See No Evil

There are legitimate reasons to believe Edward Snowden was wrong to leak what he did. I have little doubt that analyzing metadata could indeed be very helpful in identifying terrorist activity, and compared to other methods of rooting out suspected terrorists, it’s relatively mild. Of course he must also have broken the terms of his contracts, which presumably had very strong NDA requirements, but most people don’t seem to find that the salient ethical point.

However, these are not among those legitimate reasons.

For society to function well, there have to be basic levels of trust and cooperation, a respect for institutions and deference to common procedures. By deciding to unilaterally leak secret N.S.A. documents, Snowden has betrayed all of these things.

So by revealing that the NSA is gathering enormous amounts of data on us, without our knowledge and therefore obviously without our consent, it is Snowden who has betrayed the basic levels of trust in society. Indeed. Just as when I reveal to the police that my neighbor traffics in underage Bulgarian prostitutes, I am the one who has betrayed basic human trust - and indeed the very fabric of our society.

And unilateral leaks are so last year. I much prefer leaks that have been thoroughly discussed by committee and approved by the appropriate supervisors.

He betrayed honesty and integrity, the foundation of all cooperative activity. He made explicit and implicit oaths to respect the secrecy of the information with which he was entrusted. He betrayed his oaths.

Keeping secrets, big or small, can often be the right thing to do, but that activity is not terribly correlated with “honesty and integrity.” I think the word you’re looking for is “discretion,” which is a value that he could plausibly be accused of betraying. Discretion isn't synonymous with “keeping all secrets no matter what,” but there would at least be a case to be made. Aside from that, if honesty and integrity are the foundation of all cooperative activity, and government is a cooperative enterprise… Then I suppose it’s impossible that government could have been dishonest with us, and we have always been at war with Eastasia.

He betrayed his friends. Anybody who worked with him will be suspect. Young people in positions like that will no longer be trusted with responsibility for fear that they will turn into another Snowden.

OK, this one’s pretty legit. His friends and family will indeed suffer for this decision. “Betrayed” seems a little overly dramatic, but you’re a writer, so I’ll let it slide.

Good luck populating your data analyst positions with senior citizens, though.

He betrayed the cause of open government. Every time there is a leak like this, the powers that be close the circle of trust a little tighter. They limit debate a little more.

Now you’re just fucking with us, right?

He betrayed the privacy of us all. If federal security agencies can’t do vast data sweeps, they will inevitably revert to the older, more intrusive eavesdropping methods.

Uh-huh. Telling us about the large-scale invasion of privacy perpetrated by the NSA is a much greater privacy violation than the invasion itself. We shouldn't be allowed to make the decision regarding what degree of privacy violations we will allow in an open or democratic manner. And preventing one government abuse of power inevitably results in an even worse abuse of power. And if we don’t let kids smoke pot, they’ll inevitably shoot up heroin. And if we don’t invade foreign countries to root out terrorists, we’ll inevitably have to nuke them from orbit.

Give me a break.

He betrayed the Constitution. The founders did not create the United States so that some solitary 29-year-old could make unilateral decisions about what should be exposed. Snowden self-indulgently short-circuited the democratic structures of accountability, putting his own preferences above everything else.

…They created the United States so that an unelected government body could conduct wide-ranging surveillance on its citizenry without their knowledge or consent? Perhaps we’re reading different Constitutions. Granted, my copy doesn't specifically discuss cell phone metadata, but arguing that the spirit of the Constitution leans more towards secret government surveillance than towards the free and open flow of information strikes me as a little, well… fucking insane.

You’re allowed to believe that the Constitution does not adequately equip our society to deal with today’s threats, which are quite different from those we faced in 1787. Indeed, it would be extraordinarily strange if the Founders were somehow able to predict the kind of information society we live in today and design the Constitution for that society. You’re allowed to believe the Constitution should be changed to meet the needs of today’s society. You’re not allowed to just believe that the Constitution says whatever you wish it did. At least, you’re not allowed to do that and be anything resembling a public intellectual.

OK, I guess sometimes I wish I wrote the rules around here, too!

Relax!

We've been spying on you for years!

I'm not sure why Senator Reid believes this information will calm people down.

Relax, honey: it wasn't just last night, I've been cheating on you since 1995!

Relax, Mom: it wasn't just one time, I've been a heroin addict since I was 13!

Relax, officer: I pee here all the time!

Yes. Great idea, Senator.

State of the Union Reactions

1. I am not totally sold on the sequester being a horrible thing – although there can be little doubt that such an untargeted approach is less than ideal, the reality is that I would disagree with almost every member of Congress on what the targets should be, so perhaps I ought to accept some collateral damage. I am in total agreement with the President that a plan to remove military spending from the sequester is definitely “even worse” (although I don’t know the details of any Republican proposal to that effect), but I’m sure I would object to his counterproposal… well probably not just as strongly, but strongly nonetheless.
2. There is nothing magical, in principle, with a “balanced” approach to deficit reduction, and I see little reason to believe that it’s obviously the best choice. That said, it is perhaps politically magical, because it enables Obama to appear as a centrist while the Republicans seem extreme.
3. https://twitter.com/neiltyson/status/301521730378285058
4. I question to what degree he actually means the statement “It is not a bigger government we need, but a smarter government,” but it is certainly a good sound bite to throw at the Republicans.
5. An “all of the above” approach is stupid. Find out what works, and do that, or leave it to the market. Scott Brown kept harping on about this during his Senate campaign too. Just because someone has an idea, doesn’t mean it’s a good one. I really don't understand why a simple carbon tax would not fix all of our problems in the energy arena, frankly.
6. When someone is denied for a loan, we do not need to fix it. They were denied for a reason. Did we not just go through a subprime loan fiasco? Was the takeaway from that experience “we need more subprime loans?” I find it hard to believe that I’m hearing the President say these words only 5 years after the shit hit the fan in the mortgage markets. The fact that poor people get denied for loans is not the problem; the problem, insofar as a problem exists, is that there are poor people.
7. The minimum wage is something that I am generally against in principle, but I certainly would agree that if we have it, it only makes sense for it to be tied to the cost of living. Perhaps I should be advocating managing programs that I don't like poorly in order to see them fail, but in principle that seems stupid - and also it’s entirely possible that my position is wrong, so to get the best possible outcome it seems reasonable to implement the system well, even if I would prefer a slightly different system.
8. This is not a criticism that’s limited to the President, but I think the political focus on jobs is misplaced. Unemployment can be a problem, but it’s worth noting that most of us probably have a vision of utopia in which unemployment is nearly 100%. Unemployment is not a terrible problem if we are sufficiently wealthy and have sufficient redistribution. It’s not usually easy to label me a socialist, but I am actually a pretty big fan of income redistribution. I just think we do a miserable job of it. Edit 2/21/2013: I need to retract part of this bullet. I forgot that unemployment is not actually a measure of people without jobs; it's a measure of people without jobs who are actively seeking jobs. That would be a pretty poor utopia, and was a pretty poor mistake for me to make.
9. It’s ludicrous to use the phrase “even more transparent” in relation to Obama’s military policies. He might look better than his predecessor (although I’m not sure to what extent the Bush administration even tried to hide what they did – I wasn’t really paying attention at that point in my life, but I think torture was in the news at the time – I seem to recall that it just seemed like everyone was cool with it), but “at least he isn’t Bush” is a poor slogan.
10. Our ability to influence others does indeed depend on our willingness to lead and meet our own obligations. I would prefer if he actually believed this rather than just saying it.
11.  I like our military as much as the next guy, but I’m not sure that we need to pull out all the stops when compensating them for their service. They do indeed make a great sacrifice for our country, but we shouldn’t forget that A) they already receive pay and benefits, and B) their sacrifice is not actually even the most dangerous occupation. Note that logger compensation does not appear to be terribly inflated due to the job risks, even though they apparently die at slightly higher rates than the military (I was unable to find a particularly conclusive source, but most figures I found from a Google search were around $35-45k). As a side note, the idea that it’s actually safer to be shot at for a living than to cut down inanimate objects is…well, odd.
12. The President has different views than I on gun control, but I have no problem with the statement that it deserves a vote in Congress. I do object to using Newtown, Aurora, etc as the poster children for gun control, however, as they actually represent an extremely small fraction of gun violence incidents that have sparked a more disproportionate response than anything since 9/11 (OH SNAP, I WENT THERE!). Such incidents are actually about as close to a non-issue as you can get - the number of people who die on average every year in mass shootings (about 17) is lower than the number of children who drown in buckets every year (about 32, at least from 1984 to 1989. Perhaps we’ve gotten better since then). The real issue is the 11,000 firearm homicides and 19,000 firearm suicides annually, but I guess those don't make quite as good television.

That ended up being a lot longer than I anticipated. It might not be obvious from the list above, but I did vote for him. Cthulu wasn’t running, so…

Health Care - Minor Points

Debates over health care tend to suffer from an extreme example of what are usually called “repugnant markets.” This type of conversation is characterized by a suspension of rationality due to the inherent distastefulness of the topic; we are loathe to discuss selling organs or babies, for example, regardless of whether such transactions are beneficial to both parties. In health care specifically, I often hear the somewhat nebulous concept of a “right to life” invoked, promoting the view that all people have an inherent right to whatever care they need to survive.

I would like to list a couple factual points which, in my view, cannot be rationally disagreed with.

1.       There will almost always be some procedure, drug, or treatment which has the potential to extend life.

2.       These procedures, drugs, and treatments cost money, often a lot of it.

3.       We are not wealthy enough to provide an arbitrary amount of procedures, drugs, or treatments to everyone who wants them.

These three points mean that we need some form of allocation, whether what we typically call “free markets” (resources allocated to those who are willing/able to pay for them), “rationing” (resources allocated equally to everyone), or …I do not know the word for it, but (resources allocated according to perceived need). Perhaps that is considered some subset of rationing. Combinations of these are also possible, but what is absolutely not possible is for everyone to get whatever resources they want.

Some people who want things cannot have them. Trying to inject morality into the conversation at this stage is completely pointless, whether we are talking about health care or potatoes or shoes. Arguing that we all have a right to whatever treatment we want is no better than arguing that we all have a right to fly private jets; it sounds pretty nice, but it’s simply not possible to do. Morality and “rights” have no bearing on the impossible.

Anyone who goes around touting the “right to life” is not standing on their principles as I suspect they want you to believe; they are simply not being serious. I contend that as a result, they should not be taken seriously.

Uncertainty

One of the principal reasons that I have not blogged in such a long time is that I believe my level of certainty regarding the topics I normally feel compelled to discuss has decreased over time. I am not certain (HA!) what has been the cause of this transition, but one event that I believe has at the very least served to crystallize my increased uncertainty came out of the candidacy of Herman Cain. You may remember him as one of the more ridiculous offerings the Republican Party served up during the primaries. Cain said two things that have really stuck with me since he left the race:

1. Nine! Nine! Nine!
2. I don't have the facts to back this up, but...

The first, of course, is his economic plan, which I am sure his campaign manager is glad I remember. The second is the preface to some opinions Cain went on to express regarding Occupy Wall Street which are not particularly important at the moment. The comment was featured on The Daily Show (which I regularly watch) and was popular on Twitter for a time.

More importantly for me, however, it has stuck in my mind, and I found that whenever I would begin a post (recently, primarily on political or economic issues), I would find myself inserting it rather snidely into the text at various points throughout. It isn't odd for me to insert snide comments parenthetically, but what is odd is that the target of these jabs was, of course, me. I would read over a few paragraphs and find that I had actually been insulting myself throughout. As a result, I would begin fairly substantial drafts, read over them and realize the reality is much more nuanced or I had little empirical evidence for a position, try to insert sufficient caveats to address the nuance, and then realize that the sum total of argument plus caveats was essentially zero. I wasn't really saying anything useful, and the posts would become prohibitively lengthy as I tried to address more and more nuance - so I would just delete the draft.

I still believe that the answers exist (although I don't have the facts to back that up either), and I hope that I will figure out what they are, but it is interesting (and more than a little daunting) how difficult and complicated that process can be. Perhaps I will find a more useful way to discuss interesting issues in light of nuance - or perhaps I will continue deleting drafts. I already have more draft posts than published posts, so I suppose that does not bode well.

Consultant Fee Please!

The Maine GOP has recently uncovered some embarrassing information regarding Maine State Senate candidate Colleen Lachowicz. As a Maine native, I am deeply concerned by the information the GOP has uncovered concerning Mrs. Lachowicz’s gaming habits. However, although I commend the GOP’s investigative unit for uncovering these harrowing truths, I believe their flyer only scratches the surface. My additional research has revealed a great deficiency of hard work, attention to detail, and commitment. Here is just a sampling of what I have discovered:

·    Mrs. Lachowicz’s character Santiaga is outfitted almost entirely in blue gear, only 5 pieces of which are Heroic. It is well known that regular and even Heroic dungeons are extremely easy, and had Mrs. Lachowicz been a team player, she would be helping her guild progress through raids and would have obtained a significant number of epics. Additionally, with the advent of Raid Finder and associated “welfare epics,” purple gear can be obtained even without significant teamwork, provided one is willing to invest a nominal amount of time. Mrs. Lachowicz has failed to do so.

·    Mrs. Lachowicz has flagrantly violated accepted industry standard with regards to proper gemming and enchanting. Notice, most egregiously, that she has no gem in her belt. Belt sockets and additional gems can be obtained from your local Blacksmith and Jewelcrafter for a nominal fee and there is no excuse for this oversight. She has also socketed in several places for subpar socket bonuses, when it has been known for years that gemming for straight Agility is flatly superior in almost all cases. This could have been forgiven had she been attempting to satisfy her meta requirement, but as she has failed even to obtain a helm with a meta gem socket, this is not an acceptable excuse. Finally, observe the weapon enchants: double Hurricane is an option only if you lack the dedication to obtain enough gold for double Landslide. With enchants/gems like this, she was probably specced into Vigor before the expansion hit – although the records proving this are conveniently no longer publicly available.

·    Mrs. Lachowicz is wearing a Darkmoon card. Research has conclusively shown that people who use Darkmoon cards have higher rates of unemployment and lower average levels of college achievement.

·     She has completed the achievement “To All the Squirrels I’ve Loved Before.” This achievement requires repeated acts of bestiality to complete, and if that were not enough for a full indictment of Mrs. Lachowicz’s moral fiber, she has also completed the follow-up achievement “To All the Squirrels Who Shared My Life,” which requires additional acts of bestiality on such animals as Mountain Skunks, Scalawag Frogs, and Borean Marmots. We can only be thankful that she has not yet moved on to “To All the Squirrels I Once Caressed”; Malayan Quillrat, you are safe – for now.

·    Her guild name, Wreck List, is super lame.

All of these findings cast serious doubt on her fitness to serve in the state government. Ask yourself: when your guild is on General Vezax, would you trust a rogue with no belt gem to land the interrupt on Searing Flames – not just the first cast, but every other cast, depending of course on your group composition and whether you were attempting the encounter on 10- or 25-man mode? Would you let your children into her raid group, knowing full well that she wears a Darkmoon card in open view of the public?

I know where I stand. Do you?

Update: Stephen Colbert comments.

Tabula Rasa

Like Mitt Romney, I believe that from time to time it is profitable to shed your affliations with your past in order to more readily mesh with the future. I have therefore created a new blog to fit my new persona. The things which outrage me these days vary slightly from what outraged me three years ago, so I expect there will be a small shift in content as well.

Also, I forgot my password.