Election Nightmare 2020: What Rudy Giuliani Should Have Said

It looks like things are shaping up to be a long winter--and I'm not talking about coronavirus.

Rudy Giuliani has a press conference and is challenged by members of the press pool that the 2020 presidential election has already been called in favor of Joe Biden by the members of the main stream media. (only 1:08)

Giuliani's mockery in this moment might have seemed satisfying to him and Trump's supporters.  But he missed an opportunity to, not only put the media in their place over their partisan biases over the past four years, but to educate the public on America's electoral process for electing a president.  This is important because if the results get reversed and Trump gets elected for a second term, the public needs to understand why.

So here is what Giuliani should have said:

"This is a good opportunity to explain to the main stream news media, your listeners and the rest of the American public that we have a legal and constitutional process for electing a president in this country that is dictated by Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution of the United States and various other state laws.  The media and the press have no role in this process.  None!  Former presidents don't have a role in this process.  Hollywood has no role in this process.

"You can call races all day and night until you are blue in the face.  It doesn't matter.  Like polls they are only projections about what you think might happen.  You were wrong about the polls and you might be wrong about the projections.  They are not certified results.

"The Trump campaign and numerous witnesses that have been willing to sign sworn affidavits have identified irregularities and suspicious practices with our elections that are almost too numerous to list that might effect the election results.  We don't know how many ballots this will effect and neither do any of you.  So a little humility from you is in order and we expect you to cover these developments accurately and fairly to maintain the public trust in your organizations and our system of self-government.

"President Trump had warned the state governments and the public of the problems that mass mailing of ballots and voting by mail would entail due to the lack of a chain of custody and transparency in the process.  He raised concerns with their respective courts and his warnings went unheeded.  As a consequence, our elections in several key states were a chaotic disaster that is embroiled in controversy and uncertainty and may have a consequence on the final result.  

"For the sake of election integrity and the public trust we ask you to be patient as we investigate, correct and litigate any possible fraud or impropriety that we find so that the integrity of the 2020 elections can be restored."

If Giuliani said something along these lines, I think it would be better received by the public.  Our partisan pundits might have a problem with this, but fortunately, they don't have a role in the electoral process either!

Considering the Electoral College

The aftermath of the 2016 presidential election is seeing renewed calls for the abolition of the Electoral College when Donald Trump pulled off an EC victory despite losing the popular vote to Hillary Clinton.

There are numerous commentary and arguments in defense of the EC in addition to arguments advocating it's abolition.  So I won't rehash them here.  This article is going to take a different tack:  How would presidential elections be decided if the EC was abolished?  I hope to illustrate the popular adage, be careful what you ask for.  

Democrats and their liberal supporters are the ones pushing for abolition of the EC and they tend to forget the unintended consequences that are likely to happen if abolition of the EC becomes reality.  Liberals aren't very good at evaluating the risk of unintended consequences--unless it's deciding whether or not to kill a terrorist, then you hear all about escalation, escalation, escalation!

The Art of the Impossible

To begin this mental exercise we have to assume that the impossible is possible.  From Article V of The Constitution of the United States:

The Congress, whenever two thirds of both houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose amendments to this Constitution, or, on the application of the legislatures of two thirds of the several states, shall call a convention for proposing amendments, which, in either case, shall be valid to all intents and purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the legislatures of three fourths of the several states, or by conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other mode of ratification may be proposed by the Congress..

What this says in plain language is that you need a supermajority in both houses of Congress in order to even propose an amendment.  That's hard to do when one of the parties benefits from the EC (Republicans in this case) and they have the same representation in the Senate as the party that would favor abolition of the EC (Democrats).

Assuming that we pulled off this miracle, we still need to submit the proposed amendment to the legislatures of the individual states for ratification.  A total of 38 of 50 state legislatures would need to agree to the proposed amendment for it to be included in the Constitution.

That's quite a high bar to meet.  It almost seems to suggest that if we want to start mucking around with our founding document, then we better be sure that it's what we really want to do.  A simple majority vote driven by demagoguery isn't going to cut it.  A broad consensus is required.

Let's assume that liberals were able to cobble together such a broad consensus, not only to achieve the supermajority needed in both houses of Congress to propose abolishing the electoral college, but to get ratification from enough states that typically vote for the party that benefits from the EC by a 2 to 1 margin.

A Brave New Campaign

It's a lamentable fact that policies we enact rarely have the effects that we anticipate.  This is because the new policy changes the political and social environment that we live in and people are forced to adapt to the new reality in a way that maximizes benefit to themselves.  Abolishing the EC won't be an exception to this rule.

Since we have changed the rules of our elections by abolishing the EC, it would be ignorant to assume that campaign strategies won't also change to accommodate the new reality.  The goal of any campaign is to win.

In 2016 Trump lost the popular vote by nearly 3 million.  If Trump's strategy is to obtain at least 270 electoral votes to assure victory then he's not going to mind this deficit.  Especially if the deficit occurs in states that will likely be won by his opponent.  Under the EC, nobody gets points for running up the score.

Hypothetically, if we were to abolish the EC for the 2016 election, Trump's campaign strategy would change.  Now, the popular vote would matter.  Trump's campaign might decide to focus on solid blue states that have the highest population but tended to vote Democrat when the EC was in force.  How many closet Republicans do you think Trump can find in New York or California--the types of Republicans that don't go out to vote because they know their vote doesn't matter when living in a Democratic majority state?  

Trump may decide to hold one of his rallies in Fresno and remind all Republicans in California that the EC is gone and their vote matters now!  Same thing in New York.  Do you think that Trump can find 3 million more votes from formerly disenfranchised voters in two blue states to secure a popular vote victory?

What about Hillary?  If the 2016 election was going to be decided by popular vote, would she have taken those blue wall states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania for granted that Trump ended up winning by slim margins?  Where would she find additional votes to make up for the extra 3 million or more votes that Trump would reasonably expect to get by slightly changing his campaign strategy?  Texas might be an obvious place for Hillary to find additional Democratic votes.  Where else?  Maybe Florida?  But Florida was already a battleground state under the current EC system.  She likely found all the Democratic votes she possibly could in Florida.  All other large states are predictably solid blue states with disenfranchised Republican supporters.

Hillary would have to campaign in smaller states that tend to be solidly Republican by safe and likely margins to find disenfranchised Democrat supporters.  But there aren't many people in those states.  She may find an extra ten thousand votes here or there, but not the millions she would need to secure a popular vote victory.  Not unless she was able to campaign in dozens of small states that she wouldn't have even bothered with when the EC was still in effect.  Abolishing the EC could easily double or triple Hillary's campaign efforts while making things considerably easier for Trump.  In our current reality, Hillary already had cash flow problems.  Now multiply that problem without the EC.

Be careful what you ask for!

Plurality Rules?

Despite Hillary Clinton winning the popular vote by nearly 3 million, that was only 48% of the ballots cast to Trump's 46% of the popular vote.  Neither candidate won the majority of the popular vote due to a small percentage of votes being cast for third party candidates.  In fact, this phenomenon happens with enough regularity that it's worth considering how we call elections if the EC is abolished and no candidate wins the majority of the popular vote.

According to the 12th Amendment that modified Article II of The Constitution of the United States:

The Electors shall meet in their respective states, and vote by ballot for President and Vice-President, one of whom, at least, shall not be an inhabitant of the same state with themselves; they shall name in their ballots the person voted for as President, and in distinct ballots the person voted for as Vice-President, and they shall make distinct lists of all persons voted for as President, and of all persons voted for as Vice-President, and of the number of votes for each, which lists they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the seat of the government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate; The President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and the House of Representatives, open all the certificates and the votes shall then be counted; The person having the greatest number of votes for President, shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed; and if no person have such a majority, then from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President.  But in choosing the President, the votes shall be taken by the states, the representation from each state having one vote;

Advocates of abolishing the EC seem blissfully unaware of the Constitutional Crisis that abolishing the EC would precipitate.  It would perhaps be the worst crisis in history.  Do you see how?  

First, there will be no electors to make sure that the President and Vice-President live in two separate states when casting ballots. The whole purpose of requiring electors to cast at least one ballot for somebody that doesn't live in the same state as themselves is to prevent concentrations of influence in our elections due to favoritism.  Likewise, a presidentIal candidate must consider a candidate that lives in a different state to run as his vice president for similar reasons. Abolition of the EC isn't going to abolish state loyalties.

 I suppose we can pass a law mandating that a president's running mate  must be from a different state than himself but it wouldn't be as Constitutional, would it?  And if you don't see why having a President and Vice-President from the same state is a big problem then you should do the rest of us a favor and stay home for election day.  You're too dangerous.

Second, you may abolish the Electors and rely on the popular vote, but the majority requirement for victory will remain intact.  That means a candidate must win at least 50% of the vote to win outright.  Neither Trump or Hillary had this majority.  So the Constitution dictates that the House of Representatives votes for the president.  Here's the kicker: Each state delegation only gets one vote! That means that a state like California that predictably votes Democrat and has 55 electoral votes will see its power greatly diminished to only one vote in the House of Representatives when choosing a president while small state delegations that will typically vote Republican begin wielding much more influence on elections.  Trump would still win in this scenario by an even wider margin than in the EC!

Be careful what you ask for!

Or perhaps we can amend the Constitution to allow each Representative to have a vote, regardless of delegation.  Which would mean the House of Representatives, itself, is the EC.  Some countries do it this way but we call them parliamentary democracies.  Such democracies don't have the three equal branches of government that distinguishes the American system.

Or perhaps you want to keep the House of Representatives out of it and let the people decide?  How do we handle it if nobody wins a majority of the popular vote?  Or do you want the largest plurality to win?  If so, then stay home on election day.  You're too dangerous.

We can amend the Constitution to mandate a runoff between the top two participants.  For 2016 that would mean a runoff between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton (as if our election season wasn't long enough!).  Which wouldn't make the election much different than I already described; Trump will appeal to disenfranchised Republicans in large states while Hillary runs around all the small states of the country looking for a few more Democrat voters.  Trump might still win.

Once again, be careful what you ask for!

Gore v Bush Revisited

This reminds me of the last time there were calls to abolish the EC when Al Gore narrowly lost Florida and the EC to George W. Bush.  It triggered many recounts in Florida, but not in the rest of the country.  Can you imagine the chaos of nationwide recount without the EC?

Be careful what you ask for!

Seriously, you can't make this up!

As I was putting the final touches on this article, news breaks that we still don't know the results of the 2020 Democrat Iowa caucus due to some malfunction in the system that reports the results from Iowa's precincts.

Can you imagine this happening in a a nationwide election if the EC was abolished?

Be careful what you ask for!

Don't Forget 'bout the Russians!

With all the panic about foreign influence in our elections you would think that we would desire an electoral system that is more resilient to hacking.  Which would be more difficult to pull off: hacking several different states that may conduct their elections differently from each other?  Or hacking one large national database that the feds would need to maintain if the EC were abolished?

Even "Mr. Big Government", himself, President Obama admitted in 2016 that it's virtually impossible to rig an American election because our process is so decentralized.

Oh, you think the states would willingly conduct their own elections if the EC were abolished?  You sweet summer child!  Please, stay home on election day.

Did I tell you to be careful what you ask for, already?

Needless to say, abolishing the EC isn't as straight forward as abolishing slavery or alcohol (which we've actually done), even if you were to obtain the supermajorities to do it.  Abolishing the EC would fundamentally rewrite the Constitution and our election process for marginal results.

Transgender: When Ideology Crushes Common Sense

True Story

A female acquaintance of mine was sharing stories with me about growing up with her younger brother.  She was a few years older than him and always seemed to have gotten the best of him during the fights that were typical of sibling rivalries.  

That changed one summer.  A round of teasing escalated into a more physical confrontation that entailed some shoving, wrestling and a few punches to shoulders being thrown.  Her little brother was approaching puberty and started to physically mature.  Seemingly overnight, he was able to best his older sister in their physical confrontations.  The rivalry never stopped at that point but it was restricted to arguing.  Partly, because of the deterrent effect that strength grants a person in confrontations and also because their parents decided to lay down the law before somebody got seriously hurt.

To this day, my female acquaintance marvels over how hard a guy can hit.  It was a genuine shock to have experienced the physical capabilities of a man so suddenly and viscerally .  He was able to push her to the ground like a rag doll and she was utterly immobilized in his grip.  She couldn't do anything about it.  

I had replied that it's likely that she was only experiencing a fraction of the strength and power her brother was was capable of.  She was skeptical.  I told her that a man fighting a woman is only going to use enough force to fend her off or subdue her depending on the circumstances.  That would be far less force than what he is capable of.  A man beating up on a women is just bad optics, even if she started the fight.  It goes against a man's chivalrous nature--or this used to be the case, at least.

Another True Story

Much like my acquaintance, a female MMA fighter named Taika Brents was soundly defeated in 2014 by Fallon Fox, a male MMA fighter.  However, unlike my acquaintance, Brents sustained a broken skull and a concussion as a result of her match with Fox.  In an interview after the match Brents expresses similar thoughts about the match that my acquaintance had about her brother many years ago.  Brents had this to say:

I've fought a lot of women and have never felt the strength that I felt in a fight as I did that night.[...]  I can only say, I've never felt so overpowered ever in my life and I am an abnormally strong female in my own right.

That's because Brents was fighting a man pretending to be a woman.  It almost killed her!

Naturally, critics came out of the woodwork to question how such a ridiculous match-up was allowed to be booked in the first place.  Fox had this to say:

I don't understand the problem.  I'm constantly told that men and women are equal and that gender is a social construct.  I'm constantly shown "badass women" on TV and in the movies that can beat up men easily.  I'm told a woman can do anything a man can do.  DOVE commercials show that girls can run, punch, and jump just as well as men.  So...why shouldn't men fight vs. women?  

Okay, they're all idiots.  Not just Fox, but Brents and everybody else who should have called this idea ridiculous--patently ridiculous.  Where were the men who knew that this event was needlessly endangering a woman's life?  Yes, women are adults.  But they can be foolish about these matters.  It's true.  They rarely have full comprehension of how dangerous the real world can be. Oh, they have an inkling that some bad stuff can happen.  But men continue to be nature and mankind's primary victims. But what about everybody else who indulged in this nonsense?  Much like how the chivalrous nature of a man will prevent his sister from experiencing his full capability for delivering harm to someone in a fight, someone should have prevented this fight before it even started.

The femme fatale is a popular trope in movies today.  Watching somebody like Atomic Blonde or Black Widow take down a group of guys two or three times their size is entertaining to watch.  But it isn't real.  Black Widow wins because it's in the script and it probably took several takes to get it right.  And those Dove commercials trying to inspire women to do what men do?  That's a corporation trying to sell you a product.

We've seen emergency rooms and battered women shelters full of women that have been on the losing side of a confrontation with men.  We lower physical standards so women can enlist in the armed forces or join police departments.  Why would anyone with a brain think that a woman can hold her own against a man in mixed martial arts?  Do we let flyweights compete with heavy weights, even if they're both men?  No!  You put them in separate leagues.

[flipping pages]  Let's skip forward a few lessons, shall we?

When we say that men and women are equal, it implies to mean equality under the law !  It was never meant to be taken literally.  There was a time when this didn't need to be said.  There was a time when we knew that women were the weaker sex and letting her fight a man, even a weak man, would be inconceivable.

It's only when we lied to ourselves, and believed the lies, that this absurdity took place.

Segregation as a Social Good

What seems to be getting some social justice warriors worked up on these types of issues is the fact that some of our institutions are still segregated by gender.  We used to segregate by race and this was considered bad, right?  So why shouldn't segregation by gender be just as bad?

In addition, Congress is discussing the Equality Act, a bill that intends to prohibit discrimination against people based on sexual orientation or sexual identity.  So it's not just private organizations such as the MMA circuit that are indulging this.  When the government is starting to take this seriously then I know that we've gone off the rails and into some absurd places.

The only explanation I can think of is that people are interpreting the legal concept of gender equality too literally and suggesting that man and woman are interchangeable.  And instead of questioning the premises that led us to such bizarre conclusions, we just went with it as if logic is the only determinant to truth without regard to empirical observation.

When I say that we should question our premises, I don't only mean the concept that the genders are equal in a physical sense (they're not), but whether segregation is as bad as we think it is.

Let's consider why segregation is considered bad in the first place; In the past, entire classes of people were excluded from participating politically or economically in our society based on immutable characteristics that they all shared.  This was eventually considered an anathema because such people had little hope of improving their lot in life and changing their circumstances based on their talents and merits.

This social injustice was fixed by passing a series of equal rights legislation mandating equal opportunities for all people.  Equal opportunities is the term we need to keep in mind.

There's no question that sports are segregated according to sex.  But does such segregation suppress anyone?  Does it marginalize anyone?  Is it violating anybody's rights?  No, not in the slightest.  In fact, the whole reason why sports were segregated by sex in the first place is so women can participate!  Because as the MMA contest between Fox and Brents clearly illustrates, men cannot be competing in the same league as women.  Fox didn't get lucky.  He is simply too strong to compete in that league.  Allowing other men to do so means that women wouldn't be able to participate in that league in any meaningful way.  The Equity Act would effectively marginalize women in the area of competitive sports.

So in the case of competitive sports, segregation makes opportunities available to certain segments of the population that they wouldn't normally have. So the act of segregation can produce positive results. In practice this means the men stay out of women's sports and women stay out of men's sports. Period.

And, no.  Whatever gender they think that they are is irrelevant.  It doesn't matter if they transitioned.  It doesn't matter if they are on testosterone blockers.  Or they got used to wearing dresses.  A person's biological sex determines what league he or she can compete in.

The whole discussion about gender identity is a red herring.  For one thing, Fox's statement that I quoted gives me a clear impression that he still thinks he's a man and that his female opponent was an even match.  This discussion wouldn't have taken place a couple decades ago because most people still believed in an objective reality, and if one person didn't, then it was considered their problem.

Private organizations will learn fairly quickly that it isn't a good idea to mix leagues like this; not without the results being completely meaningless, or even disastrous.  It's our political leaders advancing the Equity Act that worry me.  I hope that it's just virtue signaling and that interest in it will die, but I doubt it.  If we can no longer employ our common sense and say "no" to absurd ideas like setting up a match between a man and a woman in mixed martial arts, then we won't end up anywhere good as a society.

A Reductionist and Demographic Approach to Roe v Wade

It's been over 45 years since Rove v Wade; the Supreme Court case legalizing the practice of abortion in the United States.  The decision not only granted a women a means to legally terminate her pregnancy, it created a permanent division with the American public that has only amplified with the passage of time.  People opposed to abortion identified themselves as Pro-Life while people in favor called themselves Pro-Choice.

The arguments in favor or against the practice grew old and stale very quickly leading the two sides into some sort of detente.  Legalized abortion became the new normal and people found other things to worry about.  That is, until recently.

The issue of abortion is taking on a new urgency because of various demographic and technological developments resulting in renewed hostility in the Culture Wars.  The arguments aren't new, and this essay isn't trying to advance another one.  But the political and social climate has certainly changed and this is what I want to articulate.

The Chink in the Armor of Roe v Wade

Roe v Wade's decision was never meant to be an unrestricted license to abortions.  Many proponents of abortion would like to think this is the case, but it's not.  The court rejected the argument that life began at conception.  However, the justices did acknowledge that the question of whether or not a woman should be permitted to have an abortion revolves around the personhood of the developing fetus.  When does personhood happen? Unfortunately, nobody had a clear answer in 1973.  In the majority opinion, Justice Harry Blackmun writes:

We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins.  When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary, in this point in the development of man's knowledge, is not in a position to speculate as to the answer.

 Blackmun continues:

The appellee and certain amici argue that the fetus is a "person" within the language and meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment.  In support of this, they outline at length and in detail the well known facts of fetal development.  If this suggestion of personhood is established, the appellant's case, of course, collapses, for the fetus' right to life would then be guaranteed specifically by the Amendment.  The appellant conceded as much on reargument.

I don't intend to give a history lesson on Roe v Wade or abortion practices or to argue whether or not it was the correct decision.  Stare decisis is a legal doctrine that suggests that future court rulings should be consistent with and uphold previous court decisions.  However, Blackmun's opinion allows a way for Roe to be overturned if we can answer some questions that border on the metaphysical.

Medicine Marches On

If we are going to reject that life begins at conception because it's obviously "too early" to consider a clump of cells to be a person, and also, that birth is considered "too late" because the baby is obviously a person at that point, and the whole birthing experience is a process that can last many hours, then life obviously begins at some point between conception and birth.

The average human pregnancy lasts 40-42 weeks.  This is different than a gestational period, which is typically longer, but this difference doesn't matter much for this discussion.  It's common for infants to be born earlier than 40 weeks and still survive without medical intervention.  We have no problem, as a society, determining that that baby born a little early as a person.

Likewise, we also try and save babies born prematurely that wouldn't survive without medical intervention.  We clearly consider them to have personhood at this point, also.  What has changed over the past 45 years is that babies being born prematurely at an earlier and earlier point of pregnancy are having better and better chances at surviving due to advances in medicine.

Recent news has reported on a baby born prematurely in California.  "Saybie" was born after a mere 23 weeks gestation and weighed less than a can of Pepsi.  There's no question that this would have ended up being a miscarriage or stillborn when Roe was decided because medical science wasn't as advanced.  But after 5 months in neonatal intensive care, Saybie ended up going home from the hospital with her parents.

Maybe this was an exception for the moment.  Maybe Saybie beat some long odds of survival and we shouldn't hang our hats on it when deciding personhood.  But what if this becomes the norm?  No doubt that the doctors and nurses at the hospital learned a few things while treating her and decide to share information that ends up saving a lot of other Saybies.  What then?

Pro-Choice advocates will argue that saving Saybie was a courtesy granted to the mother (the father has no say) because the mother wanted the baby.  This effectively argues that a person has rights dependent on the whims of his mother.  The only problem is that this argument is inconsistent with Roe.  Blackmun writes for the majority opinion:

Physicians and their scientific colleagues have regarded that event [live birth] with less interest and have tended to focus either upon conception, upon live birth, or upon the interim point at which the fetus becomes "viable," that is, potentially able to live outside the mother's womb, albeit with artificial aid.  Viability is usually placed at about seven months (28 weeks) but may occur earlier, even at 24 weeks.

Blackmun seems to acknowledge that if we're going to reject birth or conception as the points of where human life begins then the only other criteria we have is viability, even with medical aid.  We may still reject conception as when human life begins, but there's no question that the viability standard established by Roe is trending earlier and earlier in the pregnancy.  A state may decide to ban abortions after 23 weeks gestation and it would be fully consistent with Roe.

Embryos and Trollies

Pro-Choice advocates like to play a game.  It goes something like this:

You're in a hospital that has caught fire and are heading to the exit.  You are alone when you notice in a room to your right that there is a cart of test tubes containing human embryos about to be consumed by the fire.  In another room to your left you notice an unconscious, 5 year-old-child who is also about to be consumed by fire.  Seconds count and you can only spare enough time to save one of them or else you all get consumed by fire.  Do you save the cart of embryos or the child?

If they're honest, most people would choose to save the child instead of the embryos.  Which is suppose to trigger an "A-HA!" moment from the pro-choice crowd that supposedly means that even pro-life people wouldn't value the embryos enough to rescue them.  Pro-life advocates have painted themselves into a corner that is philosophically indefensible, right?

At this point, I recommend sitting down with the smug pro-choice advocate, pour him a cup of tea, and break the news to him that he isn't as clever as he thinks.  We can play this game all day.  What if, instead of a child and a cart of embryos, you had to choose between your mother or an outlaw biker with tattoos and a felony record?  Or between a man or a woman?  Or a black man and a white man?  Are you any more or less of a hypocrite if you choose one over the other?

The Fire in the Hospital Game is a modern version of the Trolley Problem--a similar thought experiment which makes you decide who you'd rather save.  And this problem reveals a lot of characteristics about human nature that have been confirmed in social science research.  It's the tendency of people to prefer children over adults, women over men, your own race over other races, patriots over traitors, etc.  Research even shows that the traits can be completely arbitrary or randomly assigned.  People have selected preferences over shirt color, whether or not the person is wearing a hat, or their taste in music!

What this philosophical conundrum doesn't do is dispute that we are all entitled to equal rights and protections under the law.  The fact that you would probably choose to save the child in the burning hospital doesn't dispute whether or not the fertilized embryos are people.

What if you had enough time to look inside the test tubes in the cart full of fertilized embryos and see this:

From the Endowment for Human Development

You may still decide to save the unconscious 5-year-old child in the hospital fire but I bet the decision became harder to make.  And some readers might have changed their mind depending on the circumstances.  The above image is a screen capture of a 4D ultrasound of a 10 week embryo.  It already has the appearance and morphology of a human infant but is half the age of Saybie and only 2 inches long!

Empathy is a tendency to sympathize and have feelings for the experiences of other people.  Although empathy is credited as a pro-social emotional element for many different animals--and evolutionary psychology considers empathy to be a behavior adaptation that occurred in our evolutionary past that increased a species chances of survival--empathy is not shared equally among members of a species.  Despite the fact that we try to treat everyone equally in a legal sense, our greatest feelings of empathy are reserved for people that we determine to be more vulnerable such as women and children, or even pets.  Our feeling of empathy manifests itself in legal and social customs such as default custody arrangements favoring mothers in divorce cases, rescuing women and children first from sinking ships as well as considerably more public funding for breast cancer research than for all other diseases, to name a few examples.

Being able to see the embryos in the cart changes the circumstances in the hospital fire entirely because of our sense of empathy.  Before this, we still could talk about whether or not an embryo is a person, but the conversation felt abstract.  Seeing the physical resemblance of embryos to human beings with your own eyes triggers empathic feelings.  It's instinct!

As somebody who has a scientific background, I find these developments fascinating--and not just in a technical sense.  Science is a very reductionist way of thinking: We are trying to take complex phenomena and systems and break them down into simpler components to study, understand them and hope to make some accurate predictions.  If any field of epistemology were to describe a human embryo as "just a cluster of cells" or " a parasite" it would be science.  However, due to our intervention earlier and earlier into the pregnancy to save lives and being able to look at what is inside the womb in unprecedented level of detail, scientific knowledge has had a significant impact on our definition of personhood according to Roe.

The Missing Generation

We talked about the technical and legal aspects.  What about demographics?  They're changing and in ways unforeseen by the people that advocated for and defended Roe.

How many adults--do you think--feel lucky to be born to mothers that chose to have their babies instead of aborting them?  When Roe was decided in 1973 this wasn't a question many would have asked because they never knew of a different time.  Some desperate souls might have gone the risky route of a back alley abortion but this was rare and could be dismissed as something "other people" did.

Well, people born in 1973 became the people of Generation X followed by Millenials, both of whom can vote now.  Generation Z is following close behind and approaching voting age with some polling indicating Generation Z to be the most conservative generation since the silent era.

How lucky do you think a lot of these people think they are?  Maybe they think that they barely dodged a doctor's scalpel?  How are they looking at the generations before them that implemented segregation?  How will they look at the Baby Boomers that ushered in free love and when the expected pregnancies occurred, decided to sue over their right to end them instead of accepting the consequences?  How do you think they would feel knowing that by the time they reached voting age, an excess of 50 million of their peers never got to experience life.  This is equivalent to the number of people killed in World War II!

Before you think I'm going off the deep end with this line of thought, I want you to consider Norma McCorvey. She was the one who sued over the right to have an abortion and was the plaintiff in Roe v Wade.  She seemed to have regretted her responsibility in the Roe ruling once the social impact on women and society became apparent.  She became a Pro-life activist who tried to get Roe overturned until her death in 2017.

So yes, it's completely within the realm of possibility that younger generations might want to do away with the practice after realizing the impact it has had on their peer group.

Pro-choice Falling to Natural Selection

Population genetics studies the distribution of certain traits within populations and how environmental factors can effect how often those traits appear within that population.  Some traits are better suited in the environment and will thrive, resulting in these traits appearing more often in the population than attributed to chance due to the individuals with that trait outcompeting individuals without that trait.  Traits that aren't suited for the environment tend to appear less frequently in that population or be eliminated (extinct) entirely because they simply can't thrive in that environment.

Behavioral genetics is another branch of study that is providing evidence to support the idea that some behavioral traits have a genetic foundation and influence.  Some research is even indicating that our politics and religious belief systems may have genetic roots.  It would be an oversimplification to say that there is a Pro-life gene or Pro-choice gene, but perhaps the interaction and expression of multiple genes (the genotype) creates a psychological and behavioral framework that would cause an individual to gravitate towards being Pro-life or Pro-Choice.

Both population genetics and behavioral genetics will explain the tendency of our population to become more Pro-life over time and could result in the passage of laws and court cases that restrict abortion or even overturning Roe.  The reasoning is pretty straight-forward.  Since 1973 many people that may have inherited the psychological and behavioral genotype that would favor a pro-choice orientation aren't being born in sufficient numbers because many of those pregnancies are being aborted, hence reducing the occurrence of that genotype being expressed in future generations.  Meanwhile, the pro-life genotypes are being passed down at a greater rate by virtue of being born. So we start to see a shift in population genetics because now the social and legal environment is selecting against pro-choice genotypes while allowing pro-life genotypes to thrive.

The changes in these demographics might be imperceptible at first, but when these changes get compounded over years and generations, it could result in a significant change in the population genetics in favor of pro-life.  The college student that so vigorously advocated for her right to have abortions in 1973 might be scratching her head right about now, wondering why there are so many pro-life people coming out of the woodwork.  Simply, the population genetics that existed in the US in 1973 has changed because pro-choice people aren't passing on their genes as effectively.  They are now a rapidly-dwindling minority.

Genetics, alone, won't explain the change in attitude of the public towards abortion.  Socialization and persuasion does play a part as well.  But socialization and persuasion would be the only tools available to the pro-choice cause.  They aren't replacing their numbers by reproducing.  Pro-life people are reproducing at a much faster rate and the developments in science and medicine that I described above are making their job at persuasion a lot easier.

The Canary in the Coal Mine

I think we should be paying more attention to what is happening in black communities.  Not just because we are suppose to be a tolerant and inclusive nation, although that should be a big reason.  It's because any policies or laws that we implement are going to be felt first by the black communities.  Second, the effect of those laws seem to be more pronounced in black communities compared to other communities.  This doesn't mean that white communities won't feel the effects.  They'll just feel them later and in a diminished fashion.

In effect, black communities are the Canary in the Coal Mine when it comes to the health of our society.  By this model I'm proposing, we can evaluate the effects of Roe on our society by looking at how it impacts the black community and it hasn't been good.  Devastating, in fact. Is there such a thing as self-genocide?

Let's consider that blacks make up 12-13% of our population.  Let's assume that half of that are black women.  So about 6-7% of the population is black women.  This small segment of the population is responsible for 28% of the abortions in the US during 2014!  Which puts the abortion rate among black women 3 times higher than for white women.

In a city like New York City, there are more black babies aborted than born alive!  Even when controlling for poverty or low household income, black women are over represented in abortion statistics.  Gang violence and police shootings get a lot of press these days, but abortion rights has truly been a silent killer in black communities.

Don't think that this is just a black problem.  It's a white problem too.  Liberalism itself is actively being culled and this is effecting the demographics of our country, both ideologically and racially.

Public Opinion is Misleading

When looking at public opinion, you wouldn't think that anything I've just described is having any effect on public opinion polls.  Besides a large spike in pro-choice support immediately after Roe was decided, public opinion on the issue of abortion is roughly 50/50 pro-life/pro-choice.

However, there is nuance.  Many people that identify as pro-choice still favor restrictions on abortion.  Most of them oppose partial birth abortions, for example.  And more than you think seem in favor of restricting abortion practices to the first trimester of pregnancy.  It's as if they acknowledge personhood of a developing fetus at a certain point, even if on a subconscious level.  Blackmun's opinion in Roe also suggest that there could be a compelling interest of the state to regulate the practice.  There are also pro-choice advocates that would never seek an abortion themselves.  They simply believe that the government shouldn't decide the issue.

On the other hand, pro-life advocates are accepting of abortion to save a mother's life.  As well as numerous allowances for other extenuating circumstances such as rape or incest.  

There seems to be a spectrum of abortion practices that people tolerate and it varies among individuals.  Where do you think this might shift the spectrum as science starts informing us about what is actually happening inside the womb?  What does this do to the spectrum when one side is no longer being born?  What does this mean to public attitude in the aggregate?  What laws do we expect to be enacted because of this? 

'Selling Out' is the Whole Point of Objectivism!

"Sell Out!" We hear this all the time.  We hear about a favored pop artist with a unique sound selling out to the establishment by going commercial.

And my take on this is, "Bravo! Good for you! Just invest wisely because it may not last."  Why would anybody else in good conscience think differently?

And isn't this the whole point?  To leverage your inborn talent and abilities to generate the means to support yourself?  A person that's good at math and becomes an accountant isn't accused of selling out, is he?  What about the athlete that can throw a 95 mph fastball?  Is he selling out when he agrees to a $5 million contract to throw fastballs for your professional baseball team?

No, 'selling out' is how we desparage musical artists that have become too successful.  I say 'too successful' because we have convinced ourselves that our newfound tallent should make some money.  We are willing to pay the $20 cover to listen to him at the bar.  Or drop a dollar into the bucket while he performs on the street corner.  You may have even dropped a cool grand to have him play at your wedding. But all this barely kept a leaky roof over his head. You weren't the guy that offered him millions of dollars if he was willing to play for him exclusively and let the rest of the world hear it.

You used to be able to impress your girlfriend by taking her to one of these cheap venues where you heard a catchy new sound that anchors a special moment between the two of you--a first date, a first kiss, the look of each other's faces in the dim lighting--so that you relive the moment every time you hear it.

Now, you have to pay a king's ransom to watch this performer on the jumbotron from the back row of a stadium with thousands of other people.  And when you balk at this legalized version of highway robbery, your girlfriend wonders what happened to the man she fell in love with. But she doesn't understand, does she?  Only you can decipher the meaning of the lyrics.  Only you can appreciate the technical aspects of his performance.  Only you recognize the innovations he brought to the genre.  And because you connect with all this on such an emotional level you actually thought you owned him.

There's only one word for this: envy!

But you don't own him, of course.  He has the same right to pursue his own happiness as you do.  While money may not buy happiness, it's difficult to live a happy life without it.  Hence the urge to leverage your skills to acquire money.

Our founding fathers wisely understood that the pursuit of happiness as an inalienable right--a right so fundamental to human existence that it is self-evident and an immutable property of God's creation of man.  A government cannot grant such rights anymore than it can give a zebra its stripes.  A primary function of government is to protect such inalienable rights from being violated.

According to Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism, man's moral purpose in life is to pursue his own happiness.  She illustrated this concept with allegorical stories such as Atlas Shrugged and Fountainhead.  Such stories depict protagonists using their gifts to better themselves as heroic figures in noble pursuit.  According to Rand the purpose of artists are to reproduce ideas in a form that others can comprehend and respond to emotionally.  An artist does have a responsibility to create art in such a way for others to perceive his message.  Art that the people can't find meaning in doesn't make the artist misunderstood or ahead of his time, it simply means he's a bad artist.

How can you tell a good artist from a bad artist?  The good artist is envied.  He's accused of being privileged.  They accuse him of selling out because he refined his craft in a way that millions of people can comprehend. It means that our government has functioned well to allow such a message in the first place.  And God has heard our prayers by placing a man on this earth for our benefit.  All while an imperfect man has found a morally righteous pursuit.

There's a reason why envy is one of the deadly sins.  It utterly poisons one's self on a deeply spiritual level, making it nearly impossible to perceive beauty in the world and to execute one's own moral purpose: the pursuit of his own happiness.

Deconstructing Socialism

Socialism is quickly becoming the cause de jour in today's political discourse, especially among progressive liberals and the young.  Of course there are plenty of us that think that implementing socialism in the US would be a very bad idea!  I'm certain that the liberal left that are resisting President Trump are living in their own private little hell right now, but it's a hell of their own making.  Well, socialism would be hell for everyone, and in that case there wouldn't be much we can do about it.

Unfortunately, listing the body counts and bloodshed due to attempts at implementing socialism--and it's close cousin communism--during the 20th century won't have any affect at pursuading the elite left against advocating for it.  Alexandra Ocassio-Cortez is young so we might excuse her ignorance, but Bernie Sanders should know better.

This essay tries to take a different tactic.  Instead of explaining disasterous outcomes, which won't convince advocates of socialism, it might be a more effective means of pursuasion to deconstruct socialism as a philosophy and show why it won't work.

Why Socialism?

History is cyclical and repeats itself.  One reason why socialism seems to be viewed more favorably now is because humanity tends to rationalize and make excuses for failed systems that have been attempted in the past, and proponents of socialism demonstrate this pretty starkly.  We already know that socialism and communism have resulted in deaths in excess of 100 million people, widespread poverty, severe degredation of the environment and cessation of technological advancement in the 20th century.  Many advocates of socialism don't deny these outcomes.  They simply argue that the economic systems being discussed weren't really socialist despite leaders claims that they were, or that the leaders of these countries weren't practicing real socialism, or that these systems became corrupted and evolved into something else.

A second reason why there is renewed interest in socialism, particularly among our youth, is because our youth have already been born and grown up in a socialist environment and they believe that it works just fine.

Yes, it's true.  Every child that is born into the world has it's needs and many of it's desires met by others that have more money and access to resources.  The child's parents provide everything including food, clothing, shelter, recreation and entertainment.  Doctors are paid for.  So is elementary education.  Public spaces and utilities are also provided.  Until adulthood, most of this child's needs and desires are provided by other people.

And when this fully-grown child goes to college?  There's scholarships!  There's grants!  Don't forget the student loans! And the parents are still expected to kick in some money for the tuition as well.  It's only when the child graduates and the loan payments come due is when they start appearing on CNN demanding that college should be free.

The irony that is lost on such students is breathtaking.  As I write this, some students at Sarah Lawrence College took offense to an editorial written by college Professor Samuel Abrams in the New York Times titled Think Professors Are Liberal? Try School Administrators.  Citing hurt feelings, a student organization presents a list of demands to the school administrators asking for a whole bunch of free stuff from laundry soap to meals to housing.

The students at Sarah Lawrence aren't the first students to try this nonsense.  Other disgruntled students on other college campuses have also grabbed headlines for similar stunts.  So not only are students in college demanding more and more free stuff, it also never occurs to them to demand cheaper tuition!  They would probably get broader public support if they did because virtually everybody agrees that tuition costs are rising out of control.  But no, they just want the freebies.

So yes, children have a fundamentally socialist mindset.

Oh, they probably realize that they should get a job and make some money, but the job should be low stress and fulfilling while the money they earn should be spent on only what they want. It's their right after all.  Why should I have to pay for stuff I need?  It's my right! So unfair!

God's Grandchildren (or Why The Youth Rebel)

God's Grandchildren describes a social phenomenon and explains why the youth tend to rebel against established norms in a society. Imagine a scenario where a group of people decide to adopt certain religious traditions and principles.  This group then organizes and builds a society that reflects and practices these principles as closely as possible.  Let us also assume that every member of this society arrived at these religious principles of their own free will and they all agree that these religious principles meet all of their social and spiritual needs--which is hardly realistic, but let's assume this for this thought exercise.  This group of people may regard themselves as God's children.

The next generation that emerges in this society would be God's grandchildren and they face a conundrum: how will they respond to being immersed in a society that they had nothing to do with setting up?  Will they assimilate? Will they adapt?  Will they rebel? Will they go along to get along?  Will they exploit cherished beliefs in a bid to acquire power for themselves?  Will they simply reject tradition and abandon their society?  Will some of them with opposing viewpoints to the established culture organize and launch a countercultural revolution?

The success or failure of such a culture will depend on how well the leadership can manage such cultural forces that occur.  In a relatively open and tolerant society people might decide to live and let live while minding their own business.  But under systems where certain freedoms are curtailed such as under communism, fascism and socialism, counter cultural movements are an existential threat to the established norms and the cultural leadership.

God's Grandchildren now presents a dilemma to the cultural leadership and those who favor the established norms.

Do you ostracize them?  Do that to enough people and they will discover each other and organize a counterculture that may grow to be much bigger than the established culture and the system collapses when they try to set new rules.

Do you imprison them or even kill them? This might be fine for socialists willing to ignore the moral quandaries or rationalize the atrocities as "for their own good".  It won't be long before the people discover that killing you in return would be "for their own good" as well. Socialism is ostensibly for the good of the people and atrocities, no matter how justified, would delegitimize such a system.  Such a system ends up collapsing because too much energy gets devoted to rooting out perceived enemies and destroying them and doesn't get invested into other pursuits that would result in an economic return.

There's the bread and circuses route in addressing the countercultural revolutions and many regimes have tried this.  However, under socialism when countercultural movements get started is when you start running out of stuff and the bread lines start getting longer.  Those countercultural movements tend to include people that no longer want to produce for a system they no longer endorse.

I gave our hypothetical scenario the best start one can possibly expect when establishing a new society, but even this won't work.  In reality it would work out even worse. In our hypothetical scenario I imagine a society created that is in agreement with everyone and includes rules, customs and laws that are established with the best intentions.  However, people rarely establish such a society voluntarily.  It's often done through violence, coercion and mob rule and socialism is no exception. This won't sway people that advocate socialism now.  They'll say that we want to establish it through a democratic process.  Democratic Socialism, they'll call it. "Just give it a chance, you'll love it!  Trust us!"

One simple question:
Democratic Socialism implies a "will of the people" type of government instead of the brutal "do what we say or we kill you" type.  So it might be worth considering an exit strategy because based on what I will outline, socialism has a shelf-life.  Despite the best of intentions, it's not possible to produce enough to sustain such a system like socialism.  Also, socialism doesn't have an effective way to deal with countercultural movements, not without things getting messy.

I suggest that we ask the democratic socialists one simple question:

If we find that socialism isn't working out for us can we vote the capitalists back in?

If a Democratic Socialist says, "no" then be very afraid.  Actually, you should be afraid anyways.  Even if the answer is "yes".  Because by the time enough people figure out that socialism isn't working and want to return to a capitalist system all the wealth and means for investment will be gone.  Here's why.

Capital Flight

For the average person, capital flight is a little difficult to imagine.  For most people, their only source of income is their job and their largest asset would be their home which--barring some natural disaster--is pretty stationary, leading most people to believe that wealth tends to be static and immobile.  It's not!  The wealthy often have multiple sources of income coming from their businesses and any other returns on investments they have made.  So it's very easy for a rich person  to shift investments and business strategies to maximize and maintain a certain desired income based on what gets taxed.  Tax dividends on stocks and they'll invest in bonds.  Tax bonds and they'll buy real estate.  Tax everything else and they start moving their wealth overseas to countries with lower tax rates.  Wealth is quite fluid and dynamic and tends to flow to low tax environments.  Even if forced to liquidate their summer home at fire sale prices, the rich will determine that the loss they take is minuscule compared to what a socialist will want to tax them for.

Whether we are talking about a huge progressive tax structure that taxes the mega rich a huge percentage while calling it their fair share, or direct seizure of their wealth, the outcome will be the same.  The rich don't sit around waiting to be taxed. Some will liquidate assets and opt for an early retirement.  Others will start moving their wealth and capital to greener pastures and invest abroad or use foreign banks as a tax shelter.  There's already a growing tendency of retired people moving abroad where the cost of living and taxes are cheaper, and these are people living on social security and other fixed incomes.  What do you think the rich will do?  Emigration would be even easier for them.  No matter the method of tax avoidance, the result will be the same:  The treasury will only see a small fraction of the projected tax revenues.

This is why countries lower their tax rates to encourage foreign investments to grow their economies.  (See Ireland for details). Local politicians often dangle all sorts of reduced tax incentives to companies to move their factories and headquarters into their cities.  Our politicians are well aware that lowering taxes encourage growth and investment while raising taxes stifles it. Prior to the passing of Trump's tax plan into law, the US already had the highest corporate income taxes in the world.  At the time, trillions of dollars were invested and kept overseas without any benefit to the US economy. Socialists want to raise them even higher!  Can you hear the sucking sound?  That's even more cash heading overseas.  That's capital flight!

The Laffer Curve

The idea that raising taxes can actually reduce government revenue while lowering taxes can raise revenue is counterintuitive to a lot of people.  For the skeptics that aren't sold on the idea that raising taxes rates reduces government revenues, I introduce you to the Laffer Curve.

The Laffer curve is an economic model for taxation that was developed by an economist Arthur Laffer.  The model might have limited ability to predict government revenue at a given tax rate but it is useful for determining if we expect government revenue to increase or decrease when we change the tax rate.  Imagine that you were able to plot government revenue as a function of tax rates.  To socialists and a great many people they would expect the resulting graph to look linear like this:

An illustration of the idea that higher tax rates will increase government revenue.

That's because their brains are broken.  Ask yourself one question?  If the government taxed you at a rate of 100%, how much would tax revenue would they receive?  Don't bother looking for your tax receipts because I already know the answer.  The government would make $0 at the 100% rate because you wouldn't bother working if the government took everything you earned.  You would sit back and let some other chump knock himself out.  But nobody wants to be that chump so the government gets nothing while everybody sits around doing nothing but complaining about not having enough stuff.

Neither is the government getting any revenue at the 0% tax rate because you are keeping everything you earned.  Which sounds nice, but there are bridges, roads, armies and schools to be maintained so the government needs some revenue at least.  So it taxes the people at some rate (t) and receives some revenue (R).  We now know 3 points on this graph and determine that the curve isn't linear and most likely parabolic (or U-shaped):

The Laffer Curve Illustrating that government revenue is optimized at a particular tax rate between 0 and 100%

The Laffer Curve clearly illustrates that there is a tax rate between 0 and 100% where government revenue will be at its maximum.  It also illustrates that if our current tax rate is on the right side, or downward sloping part of the curve, raising taxes would just make things worse.  The reader might want to pause and examine the curve and determine if what I said makes sense.

The reason this works out the way it does is because, in reality, we're not taxing income, but productivity!  Whether we are talking about your weekly paycheck or the income statements of our largest megacorporations, it's not the income that's being taxed, it's what is produced!  This is the economic model utilized by President Reagan for his Supply side economics theory and the same model that President Trump utilized for his recent tax reforms.

What is our tax rate?

There can be plenty of legitimate debate about where on the Laffer Curve our current tax rate lies.   I suggest that when we answer this question we consider all taxes that have been imposed or mandated by the government.  Let's say that Joe the Plumber makes the median income of about $60,000/yr.  Joe is going to pay roughly $6,500 in federal income tax, or almost 11%.  But FICA also adds another 7-8% or $4,500 bringing the total tax liability to $11,000, and we aren't even close to being finished with our friend, Joe. Which state is Joe living in?  A lot of states have their own income taxes and most are around the 5% range which means another $3,000 worth of Joe the Plumber's productivity.  His tax liability is now at $14,000.  Then there's all the sales taxes and property taxes being levied on Joe at the local level.

Chart showing Effective Tax Rate as a percentage of income by state (from Wikipedia)

Joe can adopt a lifestyle that minimizes some of these but he can only do so much.  If he doesn't have any vices like alcohol and tobacco, Joe can avoid those sin taxes.  If Joe rents, he can save on some property taxes but he's still paying the property taxes of his landlord.  It's just hidden and amortized in his rent payments.

So far, I've only talked about taxes.  What about all that other stuff?  What about expenses that the government mandates for us.  We don't have an option of refusal so they are effectively taxes under a different name.  Obamacare?  A silver plan for a married couple is about $700/ mo or another $8,400 a year that Joe must pay.  He'll probably get a subsidy which means that a richer person is paying a part of the tax for him.  Or he can just take the penalty which might be a little cheaper when he files his taxes.

Or maybe we can give Joe a break and tax the corporations instead.  They have deep pockets. Well, it turns out that corporations don't sit around waiting to be taxed either.  They just pass the added  expense onto the consumer. Economist Walter E. Williams describes this in more detail:

If a tax is levied on a corporation, and if the corporation hopes to survive, it will have one of three responses to that tax or some combination thereof.  It will raise the price of its product, lower dividends or lay off workers.  In each case a flesh-and-blood person is made worse off.  The important point is that a corporation is a legal fiction and as such does not pay taxes. As it turns out, corporations are merely tax collectors for the government.

You can replace the word "tax" in this passage with other government mandated expenses for corporations such as "fees", "insurance" or "minimum wage" and the same thing will happen: The middle class gets hosed.

Remember when I said that taxes are taxes on productivity instead of income?  Check this out: Most states charge a tax that we colloquially call car insurance.  Joe likely drives but if he tries to take the bus to avoid that tax then he effectively doubles his commute time. Which makes Joe less efficient with his time (meaning lower productivity)!

Do I need to go on?  We might look at all the marginal tax rates and think that they aren't too bad--one of the lowest in the world!  But in reality, we are paying a lot more than the official tax rate suggests.  Even if we acknowledge this and pass a law to give Joe a break by raising his wages, that is still an effective tax on the corporations that employ him and that added expense simply gets passed on to us in the form of more expensive goods and services.

So answering the question about where on the Laffer Curve we are is a more difficult question to answer than we expect. But the easier question to answer is whether or not we are on the downward sloping side of the curve.  If the answer is yes, then lowering that tax rate will increase government revenue.  And we have seen these effects repeatedly throughout history.

For a modern day example consider that American firms repatriated $300 BILLION dollars of cold hard cash from overseas when Trumps tax reforms went into effect.

To put this in perspective, consider that $38 billion repatriated to the U.S. in Q1 of 2017.  While that's certainly not chump change, it is miniscule by comparison to the $300 billion that was repatraited in Q1 of 2018, after the Republican tax cuts.

That's $300 billion dollars that can be reinvested into the US economy.  That's additional tax revenue that the federal government wouldn't have seen at the previously higher tax rates.  Remember when I said capital flows to lower tax rate environments?

The Laffer Curve is a pretty effective tool for shutting down any wannabe socialist.  I'm speaking from experience.  I've participated in many debates online. Whenever I bring up the Laffer Curve, the discussion dies.  You either hear crickets or the socialists want to change the subject.  It's a mathematical argument that is pretty easy to understand which means that they can't throw mud at you and call you a racist.  It's wonderful!

Other skeptics will pivot and shift the discussion to our growing budget deficits and national debt.  I'm in agreement with them in this case.  But if government revenues through lower taxes actually increase while deficits increase, then that means that spending has also increased.  This should suggest to us that our current fiscal issues are spending problems and not problems with taxation or making richer people than us pay their "fair share".  So the solution to this problem would be for the government to spend less not more!  Socialism would mandate that the government spends more; it's the polar opposite of what's needed to solve the problem.  

A word of warning:  Feminists are starting to brand mathematics as tools of the patriarchy to suppress women.  This would include the Laffer Curve so be ready.  I recommend reminding the feminists about all the female privileges they are enjoying and how much tax revenue is being used to fund programs that benefit women disproportionately.

So how can the rich be so selfish as to go through such great lengths to avoid some additional taxes for the benefit of society?

I'm glad you asked!

The Endowment Effect

The endowment effect describes a psychological tendency of people to place higher value on things that they own than they normally would if they did not have possession of them.

To explain this another way, a person has an expectation to sell an object he has for more than what he would expect to pay for it if he didn't own it.  This might not seem rational to our modern sensibilities but it does explain why the rich seem determined to hold on to what they own while the poorer people don't see a big deal about their demand that the rich should part with a little more of their wealth.  The poor people actually see $1,000,000 that they don't have as not being worth as much as it is to the rich person in possession of the same $1,000,000.  This behavior may have roots in our evolutionary past.

Evolutionary psychology is a recent field of study that postulates that a lot of behavioral characteristics were evolved adaptations that improved our chances at survival and are passed on genetically.  Liberals that advocate for socialism don't like the idea that unflattering parts of a person's nature might be as embedded in our DNA as eye color or height.  Their position is that our greed has been socialized and that if we simply change the system to penalize greed than we will be socialized to be less greedy and share our wealth more.  But this won't be the case.

There's no doubt that socializing plays some role in cognitive and emotional development in human beings.  It's one reason why it's even possible to raise children to function in society.  But is the endowment effect socialized or is it an instinct rooted in our evolutionary past?  There are a couple of ways that evolutionary psychologists try to answer this question.

• Cross cultural surveys can be performed.  If the same behavioral characteristic is manifested in different cultures, especially cultures that are radically different from us, then it's strong evidence that the behavioral trait is evolved and passed on genetically instead of being socialized.
• Studies in other species besides humans can be performed.  Primates are preferable because they are more genetically similar to us, but other species are still fair game.  If the same behavioral characteristics manifest themselves in other species then it's strong evidence that such behaviors are rooted in our evolutionary past.  Other animal species don't have the highly developed economic and political systems that we have, but behaviors such as defending of territory and mate guarding can be seen as the endowment effect in action in other species.

Steffen Huck et al argue pretty convincingly in The Economic Journal for the case that the endowment effect is an evolutionary development.  The TL;DR version of this is that individuals or tribes that have positive endowment effects are better suited to survival and outcompeting members that exhibit no endowment effect.  Huck believes that the endowment effect provides some leverage during negotiations that allows greater acquisition of resources without giving up too much.

The whole point of this discussion about the endowment effect is to illustrate why increased taxation on the rich isn't going to yield any significant results.  The fact that the rich have assets means the endowment effect is very much a factor on why they aren't willing to give it up willingly.  And if one of these assets are producing income or offering status then it's even more of a threat to the endowment effect.  Of course, threats, coercion and violence can be used to separate the rich from their money, but then it is no longer democratic socialism.  It becomes the jackbooted, goosestepping Venezualan type of socialism.

For a modern day example, look at what happened in France when they tried taxing the rich people.  According to an editorial in the Washington Examiner:

Three years on, President Hollande is shame-facedly scrapping the 75 percent rate, having forcibly re-learned an ancient truth: Wealth taxes don’t redistribute wealth; they redistribute people. Thousands of well-off Frenchmen made the easy journey north, including the country’s richest man, Bernard Arnault.

The lesson can't be any more clearer.  Wealth flows to the lowest tax rates.  Especially when you factor in the unprecedented mobility that the rich have. When a rich person's lowest tax haven is a short train ride away, the decision becomes obvious and the endowment effect becomes easy to fulfill.

Biology always wins!

At this point one might wonder if we can structure society where the endowment effect no longer grants a person a survival advantage?  Or that the endowment effect is penalized?  Perhaps this way humans would evolve to be more socialist and less likely to resist the seizure of their own property?

Behavioral characteristics rooted in evolution don't change overnight.  It took millions of years of evolution and selection pressure for something like the endowment effect to take root genetically.  It will likely take just as long to reverse it.  Can socialism last that long?  It's debatable whether or not any political or economic system can survive millions of years.  Recorded human history has only lasted 10,000 years, and that's if we are being charitable in our estimates.  It wasn't until 5,000 years ago when human civilization really took off.  Prior to 5,000 years ago, there isn't much preserved in the archeological record.  A million years isn't just a long time, it's a freakishly impossibly long time!  The endowment effect is here to stay for as long as life exists on this planet.

Not to mention that the endowment effect is why people are motivated to produce and innovate in the first place.  What's the point of producing something that you have no psychological attachment to?  Then what output can a socialist tax?  What assets can they seize?

No.  I wiser group of people might except the reality of human nature for what it is and try and design an economic and political system that takes the endowment effect into consideration, and perhaps, channel it into something that benefits all of civilization.  Capitalism fits that criteria pretty nicely. The ownership of what one produces would satisfy his endowment effect on a psychological level, motivate him to produce a surplus that he can trade and barter with others to meet his other needs and desires, all while keeping the machines of society running for the benefit of all.  WIN-WIN all around.

50 Shades of Pink

When we think of the color red in a political or economic sense we think of communism.  In a strictly communist society there is no individual ownership of anything, not anything of significance.  A person that was living in the Soviet Union might say that he owns his comb or his cookware, but the state owned the home he lived in along with all the businesses and means of production (aka Enterprises).  In effect, anything that an individual can use to parley, invest or use to improve his station in life was state owned.  Starting a business yourself was forbidden, although I'm sure people did this on the sly and a black market emerged--a black market the adopted capitalism as its model!  The endowment effect was unfulfilled while productivity stagnated and declined resulting in collapse.

Advocates of socialism may not advocate for strict communism.  They may try and present the pinker shade of communism called democratic socialism.  For a while, such advocates pointed to Venezuela as an example of how well it could work.  Venezuela was a country that had political stability, free elections, access to the sea, a year-round growing season and abundant oil reserves.  If there was any country on earth that could make socialism work it would be Venezuela and even that country couldn't make it work.

I already mentioned France trying for a deeper shade of pink.

Advocates of democratic socialism are now pointing to other European countries as models of what they are trying to implement.  But not Greece!  Or Spain!  Or Portugal!

Then they look to Scandinavia as a democratic socialist model but there's a problem.  Scandinavia is trying to be less pink!

This passage from the linked article in Fortune is a pretty damning testimonial:

If you look at the years in which these countries built the wealth their citizens now enjoy, it was long before leftist ideas took hold. For instance, from 1870 through 1936, Sweden was the fastest growing economy in the world. But after 1975—when the Swedish state began to expand in earnest—Sweden’s economy noticeably slowed, falling from the 4th richest in the world to the 13th by the mid 1990s.

Soooo, a capitalist economy resulted in Sweden being among the richest countries in the world, then the socialists took over and growth stopped.  Fortunately, Sweden started reversing course and growth might be returning:

Since the 1990s, the total taxation of the Swedish economy as a percentage of GDP has fallen more than 5%, while labor market reforms, such as Denmark’s cutting of unemployment benefits have helped Scandanavian economies rocket up measures of economic freedom. 

Oh, what about Norway?

Well, Norway finances it's socialist system with oil primarily.  In fact that's how a lot of socialist regimes start out and it doesn't save them from disaster anymore than a resource poor country.  How does a socialist reconcile this model of oil financed socialism with their idea that we should be living off of renewable energy?  Hello Green New Deal?  Hello?  Bueller? A question for another time.

Norway is smart enough to leave the oil production to the experts instead of appointing a political crony to run the oil business as a government enterprise, but this only delays the inevitable.  Plus, Norway's total population is less then a large US city.  That's a lot fewer mouths to feed and hospital beds needed to take care of the sick and injured.  

Uncle Sam's Guarantee

Even if Norway and other countries in Europe make good models for socialism, it's because the US government and the American consumer covers many expenses that these countries would have had to cover themselves if Uncle Sam had other priorities.

The world should be very concerned if the US tries to duplicate socialism, democratic or otherwise.  For one thing, it would make the US more of a global magnet for every hard luck case in Latin America than we already are.  Those immigrants will need to be housed, clothed, fed and educated, causing public spending to rise dramatically.  

I will also bother to note the one thing Norway or any other European country doesn't have is a military capable of defending itself.  They can indulge in the socialist experiment because their defense is virtually guaranteed by the US, even for countries not officially in NATO.  Only 4 countries in the NATO alliance are meeting their military spending obligations stipulated under the alliance--at least 2% of the country's GDP.  Even that 2% wouldn't be enough for a country like Estonia to ward off an aggressive action by Russia, for example.  Norway's model works because there is a larger more prosperous country willing to spend more on it's defense.  Same thing with every other European country.

So we can say that the US is effectively subsidizing the defense of Europe courtesy of the American tax payer.  What else is the American tax payer in the US subsidizing in Europe?  Healthcare, perhaps?  If an American pays $100 for a prescription so that a Norwegian only needs to pay $10, I would call that another subsidy courtesy of the American tax payer.  Not to mention all the R&D investments we make so that a European country can buy it off the shelf and provide healthcare to its citizens at cost.

Let's talk about trade surpluses!  The US generally imports more than it's exporting which means we don't get to sell as many goods to a European country as we are buying from Europe.  This means Europe makes more money from Americans than Americans make from Europeans resulting in more tax revenues for European governments than for American governments.  Even if the effective tax rates between the two trading partners were equal the trade imbalance means that the country with the trade surplus is being subsidized by the country running a trade deficit.

Let's talk about jobs!  How many jobs does the US lose to emerging economies?  Millions and millions of jobs.  An American loses out on an opportunity and income so that a foreigner becomes employed and makes more money to raise his living standards.  More income for foreigners means more tax revenue for that foreign government and less tax revenue for the US government.

I could go on but you get the point.  A socialist country gets to try out some socialist principles because a richer more prosperous country that is willing to defend it and trade with it has already guaranteed that lifestyle.  Once the US starts getting pinker--or God forbid, red--that free lunch is over.  The US would eventually need to cut military spending which would make other countries more vulnerable to aggressive neighbors like Russia or China.  Trade routes will be under threat as the US scales back its navy.  Since US citizens get to keep less of their own money, they will buy fewer imports, effecting the companies in other socialist countries.  Since there will be less incentive to research and innovate, quality of life stagnates and declines (some would say this is already happening in the current tax environments).  

At this point things get truly bad.  Companies lose revenue and profit and need to shut down.  People lose their jobs.  If the democratic socialists determine that an industry is vital, the government might decide to step in and run it, but it will be run inefficiently and it would result in shortages.  People will riot and the government might not have any choice but put down the unrest the only way it knows how, brutally!  At this point, we are looking at some very dark days, not just for the US but globally.

Learning from the Present

"Learning from history" has turned into one of the more pretentious phrases that has arisen with the proliferation of the internet.  Too many respondents throw this term around in debates after reading an article on Wikipedia.  Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, once said that history always repeats because there has been a lot of it.  So how about we just try and learn from the present?  Let's look for other models of socialism right now and see if they have delivered on its promise.

How about Venezuela?  Nah! Too easy.

Cuba?  Too red.

Let's look closer to home:

Socialism in the Service Industry:
If you're stuck in a minimum wage job, or a job that relies on tips, and not seem to be moving up the economic ladder, it might be because you suck at managing money and socialism isn't going to save you.

We can look into the service industry to see how democratic ownership of a company might work out under democratic socialism.  Waiters and others in the service industry that rely on tips to supplement their income practice a certain form of socialism among themselves.  It is pretty well known that people that work in the service industry tend to be pretty generous tippers themselves.  We're not talking the 15-20% that the service industry tends to advocate, but often, 30, 40 or even 50% tips are common from customers that often happen to work in the service industry themselves.  The reasoning is often based in empathy; service members have first hand knowledge about how difficult it is in their industry and tend to tip generously.

I don't criticize their spirit of generosity and willingness to help their fellow man. However, I wish to point out that, on the macroscale, servers that rely on tipping to supplement their income are redistributing their wealth by doing this--they are already practicing their own particular form of socialism.  And they are doing it badly, even by socialism standards.  If you are a server that is typically receiving 15-20% in tips but tipping other service workers 30-50%, how does this math add up?  How does this not make you more poor than you already are?  What's your plan to get you out of whatever financial pit that you find yourself in?  Relying on a few overly generous customers that might tip a higher percentage or lobbying the public to increase the standard tipping policy to a higher percentage won't work because you'll just give it away.  Neither will increasing the minimum wage work out well for you if you just give it away.  And if such a minimum wage increase might be too much for your employer to maintain his margins then you might find yourself out of a job!

No.  What would be most effective would be is to tip the standard 15-20% if you must and take the additional cash that you would have tipped to satiate your sense of empathy and invest it in a mutual fund or index fund instead.  This is how rich people became rich.  This is how you can move up the economic ladder.  This is how capitalism works.  Because you are using capital (in this case your tips) and growing it into something larger.

Granted that people higher up the economic ladder have more capital to play with and get even richer a lot quicker.  But consider that a mere $100/month investment over 40 years can yield $150,000 because of compound interest (meaning that your yields from the original investment keeps getting reinvested for additional yields).  That's not considered rich, but a nice nest egg in retirement--perhaps enough to buy a house with cash.  If you want more in retirement then you can invest more.   IRA's are capped at $5,500/yr.  That's about $450/mo so go nuts!

Socialism destroys capital by redistributing it because if wealth is being redistributed than it can't be invested.  This is the primary problem: under socialism, investing rarely happens, either by the government or private industry.  So there is no growth. At least wealth redistribution in the service industry is done on a voluntary basis.  If you find that you need to make your rent payment this month and can't tip as much as you would like, then nothing bad will happen beyond a little public criticism.  Do this under a socialist government and you're breaking the law, and the government will enforce the law brutally because they are already pulling out couch cushions for spare change as the economy spirals into the ground.

Socialism in the Workplace:
Or consider this true story:

I used to work for a company that allowed different departments to order their own office supplies.  This meant that there were several different account numbers that our vendor needed to keep track of, but they didn't seem to mind.  And they would consider total orders company wide for any volume discounts that we might qualify for.  So everything was great.

However, the financial crisis of 2008 caused a lot of companies to tighten their belts and reduce expenses.  My company felt that there were too many duplicate orders on common office supply items when ordered by department so they thought to consolidate ordering of the office supplies under one of the executive assistants to save money by eliminating duplicate orders.

The result was a disaster!  There were shortages on many common supplies resulting in emergency runs to local stores where we had to pay the premium retail prices (more expensive).  When an order of new supplies did come, certain items tended to get hoarded by people that didn't want to get stuck without those supplies.  If you were in the only department that needed a particular item like glue sticks you were also left running to the local stores because the company didn't want to buy in volume what only a few people used.  They considered it wasteful.

After a few months, management still couldn't get a handle on the situation and projects would get delayed because it took longer to do things when you have to hunt for the items needed to do your job.  Management wisely decided to return purchasing authority to the department heads with a spending cap and things worked out a lot better.

At least in this scenario, we were able to run to the stores when shortages happened.  Under socialism this wouldn't have been an option and some operations would have ground to a halt.

There's many more examples I think people can come up with in their own lives.

Needless to say, a critical evaluation of the philosophy and an understanding of human nature demonstrates pretty succinctly why socialism as a political and economic philosophy won't work.  So don't let yourself be convinced by those people that say it will be different this time.  It won't be.

Once the fallacies underpinning the socialist systems are addressed, a socialist will start resorting to pleas to empathy.  Never forget that a human is a social animal and desires approval from their group and empathy allows people to signal to their group that they are a good person.  But you aren't a good person by depriving others of their agency or enjoying the fruits of their prosperity.  This is an act of cruelty disguised as benevolence.