5:54 AM :: Stephen Sachs (contact)
Thought for the Day: From Chapter 2 of the National Security Strategy of the United States:

No people on earth yearn to be oppressed, aspire to servitude, or eagerly await the midnight knock of the secret police.

 

5:53 AM :: Stephen Sachs (contact)
Catastrophic Terrorism and the International System: In the course of studying for Oxford final exams, I've chosen to post another essay from my International Relations tutorial. (Links to earlier IR essays can be found here and here.) This essay looks at the changing nature of global terrorism, and argues that threatened states will have strong reasons to act unilaterally and preventively rather than through established multilateral mechanisms. From the introduction:

The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, demonstrated the need for a complete reassessment of the existing threats to international security. Writing shortly after Sept. 11, Seyla Benhabib suggested two "unprecedented aspects of our current condition": first, "the emergence of non-state agents capable of waging destruction at a level hitherto thought to be only the province of states," and second, "the emergence of a supranational ideological vision with an undefinable moral and political content, which can hardly be satisfied by ordinary political tactics and negotiations." To which one could perhaps add a third: the growing potential for catastrophic violence to be inflicted instantaneously in the course of a single operation, such as through the use of weapons of mass destruction.

The combination of these three factors poses a new kind of security threat to nations such as the United States, one perhaps more severe than any to which those nations are accustomed. Yet the possibility of catastrophic terrorism also threatens the nature of the international order, giving states which are the targets of terrorism strong incentives to act outside current norms of the international system. Proposals to address terrorism through globally accepted means, such as a strengthened international law-enforcement framework or aid targeted to the "root causes" of terror, are either unlikely to succeed in the short term or unlikely to be accepted by states under threat. As a result, the potential for unilateral military action in contravention of previous norms on the use of force has greatly increased. Unless the international community is willing to revise those norms to give greater latitude to counterterrorist efforts, one can expect greater frictions within the international community to be a further consequence of the new kind of terrorism.

You can read the rest here.

 

9:10 AM :: Stephen Sachs (contact)
The Fetishization of Rules: Finally, someone who understands. This customer-service debacle happened to take place with Orange Mobile, but it could have been any firm in England. One of the first things I learned after arriving here is that English bureaucrats, whether in public or private employment, would rather spend twice as much time (and lose twice as much money) inventing justifications for the existing rules than crafting new ones. Cory Doctorow documents the fetish:

At the end of the day, it came to this: These are our rules. We will stick to them. We will not make exceptions to them. We will hug them to our bosom beyond any kind of rationality or reason.

I am such a goddamned telephone junkie. I'm no Joi Ito with his $3,500 GPRS bills, but I've been spending $200 or $300 on cellular telephone damned near every month since 1992. I am every mobile carrier's dream. Any rational carrier would jump at my business.

But Orange isn't rational. It doesn't have a business plan, it has a bunch of superstitions to which it rigidly hews regardless of circumstance . . . .

My econ classes got it all wrong. Firms here don't seek to maximize profits; they seek to minimize employee effort.


UPDATE: A friend passes along an Economist article that confirms the stereotype:

A team led by Chris Voss of the London Business School found that service quality in Britain is typically worse than in America. One reason, the research suggests, is that British customers complain less about bad service than hard-to-please Americans do.
...
The result, Mr Voss finds, is that Brits suffer. But so do companies in Britain's service industries: they do not receive so much unsolicited feedback, and thus lose a chance to improve service quality. Indeed, they may spend more than they need to do on service-quality improvements, because they do not get direct help from customers.

 

11:31 AM :: Stephen Sachs (contact)
On a Lighter Note: Steve Wu notes the power of exam proctors, as described by our groundbreaking serialized graphic novel, Herbert the Walrus. Of course, now that I'm studying for finals myself, I can't help but remember the exams Herbert faced... (Modified for width -- click here for the original version.)

 

11:07 AM :: Stephen Sachs (contact)
For Their Sake and Ours: From a commenter on AndrewSullivan.com:

Imagine the next terrorist attack. Suppose nuclear devices are set off simultaneously in New York, Washington, and Los Angeles. Suppose not 3000 dead but 300000 dead. What do you think the American people will demand of our President then? My greatest fear is that we will become genocidal. The cry will be to kill them all. As much as we are there to protect the US against the Arab Muslims, we are also there to protect the Arabs from the US. It is one thing for Bin Laden to issue a fatwah to kill all the Americans. He does not have the capability to do it. It is something else entirely for the US to decide to kill all the Arabs. We have the capability. We are closer than everyone thinks to this day. For their sake and ours, we must stay and prevail.

I don't think we are, in fact, close to that day. But when I read the news about Iraq now, when I read how we've squandered some of our moral credibility at Abu Ghraib, when I read how modern science has simplified the task of killing civilians with radiation, when I read how suicide bombing has become for some groups a standard tool of domestic politics -- I worry, not only for American lives, but for the survival of American values. As I wrote to a friend in February 2003:

I think this is our generation's equivalent of the Cold War threat of World War III, when our parents had to put their head under the desk at school; it's hard to see how any other issue matters much in comparison. If there were a major WMD attack on American soil, much of what we value about our society -- its openness, its adventurousness, its prosperity, its commitment to civil liberties -- might disappear. A terrorist attack on a sufficient scale, or a series of smaller attacks, would turn this country into an armed camp. And how tolerant of other cultures or other countries' positions, and how willing to pour our treasures into fighting poverty or the AIDS epidemic, would we be then?
...
I also think this is why the left, in a fundamental way, is out of touch with people's concerns. I recently came across an article written by Susan George in The Nation about a year ago . . . . What struck me most was this quote: "The adversary hasn't changed since September 11. That adversary is still 'Davos' and everything Davos stands for, whether meeting in the mountains or on the banks of the Hudson. Homo davosiensis wants all the resources, all the wealth, all the power and all the freedom to extend his ascendancy across time and space."

As I wrote then, I just can't see the enemy as the man from Davos. However much one desires to reduce global poverty in the long term, the adversaries in the short and medium-term are Osama bin Laden, those eager to follow his model, and those willing to supply or support them. And I don't see an easier way to counter the bin Ladens of the world than to redirect the energy that's now going towards terrorism and deadly weapons, to work to create a democratic order where individuals can find dignity outside of martyrdom.

Those who truly care about the former cause must commit themselves to achieving success in the latter. But we don't have much time left. For their sake and ours.

 

11:20 AM :: Stephen Sachs (contact)
Apologies for the late post: I was away from my computer most of yesterday. In other news, despite a valiant effort, the Merton 6 team was defeated by Keble 1 yesterday in the 2004 Oxford University Croquet Cuppers tournament. Although their tournament run is now over, they will be performing in exhibition games throughout the summer...

 

11:04 AM :: Stephen Sachs (contact)
Reflections on the Duty to Vote, Part IV: The duty to vote (discussed in Part I, Part II, and Part III) is tricky in part because voting is fundamentally a group practice. Most moral theories are designed for individual agents, telling a single person how to live and act. But when they are applied to questions that require group coordination, they can produce some strange results.

For instance, according to the theory of "act consequentialism" (AC), an action is right if it produces the best (or equal best) consequences of any action available to the agent. This doctrine is relatively popular among philosophers for its simplicity; yet for a doctrine focused on the consequences, AC itself has consequences that are very odd.

For instance, suppose that a patient Joe approaches his doctor with a mild skin complaint, which she can treat with one of three drugs. Drug A would relieve Joe's condition but not cure it entirely; drugs B and C would each cure the condition completely for one-half of the population but instantly kill the other half--and no one can predict which will happen to Joe. Most people think the right thing to do would be to prescribe drug A; the marginal improvement in the skin condition simply isn't worth the risk of killing him. But in fact, this act could never be right according to AC, since it is guaranteed to produce less-than-optimal consequences. The best consequences are, in this case, achieved by prescribing drug B, which just happens to be the drug that will cure Joe entirely. The fact that the doctor didn't know this is irrelevant to AC's assessment of the consequences. Prescribing drug B was an available act, and had the doctor prescribed drug B on a hunch, her action would have right according to AC. In short, to an act-consequentialist, it can never be wrong to guess right.

One might be forgiven for thinking that there is something deeply wrong with a consequentialism which is so exacting. Indeed, such a doctrine can be shown to be flawed on its own terms. Consider the following case. I am a resident of the flooded city referred to in Part II, and when the call goes up for volunteers, no one leaves their homes to help sandbag. How will AC judge my decision to stay home? Well, given that no one else is helping, I am clearly doing the right thing. Of the actions available to me, staying at home is the best thing I could do; my own attempts at sandbagging would be woefully insufficient to save the city, and I can at least get some enjoyment out of the evening. (Assume that there are no other projects I could work on from home, like reconnecting lost puppies with their owners over the Internet, that would be a better use of my time.) Moreover, since the same argument could be made from anyone's perspective, we are all acting rightly according to AC. And the city drowns.

(Perhaps the consequentialist could object that we are not acting rightly on this very basis, as the best consequences would actually be produced by a large group of volunteers. Yet this would be to forget that act-consequentialism judges actions from the individual's point of view. Whether an action is "available" to me must take the simultaneous actions of others as given. Consider Bernard Williams' example of the traveller Jim, who is about to witness the execution of 20 innocent men, and is given the opportunity to save them by executing one innocent man himself. To the utilitarian, Jim is obliged to take the opportunity and save 19 lives. It would be no objection that the best "available" action would be for all the executioners to repent and change their ways; the crucial question is what actions would be available to Jim. Returning to the flood case, if I am unable to communicate with the thousands of needed volunteers, I cannot regard such coordinated action as "available" in any meaningful sense.)

Now consider a second case, where every resident of the flooded city turns out to help sandbag. In this case, my assistance is entirely unnecessary. The city will certainly be saved, and my efforts achieve no further benefit. I might as well go home and take the night off; doing so will make the world no worse a place, and in fact (by my enjoying a pleasant evening) will make it better. Thus, of the actions available to me, the best consequences would be produced by my staying home. And again, since the same argument could be made from anyone's perspective, we are all acting wrongly according to AC. Yet the city is saved.

Thus, a world in which AC was universally satisfied (the world where everyone stays home) could have worse consequences than a world in which AC were universally violated (and everyone helps sandbag). Universal attention to the consequences would not, even in theory, always produce better consequences, and may in fact produce inferior ones. Yet if our accepting a doctrine such as AC was motivated by the love of good consequences, why should we retain it when the world is thereby worsened? For those interested in pursuing this argument in greater detail, in my essay "Is Objective Consequentialism Self-Defeating?" I present what I believe to be a proof that every "objective" consequentialist theory -- one in which the rightness of an act does not depend on the agent's own beliefs, thoughts, or motivations -- will be flawed in this way. Consequentialism simply cannot capture everything we want to say about the consequences. And if such moral accuracy is unattainable, not merely in practice, but even in theory, then we might well wonder whether objective consequentialism is an appropriate theory to accept.

Moving beyond the issues addressed in that essay, even a subjective consequentialism -- demanding that we act in whatever way we subjectively expect to produce the best consequences -- will often, through its universal adherence, make the consequences worse. Due to my ignorance of the physics of floods and of the likely response by other volunteers, my expected benefit from sandbagging is negligible, below that of almost any alternative act. In that case, "doing my part" to save the city is not merely morally superogatory, but in fact morally perverse. I must stop sandbagging, if I am to act morally, and instead turn my attention to other affairs. Similarly, if one believes on consequentialist grounds that the duty to vote is so weak as to be permanently outweighed by other concerns--if one could always find something better to do than voting--then it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that one almost always has a duty not to vote. Even if the election is in fact going to be split, if I am unaware of this fact in advance, I am under a duty not to cast the deciding vote. Everyone who participates in an election, then, no matter how crucial the decision or how monstrous the opposing candidate, has acted wrongly. How can this be the case? How can it be that a morally required outcome for the group could only be achieved by morally forbidden individual acts?

For many moral theories, this won't pose a problem. A Kantian might well approve of the decision not to violate someone's rights, even where doing so would have resulted in a smaller number of rights violations overall. Yet for a theory that finds its motivations solely in the desire to maximize good consequences, we are unable to ignore the fact that our doctrines have made the world a worse place to live. Perhaps the case of voting is telling us something fundamental about ethics: that we must look beyond mere consequences to find where the aims of morality lie.

 

8:36 PM :: Stephen Sachs (contact)
Reflections on the Duty to Vote, Part III: Part II of this series (see Part I below) argued for a duty to vote based on an intuition against hypocrisy -- that we should not make exceptions of ourselves by expecting others to step forward where we would not. If we care about whether a city is destroyed by flood (as we ought to), and if we want thousands of people to volunteer to lay sandbags to control the river, we cannot fail to see a reason to lay sandbags ourselves. Similarly, if we care about the outcome of an election (as we ought to), and if we want millions of citizens to come forward and elect the right candidate, we must recognize some degree of obligation to join them in voting rather than sit at home.

Unfortunately, I don't think this clinches the case. Deciding that I have a reason to lay sandbags, or even a duty to vote, doesn't mean that these duties are absolute. Most of our moral choices are not between action and a state of vegetative inaction (or watching television, which is close enough), but rather between two different types of duties. The duty to vote proposed here flows from an 'imperfect' duty to assist others (the reason why we ought to care about the election result), which is not as specific in application as, say, the 'perfect' duty not to defraud. And as my friend pointed out, there might be many other imperfect duties which we ought to fulfill. For instance, consider three of her examples:

(a) People--millions of them--ought to become doctors and treat the sick.
(b) I am a person.

(a) Millions of people should work toward alleviating poverty.
(b) I am a person.

(a) Thousands of talented people should run for political office at various levels so local, state, and national governments will function well.
(b) I am a person.

How is it possible for anyone completely to fulfill their imperfect duties? And if doing so would be impossible--or if there is a distinction to be made between the morally necessary and the morally superogatory--how ought we to choose which imperfect duties to satisfy?

If voting were truly costless, then there would be no question here; we would simply vote and then move on to our next project. But voting is rarely costless, at least in terms of time. Should we not dedicate the time we would have spent voting (as well as researching the candidates) to generating income to donate to charity instead--or, if we want to make good on a civic duty to help our country, to performing other public services? When I mailed my ballot for the Missouri primary, I chose to send it via expedited air mail for £4 (~$7), rather than guaranteed delivery for £34 (~$60). As a result, it may not have arrived in time. But would my duty to vote have required me to spend the extra $53 on guaranteed delivery, rather than buying civics texts for needy schoolchildren (or even donating it to my candidate of choice)? And couldn't even that $7 have made a greater difference at Oxfam instead of merely changing the Missouri vote totals by one?

To be honest, I'm not sure there's a way to put the individual duty to vote on a consequentialist foundation. Thus far, I haven't attempted arguments based on a doctrine of political obligation, in which voting might be a perfect duty, one that can't be replaced by performing imperfect duties such as providing civics books to schoolchildren or teaching naturalization classes to immigrants. And one could always decide to vote for one's own enjoyment (a feeling of empowerment, say, or a certain pride in seeing the great experiment of democracy continue). But our political obligations are very tricky to nail down (and open up a whole other range of arguments), and a duty based on personal enjoyment wouldn't apply to anyone who'd rather sit at home.

The problem of imperfect duties is a very difficult one for any moral theory primarily concerned with how we make practical decisions. (It's easier for a moral theory like utilitarianism, which is more concerned with what happens as opposed to how we decide, and tells us to do whatever will be most effective in making the world a better place. It might be impossible to live that theory rigorously, but it's not very hard to describe it.) We can't really compare imperfect duties and to see how strong they are without first knowing how they were derived, and even then the answer isn't clear. Which is more effective, voting or teaching naturalization classes, at respecting others' humanity and treating them as ends in themselves? Of all of the joint projects in which a society might be engaged--protecting the environment, healing the sick, preserving domestic tranquility--where should voting stand in importance?

At the very least, though, I think it's worthwhile to point out what has been achieved. The argument from hypocrisy does provide resources for chastising those who see voting as truly worthless, and who would do nothing better with their time. And the problem of imperfect duties is certainly nothing new; if the duty to vote is no more shaky than many well-recognized duties, then it's pretty well-established. Moreover, I'd claim that the question of voting provides very strong reasons to accept a moral theory that pays attention to our decision-making, and may actually invalidate some common consequentialist alternatives. But to find out what those reasons are, you'll have to tune in tomorrow.


UPDATE: See further post above.

 

9:37 AM :: Stephen Sachs (contact)
Human Rights? What? We interrupt this series to note Sudan's re-election to a position on the U.N. Human Rights Commission. Sudan's victory comes amid its continued practices of ethnic cleansing, chattel slavery, and recruiting child soldiers. (Which raises the question -- what, precisely, does a nation have to do to get kicked off the HRC?)

But the bigger story, though, concerns all the other countries on this august body who will be welcoming Sudan with open arms. As I wrote in the statistical study I posted back in June, the regimes with the worst human-rights records are now significantly over-represented on the HRC, having secured seats to prevent criticism of their own records. Let's see what Freedom House has to say about some of the other countries that will be on the commission next year, including:

• Bhutan, which is ruled by an absolute monarchy that does not permit free expresion and arbitrarily detains dissenters;
  
• China, "one of the most authoritarian states in the world";
  
• Congo, where government forces are accused of "extrajudicial execution, torture, rape, beating, and arbitrary detention";
  
• Cuba, which holds political prisoners convicted of "disseminating enemy propaganda" or "dangerousness," and whose delegates to the Human Rights Commission recently beat unconscious a human rights organizer inside the U.N. building in Geneva;
  
• Egypt, where Amnesty International reports that "everyone taken into detention . . . is at risk of torture";
  
• Eritrea, where senior ruling-party members who publicly criticized the government were arrested for treason;
  
• Guinea, whose elections displayed such widespread manipulation that the EU refused to send monitors;
  
• Nigeria, where women convicted of adultery are sentenced to death by stoning (and where approximately 60 percent are subjected to genital mutilation);
  
• Pakistan, which maintains a mandatory death sentence for blasphemy;
  
• Qatar, where women cannot apply for driver's licenses without the permission of a male guardian;
  
• Russia, whose legal system is arbitrary and bribe-ridden;
  
• Saudi Arabia, which criminalizes public non-Wahhabi religious worship, and which discounts the testimony of women compared to that of men;
  
• Swaziland, whose absolute monarch had a lawsuit dismissed regarding an 18-year-old woman abducted to be his tenth wife;
  
• Togo, which criminalizes "'defaming or insulting' the president, state institutions, courts, the armed forces, and public administration bodies," and which punishes "insulting the head of state" with a jail term of one to five years; and
  
• Zimbabwe, where Robert Mugabe presides over a corrupt regime that politically manipulates international food aid for the starving.

Remind me again why the U.N. is losing credibility...

 

9:21 AM :: Stephen Sachs (contact)
Reflections on the Duty to Vote, Part II: Yesterday's post tried to estimate the chance of a split presidential election in the U.S., and found that under relatively common circumstances, the odds against an election being decided by a single ballot are astronomical. No matter how crucial the election, in a 56-44 race, the zillion-to-one chance against my casting the deciding vote renders any calculation of expected benefit meaningless. Additionally, if we ignore any effect an individual vote might have in changing the perceived strength of the winner's mandate (an effect that would also be vanishingly small), voting must appear to be an almost absurdly irrational means of making the world a better place. How, then, can a supposed duty to vote have any force at all?

A few months after my friend initially raised the question, I responded with the following argument. During the 1993 floods on the Mississippi, the cities on the river's banks would sometimes call for volunteers to help lay sandbags to keep the river from overflowing its banks. Assume that one year there's a particularly terrible flood, one that threatens the entire city with destruction. Moreover, assume -- and I don't know the physics, but I'd think this is justified in the case of floods -- that what matters is ultimately not the sheer number of sandbags laid, but whether the number of sandbags exceeds some threshold that nobody knows in advance. That is, there's some number of sandbags that is sufficient to block the water from spilling over; any fewer than that number results in the whole thing being swept away, and any sandbags above that are just gravy. However, nobody knows how high the threshold is, and so everyone fears that the city will be destroyed.

Now imagine one night when the city makes an emergency call for volunteers, and I choose instead to sit at home and watch television. My reasoning is that there are several tens of thousands of people out there throwing sandbags, and no matter what the magic number is, we'll probably miss it or exceed it by a couple thousand at least. As a result, it seems like there's a very high probability that my own contribution of sandbags won't make the ultimate difference. The same logic holds for everyone else on the line. Their actions are praiseworthy in some sense, since they're taking on a responsibility without personal gain, but also a little bit silly, since the effort they expend has a very minimal probability of making any difference at all. For myself, if the river breaks the banks and we all drown, well, at least I'll have caught another episode of the Simpsons before I go.

My motivations here seem, I think, somewhat contradictory. It isn't that the volunteers are in a particularly dangerous situation (getting crushed by sandbags, threatened by sharks, etc.) or that I have something else worth doing at home, or even that I see the enterprise of protecting the city as unimportant; I want the city saved as much as anyone else. In fact, I think it's really important that other people go out and volunteer, or that people volunteer in general, but I just don't see this importance as a reason to volunteer myself. Something like means-ends rationality is implicated here; it seems impossible to hold a set of two beliefs,

(a) People--thousands of them--ought to go out and lay sandbags.
(b) I am a person.

and fail to conclude that I have a reason to go out and lay sandbags. If I chose to sit at home and do nothing, I would be making an exception of myself; I would have a strong desire that other people act in a certain way, but I wouldn't not willing to entertain doing so on my own. The relevant sin isn't apathy, but hypocrisy. I may not be morally bound to lay sandbags above all else, but I can't rationally view a call to volunteer as entirely without normative power, if I care about the outcome. And the rest of moral theory would tell me that I ought to care about the outcome (in which the city would be destroyed, puppies would drown, etc.).

To my mind, pretty much the same argument can be made in the context of voting. We know that there's some magic number of votes Candidate A will need to defeat Candidate B; it's just that no one has any idea what that number is. We may know that we'll probably miss it by a significant amount, but don't know for certain, even with polling, in which direction the error will be ("Dewey Defeats Truman," etc.). And I don't know if it's rationally possible to have a fervent desire that others -- we're talking millions of people! -- end up voting a certain way, and yet not have a sufficient desire to engage in a near-costless act of voting myself. Of course, this desire hinges on the fact that I'm not indifferent between the candidates. But the rest of moral theory would tell me why indifference is wrong in this case, and why I ought to care about the outcome (in which the budget deficit would increase, puppies would drown, etc.). And the strength of this morally-required desire would then reveal my how strong my duty to vote would be.

(To be continued tomorrow...)


UPDATE: See Part III above.

 

10:50 AM :: Stephen Sachs (contact)
Reflections on the Duty to Vote, Part I: Late last January, I sent in my absentee ballot for the Missouri primary. In the course of applying for the ballot, I remembered a discussion I had with a good friend a while back on whether citizens had a general duty to vote. My friend's argument was based on the well-known position that "my vote won't make a difference." She wasn't claiming that political process was irrelevant; the president of the United States has a vast amount of power, and putting the wrong person in office could seriously disrupt the lives of millions. Rather, she advanced the claim that voting couldn't be justified based solely on its effects. Ever since then, I've been working on a response, which has turned into this four-part series of blog posts.

Even in an important election, the argument goes, when the candidates' differences are pronounced, one vote will still be just a drop in the bucket. No one person's vote will change the outcome of a nationwide election. The same, of course, might be said of charity work; no one person's efforts will end world hunger. But in the case of charity, even a drop in the bucket can still be valuable in its own right -- it still represents a few more hot meals served, a few more sacks of grain, a few more warm winter coats. In an election, however, a single vote that does not decide the winner will have absolutely no consequences at all--it just changes the vote totals by one. And although one of the closest elections in American history recently came down to 500-odd votes in the state of Florida, given how many tens of millions of votes were cast, it's unlikely that an election will ever become any closer. Why should we vote, then, if the election is never really going to be tied?

Derek Parfit, in Reasons and Persons (summarized here), tries to answer this question with standard act-consequentialist analysis. On Parfit's argument, I should only vote if the expected costs of my voting are less than or equal to the expected benefit -- the benefit to the world of the superior candidate winning, multiplied by the chance that my ballot will decide the election. The costs of my voting are small (one half-hour on a given Tuesday), while the benefits of the superior candidate are large. In fact, if we look only at the economy (and ignore the other responsibilities of the office, like being commander-in-chief), assuming that a bad president would cost 0.5 percent of GDP means the benefit of a good one is something on the order of $50 billion.

The argument here crucially relies on the exact measure of the probability. Parfit estimates the chance of a split election at 1 in 100 million. By our benefit estimate above, though, that means the expected benefit from voting is $500--and that's ignoring most of what the president does. But is 100 million even low enough? How can we calculate the exact probability of a split election?

To make the calculations easier, we can start with some simplifying assumptions. First, let's assume that the election is entirely decided by the popular vote (goodbye, electoral college). Second, let's assume that there are two candidates, Bush and Gore, who are exactly tied in the polls (each at 50 percent support). As in the 2000 election, let's say there are 105,363,298 people who cast their votes before I do. What's the chance that the election would come out exactly split, and that my ballot will decide the election?

One way to estimate this chance is to pretend that each voter has a 50 percent chance, once in the voting booth, of casting a ballot for either Bush or Gore. Determining the chance of a split result is sort of like determining the chance that a fair coin, tossed a certain number of times, will come up exactly half heads and half tails. On the advice of Dr. Math, I used the binomial probability formula. If I flip a coin n times, the chance of r heads is given by P = C(n,r) · p^r · q^(n-r), where p is the chance of heads, q is the chance of tails, and C(n,r) = n! / (r! · (n-r)!). (Roughly, the p^r and q^(n-r) terms identify the chance of so many heads and so many tails, and C(n,r) identifies the different ways those heads and tails can be distributed in the order of tosses.) For instance, if we want to flip a coin 4 times and come up with 2 heads, then n is 4, r is 2, p = q = 0.5, and the final probability (calculating out all the factorials) is 0.375, or 3/8. In the election case, then, if we assume that n is 105,363,298, r is half that (or 52,681,649), and p = q = 0.5, what's the probability P?

This formula involves numbers far too large for most calculators--try taking the factorial of 100 million, and you'll see what I mean--so I eventually had to resort to programming. And after the numbers crunched, I found a truly surprising result: the probability figure was 7.7727·10^-5. This is roughly one in 13,000, for an expected value of $3,886,350 per ballot -- a benefit far outweighing any conceivable costs.

Obviously, this figure is far too large. We've had a good number of elections in the U.S. since the republic was founded, and the idea that one in 13,000 would result in an even split (with 100 million people voting!) is simply incredible. What could have gone wrong?

One possibility is simple programming error; but given that the programs seemed to work well at lower numbers, giving consistent results using theoretically equivalent algorithms, this is unlikely to be the problem. (If you're interested in checking the math, I've posted the GAWK source code. I originally used the simple binomial program here, but when the numbers got too large, I was forced to switch to adding up logarithms (here) and then expanding the sum at the end. A third program provided a more efficient means of adding the logarithms (here), since many of the terms in the factorials cancel out, and produced the same results as the first two.)

A second possibility is inaccuracy in the description of the problem. "Of course," one might argue, "actual voters don't flip a coin when they go into the voting booth. There's a set number of people who are going to vote for Bush, and a set number of people who are going to vote for Gore. So your 50-50 probability has nothing to do with which candidates people actually choose." This objection can be countered by looking at the situation from the perspective of the voting machine, which doesn't know which candidate the person who just entered the booth supports. All it knows is that the person will pull the lever either for Bush or for Gore, and that roughly 50 percent have been pulling the lever for each. (Alternatively, imagine that there is a pre-set population of people who support Bush or Gore, but that not all of them will end up voting. Those who actually do go out and vote are randomly selected from this 50-50 group--or, more precisely, the process whereby certain individuals end up voting doesn't bias the election in favor of one candidate or the other, so it seems like we've taken a random sample. In this case, we really are taking a 50 percent chance that the next voter we select, or just the next voter to enter the booth, will vote for a given candidate. This assumption that the two candidates' supporters vote at equal rates isn't often true in actual elections, since one candidate's supporters may be more committed than the other's; in that case, assume that the poll data has been weighted to reflect the how likely a voter the respondent is, and that the final figures are still 50-50.) From these perspectives, the election does seem like a matter of probability. The issue here isn't that the election result is actually random and unpredictable, like quantum mechanics, but rather that we can use probability theory to produce a reasonable ex ante estimate when we don't know who the actual voters will be.

A third possibility, and the one that seems most likely to me, is that the assumption of exact 50-50 support is unrealistic. This formula, especially with large number of voters, is incredibly sensitive to minor variations in the level of support. If Bush were receiving 50.1 percent support in the polls, for instance, instead of being 50-50, the chance of a split election would drop to roughly 1 in 1.3·10⁹⁶, which is tiny beyond comprehension. (10⁹⁶ is much larger than the number of atoms in the universe.) And since polls generally have a margin of error of ±3 percent, the chance that the level of support is exactly 50-50 is also miniscule.

These extraordinarily low probabilities make it seem far more likely that the math is right, since it accords with our intuition that evenly split elections are extraordinarily rare. So we really need to conduct our analysis at two levels. First, what is the actual breakdown of Bush and Gore supporters in the country? This question probably won't be answered with a single number (it could be, but we don't know it); instead, it's a probability distribution over various values within the margins of error for our poll data. Plus, given that polls themselves aren't always right, the distribution could be a lot wider than that.

Second, once we have the distribution of possible support breakdowns, what is the probability that, given a random sampling of that population (so we'd have to weight the support breakdown to reflect the fact that not everyone is equally likely to go to the polls), we get a split election? To my mind, if differences that minor can produce huge changes in the probabilities, this means that the actual chance of getting a split election is vanishingly small. If the polls are showing a statistical dead heat, there may be some minute chance that a vote would make a difference. (How small? The chance of a split election in a 50.01-49.99 race is roughly 1 in 100,000; if we assume--inaccurately, but conservatively--that a 50-50 poll means there's a 1-in-1000 chance that the actual level of support is between 50.01 and 49.99 percent, then we're back at Parfit's 1-in-100-million figure.) But if the polls are showing a 53-47 race, or a 56-44 race, the probability that my vote would make a difference is too small even to consider. I might as well stay home.

But should I stay home? Do these probability calculations invalidate any duty we have to vote? To find out, tune in for tomorrow's post.


UPDATE: See further post above.

 

6:36 PM :: Stephen Sachs (contact)
Pornography and Prostitution, Part IV: It's an idea that's catching on -- Columbia Business School's Jonathan Knee, in his NYT op-ed today, suggests regulating pornography through conduct-focused laws:

The law of obscenity has not fundamentally changed since the Supreme Court in 1973 vaguely directed a jury to apply "contemporary community standards" in reaching a verdict. In the Internet era, the question of what community and what standards is even less clear. Amending the Constitution is impractical. The Justice Department's strategy of bringing test cases to clarify the meaning of obscenity is time-consuming and unpredictable.

What we need is a kind of regulation that does not implicate the First Amendment at all -- yet goes to the heart of the enterprises that fuel the multibillion-dollar pornography industry. The value of laws against prostitution is well established. What if we were to enact laws that made it illegal to give or receive payment to perform sex acts?

The policy justifications for such a law are similar to those for laws against prostitution: society objects on principle to the commodification and commercialization of sexual relations, even between consenting adults. Such a law would not implicate the profanity or nudity that has been the recent focus of the F.C.C. -- it would deal exclusively with sex acts, which the Internet seems to revel in.

I'd argue, though, that many existing prostitution laws already prohibit payment for sex acts, and could easily be enforced against the commercial manufacture of pornography. (See the earlier posts -- Part I, Part II, and Part III--in this series.) The Missouri statute is broadly drafted, and the legislature has already shown an interest in cracking down on smut. Why not try an alternative legal tactic? Maybe if someone in Gov. Holden's office took note...

 

3:27 PM :: Stephen Sachs (contact)
Interview with the Apologist: Filmmaker Oliver Stone, whose new movie on Fidel Castro will be released shortly by HBO, was recently interviewed by Slate's Ann Louise Bardach. Castro has always received something of a pass from many people who otherwise claim to despise dictatorship; my friend Ross Douthat once memorably characterized Cuba as the "Tickle-Me Elmo" of totalitarian states. (While in Russia, I had a conversation with a bright, well-educated American student who had visited Cuba as part of a government-approved academic tour. She told me that Castro had "only" 300 political prisoners, fewer than the number of accused terrorists held in Guantanamo Bay, many of whom may be innocent. My dumbfounded suggestion that a falsely suspected Taliban member and a librarian who stocks the wrong books might be "innocent" in different ways was met with a change of topic.)

Stone's take, which is apparently harder on Castro than his previous glowing biopic Commandante, falls squarely within this trend: it's chock full of excuses, omissions, and breathtaking moral equivalence. Some excerpts:

ALB: Let me ask you about the part [in the film] where Castro's in front of eight prisoners charged with attempting to hijack a plane [to Miami]. He says to them, "I want you all to speak frankly and freely." What do you make of that whole scene, where you have these prisoners who happened to be wearing perfectly starched, nice blue shirts?

OS: Let me give you the background. He obviously set it up overnight. It was in that spirit that he said, "Ask whatever you want. I'm sitting here. I want to hear it too. I want to hear what they're thinking." He let me run the tribunal, so to speak.

ALB: But Cuba's leader for life is sitting in front of these guys who are facing life in prison, and you're asking them, "Are you well treated in prison?" Did you think they could honestly answer that question?

OS: If they were being horribly mistreated, then I don't know that they could be worse mistreated [afterward].

ALB: So in other words, you think they thought this was their best shot to air grievances? Rather than that if they did speak candidly, there'd be hell to pay when they got back to prison?

OS: I must say, you're really picturing a Stalinist state. It doesn't feel that way. You can always find horrible prisons if you go to any country in Central America.

ALB: Did you go to the prisons in Cuba?

OS: No, I didn't.

ALB: So you don't know if they're any different than, say, the prisons in Honduras then?

OS: I think that those prisoners are being honest.

ALB: What about when you ask them what they think is a fair sentence for their crimes, and one of them starts to talk about how he'd like to have 30 years in prison?

OS: I was shocked at that. But Bush would have shot these people, is what Castro said. ... I don't know what the parole system is.

Stone seems hardly concerned by the anti-democratic elements of Castro's government, in part because he's not too hot on democracy himself:

ALB: Did you ever think to bring up why he doesn't hold a presidential election?

OS: I did. He said something to the effect, "We have elections."

ALB: Local representative elections. But what about a presidential election?

OS: We didn't talk about it, especially in view of the fact that our own 2000 elections were a little bit discredited.

ALB: In the first film, Comandante, he asked you, "Is it so bad to be a dictator?" Did you think you should have responded to that question?

OS: I don't think that was the place to do it. ... You know, dictator or tyrant, those words are used very easily. In the Greek political system, democracy didn't work out that well. There were what they called benevolent dictators back in those days.

ALB: And you think he might be in that category?

OS: Well, not benevolent to everybody, no.

But at least Stone pays attention to what's important:

ALB: I've called him the movie star dictator. Did you get that sense about him?

OS: Totally. I think it would be a mistake to see him as a Ceausescu. I would compare him more to Reagan and Clinton. ... They were both tall and had great shoulders, and so does Fidel.

True, I don't know how Bardach's might have been hidden in those ellipses, but Stone can hardly claim that his comments were taken out of context. What still puzzles me is, why is shilling for a dictator taken as a legitimate political position? How can a reportedly anti-fascist movement take such people under its wing?

Personally, I'm still agnostic as to the wisdom of the U.S. embargo; maybe it's hindering our efforts, and the best way to establish a democratic regime would be to open up more contacts with Cuba. Whatever the possible failures of our current policy, though, they shouldn't change our ultimate goal of replacing Castro with a legitimate government. And they don't excuse the ambivalence towards human freedom displayed by people like Oliver Stone--and their refusal to call tyranny by its true name.

(Link thanks to ALDaily.)

 

7:59 PM :: Stephen Sachs (contact)
Ads Run Amok: One of the most disturbing things I've seen on the net recently: Burger King's new marketing venture, subservientchicken.com.

 

2:33 PM :: Stephen Sachs (contact)
Unions and Democracy: Just before leaving for Spain, though, I started flipping through Will Hutton's book The State We're In. Hutton is fiercely critical of a number of Margaret Thatcher's reforms, which he argues had yet to produce sustainable benefits for the economy as a whole. (Of course, despite Hutton's dour economic forecast, the book hit the shelves just before the boom of the late 90's, one of Britain's most impressive macroeconomic performances in history. Note to self: never make verifiable predictions in print--and if you do, make sure those predictions can't be proven wrong until long after you're dead.)

I haven't yet had the chance to analyze Hutton's arguments in detail, but while reading I noticed the following paragraph:

Beside these severe economic and social costs must be ranked the loss of civil liberties and the qualification of democratic principles entailed in the Conservative governments' version of trade union reform. The right of a majority, after a secret ballot, to require acquiescence in agreed decisions, should be a sacrosanct democratic principle--but not for British trade unions. Here the government has enshrined a higher principle: the right of the individual to work or to reach an individual arrangement with his or her employer so that majority decisions need not bind them. The right of free association has been curtailed by laws outlawing secondary picketing and sympathetic action. Important freedoms and a long-respected conception of democracy have been sacrificed--but for what?

It was interesting to read these words at a time when mail delivery in Oxford had been interrupted for a full three weeks, due to an unofficial "wildcat" strike by local postal workers. I've never been very comfortable with strikes by public-sector unions--such as postal workers, say, or the British firefighters (!) who went on an extended strike last year. A strike at a private factor primarily affects the owner of the firm (as it loses orders to its competitors), and it can be considered just part of the rough-and-tumble process of labor negotiation. But public-sector unions usually operate in industries with a government monopoly, where there are no competitors to pick up the slack. (When teachers go on strike for a month, we can't send our kids off to private schools as easily as GM can pick another steel supplier.)

But Hutton inadvertently provides another argument against public-sector strikes--that they're fundamentally antidemocratic. The public and its elected representatives, through a democratic process, decided to establish a postal system, to create public schools, and to build a network of firehouses. It did so because a majority of citizens wanted services from their government (like communication, and education, and protection from fires). This same majority also selected representatives to oversee the management of these services, and to offer certain packages of wages and benefits to those who sought employment at public expense. Why, then, shouldn't public-sector employees feel bound by this democratic decision? Why shouldn't we "require acquiescence" in this agreed decision of the majority? A strike in a non-competitive, public-sector industry affects everyone, not just the workers in the local post office. So why should those whose paychecks are drawn on the public treasury have the right to reach an "individual arrangement," especially by using as a bargaining chip three weeks' worth of other citizens' mail?

Majoritarian decisions aren't always "democratic"--or, perhaps more precisely, they're not always appropriate. It's not always clear whether the majority ought to be making the decision, and if so who that relevant majority might be. The closed shop can be a triumph of democratic decision-making, or it can be a violation of the worker's right to free association; the prohibition on sympathy strikes can be a violation of unions' free association or a triumph of the democratic institutions that prohibited them. Which interpretation is correct will depend on what line we draw between public and private affairs; the old tension between freedom and equality rears its ugly head. And the best way to resolve this tension--to make "civil liberties" compatible with "democratic principles"--isn't nearly as obvious as Hutton suggests.