Caring to the bitter end

I just realized something that seems obvious in retrospect.

I already knew that I was more tenacious in arguments than many. I also knew that I more interested in using argument and inquiry to undercover truth. Of course, I also knew that most commenters on the internet have neither the vigor nor the fairness to follow through on the paths their arguments take. Yet knowing all this, for the first time I attacked another commenter for pivoting away from an argument, and called him to come back to it. This is what I wrote (minus the fake expletives):

Why won't you stay on the topic, thrash it out completely, and find out if you're right or wrong. It's so maddening to argue with some people. If you really care about the issue, stay to the end and really go into the argument, don't bail out.

This is what I really think. If you care about an issue, you go as deep as you can. You keep arguing, and keep listening to all the counterarguments, until you figure out what is strong and what is weak, what is right and what is wrong. The real answers are worth doing this for. If you don't want to go this far, and don't want to make the commitment to following where the arguments lead, you shouldn't be arguing at all.

If, on the other hand, you really care, then you do follow the argument to the end. And sometimes the end is painful. I find I've been wrong for years, or that the world can't be the way I wish it could be.

I know that some of this sounds like self-congratulations, but I think it's more than that. It's a commitment to rigorous thinking, rigorous inquiry, honesty, and acceptance of the truth that's discovered. That's a big commitment, but I mean every bit of it.

Image:edmontonsun.com

Painful realization: The Civil Rights Act of 1965

In light of the removal of the Confederate battle flag from the capital of South Carolina, I've been researching and reflecting on the process of securing civil rights. I was born in the late 1950's, so I witnessed some significant parts of the civil rights struggles with my own eyes.

Racial equality

I'm also lucky--I grew up believing in the equality of the races. I didn't have to overcome a nagging or latent belief in white superiority. In fact, the idea of white superiority makes me laugh. I've known too many white chumps to believe that whites are better.

Though I grew up believing in equality, I didn't know how widespread that belief was. When I wanted to date a black friend in high school, I worried how my parents would react. I didn't know if my parents (MY OWN PARENTS) would give me a hard time. Clearly they were OK with me having black friends, but would they draw the line at dating? I didn't know.

I was lucky there too. My parents had no trouble with my dates. They were happy for me in my budding relationship. (But love didn't bloom--we weren't going to be anything but friends.)

What does this have to do with the Civil Rights Act of 1965? I'll explain.

In 1965, how many Americans were inculcated with the belief that blacks were inferior? I wouldn't have been surprised if my own parents had believed that, or had been brought up learning that. Of course that's not what they taught me and my siblings. They were old-line liberals, believers in the New Deal, skeptical of red-baiting, open to all colors and creeds.

How many really believe?

But I didn't know the limits of their beliefs. Would they been like the girl's parents in the movie Guess Who's Coming for Dinner? Yes, they raised their daughter to respect everyone, but they didn't expect her to fall in love and want to marry a black man. My parents could have been like that, but weren't.

But many liberals perhaps were like that, which made the movie of interest. This movie was released just two years after the Civil Rights Act passed. How many white Americans sincerely believed that blacks and whites were equal then? Perhaps a majority of whites didn't believe it. That would be my guess.

But I'd be wrong. Researching this, I found this article citing polling about the Civil Rights Act. In 1965, 76% of Americans supported the act. How many of those people supported the act because that's what they honestly believed? How many supported the act because they agreed with the ideals, but didn't believe it in fact?

I had a surprise here, too. In my pessimism, I thought that that majority of whites didn't truly believe in equality. However, I found polling from 1964 showing that 70% of whites believed in the equality of intellect (National Opinion Research Center, p. 20). Of course, it's hard to know how accurate that polling was. Was the sample skewed toward the wealthier and better educated? Would beliefs be different by income level? It's hard to drill down into 50 year old data. (And the graphics are so primitive. Wow, have computers changed our world.)

Though I've been lucky to grow up without racism entrenched in me, I'm still disappointed by how slow the decline in racism has been. When I was young, I was more hopeful for the future, and even for the present. As I've gotten older, I've been become more pessimistic about achieving a country with no significant racism. Every year shows me that racism persists.

Racism surfaced in my dad as he got older. My daughter worries that it might surface in me. She's not wrong to worry, but I hope and pray that it's not hiding somewhere in my psyche. So far, though, even when I delve deep, my instincts are to believe in the essential equality of all people. I'm immensely grateful for that.

Image: thebestlittlefilmhouse.com

Extras. National Opinion Research Center, starting p. 104, expectations of racial troubles. And as with my other posts on race, I realize that discussions of racial superiority or inferiority are deeply painful and deeply insulting. I wish that it wasn't an active issue, but it has been during my lifetime.

Read about the fascinating Civil Rights Act of 1875, which mandated equal treatment in public accommodations. What happened to it? Guess who was the most likely to shoot it down, and you're probably right.

Too many workers

We've come to a major turning point in history. Our economies, throughout most of the world, can no longer absorb our population increases and provide an increasing number of jobs. While there have been periods of high unemployment before in history, they've been reversed. I don't foresee that happening at all in the future. We are permanently in a situation where we have many more workers than we need, and there's no way for the extra workers to join the regular economy at the full-fledged rate.

Looking just as the US, we have the lowest worker participation rate in 36 years.

Labor Force Participation Rate 1948 - 2013

Image: businessinsider.com

We have high unemployment among our young people, and that's a worldwide problem. It's certainly possible for jobless people to be productive (cleaning, doing small repairs, gardening, teaching, etc.), but not at the going rate. So this extra labor force can work in the gray economy, work at home or in family businesses, or can volunteer, but they must be supported by others--those who are working at market rate jobs.

Why don't paying jobs exist for these people? Because our economies have become much more automated. It's been a goal in innovation to automate actions instead of having workers perform them. I go to an ATM machine instead of the human bank teller earning a wage. An ATM costs $2k (according to the ads on Google). That's a lot less than a teller's yearly salary. Ordering is automated online, saving the cost of a order entry clerk. Crops are planted and harvested with the help of huge machines, shrinking the number of farmers to 2% of the US population.

Too many workers? Yes, and too many people.

With all this equipment, we just don't need as many workers. So what should we do? There's a logical answer, but most people don't want to admit it: we need fewer workers, thus we need fewer humans. We should be shrinking our birth rates. Our birth rate should be lower than the replacement rate--yes, lower. Not zero growth, but negative growth, meaning contraction of the human population. If we don't do this, we will continue to have too many workers for the rest of foreseeable future, barring global cataclysm.

What are the downsides of fewer children and lower human population? Many people don't like the policy. Their cultures emphasize having children to carry on their legacy and take care of elders. It's hard to counter the cultural norms, but that doesn't mean that the cultural norms are logical or well-adapted to our current situation.

We'll have fewer people paying into Social Security, but we have to face that anyway. The huge baby boom generation is an anomaly that shouldn't become the norm just due to worries about how pensions are going to be paid. Besides, if there aren't enough jobs, those unemployed people aren't contributing anyway.

Suppose we underestimate the number of workers we need, and we create labor shortages due to a labor pool that's too small? That's not a big problem. We can either import workers or we can increase our birth rate to correct the problem. As we've seen, we can increase our population very quickly when we want to.

I'd like every country to decrease their birth rates, and they are. Two decades ago, few countries were reproducing below replacement rate. At that time it was considered a dire situation, but it no longer looks that way. Now many more countries are running below replacement rate. That's a good thing ... especially if we want to avoid more of this.

The lucky one has a metal roof (Bangladesh).

Image: paveldospodinov.com

They pray for a rectangular shack instead of a lean-to (Bangladesh).

Image: theguardian.com

Apartment blocks don't solve the problems (Cairo).

Image: ahlu-sunnah.com

Update 12/26/14. An article from The American Conservative pointing out that no one (despite political parties' claims) seems to know what to do about these economic problems.

Painful realization: Too many immigrants

Here is yet another painful realization. We have too few jobs and too many immigrants taking them. This is painful to say because I love immigrants and identify with them. My immigrant grandfather inspires me, and I'll never be half the man he was. I love the cultural diversity that immigrants bring, especially the differences from American norms. It's good to see how other people do it.

So it is with visceral pain that I acknowledge that the level of immigration, particularly illegal immigration, needs to be curtailed. We need to tighten up the borders, but more than that we need to crack down on businesses that employ illegal immigrants (and legal immigrants with special visas). This is going to be painful, especially to immigrants who have built better lives for themselves. They had very American hopes to work and prosper, and it's going to end for some even though they are good people. Yes, this will hurt good people. Make no mistake about it. However, good people are also being hurt by the lack of jobs, so it's not as though no one benefits.

I won't give a detailed proposal because I don't know the numbers well enough and, heck, any detailed proposal from an amateur wouldn't get a second look. However, I think we should have a certain number of guest workers. We definitely need immigrant workers for agriculture if we want abundance on our grocery shelves. We should also allow some of the 12 million illegal workers in the US stay to prevent a humanitarian disaster that would occur from throwing so many out of work all at once.

Many people don't want to face this. We hope everything will work out OK. Maybe we'll have amnesty for those hard workers who have been in the country for so long, or maybe we'll keep the status quo, which is better for the immigrants than returning to their home countries.

However, some groups support amnesty or the status quo for reasons baser than love for immigrants. Business owners like cheap, reliable labor. Democrats look forward to more Dem-leaning voters. Too bad. What they want isn't for the overall good of the country, so it shouldn't matter.

Image: zimbio.com

Painful realization: Honesty is less important

My  review of the Benghazi incident spurred me to reevaluate the role of lies in a political campaign. I've rather unhappily discovered how much you may have to lie, not just to win, but to deny victory to a scarier opponent.

It's strange to be thinking this way because I really believe that most Americans see through the lies. So if the lies are transparent, why do you need to make them in the first place? On the other hand, I don't see more honest candidates doing very well. Ron Paul is probably the most honest candidate I've seen, and lots of Republicans can't stand him because of it. (Note that even Honest Ron doesn't mind using obscure election rules to grab higher numbers of delegates than his share of the vote.)

So if too much honesty is a liability, how much is 'just right?'

What the hell is going on here? That question about honesty is disgusting, and so antithetical to what ethical people.usually have to consider. Have I finally converted from believing in honesty to putting my lot in with realpolitik? God I hope not.

But maybe I have. I expect candidates to lie and pander most of the time. My pride is in being able to see the lies, read between the lies, and find out what they are hiding. I think I'm good at lie detection, and all those lies keep me busy and proud of my handiwork. I've thought politicians were hacks for not lying well and revealing what they actually thought.

Maybe I'm part of the problem. However, I can't pretend what isn't true, and the truth is that there are no honest politicians. I can't change that fact, so I have to deal with it. And if honesty isn't going to be the yardstick, what is?

Maybe these: Good judgment, the ability to get important things done, effectiveness, avoiding the big mistakes.

This is what I want most in elected officials. And looking at this list, I think it's the same list I've used for years. I've been making pragmatic choices, picking who's going to do the best out of the available options.

It's not that I've changed and gotten too jaded. It's just that I'm more aware of how politics works, and particularly the unavoidable underbelly of lies. Well, that's a relief. Or is it?

If lies aren't so bad, what place does honesty have in politics? Here are some of my initial ideas: Be honest with yourself. Don't settle for a convenient story just because it supports the party you prefer. Be honest in your discussions. When you're not a politician who has to get elected, you don't have the excuse to lie that they do, so stay away from the talking points and take a hard look at reality.

And everyone, especially politicians, should remember that lies get found out and the truth usually emerges eventually. If the truth is going to come out, why bother with the lie? Take your lumps early, admit the mistake, learn the lesson, and move on.

This would have saved a lot of the trouble with the lingering Benghazi issue. It's not too late to find a way to acknowledge that the Benghazi story wasn't the truth and to reveal all the truth that isn't a security problem. Are you listening, Hillary?

Yeah, sure, I believe that.

Image: israeliidf.wordpress.com