You might be a public worker if...

I remember a time (November 9th, 2009) where I was picking up somebody from JFK airport.  I had arrived there solely by rail -- not a small feat considering the 2-hour commute and multiple transfers -- and resolved that I would not be returning home with my guest via the same method.  The plan was to take a taxi home, paying in cash.  Immediately after we left the terminal, we were practically ambushed by a livery cab driver offering to jet us home for $45.  I didn't know it at the time, but that was approximately $20 more than it would have cost to take a yellow cab to our destination.  Not in the mood for frugality (and having anticipated spending that kind of cash anyway), I accepted, and we got into the car.  Overall, it was a swift, uneventful ride.

Some time after I got home, I recounted the experience to my mother, who hissed that I should not have  taken a ride from a livery cab, and that I certainly shouldn't tell my stepfather, a veteran taxi driver.  I remember her saying that livery cab drivers "take food from [my] mouth," referencing the illegal competition they pose to yellow cab drivers like my stepfather.  I didn't think very much of it at the time.

About a week ago, Governor Andrew Cuomo (who is a very popular executive, I should note) signed a bill that would allow for livery cabs to be hailed on the street, and increase the number of yellow cabs (medallions) by 2,000.  My stepfather was apoplectic.  This bill harms him in two ways:

1. It increases competition, leading to fewer fares per shift.
2. It drastically decreases the value of his medallion, a prized asset nominally valued around 600K at the least.

On both counts, he has cause to be upset.  However, his anguish stems not from any governing principles that reflect the service he provides, but from his particular economic interests being attacked.

The state (city, in this case), in association with powerful investors, attempts to protect people like my stepfather from rabid competition they would otherwise experience.  Any attempt to break their monopoly is understandably met by stalwart reaction.  Thus the very visceral animosity between yellow cabs and livery cabs.  Medallion owners are a protected class who have a vested interest in keeping the supply of taxis low.  The city, responding to both public demand and promises of greater revenue (mostly from projected, probably optimistic medallion sales), is accordingly going to increase supply.  It hurts my stepfather and other non-corporate medallions as well as corporate medallions, but that's the name of the game. Outsiders would say the system which benefits my stepfather is corrupt, and I am inclined to agree on principle.

However, this is not to say that my stepfather is lazy or coddled.  Nothing could be further from the truth, as he is by far the single hardest worker I have ever known, and likely ever will know.  He purchased his medallion many years ago, when it was comparatively cheap, and held onto it like any other investment.  Unlike the majority of medallion owners, my stepfather actually does the labor himself, often working 18-hour days and, in the past, even sleeping in his cab.  Like most such personalities, my stepfather tends to lean Republican, and watches only Fox News.  Given the venom that that network spews toward public employees, this is the ultimate irony -- my stepfather is one of those protected public workers, and doesn't even realize it.

His asset is a car given special value only by the state, and is otherwise no different than the livery cabs.  The medallion is an artificial commodity much like real estate during the housing boom.  Both staked their value on the state distorting market fundamentals.  Clearly, the demand for cab services in the outer boroughs outstrips the supply, but the city's cap on cab supply (buttressed by an entrenched investment class) has led to a black market of livery cabs; some of which happen to engage in price gouging as a result of minimal competition.

Good, well-meaning people can work for monopolies (good or not, I count myself among them), and good people can break them as well.  It forces one to consider what side they're on in the profession they've chosen.  Are they on the side of choice, or are they on the side of institution? Democracy, always on the lurch, tends to favor the former.

Natural Law and Human Nature

http://thefrontierlab.org/occupy-wall-street

Phrenology was, in part, based upon the notion that the shape of a person's skull was indicative of their character.  As one might gather, there were quite a few character traits associated with the most minute cranial features.  Phrenology has, of course, been discredited (to say the least) and is now considered a pseudoscience.  I'm willing to guess that few people haven even heard of it before this post.

However, the superficial assumptions of phrenology are alive today in the fields of psychology, sociology, and so-called political science.  I tend to bristle when something that is not in fact science nonetheless demands that it be recognized as such.  There is a tremendous danger in conferring the legitimacy of science onto a field that attempts to explain human behavior.  It has the double effect of discrediting science while providing justification for arbitrary decisions as though those decisions were derived from natural law.

We have sociologists from all political teams attempting to correlate different mental illnesses with different ideologies.  Liberal-leaning sociologists and psychologists have long since exited the realm of diagnosing illness -- real, crippling illness -- and instead have become the Old Guard of secular moralism in America.  They single out the people that find the most effective ways of accumulating capital and invariably deem them as narcissists, sociopaths, and myriad other mythical designations.  Yet it seems as though the vast majority of Americans that do not reach such social heights has been overlooked entirely.  Most of the time, such persons are written off as victims of one social force or another.  Empathy is normally reserved for the under-served, and is withheld from what they deem the over-served.

Those that call themselves liberals rail against greed as though it were an element on the periodic table poisoning their water supply.  What is greed? What is self-interest? And, better yet, how can there be such a thing as zero self-interest? Absent some form of mind-altering substance (e.g. ecstasy), almost everyone senses their own existence and is conscious of their interests.  This is true of most humans, and it is a quintessential human trait.  Are we to understand greed only in retrospect? When an act of self-interest results in some form of destruction, is that when we point our fingers and invoke the greed curse?

The vitriol with which the liberal left attacks the highly affluent is matched only by that with which the Republican right attacks the statistical majority of Americans.  During the Gilded Era, the new philosophy of Social Darwinism was invented as an explanation for the distribution of haves and have-nots.  It was regularly stated (and accepted as scientific fact) that providing some form of welfare to the under-served was against natural law and promoted inferiority in society.

The party of "Greed is good," has little problem with personal greed when it is exercised on the grandest and most lopsided of scales (that is, in business), yet shrieks when those with less profess their wants (and, in some cases, needs).  At best, benefits to society from such massive greed are byproducts.  It is not as though most people who become entrepreneurs do so with the motivating knowledge that their actions will be justified by one freshwater economist or another.  They do it for the money, obviously.

Therefore, there is a kind of morality to the libertarian business model.  Their faith in property rights taking precedence in all legal disputes (indeed, possession is 3/4ths of the law) contains the assumption that there will be virtuous businessmen that practice some form of ethics.  I'm sure there are many such examples, but business is ultimately about competition, about cutting off your opponents at the knees and being at least slightly more ruthless than the next man.  It's a jungle, and I maintain that, regardless of the positive social byproducts of big business, it is disingenuous to idealize every man at the helm of a large corporation.  As much as I find libertarian and laissez-faire positions appealing, positive notions of that philosophy are grounded in assumptions about human nature that are as utopian as the communist chimera with which they do battle.  Libertarians seem to believe that society ought to be run by Hank Hill, from the late great King of the Hill.

Yet some seem to believe that Hank runs the business world already.

This brings us to The Frontier Lab's insipid analysis of the Occupiers.  What distinguishes the Occupier who desires a middle-class lifestyle from the tycoon who desires to run the world? Why is wanting more preferred over wanting less? How is one type of "greed" morally justifiable while the other is not? Could it be that it is because the Occupiers do not think as big as the tycoon? Is that why The Frontier Lab is convinced that they "win" when America "loses?"  Evidently, greed and self-interest are not the only dimension through which today's conservatives view the world.  For if greed were categorically good, there ought to be a philosophical problem with attacking Occupiers for wanting things or being covetous in general.

Most maddening to me about this piece is how its conclusions are touted as "scientific."  Social science is not science.  I'll say it again.  Social science is NOT science.  This designation is abused by both the right and the left to support their ideology as one that somehow derives from natural law.  But human nature and natural law are incompatible.  You cannot quantify greed, you can't test it, and you cannot study human nature when your views will be strongly influenced by the fact that you're a human yourself.  There is no rhyme or reason for why human beings behave the way that they do.  Sure, there are "theories," but most of them boil down to assumptions steeped in ideology.  And do you know why that is? I'm not sure, but it seems it's just in our nature.

Diederik Stapel, the world's most honest social psychologist.

Introduction

I will be as pithy or unabridged as necessary.  I will post whatever content strikes my fancy.  This is the flux of information and ideas through my head unchained.  There are no limits.  Nothing and everything is sacred.