I’ll be on HuffPost Live‘s “Shadow Convention” tomorrow at 9:50 a.m. PST with Congressman Dennis Kucinich talking about California’s prison guards union as a case study of what happens when we are not mindful of power centers.
[Update: Here’s the link if you missed it: http://live.
Last weekend, my family ate breakfast at the Mother’s Market & Kitchen near our house. My wife’s diet has become increasingly organic – which is to say that my diet has become increasingly organic (for the better! thank you, dear!) – and Mother’s offers a wide variety of selections in that regard. As we browsed the market afterwards, I became intrigued by some claims printed on a package of “socially responsible” brownies. In addition to offering “lifetime employment” to the brownie-makers, the package explained that its products were all made by hand, because no one should have to suffer the indignity of telling his family his job was replaced by a machine. (I could not find the exact language on the company’s website, but that is a pretty close paraphrase of what appears on the package.) Notably, there was no claim that hand-made brownies taste better or are more nutritious than if cost-reducing equipment were used. Just that that equipment might cause redundancies, which apparently should be avoided at all costs.
While this is well-meaning and all, this is not the way an employer fulfills his moral obligations to his employees. Some of those obligations include providing a reasonably safe work environment, dealing honestly, not engaging in arbitrary and irrational discrimination or abusive behavior, and so on. I would also argue that an employer has a moral obligation to provide his employees with meaningful work. What might constitute meaningful work is open to discussion, but I would argue at the very least it means providing work that has value – in other words, the employees’ labor results in products or services that people are willing to pay for.
But it must mean a bit more than that. If I can provide those products or services to consumers at a better price by making proper use of reasonably available resources, I have an obligation to do that, too. The steady march of human progress and civilization has made available a wide array of technology, equipment, financing, processes, and the like. There is no reason my customers should not share in the benefits of these advances by enjoying the products and services I provide as efficiently and inexpensively as these modern advances reasonably allow. Indeed, my customers include the engineers, scientists, financiers, etc. that help to make these cost-reducing resources available to me.
Forgoing these efficiencies violates my moral obligations to both my workers and my customers. It deprives employees of the ability to engage in work that is as meaningful and productive as reasonably possible. And it deprives customers of products and services that, because of the feats of liberalism that we all work hard to protect, should be offered much more efficiently and inexpensively.
A canal dug with shovels (or spoons) instead of modern equipment cheats both the workers and those who had to wait longer and pay more to use it. The same basic idea goes for brownies, too.
[HT: The Corner]
Father, forgive me, I’ve been a good boy with his campaign stuff. But this I can’t resist:
Paul Ryan single-handedly takes on the Democratic ticket. The gloves are off, and Ryan handles the respect-the-office vs. the tear-him-a-new-one equation with aplomb. Joe Biden’s head is spinning like Linda Blair’s, and the president just looks like he wishes he’d stayed in bed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPxMZ1WdINs’>watch?v=zPxMZ1WdINs
The #2 guy on the ticket is the attack dog, and this is champion pit bull stuff. Will it work? I dunno, I can’t remember anything like this guy before. But there’s no way Mitt Romney can beat Barack Obama for prom king, so they might as well try the substance thing.
[Originally posted at the main page.]
Three months after the infamous Kelo v. New London opinion was issued in June 2005, Professor Thomas W. Merrill testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee about his surprise at the public’s “stunning” and “overwhelming reaction” against the decision. After “giv[ing] a great deal of thought to what it is about the decision that has caused this,” Professor Merrill concluded that “the nub of the problem is that the American people believe that property rights are invested with moral significance.” Already well into a distinguished career, the good professor had finally stumbled onto the basic truth that other Americans, unbedecked by college degrees, have always known.
Mohamed Bouazizi knew it, too, as he would demonstrate to the world six years later. Misordering of moral values aside, his tragic case leaves no doubt that economic liberty is a deeply moral question, and a first principle of liberal democracy.
A dear friend, who has done premier work in the neural sciences and several books on philosophical psychology, remarked that he wanted, as the epitaph on his gravestone, "He died without a theory." A former colleague of mine remarked that I had a "theory" of natural law. But I can join my friend in saying that I, too, have no "theory." To say that someone has a "theory" of natural law is to suggest that an observer, looking on, can see played out before him people seized with "theories" – that he may stand there, in a wholesome detachment, seeing theories of various sorts whizzing past. From that vantage point we are encouraged to make judgments about the theories, or fragments of theories, that are plausible or implausible, right or wrong, true or false. I said then: Just tell me the ground on which you are making those judgments about the theories that are plausible or implausible, true or false, and you would have been led back to the ground of what I understand as the natural law.
— Hadley Arkes, Constitutional Illusions and Anchoring Truths: The Touchstone of the Natural Law
Via NPR and the AP, according to his son, the leader of the Sikh temple “managed to find a simple butter knife” and died futilely trying to save his congregation from the mass-murdering gunman with it.
Was it a “butter knife?”
Religious tradition requires a male Sikh not only to abjure smoking and drinking and leave his hair uncut, but to carry at all times on his body a ritual sword called the Kirpan. Out of respect for the sensibilities of Western countries in which they’ve settled, many Sikhs have taken to carrying a small ritual knife.
It’s not on the mainstream wires yet, but a website called Sikh24.com writes of “The Hero of Oak Creek:”
Shaheed Bhai Satwant Singh Kaleka was 62 years old. He was the president of the gurdwara at the time and was getting ready to deliver a speech. Page, the shooter, walked in, armed with a 9mm handgun.
Satwant Singh approached him in the lobby and tried to stop him from hurting others and disrespecting Guru Sahib. From what we understand, he attempted to use a kirpan or talwar to attack and tackle the shooter but was shot in the back after a struggle. This is the correct use of a kirpan, protecting the innocent and those that are unable to protect themselves.
He was unable to stop the shooter though and tried to find cover. He died from his injuries within the Gurdwara.
…
Blood trails, [Amardeep Kaleka, Satwant Singh’s son] continued, indicate that the gunman was “slowed … enough so that other people could get to safety.”
The Hero of Oak Creek, then. Armed with a ritual sword too small for the job.
Earlier last year, there was a controversy in Detroit about whether a 4th-grader could carry a “dull, 3- to 5-inch kirpan.” His principal said yes, the school board said no. Then they said yes. Sort of, mostly.
The blade of the Kirpan must be dull and no longer than two and one-fourth inches long and the ceremonial sword must be worn under clothing and not visible in any way.
Students who violate the rules will be disciplined and may be prohibited from wearing the Kirpan to school in the future.
“Have, on your person, all the time, the five K’s: The Keshas (unshorn hair), the Kirpan (sheathed sword), the Kachhehra (drawers-like garment), the Kanga (comb), the Karha (steel bracelet).”—Rehat Maryada, Ceremony of Baptism or Initiation, Section 6, Chapter XIII, Article XXIV, paragraph (p)
The Kirpan is a ritual and ceremonial blade, but it’s also literally a sword.
According to Sikh theology, it’s for fighting evil, that evil should be fought. An interesting religion. At this point we don’t know what blade exactly Satwant Singh fought evil with, but fight it he did, and in doing so he saved the lives of some of his family and people.
The “gurdwara” was his place of worship and could be translated as temple or church, but in Sikh parlance, it really means “gateway.” And since unlike Hinduism, Sikhism is a monotheistic religion, Godspeed, Shaheed Bhai Satwant Singh Kaleka. May your soul rest in peace.
Now we got female Olympic boxing.
No reason we don’t have male synchronized swimming, then.
[HT: ABC News, The UK’s “Out to Swim Angels” barred for arbitrary reasons.]
The world has gone mad, surely.
[And don’t call ’em Shirley.]
It’s the late Milton Friedman’s 100th birthday. R.I.P., his truth is marching on. From the Nobel laureate’s famous exchange with the original sensitive man, even before Alan Alda.
Donahue: When you see around the globe the mal-distribution of wealth, the desperate plight of millions of people in underdeveloped countries, when you see so few haves and so many have-nots, when you see the greed and the concentration of power, did you ever have a moment of doubt about capitalism and whether greed’s a good idea to run on?
Friedman: Well, first of all, tell me is there some society you know that doesn’t run on greed? You think Russia doesn’t run on greed? You think China doesn’t run on greed? What is greed? Of course none of us are greedy; its only the other fellow who’s greedy. Continue Reading