Flashback – Rights

Here are some ideas about our constitutional rights from an entry four years ago. The same problematic behaviors have been even more evident since then. 

[Thinking about how people behave toward the rights of others lately can become very confusing.

About six weeks ago leading up to the [2016] election, there was quite a bit of talk about exercising your right to vote. Public service ads appeared on TV about how important it was to vote and how your vote made a difference. As is usually the case around election time, some volunteers worked with car pools and vans to make sure all voters were able to get to the polls. Some continued to subscribe to the argument that requiring voters to present photo identification at the polls was a burden and discriminatory. In short, many people came together in an effort to make it as easy as possible for everyone interested to exercise their right to vote.

We also have a right to bear arms, yet I have seen no efforts to make it as easy as possible to buy a gun. In fact the opposite is true. Exercising this right is burdened by several requirements: background check, waiting period, etc. Where are the people who will drive me to the gun show or the firing range if I have trouble getting there on my own? – The idea of this seems silly. There aren’t television ads encouraging people to exercise this right, and most comments are to the contrary. Two rights receive opposite reactions.

We also have a right to trial by jury and to be considered innocent until proven guilty. This seems to be a right everyone is in favor of for themselves, but objects to for others. If law enforcement or courts do not do what citizens think they should have done, based on knowledge of the case picked up from the news or social media, the protesters begin demanding “justice.” Sometimes they even ignore the crime victim’s or their family’s pleas for calm and patience as the process plays out.  

We also have a right to free speech. Supposedly you can say what you want to without repercussions, particularly from the government. But students at various universities protest against the appearance of outside speakers because what they say may be offensive or not correspond with their worldview. Students are supposedly in college to learn. Sometimes their ideas are wrong, and sometimes it’s just educational to understand another’s point of view. Instead, they protest demanding a cancellation of the event, or they attend to heckle the speaker already having made up their minds that the person is evil or offensive. When confronted with the idea of freedom of speech, they smugly argue that the First Amendment only applies to government interference.

It has gotten to the point where a few universities have adopted the Chicago Principle, originated at the University of Chicago. It holds that if the speech or written statement is legal and not threatening, harassing, defamatory, or a substantial invasion of privacy, it must be considered, discussed and debated regardless of whether it may be thought by some to be offensive, unwise, immoral, or wrong-headed. This action tries to move the focus from some vague notion of offense or anticipated offense to one of learning.

And it’s not just students. Society bans the use of certain words by certain people, and they can only refer to them by their initials, even when discussing the word itself. Many people feel they must consider their word choice very carefully for fear of committing an inadvertent offense or micro-aggression. If you refer to America as a melting pot, you are demeaning someone’s heritage and traditions. If you refer to our Forefathers, you are subjugating half the population. And on it goes. Political rallies have become scenes of name-calling and accusations rather than of debate and the post-rally walk to the car features fighting in the streets. 

Critical thinking leads to the conclusion that we don’t treat rights the same. Some are encouraged, some defended, some ignored, some opposed and some applied selectively. Isn’t that worth considering?]

Behavior Matters More Than Politics

Tomorrow is Election Day and many people will be going to the polls hoping to send their candidates to Washington or to the state capital to solve all our problems, or at least the most pressing ones.

The problem is, as I have written so many times here, the solutions to most of those problems lie not in Washington but with individuals choosing better behaviors. More evidence of this came last week in an article from CNN with the headline: “How to evade the leading cause of death in the United States.” 

The biggest killer of Americans between the ages of 1 and 44 in 2016 (the last year with available data) was unintentional injury. The detailed explanation shows that these are directly related to behavior, actions and decisions of the victims or of those close to them.

The first category is basic home safety. The main problem here is fires, which killed 2,775 people and injured 11,025 more. Most fires started when someone was cooking. Experts recommend simple things like having working smoke alarms and carbon monoxide detectors along with a fire extinguisher in every house. Many cities have volunteer programs to inspect and install smoke alarms for people who cannot afford them. Other home accidents are falls and drownings.

Next comes basic road safety. Here CNN reviews the requirements for children’s car seats and booster seats. But a huge problem is distracted driving, especially cellphone use while driving. Do we really need more laws to fix this?

Third on the list is basic bicycle safety. After checking the bike itself to make sure it is in good working order, it’s important to make sure others easily see you. Reflectors, bright clothing and a light at night are critical accessories. The article reminds bikers to ride on the right side of the road, with the traffic, obey other traffic laws and watch the road ahead for obstacles. “Cyclists also suggest tucking your right pant leg into your sock and your shoelaces into your shoe, so they don’t get caught in your bike chain.” And most important, always wear a helmet.

This is only a short list of direct causes of death, but add as indirect causes: smoking, eating and drinking to excess. These are related to the top three causes of death in the country overall: heart disease, cancer and lower respiratory diseases. They are also descriptions of problematic behavior.

And notice the use of the word basic in all the safety advice above. All these life-saving suggestions relate to behavior. They are precautions everyone can take to make life safer for themselves and their loved ones. Collective action in these areas alone could raise life expectancy in America significantly (without a single new law to protect us).

None of these precautions needs any government action, although the government is always happy to intervene where we fail to take responsibility for ourselves and our loved ones or show we don't have the discipline to kick destructive habits. (Look at the opioid epidemic.) So as you vote tomorrow, don’t expect miracles. Your future life and happiness are, for the most part, really in your own hands. That is true of every one of us.

Another Look at Lawsuits

In the past I have objected to unusually high judgments or settlements from legal action as behavioral failures in economic understanding and responsibility.

A plaintiff experiences a relatively minor injury, often because he was not paying attention or taking adequate care.  Examples abound:  “A man police call a Good Samaritan may face a lawsuit after injuring the alleged robber he thwarted;” a $200,000 settlement for bites from bedbugs in a hotel; $95 million to an employee for being “groped, teased, talked dirty to, and poked by her manager;” or a California man at a fast food restaurant who won $1.5 million because he heard the manager mumble what he thought was a discriminatory comment when he asked for a second napkin.  Certainly some of these people deserved some compensation, but the outcomes are often far out of proportion to the injury, real or imagined.

In these cases the lawyers move in to convince the injured party that someone else must be forced to pay.  Legal representation is done on a contingency fee – if you don’t win, you don’t pay.  It’s free money.  The injured party, weak in the dimension of responsibility, agrees.

After the trial, the jury, weak in the dimension of economic understanding, doesn’t consider that the outcome of the lawsuit reflects not only on this case but also on future cases and future actions of many parties.  It portends similar actions from similar juries, which causes all insurance companies, not just the one involved, to assume higher risk.  Their customers, all of us, cover this higher risk by paying higher premiums.  Likewise any other companies in the same industry as the one being sued must think about changing practices, which adds cost to their operations, cost that again turn into higher prices for customers.  One obvious cost is printing or stenciling those ridiculous warning labels I’ve written about before.  The outcome has a cumulative effect, plus money is transferred from one party to another (with the lawyers taking their cut) with no overall benefit to society – nothing is produced, improved or made more efficient.

But when I saw the story about the Alabama man who “was awarded $7.5 million in a lawsuit against Walmart after he tripped while buying a watermelon,” I had a different idea.  Back in 2015, the 59-year-old man apparently caught his foot on a pallet where the watermelons were on display and broke his hip.  Now a broken hip is painful and makes life more difficult for a time, but the store reports that the same display continues to be used.  It’s hard to imagine that the store was at fault if other customers have negotiated the watermelon pallets for the last two years without further problems.

But with Wal-Mart’s reputation as promoted by the media, it’s easy to portray them as evil in this case too.  This is a further case of poor economic understanding.  As this source (among others, including Forbes) reminds us:  “Ideologues who rant against Wal-Mart do not understand economics. In a market economy, success goes to those businesses that best and most efficiently serve consumer needs.”

My latest idea is that most juries don’t even get to economic considerations due to the concept of survivor guilt.  The rough definition from Wikipedia is “a mental condition that occurs when a person believes they have done something wrong by surviving a traumatic event when others did not.”  In this case, the traumatic event is life itself.  They see a person with a broken hip or other injury, physical or psychological, and think of how lucky they are for two reasons - first, lucky not to be in his shoes and second, lucky to be in a position to help out (with someone else’s money) to assuage their own guilt.  Economic understanding never enters the conversation.

The more I think about this idea of survivor guilt, the more it explains many of the other seemingly non-critical-thinking behaviors in our society.  Someone else is always worse off and needs defending or bailing out.  And it’s especially easy to support a cause when other people’s money, efforts or rights are sacrificed.

Some Unusual and Outrageous Thoughts

Sometimes, just trying to make sense of what’s going on in the world is a challenge.  So many seeming contradictions go ignored.  So much silliness just slips by.  People seem to drift along, not noticing what is not in their direct line of sight or what doesn’t agree with their preconceptions.  Consider these examples.

It’s not a bad bet that the BBC is using voice-recognition software to provide closed captioning when you see the name of the president of China (Xi Jin Ping) transcribed as “Tamoxifen Ping” once and “she’s in pain” later in the same broadcast.  I don’t think robots are ready to take over the world yet.

All hail the mute button!  I rarely listen to TV ads.  I use the mute button.  Back in the 1960s the TV just droned on, in some cases telling us how cool it was to smoke cigarettes.  The only way to avoid these commercial spots was to ignore them, using a kind of mental mute button.  The alternative would be to get up every 10 minutes, walk over to the TV and turn down the volume and wait.

Now we have remote control with a mute button, but government consumer protection and other advocates think we are unable to resist the marketing lure.  They can’t tie us to the mast to resist the Siren Song as Ulysses' crew did for him, so they must pass rules and regulations to protect us.

Before the mute button came along, when you didn’t agree with something or didn’t want to hear it, you tuned it out or walked away.  Could it be that generations growing up with mute buttons have not only forgotten how to use them, but have also failed to develop that mental mute button and are unable to ignore what they don’t want to hear or change the channel?  Perhaps we did have another options in the 60s.  Instead of turning down the volume, we could have started chanting anti-smoking slogans and holding up signs during the ads.  We could have burst into our neighbor’s house, in a holier-than-thou crusade with signs and chanting, to make sure they weren’t exposed to information we found objectionable.  What a good idea!

Autopsies of former football players show a prevalence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a neurodegenerative disease “associated with memory loss, impulse control problems, depression and eventually dementia.”  It causes irritability and changes in mood and behavior.  In a discussion of side effects Harvard tells us:  “Behavioral changes are typically seen as problems with impulse control which can lead to aggressive or violent behaviors.”

How surprising should cases of domestic violence and other actions showing lack of impulse control among NFL players be when it’s only a side effect of a disease they may have?  How long before some advocacy group, defense attorney or the players union starts arguing that they are victims of a disease and should not be held responsible?  When you think of how often this defense is presented in other instances, giving people a pass because their actions are due to their disease or addiction, I’m surprised it hasn’t happened already.  (Perhaps the defiant kneeling before the game is merely a symptom of too many hits to the head.)

Finally, why not avoid all this fuss and debate about tax reform with one side singing its praises and the other predicting disaster for the Middle Class?  The government could easily build a simple spreadsheet-based application where taxpayers could plug in their numbers from last year and see exactly what the difference would be under new rules.  Everyone gets a personalized answer instead of relying on analysts, politicians and others talking in generalities. 

Once you know how it affects you, you can decide whether the supposed effects on others are valid or worth objecting to.  (Note:  According to Forbes and other sources about 45.3%, just under half, pay no Federal income taxes.  Again from Forbes this summer:  “Under current law, some 30 percent of taxpayers itemize their deductions, as opposed to the 70 percent who claim the standard deduction.”  So except for the rates, tax reform could affect about 30% of 54% or about 16% – with some of those possibly moving to the standard deduction (if it doubles).  Most of the rest have large mortgages and property or state income tax payments.  Why is there so much fighting about the fate of a small, mostly well-to-do minority?