Flashback – Freedom and Responsibility

[What results from a lack of responsibility is often deceptive. No one gets hurt, and any important job usually gets done. When an individual fails to take care of it, someone else takes up the slack by doing it for them. The so-called helicopter parents fit into this category. But what happens when this behavior occurs on a societal level? – The helicopter government steps in with programs and regulations, and we give up our freedom one step at a time. It's true both for citizens and for corporations.

I reminded everyone of this consequence back in July 2011.]

Some think the opposite of freedom is slavery or perhaps living under a dictatorship, but in our society the opposite of freedom is the benevolent authoritarianism of warnings and legal restrictions resulting from our failures in the dimension of responsibility.

We are told that we are all victims of the economy, of our high-stress jobs, and of our non-stop lifestyles. The word is used in ads everyday, one even asking me if I am the victim of hair loss. We are presumably victims of big oil when gasoline prices rise, of big drug companies, or of big insurance companies when they raise their rates or dispute our claims. 

Especially in legal cases involving civil suits, attorneys first persuade prospective clients that they are victims (you’ve seen the ads on TV) then persuade juries that their clients are victims and someone should pay. In those same TV ads you often hear the word settlement, because the targets of these lawsuits fear that juries will buy into this point of view. It's cheaper to settle out of court, because those juries, from a basic lack of economic understanding, assume that a big corporation or insurance company will pay the cost out of their own pocket and it will never get back to us.

Claiming victimhood is an easy answer. It takes no effort. What went wrong is someone else’s fault; we are not to blame; we share none of the responsibility. It’s a passive stance. I don’t have a high-paying job, not because I didn’t bother to finish high school, but because I am being discriminated against. I got lung cancer not because I refused to quit smoking, but because the tobacco companies tricked me. My kids have too many toys not because I bought them, but because of the cartoons on the TV. The banks fooled me into getting a mortgage I couldn’t afford. When I have a sore knee, I ask the doctor for a pill or for surgery rather than losing some weight. I get to put all my problems in someone else’s hands. Responsible people don’t act like this, but victims do.

When we feel and act this way, we need to be protected. That’s when the warnings and regulations begin. Since these people can’t take care of themselves, we must require warnings on cigarette packages, on ladders, on hairdryers, and on almost every other product, telling them not to use them in ways that may seem stupid to the average person. When we sign up our kids to play sports, we must sign “hold harmless” forms. All the warnings don’t stop the lawsuits, so next come the regulations: all playgrounds must provide soft landings, all car trunks need an escape handle, all lawnmowers must have an automatic shutdown device, etc. Some cities ban the sale of certain foods or of fast food in certain neighborhoods. Victims are treated like children and must be protected from the real world and from themselves.

Where does it all end? The old analogy of boiling a frog applies. Throw a frog into boiling water and he jumps back out. Put him into a pot and slowly increase the temperature and he sits complacently until it’s too late. Likewise, when we don’t behave responsibly, our freedoms slowly trickle away.  Each of those efforts seems well-meaning and harmless at the time, but each is another example of someone restricting our choices for their interpretation of our own good. Each restriction is a loss of freedom, the consequence of patterns of behavior that show weaknesses in the dimension of responsibility.

Read the Fine Print

They seem innocent enough, pads of paper around a display in the aisle at the mall promising a free chance to win the experience of a lifetime – a $59,900 sweepstakes. No purchase is necessary; just fill out the form. It must be very tempting because it looks like about an inch of forms has been torn off from each of six pads.

The forms ask for name, address, phone number, email, age, income, marital status and spouse’s name. That information was once considered somewhat private, but now people apparently are very willing to give it away for free for a chance to win about 60 grand. But they have a better chance to get something else, something much less desirable.

The bottom of the form under the signature line reads: “I consent to receive phone calls, including prerecorded messages and text messages from Promoters at the phone numbers/wireless numbers/addresses above regarding their offers, products and services, including through an automated dialing system.” That’s right, they are voluntarily signing up for the kind of irritating spam messages that everyone is complaining about and demanding action from Congress! They are giving permission to be pestered by robots about time-share opportunities!

Wow! All that personal information must be worth a lot more than $60,000 to the “Promoters.” (The other side of the sheet is filled with terms and conditions in very tiny font.)

Here’s another example. This comes at the end of a 4-page ad in a Sunday newspaper magazine section.

The ad is apparently for a clinic offering addiction recovery services including detoxification. (As soon as I saw reference to detox, I was skeptical; but it acts as a lure for others.)

At the very end of words and pictures showing how wonderful it is, at the very bottom of the page it begins with,  “The images herein are for illustration only.” The images are of happy people. Further on it says that the company “does not guarantee, warrant nor represent successful completion of its program for any of its clients. Results vary by individual, and [the] program may not be suited for everyone.” Then it goes on to say that they might not accept everyone in the program and gives some excuses about why the results for the ones accepted may vary. Finally, the company "is not responsible and expressly disclaims all liability for damages of any kind arising out of use, reference to, or reliance on any information contained in this advertisement.” It directs readers to a website.

Basically, that translates into “maybe and maybe not.” After three-and-a-half pages of happy talk, this is something of a letdown. The company doesn’t promise anything. And they are very adamant about that non-promise. If a client goes through the program and does not get the results expected, it’s not the company’s fault. I would be willing to bet that the first requirement upon entering such a facility is to sign a page or two of documents acknowledging understanding of all their disclaimers.

Part of this song and dance about not being responsible may raise suspicions about the effectiveness of the treatment, but another part must be attributed to a typical reaction among Americans who are disappointed – blame someone else and take them to court. Nevertheless, reading the fine print and all the disclaimers before entering into any agreement leads to better decisions. If it looks too good to be true, guess what.

As the world gets more fast-paced and complex, it becomes of greater importance to pay attention to details. People trying to sell us things, whether it be services, products or ideas, have more tools to trap the unsuspecting and more lawyers to separate them from whatever consequences they may experience for their questionable decisions.

Economic Connections

Last time I checked into a hotel or motel, it was quite simple. I parked temporarily in front, walked in and told the desk clerk my name and handed over my credit card. In short order I got my credit card back along with my room key and was politely given directions to the room along with other information, such as breakfast or pool hours. I parked my car or drove it to the most convenient doorway. It was easy and pleasant.

The last time I boarded an airplane was a different story. If someone dropped me off, parking was limited and patrolled – and don’t leave the car unattended. I had to show an ID to get my boarding pass and check luggage, which was presumably inspected after the airline took control. I then took my carry-on bag to the security area where everyone lined up, showed an ID again, showed a boarding pass, took off shoes, emptied pockets, separated electronic devices, walked through a scanner, and sometimes had to be rescanned or even searched. I then picked up my belongings, refilled my pockets, put on my belt and shoes and walked to the gate.

It used to be much simpler. Relatives could even meet you at the gate when you arrived, but not any more. Now there is security everywhere, and for good reason. We don’t want terrorists or crazy people to be able to use the airports or airplanes for murder.

This came to mind when I read about  MGM "suing" the victims and survivors of the shooting massacre in Las Vegas where a lone gunman used the MGM-owned Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino as his base of operations to slaughter 58 concertgoers and wound many others. 

Suing these innocent people sounds heartless, but the word is not being used in the familiar sense. There will be no trial, no testimony, no demand for payment. MGM filed for a declaratory judgment, where a judge decides whether they can be held liable for damages. “Here, MGM is asking a federal court to pre-emptively determine whether a particular federal law prohibits a lawsuit by the victims against MGM, instead forcing them to sue only the vendor that provided security.” As people line up to sue someone, MGM wants a judge to move them out of the line of fire.

Of course there are lawyers already jumping into the fray looking for victims to represent and for deep pockets to exploit. In addition, because people either don’t understand the intent of the lawsuit and jump to the conclusion of heartless behavior or believe that the victims deserve as much compensation as possible regardless of real fault, boycotts are being encouraged.

Now I have no interest at all in MGM, but I can predict the ramifications of such a battle. Lawyers will argue that the hotel, and by extension MGM, did not do everything possible to avoid the situation – that’s the usual argument, “everything possible.” Everyone else in the hospitality industry will be put on notice. Their insurance will increase, and they will begin to take steps to do everything possible – which, by the way, is impossible when you can’t predict what threat(s) to anticipate.

As a result, all travelers will be affected in at least a couple of ways. First, things will cost more. Economic understanding tells us that when costs like insurance and precautions go up across an entire industry, there is no competitive incentive to absorb the costs. They are easily passed on to all customers.

Second, could checking into a motel become more like taking the plane, with some combination of heavily monitored parking, baggage inspections, metal detectors, photo IDs, take off your shoes and empty your pockets – with the same for all visitors and meeting attendees? 

The second outcome is not guaranteed, but it is possible. This lawsuit by the owner of a Vegas hotel may seem unfair and distant, but our world is connected in many unexpected ways.

Opioid Lawsuits

Recently states and cities, large and small, have made threats or begun the process of suing drug companies that manufacture opioids, blaming them for the epidemic of addiction and over-dose deaths that is sweeping the nation.

Here is a summary of one attorney general’s stance.  “Historically, opioid pain medications were considered too addictive and debilitating for anything but short-term acute pain and end-of-life care.”  But using sophisticated marketing campaigns in the 1990s, they “changed the prescribing culture, convincing doctors that opioids were not very addictive,” encouraging them to prescribe these drugs for chronic pain, using every trick at their disposal to increase sales.  They must take responsibility!

But the form of that responsibility is not specified.  The lawsuits reported on from cities in suburban Chicago “do not specify the amount of damages sought.”  So apparently their idea of responsibility means paying fines to governments.  A class action suit in West Virginia seems to be more focused and specific, seeking “relief for the following damages:

•  Medical expenses, including money (often thousands of dollars) spent on the prescription drugs in question
•  Costs for drug treatment programs
•  Lost wages
•  Pain and suffering
•  Funeral expenses (if they lost a loved one to overdose)
•  Any other relief the Court deems fair and just”

You would hope that such threat of penalties would motivate the drug companies to stop enticing doctors to do their dirty work.  These accusations certainly don’t cast a favorable light on the medical profession as a whole, but it’s probably like politics where everyone thinks their representative (or in this case doctor) is good, but the rest are despicable.

  

It reminds me of the lawsuits against Big-Tobacco, the primary difference being that tobacco has no redeeming characteristics, whereas opioids help people cope with severe pain.  Shutting tobacco companies down or at least fining them and requiring them to widely advertise the evils of their product makes sense, especially if it drives up the cost of cigarettes.  Driving up the cost of drugs or making them less available for the people who need them, on the other hand, would not be optimal.

Another problem arises from the fact that some of the people who became addicted and overdosed, did so using drugs that they obtained illegally.  Do we reward people for breaking the law by reimbursing them for lost wages, pain and suffering or money spent on their drugs?  That is for the courts to decide. 

Something to consider is how such a precedent may play out, suing companies that make a legal, beneficial product that can also be used irresponsibly or to break the law.  Some have already raised the idea of suing gun manufacturers.  Will cities move on to sue paint companies because they can’t control the spread of graffiti?  Will ladder makers be held accountable for the actions of cat burglars?  Why not sue glove companies or towel companies when no fingerprints are left behind at the scene of the crime?  Why didn’t this come up years ago when drivers were buying radar detectors for the sole purpose of warning them to slow down before they're caught speeding?  That was a product that, only with a great deal of subterfuge, could be represented as a benefit to society.  Lawsuits of this kind have already driven companies to plaster packaging and inserts with a host of, often ridiculous, warnings.

Some of those examples are farfetched, but the point is that states, cities and individuals seem to be surrendering, admitting the problem is beyond their control, their resources and their abilities, while looking for a scapegoat.  But isn’t this search for someone else to blame typical behavior of the addict they are trying to help and one of the first things they must overcome before recovery is possible?  Does no one else see the irony?

Littering the National Parks – Follow-up

An astute follower of this blog sent me an article last week that got me thinking.  It was related to my comments one week ago about the National Park Service struggling with litter in the parks, particularly the plastic water bottles.

This Guardian report tells how the Coca Cola Company increased their use of plastic single–use bottles in 2016 over the prior year by one billion.  Certainly one billion is a lot of bottles, but this is worded in a way that subtly reveals a bias.

As an example, when reporters want to portray a company as being greedy, they will report the company’s profits in the most unflattering way, not only with adjectives such as windfall or extravagant, but also by carefully choosing the numbers presented.  Even if a company’s profits decrease, the numbers for a large company can be very large.  So a decrease from $3 billion to $2 billion may be reported either as making a $1 billion less or as “a whopping $2 billion profit!”  If the same size company made only $100 last year but $200 this year, they can be honestly described as doubling profits even though they very close to losing money.  This tactic can apply to any numerical measure; presenting the numbers does not always assure objective reporting.

So the main headline announces in big, bold type, “Coca-Cola increased its production of plastic bottles by a billion last year, says Greenpeace.”  Smaller print explains they have increased total production to more than 110 billion bottles.  Now that’s really a lot of bottles!  But an increase of 1 billion on from a base of 110 billion is less than 1%.  The headline could have honestly read, “Coca-Cola increased its production of plastic bottles by less than 1% last year.”  But it’s unlikely that Greenpeace would put it that way, because they are concerned about the improper disposal of empty bottles.  The first headline makes that point more strongly.

The next question that came to mind concerned the growth of the Coca Cola market.  If their sales grew by more than 1%, then limiting the increase in bottles to less than 1% would be a step in the right direction.  This is never mentioned in the article so I had to look it up here and found that their sales actually decreased.  Even a small increase would then be a move in the wrong direction.

Finally, the crux of the Greenpeace complaint is that by flooding the world with so many bottles, Coca Cola is responsible for the fouling of beaches, parks, roadways and oceans with empty Coke bottles.  They show pictures of piles of bottles collected along the seashore.  “Fewer than half of the bottles bought in 2016 were collected for recycling and just 7% of those collected were turned into new bottles. Instead, most plastic bottles produced end up in landfill or in the ocean.”  Greenpeace accuses Coca Cola of not walking the walk on sustainability and urges them to increase their use of recycled plastic in bottles.

There is one flaw in this argument – the Coca Cola Company doesn’t empty bottles and throw them in the ocean, it fills bottles.  In doing so, they supply the bottles, but it’s their customers who carelessly toss them into oceans and yes, into landfills when they should be recycled.  Greenpeace tries to encourage (or shame) Coke and other soft drink companies to back negative incentives like deposit laws, as a way to coerce consumers into doing the right thing.

Responsibility is consistent in that when we don’t exercise it, advocacy groups or governments conspire to take the responsibility (and freedom) away from us or force us to comply.  The problem is ours, but the solution is theirs.

More Responsibility Examples

Responsibility is the behavioral trait that distinguishes those who own their actions and admit their mistakes from those who try to find someone or something else to blame.  From sports to politics to everyday experiences the practice of good responsibility seems to be getting more unusual.  The sun got in my eyes, I’m addicted, I’m a victim, the cards are stacked against me, it’s the computer’s fault and a host of other excuses with the full support of “advocates” have become common.

Problems with responsibility have significant drawbacks.  Passing off the cause of the problem onto some outside influence never leads to a solution, just more of the same.  And as I have emphasized many times in the past, when we step away from our responsibilities, someone else, often the government, is happy to step in to force behavior on us – even if that new rule turns out to have unintended consequences.

This is common in corporate America as well where executives claim ignorance of corporate wrongdoing or in everyday customer service.  Here are a couple of strange examples from the world of casino gambling.

At one casino in Illinois a woman was startled by the bells and flashing lights on the slot machine she was playing.  The machine told her she had won $28 million!  She immediately heard the call for a supervisor, who told her not to touch the machine.  She remained calm enough during the ensuing chaos to take a couple of pictures of the machine.

The casino refused to pay her after an internal investigation found a computer error responsible for the jackpot message.  Executives would not comment directly, but continued to blame computer error for the mistake and offered her a free dinner instead.

In another casino a 90 year-old woman from Antioch, IA put her money in the slot and soon found a message on the screen awarding her a 185-credit along with the message, “The reels have rolled your way! Bonus Award $41,797,550.16.”

Again the casino refused to pay, again blaming a computer error, and paid her the $1.85 for the initial credit.  After a couple of years in court, the casino won the case.

The slot machine manufacturer had warned these casinos of a problem, which they were supposed to have fixed.  Perhaps some admission of fault was in order.  A free dinner or $1.85 hardly seems like an adequate settlement for a problem they were supposed to have dealt with.  But even a judge agreed that it wasn’t their fault; it was the computer – as if the computer were some distant third party and not their computer!

The other point is that when individuals fail to take responsibility, institutions take over. For a recent example, we turn to the Nebraska schools.  Apparently some parents couldn’t be relied on to track their children’s health numbers, so the schools have been conducting routine health screenings including a measurement of body-mass index (BMI).  If this ratio of weight to height is too high, the parents are notified of possible diet or exercise issues.

Some parents thought this could cause potential embarrassment for children, affecting their psychological health while trying to look out for their physical health.  Others felt the time would be better spent on traditional school subjects like adding and reading rather than measuring body size.

As of this month, the schools are allowed to decide whether to include that measure in routine health screenings.  In those schools that do not drop it, parents can send a note to school opting their kids out.  Some districts have already announced that they will continue the practice unless they receive the note.

Still, for some reason the state feels it is necessary to screen the health of students.  That reason is surely related to their perception that parents will not or cannot take responsibility for health screenings of their own children.  (BMI calculation can easily be done at home at no cost with a bathroom scale and a tape measure.)

These are just a few of so many examples.  Responsibility failings are easy to spot.  And when institutions spot them in a few citizens, they are quick to take over, imposing rules even on those who are conscientious and capable.