Recession Economics

Brad DeLong on the causes and cures of the great recession and why the many supposed cures floating around in politics are wrong.

1, 2

Research = rationing?

We have Mike Huckabee objecting to comparative effectiveness research:

Tucked away in the $787 billion stimulus was the establishment of the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness, which will become our version of Britain’s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, the ironically and Orwellian-named NICE. NICE decides who lives and who dies based on age and the cost of treatment. So the stimulus didn’t just waste your money; it planted the seeds from which the poisonous tree of death panels will grow…

After Sarah Palin invoked death panels in her critique of the health care bill, it has become a standard objection that buried somewhere in the healthcare bill (or in any other bill), there is something that will lead to health care rationing. This is a fact and we don't need very much argument to prove it.

However we need to find out what treatments work better than others. Surely, having more knowledge in this area is not a bad thing. If this will lead to rationing, why not just abolish any research done to test treatments? If comparative effectiveness research would lead to rationing, so would any research at all.

And even if we would use this information to encourage the use of the cheaper treatment in Medicare, would that be a bad thing? Many insurance plans already do something similar by requiring higher co-pays for brand name drugs versus the generic version.

The bigger point though is that he is saying if the government isn't willing to pay for something, then it is rationing. However, there are millions of uninsured people who aren't able to pay for their own care. As a result, they do not receive care. If this is rationing, their plan (which is to not provide universal coverage) would also lead to rationing. Their plan is to ration by price instead.

Rationing by prices will not always lead to the most desired goods going to those who need them most. If everyone had the same level of wealth, we could allocate goods to those who are willing to pay the most for them. These people would also be the people who value them the most.

However, clearly we do not live in a world where everyone has the same amount of income to draw from. As a result, the good of healthcare will go to the ones who can pay more. So, any attempt to level the playing field (through say Medicaid or the healthcare bill) attempts to fix this income effect so markets can work better.

The despair Huckabee finds in the fact that government may at some point attempt to control its costs by encouraging Medicare recipients to use less costly (but just as effective) treatments is astounding. His view of government would leave millions uninsured with no ability to pay for care. This should lead Huckabee to much more despair and corresponding support of the healthcare bill. Yet, consistency is not his strong suit. This may be the most despairing thing of all.

See these two blog posts for similar points: The "Rationing" Switcheroo and Cutting Off Your Nose to Spite Your Face.

Aggregate Value

Alonzo is doing a series which kills the objection:

There's no way to aggregate well-being over different individuals.

Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Subjective Morality: Fact or Fiction?

In a comment to this post, a commenter stated something that is commonplace amongst moral subjectivists and relativists.

Who said happiness, desire fulfillment are good and suffering is bad is an objective truth? They may exists as being objective in some sense, but applying labels to them is not grounded in anything objective.

We can apply the same reasoning to the statement "Pluto is a planet." In one sense of the word, a sense adopted for a long time, the statement was true. However, after scientists decided to change the definition, it became false. So, is the statement objectively true or false? It depends on the definition of "planet" being used.

None of this affects the objectively true statements in astronomy. Scientists can define existing terms in new ways or make up entirely new words to describe an object. As long as we are saying something that is objectively true about the object, we are fine.

There is no magical reason why we should define the term "planet" in one way or another. So why should we expect the same thing of any other label?

So, if by "Rape is bad" one means that it thwarts desires, then it is equivalent to the objectively true statement "Rape thwarts desires." Labels are made up and the definitions thereof do not matter. They do not change the facts about rape.

If the statement "Rape is bad" is a statement that has no basis in fact, then it must be fiction. We would not look at the statement "There are invisible teacups flying around Saturn" and say, "Oh well since you can't prove or disprove it, it is a subjective claim." No, we would say it is false.

To bring to light the absurdity even more, moral subjectivists are saying there is no evidence that can prove an act to be wrong, yet we are justified in taking a position one way or another. However, shouldn't one withhold judgment when faced with a lack of evidence? Why would we choose one way or the other?

But then moral subjectivists usually argue that we have strong moral feelings and that is enough to justify our moral beliefs. However, "My feelings say you should be sent to jail" is not any justification for sending someone to jail or determining who lives and who dies.

So, in summary, moral statements are either fact or fiction. There is no third option. Moral statements are not statements that have no basis in fact but are somehow still relevant to the real world. We cannot use our feelings to justify sending people to jail. Admitting the truth of moral statements depends on our feelings does away with morality altogether. It relegates it to the world of fiction.

See this post for a similar sentiment from Alonzo.

So why should we label desire fulfillment as "good" and desire thwarting as "bad?" Stay tuned for the answer in a later post.

Good Physicist Gone Bad

Steven Weinberg, a physicist who won the Nobel prize, wrote a mantra of New Atheism which is indicative of the brilliance Dawkins and Hitchens come up with:

With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil—that takes religion.

Now this statement is false and bigoted and one should condemn whoever says it. One can note the vagueness of certain words and that the statement is only true in an irrelevant sense. One can easily switch a few things:

With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for bad people to do good—that takes religion.

or

With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do bad—that takes atheism.

Surely, atheists would take these claims to court, and rightly so. But those same reasons would take Weinberg's claim to court as well. And the prosecution rests its case.

See this post for the standard objections I have to blaming evils on religion.

Business Ethics

Milton Friedman is a famous economist of the 20th century. In this paper, he argues against a business being concerned about social issues, except that which the law forbids. Here is a quote from the article:

There is one and only one social responsibility of business–to use it resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud.

He also states elsewhere that a business needs to follow the law as well. So we can define his principle as follows:

MF: A business does no wrong in maximizing its profits when it is not breaking the law and engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud.

Why believe this is true? Friedman states that a manager's sole obligation is to its stakeholders. If the manager decides to use money from selling hamburgers to help save the rain forest, he is not maximizing profits for the shareholders which presumably is what they want. If they wanted money going to the rain forest, that would be fine too but if they want him to maximize profit, then he must do it as long as he does not break the law and engages in open and free competition.

In advanced societies, one may be tempted to think the law is good enough to keep businesses out of trouble. However, imagine a society where a "Hitman" company would not be illegal. A business could accept payment in return for killing someone. In such a society, a business could follow the Milton Friedman principle yet still be unethical.

Everyone would agree such a society should make a law against corporations being allowed to kill people. However, if a corporation has no social obligations outside of those mandated by law and free trade, then how could one say this? In this society, the act is not illegal, deceptive or fraudulent. The foundation on which this principle is built falls apart when considering this.

The only justification for laws limiting what a business can and cannot do comes from the ethical obligations of a business. Making a law stating businesses cannot kill people is only justified if businesses already have an ethical obligation to not kill people.

Since there are societies where the law can be seriously inadequate, one cannot simply follow the law to avoid any wrong. One must act ethically. If the Milton Friedman principle is to be justified, it must be done by appealing to the social responsibility of businesses. As has been shown, there are more responsibilities than following the law and avoiding deception (like not killing people). Therefore, the Milton Friedman principle fails.

See this paper for another negative assessment of Friedman's paper. See this post for a similar argument against the claim "One should not legislate morality."

The Manhattan Declaration: Objections

The Manhattan Declaration is a declaration by Christians of all types about the threats to vital institutions in our current society. The three are life, marriage, and religious liberty.

Sanctity of Life

The three dangers to the sanctity of life, according to the authors, are the institutions of abortion, stem cell research, and euthanasia. They object to the first two because they kill an innocent life. Here is what they have to say about euthanasia:

At the other end of life, an increasingly powerful movement to promote assisted suicide and “voluntary” euthanasia threatens the lives of vulnerable elderly and disabled persons. Eugenic notions such as the doctrine of lebensunwertes Leben (“life unworthy of life”) were first advanced in the 1920s by intellectuals in the elite salons of America and Europe. Long buried in ignominy after the horrors of the mid-20th century, they have returned from the grave.

Their argument is that allowing assisted suicide or euthanasia will lead to something similar to the Nazi death camps where instead of putting people of a particular race in the camps, we are killing off the disabled and elderly.

It seems they cannot tell the difference between allowing someone to choose when to die and killing someone outright. Why is it that when the idea of allowing someone to die, when it conforms to their will, is brought up, cases are brought up where people have been killed when it is against their will? Clearly, these are two different situations and allowing one does not imply we will allow the other.

Also, there is an assumption that any life, no matter how unbearable, is worth living. This is clearly false. Denying this does not give any legitimacy to the Nazi death camps however.

Imagine the following situations:

1. A person is in a car accident and arrives at the hospital brain dead and in a coma. The person is still alive, thanks to the machines he is hooked up to. However, he will never be able to function again. Once the machines are disconnected, he will die.

Is this a life worth living? Clearly not, so we are not doing anything wrong in pulling the plug and letting the person die.

2. A person is in a car accident and survives. However, he is completely paralyzed from the neck down for the rest of his life.

Is this a life worth living? Suppose the person wants to end it all and just die. Suppose also this is a persistent desire, not just a spur of the moment decision. The person is not able to do the job himself since he is paralyzed. He asks his friend to give him a lethal injection to kill him.

Many people argue there is a morally relevant difference between the two situations. However, in both cases, the person is acting to end the life of someone. In the first case, the person pulls the plug, knowing this will surely kill the patient. In the second case, the person gives his friend a lethal injection, knowing he will surely die. If the first situation is not wrong, the second one cannot be either.

Also, it is important to note here that we are not ending all lives that are judged as unworthy of life. We require the consent or the implied consent of the person being killed. That is the difference between euthanasia and the Nazi death camps.

Redefining "Marriage"

The second objection the authors make is to people to threaten marriage by thinking of allowing same sex marriages or polygamous marriages. They argue the following:

It would lock into place the false and destructive belief that marriage is all about romance and other adult satisfactions, and not, in any intrinsic way, about procreation and the unique character and value of acts and relationships whose meaning is shaped by their aptness for the generation, promotion and protection of life.

Later on, the authors state that allowing homosexual marriages implies we should allow polygamous and incestuous marriages as well. But wait, polygamous and incestuous marriages can still procreate. One may object that in incestuous marriages, birth defects can occur. However, there are plenty of cases where we allow people to procreate even when it is likely they will create a child with some unfortunate characteristic. For example, two carriers of the cystic fibrosis gene will have a 25% chance of having a baby with cystic fibrosis. There are countless other genetic diseases that have a good chance of being passed onto the children of parents. So, one cannot object to incestuous marriages for this reason.

So, their argument here also implies that we should allow incestuous or polygamous marriages too. They must come up with an independent reason why these should not be allowed, which has nothing to do with reproductive capabilities.

But do reproductive capabilities matter? The person arguing the above would also have to argue that a couple with one infertile person should not be allowed to be married. After all, they cannot procreate. What about people over a certain age? They cannot procreate either. Should we have couples get a fertility test and create an age ceiling on when people can get married?

Also, suppose another situation. A couple gets married and has a couple of kids. The kids are grown up and move out of the house. The couple is now in their 70's. They are unable to have any more kids and clearly are not taking care of their kids anymore. This argument would seem to imply we should not allow these people to be married anymore. If marriage is only for those who can procreate and take care of children, then how can one argue that we should allow marriages to continue that are no longer involved in this function?

Or imagine a member of the marriage loses their ability to procreate at some point in the marriage. If they do not already have children, then the argument would imply the couple should no longer be allowed to maintain their marriage.

Therefore, any argument against homosexual marriage because they cannot procreate clearly does not work.

The authors state one bad thing that comes from legalizing homosexual marriage is that family life and school sex-ed programs will teach children that such unions are "marriage" even though many people believe they are wrong. However, imagine we lived in a society where many people believed interracial marriage was wrong. Imagine someone argues, "Children will be taught that interracial marriage is okay when many people clearly believe it is wrong. Therefore, we should not allow interracial marriage." Does this argument make any sense?

Also, it is argued that calling homosexual unions "marriages" disallows their religious liberty. Once again, imagine a member of a religion which vehemently opposes interracial marriages. Should we make interracial marriages illegal because this group's religious liberty is jeopardized? Clearly, not.

Protecting Religious Liberty

The third point made in the article is threats made to Christian's religious liberty. However, one must note that religious liberty is not a liberty that trumps all other concerns. If the 9/11 hijackers argued anyone who gets in their way is jeopardizing their religious liberty, we surely have reason to regard their argument as wrong. Religious liberty is only relevant when the relevant belief is not harming others. Once the religious belief is doing harm to others, we can stop people from acting on that belief.

Jehovah's Witnesses object to blood transfusions. Should we ban blood transfusions because this religious group does not agree with it? Does it harm Jehovah's Witnesses' religious liberty to give other people blood transfusions? Clearly not.

Therefore, a religious belief cannot inform the law to ban a particular act. This brings us full circle to the other two points of the article. Using the Bible to argue against particular laws should have no effect since considerations of the law should be apart from any particular religion. It does not matter if the religion is the majority one or not.

This is what protecting religious liberty really means. One should not be forced to suffer based solely on rules from another person's religion. So, the statements concerning what the Bible says or what Christians believe may well motivate Christians to object to the laws, they do not form a basis for changing the law. Any basis for the law must not be informed by Christianity or any other religion.

What do you think the probability of God is?

Here is a link to a test that will tell you what you think (or what your beliefs imply) the probability of God is. It uses Bayesian probability to compute this.

Enjoy!

Carrier-Craig Debate: Did Jesus Rise from the Dead?

Hi everyone,

Here is a link to the .mp3 of the debate between Richard Carrier and William Lane Craig on the topic: Did Jesus Rise from the Dead? Carrier says no and Craig says yes.

Enjoy.

Why does God Exist?

Introduction

The Cosmological argument for God's existence looks at the universe and asks what the cause of it is. Proponents of the argument also maintain that God's existence need not have a cause. Atheists have long replied that theists can't have it both ways. If theists are willing to posit God without any explanation, why are atheists not so obliged to posit the universe without any explanation?

Historically, theists have attempted to circumvent explaining the existence of God (but still positing a cause for the universe) in three ways: (1) God has existed for eternity, (2) God is logically necessary, or (3) God contains the reason for his own existence.

I attempt to show that all three ways fail to satisfactorily answer the question. I will give a fourth response that does salvage the Cosmological argument and admits that (1) God's existence is a brute fact but yet (2) the universe should be explained using God's existence.

Analysis

Key Assumption

In the following analysis, I will use the following proposition to establish my criticism of the three different responses.

P: One can imagine God as not existing. That being either that there is no God, there is nothing at all, or there is a very powerful being who could have varying degrees of knowledge and goodness.

Surely, P is true. We could imagine there being a God who is pretty good, but not morally perfect. We could imagine there being a very powerful evil being instead of an all-good God. We could even imagine there being nothing. This shows that God's existence need not occur.

Response 1: God's existence had no beginning.

When attempting to explain why we need not explain God's existence but we do need to explain the universe's existence, some theists have mentioned that God has existed for eternity. The universe, on the other hand, hasn't always existed so this begs for an explanation whereas God's existence does not.

This response relies on the following assumption (denoted A1):

A1. Something has a cause for its existence if and only if it had a beginning.

Perhaps it can be established that if something had a beginning, then it has a cause. However, this doesn't imply that if something doesn't have a beginning, it cannot have a cause.

Let's bring up proposition P from before. Surely, even if God has existed for all eternity, he may have had different properties. God could have existed for all eternity and been less than morally perfect. God need not have all knowledge to have existed for all eternity and it is the case that he could have not existed at all, for all eternity. Therefore, mentioning that God had no beginning fails to explain why God has the properties he has or why he exists in the first place.

To put it a different way, this argument supposes that the existence of God at a given time can be fully explained by looking at a time before when he existed. However, this does not explain why God exists in the first place with the properties he has.

So, the first response fails to establish that we need to explain the existence of the universe but yet God's existence can go unexplained.

Response 2: God is logically necessary

Another way to circumvent the issue is to argue that God's existence is logically necessary via the Ontological argument. Basically, this argument attempts to show that God's non-existence is logically impossible. Much like the statement that 2+2=4. This statement has to be true, regardless of anything else. The argument attempts to establish God's existence being akin to the existence of mathematical theorems or logical rules.

To throw some doubt onto any form of the ontological argument, one must note that most philosophers do not accept it as sound. Also, we can recall proposition P. If P is true, then God's existence need not hold which implies that God's existence is not logically necessary. It is curious that one is able to imagine God as not existing or to exist in a different way if the ontological argument is supposed to be successful.

So, the statement that God is logically necessary is not a good response since it relies on a rejection of proposition P and relies on the Ontological argument. Since P is intuitively true and the Ontological argument is widely criticized, the retreat that God is logically necessary is not a successful one.

Response 3: The Principle of Sufficient Reason

Leibniz, in positing his version of the Cosmological argument, relied on the principle of sufficient reason. The principle states:

For every entity x, if x exists, then there is a sufficient explanation why x exists.

This can be read as denying the existence of any brute facts. He argues that God contains his own reason for existing while the universe does not. Therefore, according to the principle of sufficient reason, the universe still needs a reason for its existence but God does not.

The problem here is by saying that God contains the reason for his own existence. Unless one is also relying on God being logically necessary (see response 2) the argument will fail. Of course, one can use statement P cited in the beginning to show that God could have possibly not existed so by the principle, God must need a reason to exist.

Response 4: Swinburne Salvages the Argument

With these 3 responses failing, many have concluded the Cosmological argument cannot be salvaged. However, Richard Swinburne has come up with a way to do so. In his book The Existence of God, Swinburne argues that one should move beyond a given explanation only if doing so results in a gain in explanatory power and simplicity.

One example is the law of gravity. One can note that objects fall to the ground when they are released. Why does this happen? One can posit the law of gravity as an explanation. Why is this a good explanation and why is it warranted to move beyond accepting objects falling to the ground as a brute fact?

Using Swinburne's point, in doing so, one gains simplicity and explanatory power. Surely, with the law of gravity, one can explain why objects will fall when released. Also, one gains simplicity because positing the simple law of gravity explains all the instances of objects falling to the earth. One need not accept all these separate instances as brute facts (a very complex hypothesis) but can instead posit one simple law to explain all the observations.

As a sidenote, it is interesting to note two objections often heard against positing God as an explanation for the universe are rebutted.

One being,

"If you say God created the universe, then what created him? Without saying what created God, you can't explain the universe by positing him."

This is obviously false since one can explain objects falling to the ground with the law of gravity without having to explain why the law of gravity exists.

The next being,

"When you posit a God, you have complicated the explanation. When choosing between only the universe existing and the universe and God existing, the simpler explanation is just the universe. So, Occam's Razor should be used to cut God out of the picture."

However, this objection could also be brought against the gravity explanation.

One could say, "In positing gravity, you need to posit all the instances of objects falling to the earth and the additional statement that the law of gravity makes them do so. I'll use Occam's razor and stick to the simpler picture that these objects just fall to the earth with no law to govern them."

However, since the law of gravity is being used to explain objects falling to the earth, one need not posit both in an explanation. Since the law of gravity is simpler than supposing all the separate instances when objects have fallen to the ground, gravity can be used to explain the instances in question.

Likewise, since God is being posited to explain the universe, one need not posit both entities, just God. If God is simpler than the universe, then positing God is the simpler hypothesis.

So, Swinburne's principle states that if you gain simplicity and explanatory power by positing a new entity, then that increases the probability the entity exists. However, why think that God is simpler than the universe? Also, how can God be used to explain the universe's existence? What reasons does God have for that?

Swinburne argues that positing God is positing an entity with only one property. That being omnipotence. He uses this property to argue that God must also be omniscient, perfectly free, and morally perfect. Since God is a being with one property, he is clearly simpler than the universe we observe.

Also, God has good reasons to create a universe like the one we observe. Clearly, creating humans is a good thing. It is good for beings to exist who have the choice between good and evil and can affect the world around them, for better or worse. (See Chapter 6 of The Existence of God.)

Clearly, God has the ability to create a complex universe since he is omnipotent. Therefore, positing the existence of God gives us reason to expect a universe with humans.

It has been established that God is a simpler hypothesis than the complex universe and can be used to explain the existence of that universe. Therefore, the observation of a complex universe increases the probability of the existence of God.

But why does God exist? Why can we stop at God and not stop at the universe? Well, using the same principle, if we posited a cause for God, we would not gain simplicity since God is already an exceedingly simple being. So, it is not unlikely God would exist uncaused. However, the universe, given its complexity, is very unlikely to exist uncaused.

Swinburne concludes chapter 7 on the Cosmological argument in this way:

There is quite a chance that, if there is a God, he will make something of the finitude and complexity of a universe. It is very unlikely that a universe would exist uncaused, but rather more likely that God would exist uncaused. (p. 152)

Using Swinburne's principle, we have salvaged the Cosmological argument.

Conclusion

Critics of the Cosmological argument have long objected that you can't ask for a cause of the universe while also ignoring that God is being posited without an explanation. Three responses to this charge have traditionally been given but they all fail. They are (1) God has a beginning but the universe does not, (2) God is logically necessary but the universe is not, and (3) God has sufficient reason to exist but the universe does not.

A more sophisticated response from Swinburne states that God is simpler than the universe and one gains explanatory power by positing God, so the probability God exists is increased. This response allows God to exist uncaused rather than allowing the universe to exist uncaused. This is because of the simplicity of God compared to the complexity of the universe. Since God is far simpler, it is far more likely he would exist uncaused rather than the universe.


(For Swinburne's discussion of these points, see Chapters 5-7 of The Existence of God.)