The Economics of Suffering

Christianity, along with all the other ancient religions, see the world as a zero-sum game because none of them understand economics. Thus, the rich man MUST impoverish himself to help the poor man.

Buddhism and Christianity are designed to help people absorb the "necessary suffering" and engage in the exchange anyway. In order to encourage the rich man to embrace this result, suffering has to be a positive good, suffering has to be BETTER than the money he is giving up. That's a hard sell, but that's the pitch made by the cross. In a subsistence-level society, where economics is only crudely understood, the cross makes a lot of sense.

But once a better understanding of economics has turned the culture into a surplus-goods society, once a large number of people understand that there is no necessary suffering in an economic exchange, once a large number of people understand that economic exchange actually makes BOTH parties better off, the entire ancient rationale for how to deal with suffering collapses.

“And then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, a girl sitting on her own in a small café in Rickmansworth suddenly realized what it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place. This time it was right, it would work, and no one would have to get nailed to anything.” ~ Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“It is so hard for people to get out of the notion that life is a zero-sum game. They think if one man benefits, another must lose. But in a free market, both people can benefit.” ~ Milton Friedman

It's hard, because that notion of gain vs. loss is the basis for every ancient religion. That notion turns out not to be correct in economic terms for economic exchanges between relatively mature adult parties.
However, it is still correct (for the moment) in biological terms. So, a sexual exchange between a man and a woman can result in the woman getting pregnant. While we live in an economics-surplus society, we do NOT live in a biological-surplus society. Suffering in pregnancy and child-rearing is entirely necessary, entirely unavoidable, this biological exchange is both (a) still zero-sum and (b) necessary for the existence of mankind. It is literally subsistence-level living.

Whereas ancient societies were ENTIRELY subsistence level, modern society has split into two: the general economics and the reproductive economics. A confusion between the two results in absurdities.

In Christian conception of the market economy, the rich should give their wealth to the poor, participate in the suffering of the poor, "give until it hurts." But, in the market economy, that is completely wrong. In a well-designed, well-executed market transaction, nobody suffers at all. Everyone wins. That's the definition of a "free market" - no suffering in the exchange of goods. A free market is not about whether the government is involved (the government is really just another corporation) or whether there is a monopoly involved (one sign of a truly free market is the creation of monopolies), rather, a free market is one in which every exchange is a mutual win, everyone is better off afterwards. Christianity doesn't have a language for this. It is a completely foreign concept.

Hook-up culture, contraception and abortion are all attempts to make biological economics mirror general market economics. Remember, in general economics every well-designed interaction between adults is a win-win, nobody has to suffer. But, given the reality of pregnancy and the reality of resource allocation for child-rearing, that result cannot be obtained in biology in any classically economic sense.  Pregnancy is unavoidable suffering. Child-rearing is unavoidable spending of resources to someone who simply will never repay you in like kind. In child-rearing, the fact that some of the parties are NOT adults means the adult parties in the transaction MUST experience some suffering for everyone in the transaction to win.

When Jesus said "the poor will always be with you", he could not have been talking about the adults. In a modern, surplus-good society, the only ones that still fit the description of "poor" are the infants. 

But, precisely because we now understand market economies, society is no longer oriented to accept suffering as a necessary price in every exchange. Precisely because we are now surplus-goods, and suffering is not always necessary (indeed, suffering is a sign of a badly-created market transaction), we no longer maintain a widespread acceptance for how to value suffering. That's why people aren't having children. The surplus-goods societies we created necessarily turned "suffering" from a univocal word with a univocal value into an equivocal word with an uncertain value. The value changes on the context. Given advances in biology, the context is also shifting.

Nobody knows how to properly value suffering. Christianity's definition doesn't seem accurate anymore because it isn't. It doesn't correctly reflect the market. Suffering isn't a necessary component of every exchange. But Hayek's and Milton Friedman's definition is also incorrect, because it only applies to market goods and a market economy, it doesn't apply to the biological exchanges that produce human life and allow human civilization to continue.

Quantum physics and relativity broke the classical physics model into two incommensurable pieces.  General economics and biological economics broke the classical Christian model into two incommensurable pieces. Just as physics now lacks a universal field equation, people now lack a universal theory of suffering. I don't know how to remedy this, but at least figuring out the problem is a beginning step. 

Should Children Be Executed?

One of the classic Catholic justifications for the death penalty is the state's duty to protect its own citizens from harm (CCC 2265, Aquinas,  ST IIa-IIae, q. 64, a. 3). Traditionally, the state is permitted to execute a citizen for the same reason a state is permitted to execute an invader - in both cases, the state is bound to protect its own citizens from danger.

But, traditionally, a person who cannot distinguish right from wrong was spared execution. 

This is objectively absurd. Someone who knows right from wrong but doesn't care is, from the POV of outcomes, no different from someone who cannot distinguish right from wrong. In both cases, the person will do evil. Sure, the first is morally culpable and the second is not, but in both cases, citizens will come to harm precisely because evil will not be distinguished from the good, nor will evil be avoided.

Thus, if the state truly has a duty to protect its own citizens from harm, the state has a duty to execute both the one who chooses evil instead of good AND the one who cannot distinguish evil from good. The child and the child-like must be executed not because they are guilty, but because they are mortally dangerous. 

And, indeed, since the death penalty is about protection, not about revenge, it would seem morally better to execute the child-like if only because it so clearly isn't about revenge for their evil-doing (for we know they are not guilty in any classical sense) but definitely about preventing future evil so as to protect the population from further harm. 

That is, we do not execute children, true, but we do not execute them ONLY because we are assuredly more powerful than children. We can, unquestionably, restrain children from doing ignorant evil. However, if the person in question is very powerful but child-like in his moral reasoning, that is, if he cannot certainly be restrained by more powerful and more morally good men, then the morally good men have a duty to remove the powerful, child-like ignorantly evil man from their midst. 

Thus, the legal defense non compos mentis has no bearing on whether or not the person should be executed. If we are truly executing a person to avoid having evil wreaked upon innocent citizens, then it isn't a question of mind and choice, but rather of power to do evil, and likelihood that evil will be done. 

What Vegetarians Don't Understand

The problem with vegetarians: they have no freaking idea how biology works. For instance, to take but one of innumerable examples, iron absorption.

Human beings need iron for, among other things, oxygen transport in the blood, via the heme molecule. 

If you gnaw on an iron bar, or take iron supplements, that probably isn't going to help much. Eating plants with iron is essentially no different than gnawing on an iron bar. Iron transport and absorption are much easier when the iron is bound inside a heme molecule. Heme iron is absorbed efficiently by the body (about 15% to 35%) compared to non-heme iron (2% to 20%).

But how do we get heme iron, that is, iron bound within a heme molecule, into our bodies? Simple. Eat animal meat.

Plants don't wrap iron in heme.

Animals do.

You already know - and accept - that our gut biota, the organisms in our gut, either produce vitamins we can't (e.g., B vitamins) or help us absorb vitamins we otherwise couldn't. That's what gut bacteria do. That's why we have them. They are symbiotes that we cannot survive without because they digest food for us. 

Animals are simply macro-versions of our gut biota. They are really, really big bacteria with fur, legs and motility that walk around pre-digesting things for us. In the case of iron, animals pre-digest iron, wrap it in a heme molecule for us, and allow us to absorb iron much more easily. Since animals act as pre-processors for our food, a lot of the vitamins and minerals that are not normally available to us through the raw mineral or plant venues become available because the animals have pre-chewed, pre-digested, and pre-packaged the necessary vitamins and minerals for us. 

That's why we eat animals. Animals are food processing factories.

In fact, animal meat is really the original skin-foil bag of ultra-processed nutrients. Animals not only serve as food processing factories for us, they even wrap the resulting food in a sterile skin/fur package, often making the food permanently safe for consumption as long as the waste processing lines (the guts) are first removed (yes, I know, there are parasites which inhabit muscle tissue, but in general, the skin serves as a crude form of sterile plastic wrap). 

Every domesticated animal is an independent, mobile food processing plant, an external gut, a walking massive biota for our small intestines. Eating vegetarian is equivalent to surgically removing several feet of your small intestines or nuking the biota in your gut. Can you survive? Yes. Maybe. But it won't be nearly as easy. You've just voluntarily crippled yourself.

For us, meat animals are external symbiotes. We deliberately cultivate them, by feeding them appropriate pro-biotics, so we can consume what they produce - partially pre-digested, pre-metabolized vitamins, minerals and enzymes we need to live.

Hindus are famously vegetarian, revering cows as signs of divinity. India's bus lines used to carry ads on the sides of each bus that said "Killing germs is not murder! Use Lysol!" That is the logical end of Hindu philosophy, which lies at the root of vegetarianism. Jainism, the idea that we should wear masks so as not to accidentally inhale and kill insects, and sweep the ground before us as we walk, so as not to accidentally step on and crush a worm, is part of the Eastern nonsense that values all life equally.

Christianity recognizes this as absurd. Just as killing germs is not murder, so killing cows is not murder. Use not only Lysol, but your barbecue and stove. Eat beef, chicken, pork and lamb, dog and cat, fish and clam, or any other meat-bearing animal. Let Nature pre-chew your food. That's what Nature is for. 

Education is a Scam

Education is NOT about teaching.

Most colleges employ most professors as adjuncts (i.e., part-time). Up to 40% of profs are adjunct, part-time positions. Up to 70% are non-tenure track or adjunct.

No business in the world makes their core employees part-time. Since profs ARE part-time, teaching cannot possibly be the core business of a college.

Administration has to be the core business, because administrators are NEVER part-time. What do administrators do?

They make sure the college stays in legal compliance to be the recipient of government grants, loans, and other funding. Thus, the core business of a college is to harvest tax dollars and distribute those tax dollars to employees.

There is no other conclusion that can be drawn.

As innumerable financial analysts have pointed out, McDonalds is actually a real-estate business. They just have the renters sell hamburgers to pay the rent on the real estate. Similarly, the entire education industry is actually in the tax-harvesting business. They just have classrooms as the excuse to harvest the tax money. The quality of the hamburger or the education is very much a secondary concern.

Flock Cameras

A lot of people are upset about Flock cameras. I must confess, I don't like them, but I can't see any way to stop them from what they are doing. It is perfectly legal. 

Consider, police can conduct warrantless tails of individuals for days at a time, as long as those tails remain in public areas, public thoroughfares and do not infringe on curtilage, that is, the home and the area immediately surrounding it. 

Flock cameras that are not trained on curtilage are viewing public thoroughfares. It is not a crime to publicly observe individuals who are traversing public areas. That's simple observation, and there is no law against it, nor can there be. If it were a crime, cops could not do warrantless tails, but they can do warrantless tails. 

Heck, game wardens can walk onto private property, install secret cameras and use the evidence derived in court without bothering to get a warrant. It is not considered trespass and the surveillance is completely legal. As long as the cameras are of woods and open fields, not curtilage, there is zero problem. This has been upheld countless times. Flock cameras are just public highway versions of this "Open Fields" doctrine. The Open Fields doctrine is relatively new, having been established during Prohibition, but it has never been overturned. In fact, SCOTUS was the court that created it (Hester v. United States, 1924). It has been reaffirmed, by SCOTUS, as recently as 1984  (Oliver v. United States).  Unfortunately, that's great precedent for Flock.

As I said, I don't like Flock cameras and I have no problem with people who knock them down (which is logically inconsistent of me, I grant), but Flock isn't violating the law.

Democrats: American Taliban

Amnesty International is now up in arms over the Taliban's recent passage of a law allowing child marriage. I have pointed out in previous essays that the Taliban law is not much different from late 19th century US law. In fact, it isn't much different than the current law in several US states. 

But, when you think about it more deeply, the Taliban law is actually not much different from current US federal law. 

All 50 states and Washington, D.C. (51 jurisdictions total) allow minors to consent to STI testing and treatment without parental consent. Meanwhile, 24 states + D.C. explicitly allow all minors to consent to contraceptive services: 

• 16 states allow it under specific circumstances (e.g., married, pregnant, parent, mature minor, or health risk).
• A few states have no explicit policy (providers may rely on general "mature minor" doctrines or other rules).
• 2 states (e.g., Texas in some contexts) have stricter rules, though federal programs can influence this.

Title X Family Planning Program (federal funding for clinics) requires providers to offer confidential services to minors without requiring parental consent or notification. Other federal rules like HIPAA generally treat minors who consent to their own care as having privacy rights over that information.

So, both the Taliban and American federal and state law allow minor children to engage in sex. In America, this is commonly protected activity, something a minor can engage in without parental permission or even parental knowledge. The government will actively work with the minor to make sure the parents never find out. In many cases, any attempt to notify the parents is actually a crime.

Meanwhile, the Taliban require that all sexual activity take place within the social construct of marriage, thereby providing at least a minimal structure of protection and care for the child engaging in sex.

So, explain how America, which allows minors to be used, abused and discarded, is morally superior to the Taliban, which requires minors at least be married and cared for within the confines of marriage.

Apart from the superior care for children expressed in the Taliban law, I honestly don't see that much difference between American practice and Taliban practice.

College as Social Club

All colleges teach the same facts. Course content is the same. There's only so many ways to teach someone how to calculate the area of a circle, then you're done. You can now learn most course content on Youtube. If you are going to college to learn content, you are mostly wasting your time and your money. For some things, like engineering, medicine, the law, you have to have a college degree to practice the profession. But for a lot of subjects, for example, history, English literature, philosophy, etc., college is simply unnecessary. All you need is a library card and interest in the field. 

HOWEVER...

The major advantage of college is the classmates. If you go to an "elite" college, your classmates will be children of Congressmen, your dorm roomate might be the child of a SCOTUS judge or a governor.

If you go to a "good" regional college, your classmates will be running companies or company technical departments, making hiring decisions, etc.

You go to college to make those social connections so your career advances. That's what the tuition pays for. College is a match-maker. It hooks you up with the people who will eventually be moving your industry in your area. 

You just have to realize that going in. When you take a class, you aren't trying to impress the professor. You're trying to impress your classmates, the people who will be important in your profession in ten years. You're making friends now so doors will be open for you later.

THAT is something you can't get through Youtube or Khan Academy. That's why you go to college. It is entirely about socialization now. 

Except as a way to virtue-signal to your colleagues, course content is kind of a side dish, not the centrepiece. College tuition is the annual dues at a country club. You don't go to country clubs for the meals or the golf, you go there to meet the other people in the club.