting, shooting(s), and on and on down the litany of civil libertarian woe. My main reaction, which is typical to me, is to summon my cynicism. Not much appears likely to change. The police don't appear ready to dial down their rhetoric, equipment, or tactics. Even or perhaps especially in front of media. The public appears broadly indifferent outside of groups that were already closely following these kinds of issues (police militarization, racial profiling, police brutality/aggressiveness) with what does not appear to be a major shift beyond the slow drift away from paranoia that dominated the previous three decades.

Some thoughts.

1) It is not relevant empirically that the police killed this person instead of some other person (or some other person who was killed by police elsewhere). People should be outraged and demand transparent methods of evaluating the actions where ever police are involved in the death of a "civilian". We, the public, should view that as a failure. Even if, and I wish this were more obvious than it appears to be, the person killed was accused of or witnessed committing a crime. It's possible that the death may be later justified in self-defence, but it should always be transparently investigated. Preferably by a third party agency rather than the police itself. I would also press for this in cases of non-lethal violence (assaults, tasings, deployment of tear gas or pepper spray). Police generally are poorly trained in marksmanship, use of non-lethal weapons and tactics, and in the de-escalation of force from the evidence of these cases of death and injury, and one reason for this is the lack of a proper and transparent accountability to the public that is served by policing.

2) People complaining about these actions in Ferguson and elsewhere are not being "anti-cop" or "anti-police". Most people making such complaints, even the civil libertarian wing who has monitored the growth of militarized police forces and the expansive use of procedures like no-knock raids, asset forfeiture, and stop and frisk searches, mostly upon disfavored minorities, would acknowledge a role for police to serve the community in the pursuit of justice and law and order. The complaint is that the tactics, strategies, training, and activities of police are often inappropriate, possibly unconstitutional and certainly not respective and protective of individual civilian rights regardless of whether they are violating those rights, often well beyond the minimum level of force required to carry out their duties, and have developed legal structures and protections that make them both individually and as a whole unaccountable to the communities involved. And all the while the victims of these actions have limited voice to make a strong defense of their innocence, or the disproportionate nature of such activities.

The major change that makes this issue apparent, one hopes, isn't that our police have become more violent and hazardous to communities, but that our communities have more tools to realize and become aware that police are trying to avoid accountability and transparency (camera phones, video surveillance, body cameras on the cops themselves or in their squad cars, etc). The worry is that the problem is more endemic to the recruiting and training of police procedures, and that brutality and violence are as a result a preferred means of affecting law enforcement for some, if not many police officers. Removing such officers from the force will be increasingly difficult the more widespread the problem is. If it is cultural rather than "bad apples".

3) We do not have currently good transparent data to evaluate whether it is cultural or bad apples. Police do not generally disclose their use of aggressive search warrant tactics, the discharging of firearms, even the deaths or assaults of citizens or civilians caused by police actions (whether justified or not) are not well documented. No one keeps track of this data. Very few states require the collection and documentation of it and federal data collection is voluntary and relies upon self-reporting. Worse still, it is often difficult to document or track the "bad apples", if that is the problem, as they can shift between departments, or between districts and jurisdictions of large urban areas, without being disciplined, charged, or otherwise interfered with in the problems they are causing.

In Ferguson several years ago, there was a severe beating of an innocent man in police custody (arrested because his first and last name matched a warrant, but with a different middle name and social security number), evidence of a purported assault on an officer for which this beating supposedly occurred was destroyed or conveniently missing, and the police attempted to have him charged with "destruction of property" for bleeding on uniforms. A charge which they later retracted that had even occurred. No one was disciplined, and without there having been a legal deposition (during which they may have admitted to having offered false testimony to gain the charge in the first place), there would be no official record of who these officers were.

One possible option would be to start to use Yelp! style public reputation models for rating police interactions, such that "bad apples" who have a poor reputation in the community, whether from violence or other inappropriate actions, would be at least moderately easy to identify. I have myself mostly encountered police during traffic stops. And some of these were polite and efficient, if otherwise unpleasant, and others were unpleasant and borderline abusive. I would emphasize nothing as yet untoward has occurred to me (other than perhaps getting a ticket or two when I might have gotten off with a warning from a different cop). But there was a clear difference in the interactions that some were coming from a more authoritarian world than should be the case for police to seek to maintain while others recognized their duties to enforce the law with a minimum of disruption. If such a system were widely available, I would rate those second variety more highly and positively, and rate the former negatively.

4) One of the largest problems with policing isn't the heavy duty toys provided by the Pentagon. It is that the system of accountability makes it difficult to first recognize "bad apples" and second to properly or appropriately discipline them. The Pepper Spray cop, Lt John Pike, was found to be cleared of wrongful actions by the police's own investigation, which took months (during which time he was still being paid). Independent investigation documented insubordination (disobeying orders not to deploy with riot gear), lack of training on equipment selected for use (said riot gear, in particular the pepper spray, was not adequately trained with), escalation (showing up to a peaceful protest in riot gear), and brutal force (the actual spraying of pepper spray, incorrectly and indiscriminately), in much less time. He was only fired over the objections of the police investigation. Without the independent investigation and worldwide distribution of video documenting part of his activities, it is very likely he would still be an officer of the law today. Various other officers have committed similar actions, often on video, and remain employed and patrolling the streets of some city or town today. The FBI's internal investigations have found zero unjustified shootings out of the last 150, demonstrating that the problem of accountability may not be simply a local force and lower professional standards as causes.

These problems are not limited to use of force. Wrongful arrests, such as for people taking video or photographs of police activity, are a violation of basic civil rights. Such events typically can cost a city thousands of dollars in lawsuits and settlements. But most of the time nothing happens to the officers who actually created these violations.

5) Police militarization has occurred in large part through the war on drugs and war on terror formulations, whereupon large quantities of military hardware were gifted to police forces, large and small, urban and rural. The logic behind this is typically to proclaim a need for high value intervention forces, like SWAT teams. Most of the towns and cities which are receiving this, a) haven't had assaults, much less murders of police officers in decades if ever, and b) haven't even had many murders and shootings of "ordinary citizens" in decades. Violent crime rates have been falling, in some places fast, and in others barely, for over 20 years. You would not know this to hear it from police officers who speak of "war zones", and general danger and fear of the communities they police and work in. To be sure, they have a risky job which involves occasionally a very high danger to their personal safety. But the actual danger to police, the risk of death or injury, from assault or gunfire from suspected criminals, is extremely low. As is the actual danger in most instances of terrorism, or for mass shooting events and hostage scenarios. And almost none of these individual events requires that we arm police with sniper rifles, automatic machine guns, and armored personnel carriers. Very little of this equipment has been well trained with, or the personnel selected for advanced training rather than simply being a part of a small rural or suburban assault team.

6) The main use for these tactics and equipment is to conduct no-knock drug raids upon non-violent, mostly poor, mostly minority residents and property owners. The reason is fairly simple; in many cases the police can make seizures of a variety of assets during a drug bust, assuming the drug bust is of the correct home and finds drug paraphernalia. The incentives for doing what we would regard as ordinary police work are skewed by the "investigation" of vice crimes like drug distribution.

Taken altogether, as with many of my observations of the society around me I wonder something strange, one could wonder why there aren't people in the streets fighting with police more often in protest and/or riot formats. None of these are positive trends, and there is limited impetus to shift policy on virtually any of these designs (with the possible exception of legalizing marijuana).

One main reason: mostly these forms of mobile oppression are mostly imposed upon the poor and lower status minorities or immigrant communities. Middle class white people are then left mostly alone and see very little of these activities as commonplace. Further, they support these tactics even more when told who they are being used against. A large portion of the injustice of anti-terrorism surveillance is the singling out of Arab-American and Muslim-American communities and individuals. With little or nothing to show for it and at great expense to the taxpayer. People not only don't mind this, but prefer it. Ditto for criminal enforcement of African-American communities or their imprisonment, no matter how petty the legal infringements. Inconveniences of oppression are imagined to be much less inconvenient when they are imposed upon people "we" want oppressed anyway. Finally, most middle class white Americans do not know anyone who is of some minority, even to the extent of knowing few non-Christians. Which limits the knowledge and perspective such people might offer on the subject.

All of that means
1) Most Americans do not see a reason to be upset enough to demonstrate.
2) Most Americans see demonstrations as unusual and in need of repression rather than legitimate airing of grievances.
3) Which in turn means there's a social custom against demonstration, on this subject in particular.

It would be nice if there were more mainstream protests and movements to reform the conduct and supervision of police, or the legal incentives available to persecute, investigate, or detain and harass people for non-violent and especially consensual criminal acts like those involved in vice crime. But we're not there yet. I have been following these issues for several years with an increasing degree of annoyance. Posting about it feels at this point like a flat and useless "I told you so", but it seems no less important to keep talking about in the hope that there will be people listening.

Mr Williams

Now batting.

One strange part is there are a lot of Dead Poet's Society references. He was good in the film. I have no issues there, and it's even a decent to good movie (although it becomes a bad Julia Roberts movie later). I enjoy the insurgent campaign of teaching being waged as a fan of the idea of teachers more as motivators who capture interest in a subject and spread it around as an infection to students rather than as instructors who drone on about mechanical processes that we must master. As much as the form of instructing poetry as an insurgent campaign appeals to me as a writer of bad poetry (sometimes), poetry is more complicated as an art to learn to appreciate than just getting the feeling down. There's a flow and lyricism to writing, of all kinds, that doesn't come easily for everyone and is harder to do than just through being "inspiring". The alternative stuff mode of teaching it was awful of course. But art is hard and a complicated subject to portray. Writing is more so because it lacks a visual component. Poetry, because it often relies so much on allusion and imagery can get around this (and because we so rarely engage with modern poets, they're all dead anyway as far as most of us are concerned. People rarely conceive of music as poetry, for some reason, possibly just not enough high quality rap is being consumed on a popular level). Even in the film, the principal measure of artistic expression in the plot is someone wanting to act. Not someone wanting to write poetry or music. That's a curious angle for a film to draw many references back to now; the apparent futility of an entire endeavor of human artistic expression. In spite of its many extolled values, it is treated like a hobby than a passion. That bothers me a bit as a reference point for his career. Whitman should stand on his own. He doesn't need people standing on desks to remind us of that. (Williams made a lot of references to Whitman in his films, probably for that reason).

I'm a little confused why Good Will Hunting isn't getting referenced as much in popular references I see. Maybe it wasn't as drop dead funny (neither was Dead Poets). Maybe it's too close to the subject matter of loss. But it's immediately where I went to. Maybe I just had a stronger connection to this film than that. He won an Oscar, and he was very good in it, and we're probably seeing why. The best performances of many actors/actresses are when they tap their own reality a little more instead of putting on a mask (that's not the "best acting", but the best performances).

The main issue with evaluating Williams as an actor or comedian (beyond the obvious that it limits our evaluation of someone as a complete person to look only at the body of work they produced for public consumption), is this: He would be the person who was probably the funniest person in any room. But it would be hard to translate the joke later to retell it and explain why it was funny. It's like every other bit was an inside joke that spawned from the moment. It might still be funny later. It will make "you" laugh later. But you won't be able to make someone else laugh unless they were there, or shared in it. The secret to that working is that all of us, I think, want to be funny like that. To make it look like a reflex, a reaction, but actually drive the situation and conversation forward and to say something that people look back on and remember. Even if they have a hard time explaining why they do.

And the darker secret to that working is that's exactly why we would want to do it; so nobody will pay that much attention to us for a while. They will laugh, they will enjoy, they will embrace, and they won't look that much harder. Somebody funny doesn't inspire us to ask "what's wrong with them?" versus somebody morose and sullen and even cynical. And yet the funny man often feels no differently, no less alone or confused, than the sullen one. He just provides a better mask that the rest of us can enjoy.

Unicorns

But they may not immediately see why "the State" that they can imagine is a unicorn. So, to help them, I propose what I (immodestly) call "the Munger test."  

1. Go ahead, make your argument for what you want the State to do, and what you want the State to be in charge of.
2. Then, go back and look at your statement. Everywhere you said "the State" delete that phrase and replace it with "politicians I actually know, running in electoral systems with voters and interest groups that actually exist."
3. If you still believe your statement, then we have something to talk about.

This leads to loads of fun, believe me. When someone says, "The State should be in charge of hundreds of thousands of heavily armed troops, with the authority to use that coercive power," ask them to take out the unicorn ("The State") and replace it with George W. Bush. How do you like it now?

If someone says, "The State should be able to choose subsidies and taxes to change the incentives people face in deciding what energy sources to use," ask them to remove "The State" and replace it with "senators from states that rely on coal, oil, or corn ethanol for income." Still sound like a good idea?

How about, "The State should make rules for regulating sales of high performance electric cars." Now, the switch: "Representatives from Michigan and other states that produce parts for internal combustion engines should be in charge of regulating Tesla Motors." 

While I agree with these insights, and try to apply them fairly rigorously to things protected Constitutionally (such as free speech or freedom of conscience exercises), I think the explicit value of public choice theory is to be skeptical of the efforts of the state or those proclaiming the need for a state to intervene. And not to immediately and reflexively eliminate it. While that elimination may be desirable in its own ends, for a variety of public choice and private goods problems that are better left to markets to resolve (most forms of occupational licensure for example), I'm not convinced that this is an argument that libertarians should be advancing as the main goal when arguing with people who believe in unicorns. 

Here's a simpler argument to evaluate: 

1) Establish publicly what it is you hope to accomplish using state action. What is the actual problem we are hoping will be resolved or reduced. Presuming this is not Constitutionally restricted ("I want to shut up people with whom I disapprove or disagree!", "I want to require people to worship in the same way as I do"), we can proceed further. 

2) Describe why this cannot be resolved without the intervention of the state (why do we need a law for this instead of leaving people to their own devices?, or otherwise expressed as "is this actually a/the problem?") And also by what mechanism the state will do so. If it is unlikely the state will adopt the general outlines of the mechanics you desire, are you aware why this is so? 

3) Construct a mechanism that allows for the results to be evaluated, showing that it reduces problem X (or at least that problem X is being reduced). If people are unwilling to do this when they are discussing policy, they are not actually interested in doing #1 and we should require additional information as to their intentions (eg, this is where the "corn ethanol" subsidies come in, or the "WMDs" in Iraq.) Note: it is very difficult to separate state actions from those of the public or market responses in many cases. In some cases it is obvious what has done the lion share of work, in others the state's actions spawn public or market responses of their own that are "unintended" consequences. Nevertheless, we should want some method of evaluating simply whether the intentions of the policy are matching up with the effect, or whether the intentions have other goals in mind that are undeclared. 

A large portion of public policies proposed, enacted, or supported after the fact (by conservatives or liberals) fail on this sort of cost-benefit analysis to show they are achieving some putative goal. Drug use is pretty consistent. Abortions have been declining as a procedure for well over a decade despite being legal (suggesting bans have little effect), and declining more in states and legal regimes that are less restrictive on sex education and especially birth control than in states that are imposing onerous and wasteful regulatory burdens on the procedure (waiting periods, parental consent laws, ultrasounds, etc). Various gun control regulations constantly proposed have little or nothing to do with the underlying violence in our country and its cities and towns. Militarized police forces and deployment of equipment have little to do with the level of violence and its accompanying risk to police or the public safety within a given community. "Stop and frisk" searches don't find many guns. And so on. 

I noticed a lot of these philosophical problems during the lead up to the PPACA being enacted. We were told the problem was lots of uninsured people lacking access to quality health care. I am dubious this was the actual problem, for many reasons on its own merits; lots of uninsured people were transitory, many were "young invincibles" with limited need for health insurance, etc. But primarily I think it was a symptom rather than a causal agent. I saw two bigger problems at work; employers providing health care insurance instead of wages or other benefits (vacation time or family leave for instance), leading to the lack of an effective individual market for insurance, and rising health care costs owing to third party payment structures and an accompanying lack of transparent pricing. We sort of dealt with the latter problem and the rise of health care costs has started to slow over the last few years. It is unclear if this was achieved by legislation however and not simply a decline in incomes leading to substitution effects (for example, people self-medicating with alcohol or drugs, that prescription drug crisis didn't come out of nowhere) or people not consuming health care because of diminishing purchasing power from income stagnation or diminished savings, and so on. 

The former problem meanwhile reared its ugly head again in the form of contesting birth control mandates already. And more pressing, continues to be a problem for people in between jobs, or who have lower quality insurance provided and cannot get or afford better insurance they may desire, or who have insurance that is well above their demands or needs provided (which in turn leads to overconsumption of health care since those lost wages can only be consumed by taking health care as payment). 

I also encounter this frequently in calls for foreign interventions. I'm not sure what precise mechanics sending bombs and rockets and troops abroad establishes the goals that people proclaim (spread of democracy!, end to internecine conflicts caused by years of enmity and strife!). I'm skeptical that sanctions usually achieve much (see: embargo, Cuba). And so on down the line. What I am not saying is that we should do nothing, or that any and all diplomatic or military efforts will be fruitless and counterproductive, but I don't automatically agree we can do something about every problem on the globe and I do not automatically agree that since we "should do something", whatever someone proposes as a bold plan of action is that something. I'd like to know if it has some chance of success, or if it has a history of working, and so on. I apply that same skepticism to the public machinations of the state at home. Maybe the state can do something, if imagined "perfectly". If we have to imagine a perfect state to do it, it probably isn't going to get done though. What we need is things that can be imagined as "good enough", and if those are effective enough, easy to implement, transparent to evaluate, and do not cost exorbitant sums in taxation and relative individual autonomy, then they're probably fine. Markets at some level require and imply the existence of a state (who else may grant and enforce property rights and general laws in a less arbitrary way if not a third party?). Perhaps a much smaller one than the one we have, but a basic state is in there somewhere to grease the wheels of trust and transaction costs. What that does not imply is that anything and everything the state does is automatically legitimate and good. 

discrimination abounds

I have two thoughts here
1) I'm not sure this is something that "should" require legal sanction and action to prevent someone from doing it. I can see an argument against it, but price discrimination doesn't necessarily raise a moral issue in a competitive business like a restaurant. If some place I feel is overcharging me because I'm not of their faith (or any faith in my case), I would stop going there as I would not feel welcomed and suitably entertained in my choice of dining to keep going. They must have great pie or BBQ pork or something if I felt compelled to complain.

I might have the same objection if they're offering a senior or military discount and the place is mostly frequented by seniors or active military personnel. Which is to say, it's not that likely to encourage a legal reaction versus a market response to abandon it in search of other options.

2) It's a terrible business practice anyway. Which is why I don't know that it should require legal sanctions.

People may complain if they aren't seen praying or could lie and claim they were to get a discount, it isn't really something the employees is necessarily trained to recognize (what routine counts here: out loud, bowed heads, clasped hands, etc, how do they tell the difference between someone who is "faking", or someone taking a nap in front of their soup or salad, and someone "actively" praying), and I'm not entirely sure it's a strong element of religious faiths to pray ostentatiously and "publicly" anyway (in a religious setting yes, a meal seems more like a maybe with different rules when at a restaurant versus at a home). So it may counter various social conventions of other Christians, much less other faiths or the lack thereof to suggest this as a method of providing a discount.

Plus, people may wonder, if you are able to give a 15% discount on what many local Christians may assume is virtually every meal, then that leaves the question of why the prices were that high that the diner can afford to surrender a 15% revenue reduction. Or whether that's now built into the prices charged, in the same way that the "free" chips or "free drink refills" at a Mexican place are built in the price of the burrito.

The economic reaction I have is to wonder how long this diner could stay open while using this practice, or how much they were ripping off their customers before instituting it. Meanwhile, the discrimination reaction I have is pretty minimal. Okay it's a form of price discrimination. Are they refusing to hire atheists? Are they refusing to serve atheists as customers? What of the other faiths besides Christianity? Did Buddhists get a discount for meditating in front of the salad? These are the mechanical questions that occur to me well before arriving at some idea that this is awful and should be legally stopped. It is dumb. People do dumb things all the time. I don't worry about people doing dumb things that aren't necessarily exclusionary. I worry about people doing dumb things that are necessarily exclusionary (like refusing to vote for atheist candidates, or not hiring job candidates, or refusing service entirely, refusing to allow children to date or marry atheists and so on). Yes this is a form of discrimination, but we have a long way to go yet before this is one of those front line battles. This is like bunting when a team is down to one of the last outs and needs a 3 run home run to win anyway. We're so far behind the eight-ball here that this is something barely visible on the radar as a fix.

More to the point, it seems like the reactions could be one of the following scenarios that this is ultimately counterproductive
1) Christians are annoyed by the threat of a lawsuit and reverse boycott, encouraging the practice to continue elsewhere
2) The business was aware of #1 and did it on purpose to attract local attention on the theory that any news is good news
3) Atheists portrayed themselves as aggrieved and petty (whether or not the grievance was legitimate, the visibility of the situation did them/us little favor in public perception). This was a pretty small form of discriminatory behavior. 

GoG

1) Comes in about around Iron Man 1 for me. Behind Avengers and Captain America 2 among the Marvel set of films. Maybe X2 and of course the first two Nolan Batman films are ahead after that among the superhero set generally.

2) Script is a little sloppy plotwise, kind of like Thor 2 was. They made up for it by being way funnier (Thor 2 did well to have little touches of this, so they're clearly learning not to take it that seriously). Avengers had a much tighter script and Cap had a much tighter plot and for a "comic book" movie an usually serious theme (similar to Nolan's Batman work or the first two X-Men films). This has a serious theme (dealing with loss), but it isn't as cleverly pulled off as Avengers or Batman Begins, say.

3) Marvel has really poor villains outside of the X-Men set and Loki it seems like (eventually Thanos). Ronan was a badass yes, but like the Winter Soldier or Kursed we have no idea who he is really and what or where his motivations of hatred come from (comic book fans do, but sometimes it needs to be spelled out in films). At least the Dark Elves and Hydra we got a brief and solid back story. Winter Soldier they get around to it, very late in the film. Ronan they do not. It is just assumed, correctly, his intentions are to destroy people and planets.

4) Did I mention it was funny? Other than Gamora, they all have plenty of funny bits (although she gets a random Kevin Bacon reference, so there's that). Including Groot. The sociopathic raccoon (Rocket) worked very well.

5) There are a lot of easter eggs at the Collector's.

6) I don't think the stinger scene at the end of the credits was worth much. It's very funny. But I don't see it developing into a film or more than a set of cameos like the persistent Stan Lee gag.

7) Update: This point occurred to me later, and probably shouldn't have. The film spent a surprising amount of time being actually concerned that people were dying in their quest to save a planet/city. Not merely saying "lots of people are going to die", but the "this actually concerned me that some random non-canon character Y was killed". Some of the other Avengers films have had this in some measure (Avengers touched on it a few times in NYC). But not quite to this degree. Considering the blockbuster action film of the modern era typically flattens half of a city (and presumably kills or maims thousands, if not tens of thousands), this was refreshing. It stood in stark relief to the terrible Man of Steel Superman film in that it actually felt like these guys cared what they were doing and we weren't just told they are "heroes". Show, not tell.

More words, in furious languor.

There appears to be much going on signifying sound and fury in the world of late. But it is mostly empty.

We have an "immigration" crisis. Except we've had an immigration problem that needed to be addressed for 90 years. Ever since we started closing off our borders to foreign populations and placing onerous restrictions on how and when someone may become a citizen if they wished to live here and raise a family and do the things that human beings tend to do when they live and work and play in a place for a long time. They want to call it home. Like some relentless wheel, this just cycles around again and again as a new crop of nativist biases that either do not make a coherent philosophical point or are factually wrong. Fortunately, it appears there isn't actually a strong support for kicking millions of people out of the country who want to stay here somehow. Unfortunately nobody in Congress appears to be paying attention to that because there's a very loud and politically active group of people wandering around pretending we are being invaded and who does want to kick people out, and which nobody else wants to antagonize but doesn't want to be seen talking to either. Which leaves us within a middle ground position that even fewer people want (things like guest worker programmes).

All this tells me is that we haven't bothered to fix the existing immigration system, and what bills have been proposed primarily don't either. They focus entirely too much on borders and how people get in. That's not the "problem". The issue is how people can stay, if they would like to, and how difficult or onerous we make it to become a citizen, a problem for which I have seen no bill address in a serious way. Huge numbers of people who are residents illegally in the country came here in a perfectly legal way, as students, tourists, or workers and no amount of "border control" is likely to create an environment which catches them and restricts their presence. Large numbers more of people abroad probably would come here and stay if we had a simple system for allowing people to emigrate from their homes. The demands for armed troops on the borders have little resemblance to a solution to the problem. If anything that only amplifies the humanitarian problems by increasing the price and danger of migration across borders, and makes it more difficult for people to leave when they do come here for a temporary basis, thus further discouraging such behavior as say, seasonal labourers who migrate across borders following available work.

I am not all that impressed with liberal solutions either. They can't do very much without Congress acting, but I keep hearing "decriminalizing drugs" coming up. The likely reason for that term is that there's little or no public support for the legalisation of drugs other than marijuana. Decriminalizing, say, heroin does not destroy black markets of the drug, as a major flaw in this arrangement. That does construct the legal arrangement so the users of drugs are not punished (or sellers with small quantities), or at least are not sent to jail and prison, which is a great social victory in its own right. But it does nothing about the establishing of legal markets where sellers of these products can use the legal system for protection of property rights and to arbitrate grievances peacefully through the courts and other forms of mediation. Without that option, the violence remains a significant and sometimes essential component of the existing black markets for goods that are merely "decriminalized". Decriminalization would be better than arresting thousands of people for consensual vices, but it would not solve this problem of an illicit market with artificially inflated profit margins and through which there are considerable issues of gang violence in foreign countries (like the countries the current wave of children are fleeing). Legalisation of marijuana likewise may help some, if it occurs on a broader scale, but will not remove the problem. Consider that some clever Central American drug cartels have branched out into protection rackets for farms, for ordinary domestic crops as limes or avocados and this becomes an even more elaborate problem to disentangle than how our legal system treats the recreational ingestion of mind-altering chemicals as a means to reduce the violence.

And now for something completely different.
A brief digression to rant about (other) silly things.
- This would all be much easier, apparently, if we publicly expended time discussing genital naming conventions from 90 years ago. Fortunately, "Jerry" had already taken on a somewhat darker turn from a cheeky British affiliation as a nickname for evil Nazis or we could be at risk of a wave of named phallic features, similar to the wave of names from characters of popular fantasy novels (Khaleesi, Katniss, etc). Let's just move on. Penis jokes are not too hard.

- If someone else makes a movie about how humans only use 10% of their brains, we may want to consider an investigation if this is an actual problem that there are people employed in Hollywood who somehow only use 10% of their brains. I like science fiction, but the prospect of someone getting suddenly smarter relies on some tricks about consciousness that we don't yet have solid neuroscience to explain, or a mental disorder that is treated (depression being a common example). Honestly all being able to access 100% would mean (probably) isn't that someone would get instantly superhuman powers, but that they'd be aware of ordinarily sub-conscious processes like breathing or sensory perceptions that we filter out most of the time. Maybe memory recall would be better. And that in turn risks a lot of solipsism rather than someone running amok with god-like powers. I realize that people with superior mental recall and eidetic memories are perceived as "superhuman", or that people with very good perceptive abilities (excellent eyesight or distinguishing palettes for foods) are. But we don't need to make a superhero/supervillain movie to sell those and it probably isn't because they "use more of their brain."

A note on writing
- All writers are writing about themselves. A very good writer is writing in such a way that, while their reader will know this, has constructed an imaginative reality in which the reader may escape, or clever and well-supported arguments in which they may engage and nod or shake the head vigorously in agreement or anger. But writers are really writing to put down the words about themselves. What I believe a very good writer possesses is not necessarily a command of the language in which they compose words (though the well-placed 5 dollar word helps at times). Instead it is a command of perspective-taking that is possessed. Writers see things as best they can as someone else, be they a character or an interlocutor, and can better convince us that these others are the ones speaking to us on the page and not the man behind the curtains.

This is not the same as "If I were in his/her place". That's a weak sauce to pour over the question of what someone else would or should think. Anyone can do that and it requires no imagination. It is "If I were them in his/her place" that we're after. Assuming a new identity for a brief while, not presuming an identity for ourselves. History as a field of study requires this practice when done properly. It is this skill that it should instruct and impart and not the memorization of trivial dates and names assembled into the proper order.

Since you mentioned it

Somehow in the context of the varied debates on Hobby Lobby and corporations are bad mkay, the question of low-information or poorly informed voting emerged but attached to the problem of low voter turnout, as it often is (which I find curious, probably because most people are poorly informed about who votes and how, ironically enough).

I am skeptical this is a meaningfully identified problem. And since I am now a go-to person for the "people should really not bother voting" claim, I will explain why here so I can just link to it whenever it comes up again.

1) Marginal utility of voting is extremely low. The likelihood of individual votes changing a voting outcome is astronomically low. The likelihood is even lower that a voter changes an election outcome if more people vote. The incentive of people who vote should be to have lower participation so they have more control over the outcome. People who vote should not complain that much about the fact that other people do not vote. This matters a great deal in the next portion. (there's also a distinction here I will discuss in a moment between people who choose not to vote or don't care to and people who can not vote or are prevented from voting)

2) High information voters vote at much higher rates. These would be people who make more money, or have higher educational attainment on average. These are not perfectly correlated, but on average higher income or especially higher education correlates with higher voting participation and with higher political knowledge. Not all of these people vote mind you (and some cannot for legal reasons, immigration status, etc), but many more of them vote than low information voters percentage wise and there are a lot of them. There is not a problem of high information voters sitting at home forgetting to vote. This is not the issue in voter turnout. Most of the people who don't vote are low information voters who have little interest in politics. Most of the people who do vote are motivated by some issue or another and at least believe themselves to be well-informed on those issues. They tend to possess more information at any rate (whether or not it is accurate).

Encouraging more people to vote is generally encouraging more people who don't know very much about the relevant topics to vote and not gathering in some mysterious clutch of smart and reasonable people who would push the electorate over the top. In general, "smart and reasonable" people on some given topic either disagree (reasonably if possible), are just as poorly informed as the general public, or have their own biases that push them to be misinformed as well. There are few matters that "smart and reasonable" people make up a large voting bloc, a correct and reasoned opinion on what the vote should be, and that they would push an issue forward or prevent one from passing. The theory that they do matter significantly relies on the assumption that uninformed or misinformed voters break randomly and could be overwhelmed by enough smart people. They do not. They break based upon biases that push their voting preferences in particular and predictable directions (nativism for instance). These biases can easily overwhelm expert opinion, or the expert opinion is easily co-opted to serve those biases and interests. The solution to that problem is not to encourage more low information people to show up as a result and not to complain about low voter turnout as if fewer people vote, the likelihood is better that higher information voters will comprise most of the electorate. Misinformation is a separate problem from voter turnout as a result.

3) If the problem is limited to "misinformed" voters, that may be a description which applies to almost all voters on some issue or candidate or another. VERY VERY few people study politics and elections carefully all the way through every time. I am probably a very high information voter in that I try to look into local and state matters as best I can and I still would consider myself poorly or even potentially misinformed by biases and priors and assumptions in many instances. I would admit to having this weakness, and it sometimes leads me to ignore certain issues or races in casting a ballot by refraining out of ignorance. If more people who do vote would do this voluntarily however, the misinformed voter problem only gets worse. I would probably be voting randomly if I did vote under those circumstances, or at least looking out for my worst possible options to exclude those. The average voter does not do this but enters with a preconceived judgment and uses heuristics to assess their unknown priors (such as party affiliations). The average voter also does not know they possess misinformation. Indeed, they are often much more convinced they possess accurate and true information than someone who is skeptical. This can happen on a specific issue, while maintaining wisdom elsewhere or a broad set of them can produce delusions. Diagnosing and countering the misinformation problem is tricky at best as a result.

4) If the problem is "misinformation", who determines this? The misinformed voting public? The people they elected? Some third party? Who would agree on that third party and how would that be done? And then, finally, how after all of that would be deemed fair to exclude anyone who was considered "misinformed" from voting. Complaining that the other guy thinks and believes and votes based something that you think is wacky is not evidence of misinformation that should exclude their vote. All of us really are in that boat. I'd rather not start launching stones over it with the idea that if only we could get these people not to vote, all of our problems would be solved. I realize there's a huge voter bias problem on a lot of economic questions, among many others where there's a big divergence from expert opinion and the general public. I do not think that means we should just start in with the technocracy and forget about the voters.

What does this all mean?
Here is what I would propose as solutions to the voting problem

1) Stop encouraging people just "to vote". Instead, encourage more people to engage in friendly debate about politics, to listen to people they disagree with (although this is distasteful and sometimes demonstrates their ignorance more than it helps, it is important now and again to confront the strongest arguments of our opponents by being aware they exist), and to do some research on the events going on in legislation or judicial rulings and so on. If people will do those things, they will probably vote anyway. If they don't want to do those things, they probably aren't interested in voting and we don't need to require and exhort them to show up as some social calling. They either will or they won't.

The advantage of friendly engagement is that it allows us to make and form friendships or acquaintances with people we might not otherwise listen to. I find I have a subset of people who will pushback on some given issue even if I think they are ill-informed or wrong and I prefer that they do (though I find that I have a low tolerance for ad hominem tactics of argument, which is not friendly and should probably not be tolerated). This advantage should not be underestimated. Even if we do not agree with "those people", we will know some of them and it will be much harder to inspire strong partisan feelings that they are always wrong about everything and can be dismissed and ignored, or more concerning, they should be dismissed and ignored on everything because they are "those people" and not because they are wrong about this or that thing.

Libertarians run into this all the time because of the "crazy" beliefs like heroin should be legal or the federal reserve rantings of Austrians. That doesn't make them wrong on whether marijuana should be legal or whether free speech should be respected, or the NSA surveillance, and so on. We should be willing to form these alliances of convenience when people have different opinions on many things but shared opinions on these things here. (as a note though, I usually worry when there is a "bipartisan consensus" on some issue in DC. Most of those are establishmentarian rather than based upon a shared coherent ideological goal, which I am not in favor of things simply because it is good for the status quo power struggle).

2) Don't prevent people from voting. In fact, make it easier to vote, not harder. The problem of voter fraud does exist, but it is very small relative to the massive number of people who are legally prevented from voting for no apparent reason (felons who have already served time for instance in many states, as one example). Some of these would be people who are highly motivated to vote on a particular issue (as a result of their encounter with the state up close and personal) and they deserve to cast their opinion on those matters. The likelihood that an election could turn based on the ex-con vote is small too, but it is much more significant than the probability that an election could be stolen or rigged based on including people who can't vote, and so on.

3) Stop complaining about misinformed voters. Go inform them, or delegate someone to do so, or perhaps just go and talk to them. You may find sometimes it is YOU are who are misinformed. This will be an unpleasant but necessary and humbling experience.

4) Stop worrying about voter turnout rates. These are not necessarily symptomatic of any problem. Worry more about information distribution than the voter distribution.

5) Stop only really encouraging people to vote during Presidential cycles. Important matters can happen and be decided every year.

The reason this happens is that many people vote via party affiliation. Parties have a strong interest in promoting turnout during Presidential cycles, because they place a lot of signalling importance on who is President. They place some importance on other matters. You may find you would prefer to place more importance on those matters that are of local or state control, or who your Congressional representative is. Particularly if you follow the separation of powers and the precise powers available and used by the officials we elect.

Presidents for example are essentially irrelevant (unless they're terrible) on anything other than international relations/foreign policy, and the dialogue and scope of civil liberties protections or abuses, via their court appointments if necessary. Their economic policies have to be enacted by Congress to carry any meaning and weight. Their foreign policy or court picks usually are just signed off on by Congress (even though they're supposed to have more authority there). These are also very removed from the average voter as concerns (on average). That means that you should probably care a lot more about who your Senator is, or who your governor is, or who your school board is.

6) Over time, seek to reduce the number of things and issues which are determined politically and as a matter of law. But be free to use the political process to make those reductions and to argue over which are to be so determined.

7) As a corollary to all of this, be aware that many matters occur and can be lobbied for or against in between elections and that using elections as a time to weigh in on those decisions is probably less adequate a safeguard of democratic representation than is being aware of the motions and bills that are moving forward on issues of concern to you or your friends or family.

This is largely why I did and still do not worry about Citizens United. Putting more money and attention into elections potentially moves it away from the lobbying and legislative end. There is far more heat and light right now on the election end of the process and biases introduced by powerful agents are easier to recognize and combat there as a result.