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Review of Frank Pasquale’s “A Rule of Persons, Not Machines: The Limits of Legal Automation” – Article by Adam Alonzi

Review of Frank Pasquale’s “A Rule of Persons, Not Machines: The Limits of Legal Automation” – Article by Adam Alonzi

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Adam Alonzi

From the beginning Frank Pasquale, author of The Black Box Society: The Secret Algorithms That Control Money and Information, contends in his new paper “A Rule of Persons, Not Machines: The Limits of Legal Automation” that software, given its brittleness, is not designed to deal with the complexities of taking a case through court and establishing a verdict. As he understands it, an AI cannot deviate far from the rules laid down by its creator. This assumption, which is not even quite right at the present time, only slightly tinges an otherwise erudite, sincere, and balanced coverage of the topic. He does not show much faith in the use of past cases to create datasets for the next generation of paralegals, automated legal services, and, in the more distant future, lawyers and jurists.

Lawrence Zelanik has noted that when taxes were filed entirely on paper, provisions were limited to avoid unreasonably imposing irksome nuances on the average person. Tax-return software has eliminated this “complexity constraint.” He goes on to state that without this the laws, and the software that interprets it, are akin to a “black box” for those who must abide by them. William Gale has said taxes could be easily computed for “non-itemizers.” In other words, the government could use information it already has to present a “bill” to this class of taxpayers, saving time and money for all parties involved. However, simplification does not always align with everyone’s interests. TurboTax’s business, which is built entirely on helping ordinary people navigate the labyrinth is the American federal income tax, noticed a threat to its business model. This prompted it to put together a grassroots campaign to fight such measures. More than just another example of a business protecting its interests, it is an ominous foreshadowing of an escalation scenario that will transpire in many areas if and when legal AI becomes sufficiently advanced.

Pasquale writes: “Technologists cannot assume that computational solutions to one problem will not affect the scope and nature of that problem. Instead, as technology enters fields, problems change, as various parties seek to either entrench or disrupt aspects of the present situation for their own advantage.”

What he is referring to here, in everything but name, is an arms race. The vastly superior computational powers of robot lawyers may make the already perverse incentive to make ever more Byzantine rules ever more attractive to bureaucracies and lawyers. The concern is that the clauses and dependencies hidden within contracts will quickly explode, making them far too detailed even for professionals to make sense of in a reasonable amount of time. Given that this sort of software may become a necessary accoutrement in most or all legal matters means that the demand for it, or for professionals with access to it, will expand greatly at the expense of those who are unwilling or unable to adopt it. This, though Pasquale only hints at it, may lead to greater imbalances in socioeconomic power. On the other hand, he does not consider the possibility of bottom-up open-source (or state-led) efforts to create synthetic public defenders. While this may seem idealistic, it is fairly clear that the open-source model can compete with and, in some areas, outperform proprietary competitors.

It is not unlikely that within subdomains of law that an array of arms races can and will arise between synthetic intelligences. If a lawyer knows its client is guilty, should it squeal? This will change the way jurisprudence works in many countries, but it would seem unwise to program any robot to knowingly lie about whether a crime, particularly a serious one, has been committed – including by omission. If it is fighting against a punishment it deems overly harsh for a given crime, for trespassing to get a closer look at a rabid raccoon or unintentional jaywalking, should it maintain its client’s innocence as a means to an end? A moral consequentialist, seeing no harm was done (or in some instances, could possibly have been done), may persist in pleading innocent. A synthetic lawyer may be more pragmatic than deontological, but it is not entirely correct, and certainly shortsighted, to (mis)characterize AI as only capable of blindly following a set of instructions, like a Fortran program made to compute the nth member of the Fibonacci series.

Human courts are rife with biases: judges give more lenient sentences after taking a lunch break (65% more likely to grant parole – nothing to spit at), attractive defendants are viewed favorably by unwashed juries and trained jurists alike, and the prejudices of all kinds exist against various “out” groups, which can tip the scales in favor of a guilty verdict or to harsher sentences. Why then would someone have an aversion to the introduction of AI into a system that is clearly ruled, in part, by the quirks of human psychology?

DoNotPay is an an app that helps drivers fight parking tickets. It allows drivers with legitimate medical emergencies to gain exemptions. So, as Pasquale says, not only will traffic management be automated, but so will appeals. However, as he cautions, a flesh-and-blood lawyer takes responsibility for bad advice. The DoNotPay not only fails to take responsibility, but “holds its client responsible for when its proprietor is harmed by the interaction.” There is little reason to think machines would do a worse job of adhering to privacy guidelines than human beings unless, as mentioned in the example of a machine ratting on its client, there is some overriding principle that would compel them to divulge the information to protect several people from harm if their diagnosis in some way makes them as a danger in their personal or professional life. Is the client responsible for the mistakes of the robot it has hired? Should the blame not fall upon the firm who has provided the service?

Making a blockchain that could handle the demands of processing purchases and sales, one that takes into account all the relevant variables to make expert judgements on a matter, is no small task. As the infamous disagreement over the meaning of the word “chicken” in Frigaliment v. B.N.S International Sales Group illustrates, the definitions of what anything is can be a bit puzzling. The need to maintain a decent reputation to maintain sales is a strong incentive against knowingly cheating customers, but although cheating tends to be the exception for this reason, it is still necessary to protect against it. As one official on the  Commodity Futures Trading Commission put it, “where a smart contract’s conditions depend upon real-world data (e.g., the price of a commodity future at a given time), agreed-upon outside systems, called oracles, can be developed to monitor and verify prices, performance, or other real-world events.”

Pasquale cites the SEC’s decision to force providers of asset-backed securities to file “downloadable source code in Python.” AmeriCredit responded by saying it  “should not be forced to predict and therefore program every possible slight iteration of all waterfall payments” because its business is “automobile loans, not software development.” AmeriTrade does not seem to be familiar with machine learning. There is a case for making all financial transactions and agreements explicit on an immutable platform like blockchain. There is also a case for making all such code open source, ready to be scrutinized by those with the talents to do so or, in the near future, by those with access to software that can quickly turn it into plain English, Spanish, Mandarin, Bantu, Etruscan, etc.

During the fallout of the 2008 crisis, some homeowners noticed the entities on their foreclosure paperwork did not match the paperwork they received when their mortgages were sold to a trust. According to Dayen (2010) many banks did not fill out the paperwork at all. This seems to be a rather forceful argument in favor of the incorporation of synthetic agents into law practices. Like many futurists Pasquale foresees an increase in “complementary automation.” The cooperation of chess engines with humans can still trounce the best AI out there. This is a commonly cited example of how two (very different) heads are better than one.  Yet going to a lawyer is not like visiting a tailor. People, including fairly delusional ones, know if their clothes fit. Yet they do not know whether they’ve received expert counsel or not – although, the outcome of the case might give them a hint.

Pasquale concludes his paper by asserting that “the rule of law entails a system of social relationships and legitimate governance, not simply the transfer and evaluation of information about behavior.” This is closely related to the doubts expressed at the beginning of the piece about the usefulness of data sets in training legal AI. He then states that those in the legal profession must handle “intractable conflicts of values that repeatedly require thoughtful discretion and negotiation.” This appears to be the legal equivalent of epistemological mysterianism. It stands on still shakier ground than its analogue because it is clear that laws are, or should be, rooted in some set of criteria agreed upon by the members of a given jurisdiction. Shouldn’t the rulings of law makers and the values that inform them be at least partially quantifiable? There are efforts, like EthicsNet, which are trying to prepare datasets and criteria to feed machines in the future (because they will certainly have to be fed by someone!).  There is no doubt that the human touch in law will not be supplanted soon, but the question is whether our intuition should be exalted as guarantee of fairness or a hindrance to moving beyond a legal system bogged down by the baggage of human foibles.

Adam Alonzi is a writer, biotechnologist, documentary maker, futurist, inventor, programmer, and author of the novels A Plank in Reason and Praying for Death: A Zombie Apocalypse. He is an analyst for the Millennium Project, the Head Media Director for BioViva Sciences, and Editor-in-Chief of Radical Science News. Listen to his podcasts here. Read his blog here.

Charlie Gard’s Parents Are Forced to Stop Fighting for Their Dying Baby – Article by Marianne March

Charlie Gard’s Parents Are Forced to Stop Fighting for Their Dying Baby – Article by Marianne March

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The New Renaissance Hat
Marianne March
July 27, 2017
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I cannot imagine the pain Charlie Gard’s parents are feeling now, as they savor their last moments with their precious child. Charlie is 11 months old and he’s dying.

Chris and Connie have been fighting for months to get treatment for Charlie, ever since he was diagnosed with a rare genetic condition, mitochondrial DNA depletion syndrome. But they have been forced to give up that fight.

I can’t imagine their pain, but I can imagine their fury because I share it.

From the Hospital to the Courts

Charlie is not mine. I’ve never met him or anyone who knows him. Yet I am furious with the British government for refusing to allow his parents to take their dying son to the United States for treatment: a therapy trial, his last and only hope.

No further recourse was available in the UK, but an American doctor was ready to try to help him at Columbia University Medical Center. Charlie’s parents raised £1.4 million through crowdfunding; they had the money to take him to the US by air ambulance.

But doctors at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London didn’t like that idea. They said it wouldn’t help, that the American therapy was experimental. They said the baby’s life support should just stop.

On April 11th, a British High Court judge ruled with the doctors, empowering them to turn off Charlie’s life-support machines. His mother screamed “no” when she heard the verdict.

There was a petition with more than 110,000 names on it. People wrote letters to the Prime Minister, calling on her to release Charlie from Great Ormond Street’s care. The pope said he was praying for Charlie’s parents, “hoping that their desire to accompany and care for their own child to the end is not ignored.”

And now Charlie is out of time.

Even US President Trump tweeted that “If we can help little #CharlieGard, as per our friends in the U.K. and the Pope, we would be delighted to do so.”

Charlie’s parents challenged the decision in the Court of Appeals, the Supreme Court, and the European Court of Human Rights.

All to no avail. The Courts would not allow them to try to save their baby’s life.

Who Can Call This Justice?

And now Charlie is out of time. According to the BBC, “US neurologist Dr. Michio Hirano had said he was no longer willing to offer the baby experimental therapy after he saw the results of a new MRI scan last week.”

It’s possible that Charlie’s doctors were right, that experimental treatment wouldn’t have helped (although his parents don’t think so, nor do American and Italian doctors). But what harm could it have done when he’s dying anyway? And if his parents had the means to give him one last chance, why shouldn’t they exercise their right to do so? They belong to Charlie just as he belongs to them, and no one but Chris and Connie should get the final say on his medical care.

I never really knew what people meant by the phrase “death panels” before. It was just a term bandied about by talking heads and political personalities. It’s chilling how well it applies in this instance: a group of bureaucrats that sits around deciding who is worthy of medical care.

I don’t know how the power slipped away from the individual, whether taken by force or given away with applause, but this is outrageous. And it’s wrong.

Read with a Box of Tissues

I will leave you with the words of Connie Yates, Charlie’s mom:

Due to the deterioration in his muscles, there is now no way back for Charlie. Time that has been wasted. It is time that has sadly gone against him.

We want people to realise that we have been speaking to parents whose children were just like Charlie before starting treatment and now some of them are walking around like normal children. We wanted Charlie to have that chance too.

All we wanted to do was take Charlie from one world renowned hospital to another world renowned hospital in the attempt to save his life and to be treated by the world leader in mitochondrial disease. We feel that we should have been trusted as parents to do so but we will always know in our hearts that we did the very best for Charlie and I hope that he is proud of us for fighting his corner.

Charlie had a real chance of getting better. It’s now unfortunately too late for him but it’s not too late for others with this horrible disease and other diseases. We will continue to help and support families of ill children and try and make Charlie live on in the lives of others. We owe it to him to not let his life be in vain.

Despite the way that our beautiful son has been spoken about sometimes, as if he not worthy of a chance at life, our son is an absolute WARRIOR and we could not be prouder of him and we will miss him terribly. One little boy has brought the world together and whatever people’s opinions are, no one can deny the impact our beautiful son has had on the world and his legacy will never ever die.

We are now going to spend our last precious moments with our son Charlie, who unfortunately won’t make his 1st birthday in just under 2 weeks’ time, and we would ask that our privacy is respected at this very difficult time.

Mummy and Daddy love you so much Charlie, we always have and we always will and we are so sorry that we couldn’t save you.”

Marianne March is a recent graduate of Georgia State University, where she majored in Public Policy, with a minor in Economics. Follow her on twitter @mari_tweets.

This article was published by The Foundation for Economic Education and may be freely distributed, subject to a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which requires that credit be given to the author. Read the original article.

Thanks to Court Ruling, Student Literally Can’t Attend School Because He’s Black – Article by Carey Wedler

Thanks to Court Ruling, Student Literally Can’t Attend School Because He’s Black – Article by Carey Wedler

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The New Renaissance HatCarey Wedler
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St. Louis, MO — An African-American third-grader in St. Louis, Missouri will be unable to continue attending his charter school due to a decades-old federal court decision intended to fight segregation. Edmund Lee, a high-performing student at Gateway Science Academy, will be forced to leave the school he has attended since kindergarten because he and his mother, La’Shieka White, are moving away from the district where the school is located. Though policy guidelines, pursuant to the court decision, allow students to stay if they move, a provision specifically states he cannot — because he is black.

“When I read the guidelines I was in shock,” White said. “I was crying.”

Though media outlets, including Salon, have reported this anachronistic decision to be a result of state law, the policy is actually a result of a U.S. Court of Appeals ruling from 1980 in response to a 1972 lawsuit challenging segregation. In 1983, a desegregation settlement agreement was reached that included “the transfer of black city students into primarily white suburban districts and white suburban students into magnet schools in the city,” explains the Voluntary Interdistrict Choice Corporation, the organization tasked with overseeing the implementation of the 1983 settlement. Until 1999, VICC stood for the Voluntary Interdistrict Coordinating Council, but in 1999, it became a non-profit corporation and the name was changed.

Kurt Fuchs, an employee with the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (MDESE), told Anti-Media that Edmund will be able to finish his current semester at Gateway Science Academy, but noted he will have to relocate to a new school next year. He explained that the 1983 settlement agreement was reached when St. Louis’ demographic was predominantly black, and the court decision sought to implement what could be called reverse discrimination.

Sarah Potter, a communications coordinator for the MDESE, explained the settlement initiated transfers intended to equalize race distribution in schools. She said when the agreement was drafted, the region had predominantly white suburbs and predominantly black cities, a demographic the settlement sought to change.

Though the agreement was intended to undo segregation, more than 30 years later it has become a justification for it. Edmund’s mother expressed a broad view of the issues with the court-mandated policy.

“I don’t want it to be just about an African-American boy,” she said. “I want it to be about all children.”

Staff at the charter school are also dismayed at the way the decades-old policy is now perpetuating the very discrimination it was intended to prevent.

“If this helps us start a conversation about maybe some things that could be different with the law, then that is as good thing,” said Assistant Principal Janet Moak.

Tiffany Luis, Edmund’s third grade teacher, said, “To not see his face in the halls next year would be extremely sad.”

David Glaser, VICC’s chief executive officer, told Anti-Media they are unable to challenge the policy.

“I understand why people would like to do [something] different, but there isn’t anything I can do — or that anyone can do — because we are all under the constraints of the decision, and it’s our job to follow the law,” he said. He suggested it is unlikely an exception will be made for Edmund because the court’s decision — and the subsequent 1983 desegregation agreement — are legally binding federal court mandates. “It’s not like we can unilaterally change it,” he said.

As of Thursday afternoon, a petition seeking to allow Edmund to continue his studies at Gateway has garnered over 35,000 signatures. In spite of public outcry, however, it appears that for now, the anti-segregation policy will continue to enforce discrimination.

Glaser noted that even the state legislature can’t do anything because the state of Missouri signed the agreement when it was crafted.

As Tiffany Luis said, “The family is saying they want to stay. I don’t understand why they can’t.”

Carey Wedler joined Anti-Media as an independent journalist in September of 2014. Her topics of interest include the police and warfare states, the Drug War, the relevance of history to current problems and solutions, and positive developments that drive humanity forward. She currently resides in Los Angeles, California, where she was born and raised.

This article (Thanks to Court Ruling, Student Literally Can’t Attend School Because He’s Black) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Carey Wedler and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11 pm Eastern/8 pm Pacific.

No, Mr. Trump, Victims of Eminent Domain Do Not “Get a Fortune” – Article by George C. Leef

No, Mr. Trump, Victims of Eminent Domain Do Not “Get a Fortune” – Article by George C. Leef

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The New Renaissance HatGeorge C. Leef
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Trump’s huge mistake about eminent domain

During the debate among Republican presidential candidates last month, Jeb Bush hammered Donald Trump on his abuse of eminent domain. But Trump apparently sees nothing wrong in having government officials force people to sell their property.

Trump replied,

Eminent domain is an absolute necessity for a country, for our country. Without it, you wouldn’t have roads, you wouldn’t have hospitals, you wouldn’t have anything. You would have schools, you wouldn’t have bridges.

And what a lot of people don’t know because they were all saying, oh, you’re going to take their property. When somebody — when eminent domain is used on somebody’s property, that person gets a fortune. They at least get fair market value, and if they’re smart, they’ll get two or three times the value of their property.

This last assertion led George Mason law professor Ilya Somin (an expert on eminent domain) to quip at the Volokh Conspiracy, “If eminent domain really were a good way to make a fortune, the Donald Trumps of the world would be lobbying the government to condemn their property. But that rarely, if ever, happens.”

Put aside Trump’s hyperbole about the supposed impossibility of schools, hospitals, and bridges without eminent domain. What I want to focus on is his claim that eminent domain is not objectionable because people who have their property taken make out just fine financially.

That claim is simply indefensible. The truth is that people who lose their property to eminent domain proceedings are almost never made whole.

Legal scholars have for many years been writing about the injustice that usually befalls people who have to settle for what the government deems “just compensation” under the Fifth Amendment. I wouldn’t expect Mr. Trump to know about that because he is too busy making deals. But the kind of deals businessmen usually make involve two parties who can say “no,” unless and until they think the deal will improve their positions.

With eminent domain takings, however, the property owner can’t say “no,” and usually must settle for much less than he or she would have bargained for in a voluntary setting.

Professor Gideon Kanner has written extensively about the problem of inadequate compensation for people who’ve been forced to sell under eminent domain. In his article “[Un]Equal Justice under Law: The Invidiously Disparate Treatment of American Property Owners in Taking Cases,” he writes:

The true standard of compensation is not indemnity, but rather fair market value so artfully defined as to exclude factors that sellers and buyers in voluntary transactions would consider, and that the government need only pay for what it acquires, not for what the owner has lost.

Those losses include business goodwill, relocation expenses, and the emotional damage of having to leave a community where one may have strong ties. In the government’s calculus, people are expected to suffer such losses as part of the price of living in America.

As the Supreme Court stated in the 1949 takings case Kimball Laundry v. U.S., “Loss to the owner of non-transferable values … is properly treated as part of the burden of common citizenship.” That “tough luck, property owner” mindset still prevails.

Knowing that they hold the high cards (and ultimately the guns) when they deal with property owners, government officials take full advantage. As Kanner observes, “Condemning agencies regularly reap unjustified windfalls from the fact that the majority of their offers (including the many low-ball ones) are accepted without litigation or even involvement by a private appraiser or lawyer.”

Therefore, eminent domain causes many property owners to suffer uncompensated losses.

Far from “getting a fortune” or “two or three times” the market value of their property, most owners are left substantially worse off for their unwanted encounter with condemning government agencies. Few if any of them shrug off the losses as their part of the “burden of common citizenship.”

Although the eminent domain issue came up during a debate among presidential candidates, there is hardly anything that the president can do to rectify the problem of under-compensation for property owners. He (or she) cannot issue an executive order mandating that property owners be made whole.

If there is to be a solution, it must come from the judiciary.

Judges, and especially the justices of the Supreme Court, will have to stop ruling that merely because an individual is paid an amount deemed “fair market value,” the Fifth Amendment’s requirement of “just compensation” has been satisfied.

It would also help property owners if the Supreme Court would overturn Kelo v. New London and establish that property can only be taken for actual “public use,” as the Fifth Amendment requires, and not for private use that local politicians think might have some “public benefit.”

Since we are going to have confirmation hearings for a new member of the Court eventually, it would be important to find out precisely what the nominee thinks “just compensation” and “public use” actually mean.

George Leef is the former book review editor of The Freeman. He is director of research at the John W. Pope Center for Higher Education Policy.

This article was published by The Foundation for Economic Education and may be freely distributed, subject to a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which requires that credit be given to the author.

#IStandWithAhmed Tells Us Something about Public School – Article by B.K. Marcus

#IStandWithAhmed Tells Us Something about Public School – Article by B.K. Marcus

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The New Renaissance Hat
B.K. Marcus
September 17, 2015
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There’s zero tolerance for drawing outside the lines.

“None of the teachers know what I can do,” said Ahmed Mohamed of Irving, Texas.

Does that sound ominous — or does it sound like any gifted 14-year-old reflecting on his public school environment?

Mohamed is a tinkerer. He makes his own radios and repairs his own go-kart. He has a box of circuit boards at the foot of his bed. In middle school, he belonged to the robotics club, but it’s a new school year, and Ahmed hasn’t yet found a similar niche in high school.

So shortly before bedtime last Sunday, September 13, Ahmed wired a circuit board to a power supply and a digital display, and strapped the result inside a pencil case, hoping to show his engineering teacher what he could do.

Monday morning, his teacher admired Ahmed’s homemade clock. It was hardly his most sophisticated project, but more complex no doubt than anything Ahmed’s peers were doing on their own.

Ahmed’s engineering teacher admired the boy’s handiwork but added, “I would advise you not to show any other teachers.”

So Ahmed followed the advice and kept the clock in his bag — until another teacher complained that it was beeping during a later lesson, and Ahmed made the mistake of showing her his project after class. She told him it looked like a bomb and refused to return it.

A police officer pulled Ahmed out of his sixth-period class and, after questioning him in a schoolroom full of other cops, took him away in handcuffs.

“We have no information that he claimed it was a bomb,” said police spokesman James McLellan. “He kept maintaining it was a clock, but there was no broader explanation.”

Why should this kid have to explain a clock?

“It could reasonably be mistaken as a device if left in a bathroom or under a car,” according to McLellan. “The concern was, what was this thing built for?”

Because Ahmed is Muslim, and because Irving mayor Beth Van Duyne made national news over the summer making what have been generally interpreted as anti-Islamic statements, the Council on American-Islamic Relations has taken note. “This all raises a red flag for us: how Irving’s government entities are operating in the current climate,” said Alia Salem of the council’s North Texas chapter.

McLellan insists that “the reaction would have been the same regardless” of the student’s skin color, but the council is skeptical. Had a blonde Baptist boy brought a homemade clock to school, we would never have heard anything about it.

But is Ahmed’s treatment only a story about anti-Islamic hysteria?

“The concern was,” according to the police, “what was this thing built for?”

It was built to tell the time. It was built to impress an engineering teacher. It was built to help a talented boy find a place at his new school where he could fit in.

But it wasn’t assigned. It wasn’t sanctioned. Like Ahmed himself, the jerry-rigged timepiece doesn’t fit the expectations of the local powers that be.

The engineering teacher understood — and he warned Ahmed that no one else would. That tells us everything we need to know about the people responsible for Ahmed’s education.

B.K. Marcus is managing editor of the Freeman. His website is bkmarcus.com.

This article was originally published by The Foundation for Economic Education and may be freely distributed, subject to a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which requires that credit be given to the author.

Thousands of Americans Have Been Illegally Detained in Chicago’s CIA-Style Detention Center – Article by Carey Wedler

Thousands of Americans Have Been Illegally Detained in Chicago’s CIA-Style Detention Center – Article by Carey Wedler

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The New Renaissance HatCarey Wedler
August 19, 2015

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(ANTIMEDIA) Chicago, IL – The Chicago Police’s CIA-style black site, Homan Square, has seen more people detained than died on 9/11 or imprisoned at Guantanamo, according to a new report by the Guardian. The newspaper, which sued the Chicago police to obtain further details on Homan Square, reports overwhelming targeting of minorities as well as other sordid and violative policies.

From 2004 to 2015, at least 3,500 people were detained at Homan Square. These records do not cover the full span of the facility’s tenure, as it has been open since 1995. According to the Guardian, a grossly disproportionate ratio of detainees were minorities, “many accused of low-level drug crimes, [and] faced with incriminating themselves before their arrests appeared in a booking system by which their families and attorneys might find them.”

The majority of arrests were for low-level drug crimes. As the Guardian details, there were 1,175 arrests for heroin, 526 for cannabis, 484 for cocaine, and 464 for “unspecified” drug charges. 244 arrests were made in relation to firearms while other arrests were for “minor infractions such as traffic violations, public urination and driving without a seatbelt.” Other charges ranged from drinking alcohol in public to murder. More than half of all Homan Square arrests occurred 2.5 miles or less from the facility. Of 3,621 arrest records provided to the Guardian, about 3,540 incurred charges (the newspaper notes that “[v]ast amounts of data documenting the full scope of detentions and interrogations at Homan Square remain undisclosed”).

Though blacks make up 33% of Chicago’s population, 82% of those detained at Homan Square were black. Of the 3,500 detained, only three were allowed official visits from attorneys, two of which were on the same day in 2013. The Guardian noted it was able to find eight other instances of lawyers entering the facilities, though four were to accompany clients turning themselves in.

Craig Futterman of the University of Chicago Law School observed that “In Chicago, the police do not provide people with attorneys at the police station at the times they most need them: when they’re subject to interrogation…That’s what the Miranda warning is all about: the right to counsel while interrogated by police.” Though police have said that “any individual who wishes to consult a lawyer will not be interrogated until they have an opportunity to do so,” the Guardian notes that this would mean 3,500 people waived their right to an attorney.

Former top Obama aide and current Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who presided over ⅔ of the arrests— 2,522 since he took office in 2011—has insisted that Chicago police “follow all the rules.” However, in addition to the lack of access to attorneys, first-hand accounts reveal a starkly different story.

In February, the Anti-Media reported on detainees held for marijuana, shackled to poles, and denied lawyers. Since the initial news broke that month, 118 arrests have been made. Charles Jones was arrested (for a second time) on March 17 after police officers broke in his door looking for a 5’8” man. Jones is 6’4”, but when officers—some masked— found a firearm in his air conditioning unit, they took him back to Homan Square. He was shackled to a pole in an “interrogation room” and his requests for a lawyer were denied over the course of six to eight hours (others claim to have had similar experiences while other allegations include sexual abuse, starvation, sensory deprivation, and beatings).

Jones suspects they conduct such arrests to extract information on drug dealers.

“The only reason you’re brought to Homan and Fillmore [the facility’s cross streets] is to extract information,” he said. “The police probably feel they need those covert operations because that’s the only way to get the intel they need instead of doing the good work – the hard work…It’s easy to just go grab someone, throw ’em somewhere – no food, no water, no access to the outside world, intimidating and threatening ’em.”

Jones’ wife and mother of his three children was unable to locate him once he was arrested, in spite of her slew of calls to police departments across the city. Jones is currently in the midst of suing the police department for a separate 2012 case where he claims he was charged for refusing to “give them information and cooperate with them.”

Rich Dressman, a white 50-year-old man, says he left town to evade pressure from police to act as an informant. “My life would be a lot easier if I gave them information,” he said. “I’d be home with a nice long shower and all that bullshit.”

Though police insist there is nothing disreputable about the facility, saying the square “merely house[s] undercover units,” the number and nature of arrests paint a markedly different reality. More people have been detained and charged at the formerly secret black site than were killed on 9/11, though such abuses are often justified by the terrorist attacks that occurred that day (even as the Patriot Act and Homan arrests overwhelmingly focus on drug “crimes”). More people have been illegally detained at Homan than suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, the globally infamous military torture facility scorned for flouting due process and holding innocent people for a decade. Guantanamo has been open longer than the span of released records from Homan Square.

That the Chicago police continued to arrest people—even after news of its abuses sparked widespread outrage—highlights the impunity with which they operate. That the numbers far surpass other outrageous figures demonstrates the United States’ increasingly misplaced priorities and disregard for the justice and freedom it claims to protect.

As Flint Taylor, who helped pressure Mayor Emanuel and the police to provide compensation to victims of police abuses said, “Hopefully, Chicago’s political leadership and its establishment media will finally take notice and stop collaborating to bury this story, so righteously championed by the Guardian, under the rug of denial and false ignorance.”

This article (Thousands of Americans Have Been Illegally Detained in Chicago’s CIA-Style Detention Center) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Carey Wedler and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org.

Carey Wedler joined Anti-Media as an independent journalist in September of 2014. As a senior editor, her topics of interest include the police and warfare states, the Drug War, the relevance of history to current problems and solutions, and positive developments that drive humanity forward. She currently resides in Los Angeles, California, where she was born and raised. Learn more about Wedler here!

Handcuffed and Helpless – Article by T.K. Coleman

Handcuffed and Helpless – Article by T.K. Coleman

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The New Renaissance HatT.K. Coleman
July 28, 2015

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There’s a naive idea floating around that an innocent person should never be afraid of cops.

 

Editors’ Note from the Foundation for Economic Education: FEE faculty T.K. Coleman is consistently one of our students’ favorite speakers and teachers. His insight and magnetism would be impossible to replace. We not only consider him a friend, but a member of the FEE family.

Recently T.K. related the story of his experience with police abuse. We cannot independently verify the account he gives here, but we offer his story based on our belief in T.K. Coleman as a human being and as a friend to our organization.

We believe it is important to cover the problem of police abuse from the perspective of one who has experienced it.

What you are about to read is not a philosophical argument. It’s a personal testimony. The aim of telling this story is neither to make a political statement, nor to score points for a particular ideology. For almost three years, I’ve mostly held it in. But it’s become clear to me that it’s time to give a more detailed account to a broader audience.

*             *             *

One Friday night, my wife and I were driving through a small town on the way to a comedy club in Manhattan Beach, California. We were going to hang out and share a few laughs. On the way, we were pulled over by the police.

Two officers approached our car. One of them came to my window. The other one came to her window.

Without asking to see my license or registration, the officer on my side told me to get out of the car. I immediately and respectfully complied without raising a single question or objection. And in case you’re wondering, I wasn’t dressed in gang colors, nor was I wearing a hoodie.

When I exited the car, he turned me around, handcuffed me, threw me against the side of my car, and did a complete body search on me. As he groped me, he said, “This is how we do it in LA.”

I remember seeing a woman walking across the street holding hands with her little girl. We made eye-contact. She picked her little girl up and jogged in the other direction. Who could blame her? If I saw one of society’s most trusted authority figures manhandling a guy, I’d also assume this was a potentially dangerous situation.

The officer then removed the wallet from my pocket and pulled out the cash.

“Why do you have so much cash on you?”

“Sir, I honestly didn’t feel like a $100 was a lot of cash to have on me. I’m going out with my wife tonight and just wanted to have a little cash on me.”

“We’ll see.”

Next, he asked me where I lived. I told him my address. He laughed and said, “This n****r knows his address.” Then he walked me to the police car and literally threw me in the back seat and shut the door. From the back seat of a police car, I watched the officer join his partner who was already busy questioning my wife. They also made her get out of the car. They both got in her face and started questioning her.

Imagine what goes on inside of a man’s head when he’s handcuffed and helpless as he watches two men with guns get in his wife’s face. Imagine the complex blend of confusion, fear, irrational optimism, and rage that festers inside one’s soul as he watches one cop take his wife’s purse and pour all the contents out, while the other officer literally crawls around inside our car for several minutes.

They spent about 10 more minutes aggressively questioning my wife.

One of the officers returned to the car with my wallet and proceeded to look up my info in the system.

“You got any baby momma drama?” he asked me.

“I don’t have any children, sir.”

“You sure you ain’t got no baby momma drama?”

“I am certain I have no children, sir. There are no women out there who are even under the impression that I am the father of their child.”

“Are you clean? Are you clean? You ain’t got no drugs? You ain’t got nothing on you? No baby momma drama?” he says.

“I am clean,” I said.

For the entire time we were talking, my eyes were deadlocked on that other officer and my wife. After what felt like an eternity, the officer let me out of the car and took off the handcuffs.

“You’re good,” he told me.

As I slowly walked back to our car, I said to one of the officers, “Sir, I’m not trying to be antagonistic or disrespectful, but is there a reason for why I was pulled over?”

“We just had to check you out.”

I wanted to say, “What does that even mean?” But more importantly, I wanted to get us out of that situation safely. Given the way he man-handled me earlier, it was obvious to me that I was dealing with guys who weren’t above breaking protocol. So I just walked back to the car, took a deep breath, asked my wife if she was alright, and did my best Denzel Washington from Glory impersonation as I tried to keep it together.

Our comedy show started at 8 P.M. We were pulled over at about 7:30. When they let us go, it was about 10 minutes after the hour. We decided we couldn’t go home, or it would feel as if we let them win. So we drove to a local cinema, watched a movie, came back home, had some coffee, and just stayed up talking with each other about it.

*             *             *

I’m grateful that we didn’t get killed. I’m grateful that my wife didn’t get assaulted. I’m grateful that they didn’t plant drugs on me or put me in the hospital.

But my gratitude doesn’t change the fact that these men abused their power, disrespected my wife, laid their hands on my body in an inappropriate way, scared the hell out of us both, made us miss our show, and treated us like criminals simply because they felt entitled to do so.

They will not ruin my life, nor will they determine my destiny, but I want to put this story on the record because this was neither the first nor the second time something like this happened to me, and I sincerely believe that things like this happen all over the country.

There’s this naive idea floating around that people should never be afraid of cops as long as they’re innocent and compliant. For a lot of people in this country, that’s simply not true. This isn’t about playing some mythical race-card, nor is it about me promoting the idea that all cops are evil. I’m sure there are lots of cops who are nice to their kids and fun to hang out with when they’re having beer with their buddies. (I’m also sure that’s true of a lot of so-called thugs.)

But if we want to have intelligent discussions about authority in this country, we have to stop using a logic that tells us that people in authority always have a fair reason for doing what they do. We do a lot of talking about what people can do to avoid being abused by cops. We don’t talk as much as we should about the abuse that happens to people who follow all those instructions. If we can’t question authority, we are doomed.

*             *             *

Here’s a habit I picked up early on: When I see police officers, I shift into my A-game.

If I feel an itch on my forehead, I’ll notify the cops first before scratching the itch because I want them to feel safe and secure about the movement of my hand. This is a technique I refer to as “not getting shot.”

I learned techniques like this from the first day I received my driver’s license. Growing up in the suburbs, I was always afraid to drive my dad’s Lincoln Town Car.

I was too afraid to tell him, but I would cringe when he’d ask me to drive his car because I knew I would be pulled over and harassed by cops whose worldview wasn’t big enough to imagine me in a nice car (even though it was normal to see young people driving nice cars in the neighborhood where I grew up).

I remember driving my dad’s car once, and he left his toolbox in the back seat. A cop pulled me over and asked why I had a toolbox. Fair enough. I told him my dad was in real estate and construction, and that I was working with him at one of his buildings. The cop had me step out of the car, handcuffed me, and searched the toolbox while I sat on the curb in handcuffs.

“Are there any other weapons in this car besides this hammer here?”

My overly diplomatic reply was this: “With all due respect, sir, the hammer is not a weapon, but rather one of many tools in that toolbox we use for work. However, I understand where you’re coming from and I can see how you might be inclined to see it as a weapon, but those tools are only used for work.”

He let me go. I can only imagine what my fate would have been if I hadn’t learned about the loaded question fallacy. Two points for philosophy. Hurray.

By the way, the officer gave me no warnings, citations, or explanations. Like the guys from my earlier story, he just wanted to “check me out.”

Unfortunately, my techniques don’t make me feel all that secure, nor does the fact that today I drive a car that’s a lot more modest than my dad’s. At every stage of my adulthood, I’ve been pulled over by cops, dragged out of my car, handcuffed, spoken to like I was a stupid little boy, humiliated in public, called racial slurs, and manhandled by multiple guys with badges multiples times (without being arrested or charged with anything), in spite of the fact that I’ve never been armed, and I’ve always complied with their every request.

When I spent two years without having a car, it was one of the most peaceful, cop-free times in my life. I would still get harassed at times, but it was so much harder for them to come up with excuses for stopping me. I have never been physically or psychologically abused by drug-dealing “thugs,” but I have definitely been abused by police who thought it was okay to push me around because I fit their stereotype of a thug.

Some people automatically feel safer when cops are around, but that’s not a universal experience. It’s certainly not mine. I’m not angry at every cop, but I am deeply concerned about the frighteningly popular belief that you must have done something wrong if you were abused by one.

*             *             *

When I first wrote about this on my Facebook page, I only had my family and friends in mind. Prior to that, I’d never shared the full details with anyone except for a small group of people.

But more and more, I’d been involved in conversations about police brutality. It seems to be on everyone’s mind. And while I acknowledge that these issues are more complex than many people make them out to be, there was one recurring element in many of these conversations that really irked me: The idea that a police officer would never mistreat someone if they conducted themselves in the right way. I know from personal experience that this assumption is false.

Indeed, I know many people who have been mistreated by authorities who abuse their power and they’re simply afraid to talk about it. Since I shared a version of this account on Facebook, over 1500 hundred people have shared my Facebook post. I’ve received tons of messages from people who have been victims of various kinds of abuse, not just from cops, but abuse in general. Many of them thanked me for inspiring them to tell their own story. I’ve even had police officers apologize to me on behalf of other police officers.

But why are people so often silent in the face of abuse? They don’t want to risk their careers; they don’t want to make enemies at their church; they don’t want to be associated with the wrong political party; they don’t want to be seen as liars; they don’t want anyone targeting them.

And I get it. Just since I shared this on social media, people have called me a liar, a bullshitter, a slanderer, a cop hater and an attention seeker. Honestly, I can relate with those people who would rather just stay silent than suffer the indignity of the aftermath — which so often just adds insult to injury.

But then there are the people who find inspiration, perhaps to tell their own story. I wrote this for them. Some have asked why I would write something like this if I have no chance of bringing the cops to justice. My answer is that I wrote this primarily in hopes that some people’s minds will be opened and others’ hearts will be healed due to what I went through. Most importantly, I wrote this so that people who stay silent — for whatever reason — will know they aren’t alone.

I wish I had footage of what happened. I wish I had had the opportunity to obtain badge numbers, names, or license plate numbers without fear. Instead all I could think was “Please God let me out of this situation alive.” “Please don’t let them hurt my wife.” “What in the world is happening to me?” When they finally let me go, I was mostly just relieved that we were going to get out safe.

Believe it or not, there was a point when it did occur to me to try to get some information on these police officers. When I asked the one cop why we had been stopped, I thought about getting a look at their license plate number right then. But it occurred to me that things could escalate again if they perceived me as antagonizing them. I was scared of what they might do next if they noticed me looking at their car as if I were trying to obtain their information.

*             *             *

After my wife and I left, we calmed down. I started to reflect on things. I wished I could have gotten something — a badge number, a license tag, anything. Still, I decided to report it. The next day, I called the police department in the town where we were pulled over. I spoke with an officer who was appalled by my story, but who said it couldn’t be his department. He asked me if I was sure it wasn’t the state police. I honestly didn’t know. He believed my story, though, and he told me that if those were his guys, he would deal with them harshly. He apologized on behalf of police officers. We talked for almost an hour and he promised to have a meeting with his department about my story.

I also called state police as well as the departments for a couple surrounding towns but with the same results. My lack of evidence made things difficult. I tried hard to channel my anger in the direction of holding those officers accountable, but ultimately fell short. So, all I have is my story and the hope that some good can come from telling it.

All I ask of you, dear reader, is that you consider it an invitation to rethink the way some of these police encounters are framed and construed by all parties. If you’re skeptical of my version of events, that’s fine. I encourage you to keep on doubting.

But please don’t be selective in your skepticism. Question me. Question others. Question the police. Question authority. Most importantly, question your own assumptions. The truth will come will eventually come from people willing to search for it.

T.K. Coleman is a philosopher, writer, lecturer, entrepreneur, and life coach living in Los Angeles, California. He is the co-founder and Education Director for Praxis, a 10-month apprenticeship program that combines a traditional liberal arts education with practical skills training, professional development, and real-world business experience.

This article was published by The Foundation for Economic Education and may be freely distributed, subject to a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which requires that credit be given to the author.

Particular, Principled, Context-Specific Justice (2010) – Article by G. Stolyarov II

Particular, Principled, Context-Specific Justice (2010) – Article by G. Stolyarov II

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The New Renaissance Hat
G. Stolyarov II
Originally Published April 11, 2010
as Part of Issue CCXLIV of The Rational Argumentator
Republished July 18, 2014
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Note from the Author: This essay was originally published as part of Issue CCXLIV of The Rational Argumentator on April 11, 2010, using the Yahoo! Voices publishing platform. Because of the imminent closure of Yahoo! Voices, the essay is now being made directly available on The Rational Argumentator. The arguments in it continue to be relevant to discussions regarding justice, natural law, and a merit-based society, and therefore it is fitting for this publication to provide these arguments a fresh presence.
~ G. Stolyarov II, July 18, 2014
***

Here, I will briefly outline the fundamental features of a new approach to justice that departs radically from the egalitarian view typical of our era. A departure from egalitarianism may appear to some to be reactionary – with the alternative being a reversion to the older, class-based systems of justice, where different individuals were afforded different treatments on the basis of membership in rather arbitrarily defined groups. However, the approach of particular, principled, context-specific justice is in fact highly progressive in that it rejects the collectivism and suffering of innocents inherent in both class-based and egalitarian systems of justice. If we use an analogy to medical evolution, class-based justice could be compared to the pre-scientific treatments of bleeding and leeches; egalitarian justice could be compared to a mass-marketed pill that helps some people, but not in all ways, and also causes substantial adverse side effects in others; particular and context-specific justice is like an army of tiny nano-machines, repairing specific instances of bodily damage cell by cell without damaging healthy tissues. What nano-medicine promises to accomplish for the principle of health, particular and context-specific justice can accomplish in advancing the principle of merit.

The best way of encapsulating particular, principled, context-specific justice is to say that justice should not be blind. Indeed, justice should see as much as possible about the situation which is being judged and use all relevant information to arrive at a remedy specifically tailored to that situation. Any simplification of this principle – including the invocation of group- or class-based stereotypes, inflexible norms, and binding precedents – leads a departure from the just outcome.

It is a necessary component of justice that no innocent person should be harmed by its application – and that no guilty person should be harmed by it beyond the extent specifically warranted by his guilt. To hold otherwise is to embrace not justice, but pseudo-pragmatic trade-offs, where the suffering of some innocents is weighed against the perceived greater or lesser suffering of other innocents. To enforce such trade-offs is not within the legitimate power of any human being, nor is it necessitated by the natures of things or genuine practicality.

Unfortunately, “justice” as conceived by many of our contemporaries – egalitarian justice, or, phrased less generously, one-size-fits-all justice – necessitates the making of trade-offs that harm innocent people in virtually every case. Egalitarian justice is based on the premise that all persons must be treated in the same manner, irrespective of their individual qualities, context, and the consequences of a particular treatment. The uniform treatment is intended to produce the “greatest good for the greatest number” – but it often results in the lowering of the manner in which people are actually treated to a mediocre level, or even to the level of the lowest common denominator. Egalitarian justice typically imposes mandates or prohibitions deemed to improve the position of the “average person” or the majority of people; in reality, such impositions hamstring the above-average individuals while providing only slight, if any, benefits for the others. Indeed, many egalitarians, after the failure of their attempts to elevate the majority through one-size-fits-all measures, resort to insisting that everyone must “share the burden” equally – i.e., suffer by the same amount in situations where, before, no suffering was necessary.

Egalitarian justice is misguided, because it is premised on the idea that justice applies fundamentally to collectives of people, as opposed to individuals – who are the basic units where human perception, thinking, creation, and decision-making are concerned. Egalitarian justice seeks – at least in its best-intentioned variant – to bring about societal improvement by imposing the same rules and treatments upon all of society.

By contrast, reason and morality – natural law – require that every individual be treated in accordance with the merits or demerits of that individual’s own actions. Individuals who act rationally and morally, to the genuine benefit of themselves and others, should be rewarded, and individuals who act detrimentally – by harming others or themselves – should suffer the naturally ensuing adverse consequences of their actions. Individuals who harm only themselves are already punished sufficiently by the harm they inflict; there is no need for an external entity to disproportionately magnify that harm. However, individuals whose actions also adversely affect innocent others will not always be thwarted in time to prevent the harm. Hence arises the need for societal institutions, external to a particular situation where harm to others can be caused, to prevent or remedy such harm. This is the function of justice.

Thus, to have true justice in a particular case, it is clear that the harm to innocent persons in that case must be prevented or remedied – and, just as importantly, no harm must be caused by the process of justice itself. This is impossible to accomplish without a finely targeted approach: one that attempts to fathom the particular situation in all its relevant details, to establish the harm being committed or threatened, and to develop a way of neutralizing that harm which will punish only the guilty, and only in proportion to their guilt. A simplistic rule, conceived to apply to a myriad of diverse cases, apart from the context of these particular cases, is not adequate to this task.

It may seem at first glance that the attainment of particular justice precludes the application of any principles whatsoever. After all, are principles not themselves general rules that are developed apart from any given particular case? Yet it is not possible to reach a non-arbitrary decision on any matter without having some standards on which to base that decision. And there are indeed standards which are universally applicable to all human beings – derivable from the desirability of human life and flourishing, and from the mechanisms by which such values can be preserved and expanded. Among these standards are the natural rights of all humans: the right to act in the furtherance of one’s life, the right to acquire and keep property by naturally legitimate means, the right to interact with consenting others, and the right to be free from aggression, expropriation, and unwarranted punishment.

Indeed, the very definition of what constitutes an unjust harm is dependent on the principles of natural law. For instance, it is not an unjust harm if a person becomes displaced from a particular field of work because technological advances by others rendered that field of work obsolete. Because the technological advances and their creators did not rob, injure, kill, threaten, or defraud anyone, they are in complete accord with justice. The people displaced from their jobs may be worse off temporarily, but they always have an opportunity to retrain themselves in a society that respects their rights. Moreover, because they did not have the right to hold a particular job in the first place – as such a job was the result of an agreement that requires the continuing consent of two parties – they lost nothing to which they were entitled. On the other hand, it may be salutary from the standpoint of voluntary, private morality for the employers of such displaced individuals to offer to support their re-training or to aid them in finding alternate jobs.

But the universal standards of natural law are not the standards used by egalitarian justice; rather, egalitarianism tends to develop highly concrete criteria that are applied irrespective of whether they satisfy the abstract universal principles of justice. According to the most widespread embodiments of this philosophy, everyone must be subjected to the same minutiae, in an attempt to approximate just outcomes on a society-wide level. By contrast, in true justice, universal principles are not tied to any specific set of objects, procedures, or prescriptions for concrete behaviors. Rather, each principle can only be properly applied by considering the context in which it is relevant. To say, for instance, that honesty is a universal principle does not translate into concrete mandates or prohibitions for every situation; while it may not be justified to lie in most situations, in some – including situations where an aggressor demands the truth so as to inflict harm on its basis – lying may be morally necessary. It is an unfortunate characteristic of the egalitarian thinking of our era that abstract principles often become reified into a laundry list of byzantine particulars, whose “uniform” imposition then becomes seen as synonymous with justice – to the detriment of the very principles of justice that were supposed to be advanced in the first place.

While universal moral principles do not change, there are two important aspects of the world that do change continually: (1) our knowledge and understanding of these principles and (2) the specific concretes of our existence, to which those principles need to be applied. Moral philosophy is, and should be, an ever-evolving discipline, not because there are no truths to be found, but because no one can claim to have found all the truths or to have developed all of the facets of any true idea. At the same time, new discoveries, inventions, and societal changes raise new questions and dilemmas regarding how moral principles ought to be applied. The attempt of egalitarianism to set uniform concrete norms that apply to all people in all cases stands in defiance of the dynamic context in which we live and strive to fathom justice and reality. Egalitarianism, even based on the best effort to integrate the most advanced knowledge and the most rational thinking currently available, freezes justice in time and cuts off the prospects for a variety of innovative approaches that often occur simultaneously with one another within different subsets of any given society.

Because of the complexity of individual circumstances, every concrete norm, applied too broadly, will harm some innocent people. Particular, principled, context-specific justice would avoid this problem by being flexible with respect to concrete norms. For this, the discretion of the entity that dispenses justice is of foremost importance. Without discretion, no deviation from a concrete norm is possible – and, consequently, there is no way to avert innocent suffering. Discretion by a reasonable intelligent person, however, can avoid all of the obvious harms of a given norm – and the most competent and scrupulous dispensers of justice can even structure remedies so as to avoid subtle and indirect harms. Discretion should not be unlimited, and its exercise should be allowed in such a manner as would not extend the authority of the dispenser of justice beyond its intended sphere. Moreover, every care should be taken to prevent such discretion from resulting in draconian outcomes. But the limits imposed upon discretion should never prevent contextually warranted leniency or experimentation with remedies that are more palatable to all parties involved than those suggested by precedent or tradition.

To apply a general principle properly to a given situation, knowledge of the situation is crucial. The difference between true justice and egalitarian justice is akin to the difference between two applications of the principle of healthy eating: one approach makes choices regarding the nutritional value of every particular item of food one encounters, in the context in which one encounters it, while the other approach develops in advance a “diet” that consists of context-independent prohibitions on certain foods and requirements for certain other foods. Following a sub-optimal strategy for healthy eating may still make one healthier on net and, in that case, is not perilous. But this is because the individual is the basic moral unit; actions that benefit an individual on net while causing some discomfort, inconvenience, or inefficiency to that individual are therefore acceptable. But there can be no legitimate consideration of what benefits “society on net” which disregards harms to any individuals that occur in the process. Society is not a moral unit, and harms to its “components” cannot be brushed aside as necessary to advance an ostensibly greater goal.

Of course, for particular, principles-based justice to be applied to any systematic extent, both prevailing legal systems and moral understandings would need to change; the latter change would most likely need to precede the former, at least among the people who can affect the legal systems. Egalitarian justice attempts to treat particular situations independently of context or consequences; such treatment cannot be reconciled with the principles of justice. True justice encounters reality directly and infuses into it improvements – protections for the innocent, punishments for the guilty, and a closer approximation of a society where natural law is obeyed and the principle of merit is reflected.

Read other articles in The Rational Argumentator’s Issue CCXLIV.

Meaningful and Vacuous “Privilege” – Article by G. Stolyarov II

Meaningful and Vacuous “Privilege” – Article by G. Stolyarov II

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The New Renaissance Hat
G. Stolyarov II
December 3, 2013
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Sanford Ikeda’s concise and insightful lists of 14 common fallacies about the free market (available in two installments from The Freeman here and here) motivate careful thought about the commonly used and misused term “privilege” and the conflations in which it can result. In discussing the second fallacy regarding the free market, that it is identical to a system where the government grants special privileges to businesses, Dr. Ikeda writes that “People sometimes define ‘privilege’ as any advantage a person or group may have over others. Certainly such advantages exist today and would exist in a free market—you may be born into a wealthy family or have superior drive and resourcefulness—but these advantages are consistent with the absence of privilege in the libertarian sense, as long as you acquired such advantages without fraud or the initiation of physical violence against the person or property of others.”

Indeed, the increasingly common usage of the term “privilege” to mean any advantage whatsoever eviscerates it of any genuine meaning it once had. This problem in today’s discourse spreads far beyond discussions of connections between businesses and governments.

Certainly, the very fact that one individual is different from another – with a different set of experiences, different physique, different knowledge, and even different standing room at any particular time – provides that individual with opportunities that the other lacks, while rendering him or her limited in ways that the other is not. Unfortunately, this trivial fact is increasingly being misconstrued in some circles to suggest vile inequities arising out of innocuous human differences. People who have not aggressed against, or even demeaned or ridiculed, anyone are increasingly being identified as “privileged” simply for belonging to broadly and crudely defined groups – be it all people of European descent, all males, or even all non-overweight people (witness the pseudo-concept of “thin privilege”) or people who are not disabled. (“Ableism” is apparently an emerging sin in the vocabulary of the increasingly militant and vitriolic collectivistic “social justice” movement – which is about neither true individual-oriented justice nor the preservation of a civilized and tolerant society.)  Such a vacuously expansive view of privilege is a tremendous insult to the true victims of coercive privilege throughout history – from slaves in all eras, to women who in prior eras were denied suffrage and property rights, to the freethinkers and forbears of liberty and reason, whose voices were too often snuffed out by the arbitrary power of absolute monarchs and theocrats in the pre-Enlightenment world.

Thomas Jefferson, an opponent of privilege in its meaningful sense, put it best when he expressed in his 1826 letter to Roger C. Weightman “the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride legitimately, by the grace of god.” Jefferson was a staunch opponent of the coercive privilege that enabled some to gain artificial advantages by restricting others from pursuing life-improving courses of action. Accidents of birth, or special lobbying skills, should not, in a just system, enable a person to acquire prerogatives which could not be earned through the free, peaceful exercise of that person’s abilities. Jefferson saw the future and strength of the American republic in the hoped-for emergence of a “natural aristocracy of talent and virtue” – people who, when allowed the liberty to flourish through honest work and competition, would become role models for others solely through their examples. This natural aristocracy would not need force to maintain its prominence, because the traits of the most knowledgeable, most industrious, and most virtuous people will be emulated by any who earnestly seek to improve their own lives and who have the freedom to acquire knowledge and make their own decisions.

Yet Jefferson’s natural aristocracy would be denounced as an example of horrid “privilege” by the “social justice” types – simply due to the necessarily unequal distribution of outcomes on a free market of open and honest production, competition, and cooperation. After all, not everyone can originate the same ideas at the same time. Not everyone can take advantage of the same opportunity for entrepreneurial profit, whose attainment, as economist Israel Kirzner demonstrated in Competition and Entrepreneurship, arises out of alertness to opportunities that others have missed. Kirzner writes that “Because the participants in [a] market are less than omniscient, there are likely to exist, at any given time, a multitude of opportunities that have not yet been taken advantage of. Sellers may have sold for prices lower than the prices which were in fact obtainable… Buyers may have bought for prices higher than the lowest prices needed to secure what they are buying…” (43). Would it be an example of unacceptable “privilege” for an alert entrepreneur to remedy such an arbitrage opportunity and thereby bring otherwise-unrealized value to consumers?

Yes, the free exercise of human abilities will produce outcomes where some people will have some advantages over some others (while, of course, leaving fully open the possibility that those very others will have their own distinct advantages, obtained through hard work, knowledge, or sheer luck). But, as long as coercion is not involved in securing and maintaining those advantages, the people endowed with them are not “booted and spurred” to ride the rest of us. As Dr. Ikeda points out, the differences among people are a source of strength harnessed by the free market: “The free market gives you an incentive to profit from associating with and learning from others who might be very different from you, who operate outside your normal social networks.” By incentivizing and facilitating these interactions, the free market encourages greater tolerance, understanding, and visible societal heterogeneity of the sort that constitutes the best safeguard against truly heinous oppressions based on collectivistic stereotypes. Instead of condemning others as being too “privileged” simply on account of innocuous differences, it is far more productive to think about how those differences can help one achieve one’s own values through honest, peaceful, and productive interaction, cooperation, and exchange.

Against Collectivist Violence in the Middle East – Video by G. Stolyarov II

Against Collectivist Violence in the Middle East – Video by G. Stolyarov II

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Mr. Stolyarov condemns the murderous attacks on U.S. facilities in Libya, Egypt, and Yemen and discusses how the philosophy of collectivism and collective guilt is the motivation for the attacks. These completely unjustified killings should result in the recognition that individuals should only be judged as individuals and only for the deeds that they personally committed, and that guilt by association is unacceptable. Mr. Stolyarov also calls for a non-interventionist foreign policy, for the individual perpetrators of the atrocities to be brought to justice, and for a more general Enlightenment to occur in the Middle East.

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References

-“US envoy killed as Libya mob storms embassy” – Agence France-Presse – September 12, 2012
-“New details emerge of anti-Islam film’s mystery producer” – Moni Basu – CNN- September 13, 2012
– “2012 U.S. diplomatic missions attacks”
– “Yemeni protesters storm U.S. embassy compound in Sanaa” – Reuters – Mohammed Ghobari – September 13, 2012
– “Libya arrests four suspected in deadly US Consulate attack in Benghazi” – NBC News – September 13, 2012