E.G.

I heard this old song on the radio the other day.  Listen to it while thinking about the issues addressed in this post by Neil the Werewolf.  This page says that it is "one of" the "only hits ever to include an extended kazoo solo."

1. Pete is starving to death on a distant continent, and I can keep him alive by giving $10/month to charity.  There are other people on Pete’s continent who are starving to death, too, and $10/month could save them just as well.  Suppose that anything less than $10 will be useless to these people, so that if I give $5.00, then I help no one; if I give $10.00, I help only Pete; if I give $15.00, I still help only Pete; if I give $20.00, I help Pete and one other person; etc. 

A claim: "If Pete were the only one in need, I might have an obligation to help him; but when the number of people starving on Pete’s continent becomes sufficiently large, I have no obligation to help anyone at all."  This is a weird-sounding claim, but I think that many people believe it; anyway, I think many people behave as though they believe this claim and others similar to it.  Here I will present an argument which might get at some of the reasons people may have for believing such claims.

Say that the "needy group" is the group of people who, like Pete, are starving and can be saved by a donation of $10/month.  Let’s begin with the assumption that if Pete is the only member of the needy group, then I have an obligation to help him, i.e. to give $10/month to charity.  We want to know: What happens to my obligation when the number of people in the needy group increases?  To see what happens to it, suppose now that there are two people in the needy group — call them Pete and Sue — and suppose that we know nothing about Pete and Sue except that they are members of the needy group.  In that case, Pete and Sue are similar to one another in all (known) morally relevant respects, which means that I must have the same obligation (if any) to Pete as I have to Sue.  Thus, I may have an obligation to help Pete and Sue (i.e. to give $20/month to charity); or I may have an obligation to help neither Pete nor Sue (i.e. to give 0/month); but I cannot possibly have an obligation to Pete without having the same obligation to Sue.  Something similar will be true when we suppose that there are three members of the needy group: I will be obligated to give either $30/month to help all three, or will have no obligation to help anyone.  And in general, the following disjunction will be true: Either I am obligated to give X*$10 or I am obligated to give 0, with "X" representing the number of members of the needy group.

For X=1, we have supposed, the left disjunct is true: I am obligated to give $10/month.  As X grows, two things happen: The number of people in the needy group grows, and the number in the left disjunct grows.  It might be thought that, as the number of people in the needy group grows, my obligation to lend a hand becomes stronger and more pressing.  But as the number in the left disjunct grows, any potential obligation I might have becomes increasingly unreasonable.  When X=1,000,000, for instance, I am (given the above disjunction) either required to give $10,000,000 per month or I am required to give nothing.  But I do not have $10,000,000 per month to give; thus, I must not be obligated to give anything at all.  So: When the needy group is sufficiently large, I have no obligation to help Pete, nor do I have any obligation to help anyone else in the needy group.

Where has this argument gone wrong?

2. Suppose you are designing an advertisement for a charity.  You know the ad will feature a photo of a starving boy, and you know that the photo will be displayed alongside text like this:

By donating only $____ per month, you can save the life of a boy just like this one.

Your assignment is to fill in the blank.  Your only goal is to maximize the amount of donations which will be given in response to the ad; you don’t care whether the way in which the blank is filled yields a true or false sentence.  How should you fill in the blank?

It seems to me that if you fill the blank with a very large number, the ad will be discouraging to people.  If people think, for instance, that in order to save the boy’s life, they need to donate $500 per month, they will feel that they must choose between the boy’s life and (say) being able to make rent.  Given such a choice, most people will choose rent.  On the other hand, if you fill the blank with a very small number, then people are unlikely to donate very much money.  If people think, for instance, that they can save the boy’s life by donating only 50 cents per month, then their consciences will be satisfied even if they donate only that much.  This game will have some things in common with Blackjack.

Jonathan Ichikawa writes:

Here is the full text of the newly proposed section of Article I of the Texas Constitution, proposed by HJR 6, which has been passed by both chambers:

Sec. 32. (a) Marriage in this state shall consist only of the union of one man and one woman.
(b) This state or a political subdivision of this state may not create or recognize any legal status identical or similar to marriage.

As Jonathan points out, this bit would have the effect of banning marriage itself, since marriage is a legal status which is identical to marriage.  This is clearly not what the authors of the amendment intend to do.  So it seems clear that the authors of the amendment have made a mistake, and that what they meant to write is something other than what they did write.  But I think it’s actually sort of difficult to figure out what, exactly, they should have written instead.  It looks like the word "identical" is causing the problem, so we might try simply dropping that word.  For instance, we might try:

(b2) This state or a political subdivision of this state may not create or recognize any legal status similar to marriage.

But (b2) still has problems.  Marriage is identical to marriage, but marriage is at least aruably similar to marriage as well.  If so, then (b2) bans all marriage, just like the original (b) does.  You might try to avoid this consequence by saying that marriage is not similar to marriage; you might want to say, for instance, that two things can be similar to one another, or identical to one another, but not both.  Even if we say this, however, it is not clear how close a status must be to marriage in order to be considered "similar" to it.  For instance: Being a person’s business partner certainly has some things in common with being married to that person.  If this means that being a business partner is "similar to" being married, then (b2) would prevent the state from recognizing business partnerships.  That’s bad.

So maybe we will want to leave aside talk of "similarity," as well as talk of identity.  Here’s a stab in that direction:

(b3) This state or a political subdivision of this state may not create or recognize any legal status other than marriage.

But (b3) is even worse than (b2).  The state will want to recognize the status of being divorced, or the status of being an immigrant, or the status of being a convicted criminal, but these are all statuses other than marriage.  So we clearly need some talk of similarity in our formulation. 

Perhaps the problem with (b2) wasn’t that it mentioned similarity, but that it did not say what kind of similarity was at issue.  Perhaps what is needed is to talk about relevant similarities.  For instance:

(b4) This state or a political subdivision of this state may not create or recognize any legal status relevantly similar to marriage.

Since marriage is arguably "relevantly similar" to itself, we again have the problem of prohibiting marriage.  But we can avoid this by adding a few words to (b4) to yield:

(b5)  This state or a political subdivision of this state may not create or recognize any legal status relevantly similar to marriage, other than marriage itself.

(b5) has a few clear advantages.  First, (b5) wouldn’t result in a ban on all marriage.  Second, (b5) would allow the state to recognize the statuses of being divorced, of being an immigrant, and of being a convicted criminal, since these statuses are not relevantly similar to the status of being married.  Third, it is at least probable that (b5) would not result in a ban on, say, state recognition of business partnerships, since (probably) business partnerships are not similar to marriage in whatever respects are supposed to be relevant.  However, (b5) has the problem that it leaves open what "relevance" is supposed to be.  Since it is unclear how to tell whether a particular status is "relevantly similar" to marriage, it is unclear how to tell whether a particular status is permitted or prohibited by (b5).  It might turn out that certain statuses which the state needs to recognize are relevantly similar to the status of marriage; if so, then (b5) is fatally flawed.  More importantly (from the perspective of the amendment’s authors), it might turn out that "civil union," or some other legal status which is supposed to be a substitute for marriage for gay couples, is not relevantly similar to the status of marriage.  If so, then (b5) would allow civil unions, in which case (b5) clearly does not do the thing which its authors intend it to do.  In any case, we won’t be able to tell what, exactly, (b5) says until we know what relevant similarity to marriage is, and how to determine whether it obtains in a given case.

I suspect that (b5) is probably very close to what the authors of the amendment wanted to get across.  However, I think the ambiguity of the notion of "relevance" as it is employed in (b5) is probably too obvious for (b5) to be considered acceptable to lawyers.  Perhaps this is why the authors chose not to use a formulation along the lines of (b5), and instead chose to use the original (b) as it appears above.  The original (b) has the advantage of being less obviously ambiguous, and perhaps this advantage was thought to outweigh the disadvantage of having the obviously unintended consequence of banning all marriage.

A lot of people are criticizing the new Pope for having been a member of the Hitler Youth.  I think there is very good evidence that his membership in that organization was non-blameworthy.  First of all, he was very young when he was a member; younger people are not to be held responsible for their actions in the same way that older people are.  Second, the evidence seems to show that he was not an especially enthusiastic member.  Third, he was probably, in some sense, "forced to" join; if he had refused to join, he or his family would probably have faced quite severe negative consequences.  And finally, my impression is that the routine activities of the Hitler Youth were not, on the whole, all that morally troubling.  Hitler Youths were, I think, indoctrinated into the Nazi worldview, which is bad; but I do not think they were ordinarily involved in doing wrong actions.  My understanding is that they were more likely to be found exercising or chanting slogans than (say) persecuting Jews or what-have-you.  None of this means, however, that having been a Hitler Youth cannot hurt one’s ability to soundly arrive at correct moral judgments. 

Suppose a child is strapped to a chair and forced to listen to Jeffrey Dahmer argue that serial killing is permissible.  The child is not permitted to argue back.  In fact, the child is forced to pretend to agree with everything that is being said.  After a very long time — say, 1000 hours — the child is set free to go about his business.  We would not blame the child for what has just happened to him.  Indeed, we would feel overwhelming pity for the child.  Nevertheless, it’s probable that by undergoing such an experience, the child’s moral sensibilities will have been damaged.  If you wanted to get advice on how to resolve a tricky moral problem, for instance, you would prefer to get advice from someone who has not been subjected to this experience, than to get advice from someone who has been subjected to it, all else equal.

I’m guessing that a typical member of the Hitler Youth spent many hours listening to people argue that domination is a virtue, that the weak should be crushed by the strong, that anyone who was born Jewish is one of the "weak", etc.  And, like the child in the above example, a typical member of the Hitler Youth was probably expected to pretend to agree.  Probably, most of the people who were subjected to this experience are not to blame for having been subjected to it.  Nevertheless, this sort of experience is not the best way to prepare to give advice to people who are dealing with tricky moral problems.  But this is precisely what the new Pope will be doing.

I’m not saying that having been a member of the Hitler Youth should automatically disqualify you from dispensing moral advice.  I am quite sure that someone could be subjected to the experience of being a Hitler Youth and, in the end, become a morally exemplary person.  For all I know, the new Pope has done exactly that.

From CT:

Backword Dave notes, cogently:

I hate those in power. I look up, and others see the stars; I see the shit up our leader’s arses.

I actually think the star-metaphor is more apt.  A star is remote and gigantic.  It can affect you (as when, for instance, the sun gives you a sunburn), but you cannot affect it.  On the other hand, very few "arses" are remote or gigantic; you can easily affect someone’s arse, e.g. by kicking it.  Looked at this way, Backword Dave’s statement is actually kind of hopeful.  It expresses the sentiment that government is something bad, and corrupt; but it also expresses the sentiment that its corruption is something personal, local, and changeable by ordinary people.  Changing the government, the metaphor seems to suggest, is nothing more profound or impossible than wiping after a bowel movement.  Unfortunately, this does not seem to be the case.  The government is remote and gigantic; no one of us can affect its course.  One may as well try to stop the stars from twinkling.

From this page:

Monasticism (from the Greek monos, meaning "single" or "alone") usually refers to the way of life–communitarian or solitary–adopted by those individuals, male or female, who have elected to pursue an ideal of perfection or a higher level of religious experience through leaving the world. Monastic orders historically have been organized around a rule or a teacher, the activities of the members being closely regulated in accordance with the rule adopted. The practice is ancient, having existed in India almost 10 centuries before Christ. It can be found in some form among most developed religions: Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Taoism, the Sufi branch of Islam, and Christianity.

Apparently, almost all the world’s religions have developed some sort of monastic institution.  Why is this?  Here’s a simple theory: Perhaps these religions were meeting a felt need.  Maybe a certain percentage of people, within any given society, are simply best-suited to a life of poverty, chastity, and retreat from society.  Such people make good monks, but probably turn out to be rotten coworkers, rotten parents, rotten drinking buddies, and/or rotten spouses.  If so, then monasteries perform a very simple function in society: Monasteries provide these monastically-inclined people with a place to live the sort of life to which they are best-suited.

If every society contains some such people, then our own society must contain some of them.  But unlike most societies throughout history, our society no longer provides any sort of monastic institution to accommodate their needs.  Catholics, of course, can join the priesthood, but my understanding is that nowadays, being a Catholic priest almost invariably means being assigned to a parish, and thereby being "immersed in the world": Shaking hands after Mass on Sundays, going to church socials, organizing charity raffles, etc.  Protestants, I would guess, provide their clergy even fewer opportunities for monasticism than Catholics do.  And of course, if you are not religious, then your chances of living a monastic life are dimmer still.

Some people go off to live by themselves as hermits in some place like Montana.  Every now and then, one of these people blows a gasket and does something weird or horrible, like sending bombs through the mail.  I suspect that had they been born 500 years ago, the Montanan hermits of the world would probably have become monks instead.  They might have been happier that way.

This post is part of my gradual progress toward an argument against knowledge closure.

Consider four propositions:

1. I know that I saw a zebra at the zoo.
2. I don’t know that what I saw wasn’t really just a cleverly disguised mule at the zoo.
3. If I know that I saw a zebra at the zoo, then I know that what I saw wasn’t a cleverly disguised mule at the zoo.
4. 1, 2 and 3 are inconsistent.

(This is a stolen example.) 

If I’ve just been to the zoo and had a look at the zebras, I probably am inclined to say that the first proposition is true.  But I may also be inclined to assent to 2, at least once 2 is presented to me for consideration.  3 seems plausible (3 is a consequence of knowledge closure combined with plausible background assumptions).  Finally, 4 seems very plausible; 4 appears to be a rather straightforward logical truth.  So there are reasons to accept 1 through 4.  But 1 through 4 are inconsistent, so we will have to deny at least one of them.  Which one should we deny?

Contextualists can deny 4.  Contextualists about knowledge think that the truth conditions for knowledge ascriptions are context-dependent; on the contextualist account, the same ascription of knowledge could be true in one context and false in another.  So, at least in certain contexts (e.g. "everyday contexts"), 1 might be true, even though in other contexts (e.g. "skeptical contexts"), 2 might be true.  In that case, even if 3 is true in every context, 1-3 are not inconsistent, provided that 1 and 2 aren’t both true in the same context.

Invariantism is the denial of contextualism.  If one were an invariantist, would one need to affirm 4?  I want to show that the answer to this question is "no."

Contextualism is obviously true of certain propositions.  "Michael Jordan is tall," for instance, may be true in the context of a discussion about the people on a city bus, but false in the context of a discussion about professional basketball players.  In both cases, the same concept, "tallness," is employed; it just so happens that "tallness" is the sort of concept for which context-dependence is "built in."  Contextualism about knowledge is the view that context-dependence is built into knowledge.  It is this "conceptually built-in" context-dependence which allows the contextualist to affirm 1 through 3 without contradiction.

"A&M Savings is a bank" is a sentence which superficially resembles "Michael Jordan is tall."  If I say "A&M Savings is a bank" in the course of a conversation about "business establishments in which money is kept for saving purposes," then I may well have said something true; but if I say "A&M Savings is a bank" in the course of a conversation about "slopes of land adjoining a body of water, especially a river," then I probably have said something false.  So "…is a bank" appears to be context-dependent in the same way that "…is tall" is.  The crucial difference, however, is that the single word "bank" is used to invoke two different concepts (i.e., the concept of a certain kind of financial business, and the concept of a certain kind of geographical feature), whereas "tall" always invokes the same concept.  "Bank," therefore, has two senses, neither of which is context-dependent, whereas "tall" has a single, context-dependent, sense.  (It may turn out that "bank" does exhibit a certain kind of context-dependence.  If so, it is only because the context in which the word "bank" is uttered may help to fix which sense of "bank" is intended by a speaker. )

One ought not be a contextualist about the predicate "…is a bank."  Rather, one ought to be (what we might call) a "sense pluralist" about "…is a bank."  That is, one ought to think that the word "bank" has multiple senses, each of which is context-independent.

One could be a sense pluralist about knowledge, too.  That is, one could say that there is more than one concept which the word "knowledge" represents.  If that were the case, then 1 and 2 might both be true, even if 3 were also true, so long as the sense of "know" employed in 1 is different from the sense of "know" employed in 2.  So a sense pluralist about knowledge can deny 4 even though she denies contextualism.  But since a sense pluralist is not a contextualist, she is an invariantist.  So it follows that invariantism does not commit one to affirm 4.

If one wants to affirm 1-3, then one needs to deny 4.  Both sense pluralism and contextualism provide the means to deny 4.  But one needs an excuse to deny 4, because ordinary speakers tend to think that 4 is true.  Question: Who can muster the best excuse — the contextualist or the sense pluralist?

The contextualist can produce an excuse to deny 4 by analogy with certain context-dependent adjectives like "tall."  To the ordinary speaker, "Michael Jordan is tall and Michael Jordan is not tall" looks like a contradiction, because ordinary speakers are accustomed to assume that both sides of a conjunction are meant to be understood within the same context.  This assumption is usually correct.  After all, it is "conversationally inappropriate" to say "Michael Jordan is tall and Michael Jordan is not tall"; it is more appropriate to say, e.g.: "Michael Jordan is tall compared to regular people, but not tall compared to typical basketball players."  But conversational inappropriateness is not contradiction, although it sometimes appears to be.

The contextualist can argue that, likewise, the appearance that 1-3 are inconsistent derives from the conversational inappropriateness of their presentation.  1 is true within an "everyday" context, while 2 is true within a "skeptical" context, and it is inappropriate not make these contexts explicit.  But this does not show that there is any contradiction which results from omitting explicit acknowledgement of the differing contexts.  Indeed, if the analogy with "tall" succeeds, then we should think that there probably is not any contradiction.

The problem for the contextualist, however, is that the analogy with "tall" does not seem to succeed.  It is obvious that "tall" is context-dependent; it is not anything like obvious that "knows" is context-dependent.  Many ordinary speakers will be satisfied with our explanation of how "Michael Jordan is tall and Michael Jordan is not tall" does not have to produce a contradiction, but significantly fewer of them will be able to see that 1-3 might not produce a contradiction.  So to come up with an adequate excuse to deny 4, the contextualist cannot just provide an analogy with "tall."  The contextualist must also give an explanation of how the context-dependence of "knows" could be so difficult to see, given that the context-dependence of "tall" can be so obvious.

Now for the sense pluralist’s excuse.  Just as the contextualist can provide an analogy with "…is tall," the sense pluralist can provide an analogy with "…is a bank" to show how the appearance of a contradiction might be generated by 1-3 without there being any actual contradiction.  If she takes this route, the sense pluralist will have a problem similar to the one faced by the contextualist: The sense pluralist will need to explain why sense pluralism about knowledge is so difficult to see, while sense pluralism about "…is a bank" is so obviously true.  But it is here, I think, that the sense pluralist has resources which are unavailable to the contextualist.

Question: How do we know that "bank" has more than one sense?  Suppose I am just learning English.  One day, I hear my parents say that a building where money is kept is a bank.  The next day, I hear my teacher say that a slope alongside a river is a bank.  These might seem to be two very powerful clues that "bank" has more than one sense.  But why should they be?  Why shouldn’t I think that there is just one concept to which the word "bank" points, but that that concept is so broad that its extension can include both a building where money is kept, and a slope alongside a river?  I claim that we would not be able to tell that there is more than one sense of "bank" simply by observing the way competent speakers use that word.  These observations might lead us to guess that "bank" has more than one sense; but I suspect they could lead us instead to guess that "bank" has just one, extremely broad, sense.

So: How do we learn that there is more than one sense of "bank"?  I am not sure, but I suspect it helps that we are able to provide analyses of the two senses of "bank."  We can list features which would make something a "bank" in one sense, and list features which would make something a "bank" in the other sense.  We can then compare the two lists, and notice that they are not the same — that the items on one list do not appear on the other list, and vice-versa.  It is the availability of such differing analyses which, I think, provides one with the means to know that there is more than one sense of "bank."

It is possible — perhaps probable — that no correct, non-recursive analysis of knowledge is available.  If so (and if I am right that analysis is the primary direct way to distinguish different senses of the same term), then it is possible that we simply do not have the tools to determine that there is more than one sense of knowledge.  So, it seems to me, the sense pluralist might have a way to explain why sense pluralism about knowledge is so difficult to see, while sense pluralism about "…is a bank" is so obviously true.  We can see that sense pluralism about "bank" is true because we can analyze the different senses of "bank."  But no analysis of knowledge appears to be possible, so if there is more than one sense of knowledge, we might never be able to tell.

Project Misty is an organization which sends episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000, and other cult/sci-fi TV shows and movies, to troops stationed in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere.  Somehow, I kind of doubt that very many American soldiers are fans of such an obscure show, but I guess a handful of them must be, since there are an awful lot of soldiers.  Project Misty also has a blog.  Here’s a note from a post entitled "Super Important!  Don’t Send Sexually Explicit Donations!":

If it involves crushing small animals or anything mixing sex with death, it’s sexually explicit. Also, anything like “Faces of Death” is out, okay? Don’t send us any of that weird crap.

Good to know.

There is some disagreement over whether we should think of social security as a form of investment, or as a form of insurance.  In order to answer this question, we should first be able to distinguish investments from insurances.  To understand this distinction, one could consult the work of economists and accountants, who I am sure have already worked it out in great detail; or one could engage in baseless, uninformed armchair speculation.  In this post, I will do the latter.

People ordinarily say that insurance is meant to insure against events.  So, for instance, people take out insurance against medical emergencies, and it is said that this form of insurance insures one against the event of a medical emergency.  Investments, on the other hand, need not be "against" any particular event.  For instance, if I buy a bunch of stocks, I might do so in order to be financially prepared for some future event (e.g., retirement), or I might do so simply in order to make my money grow.

So, initially, we might say that insurance is the sort of "financial product" which is purchased with particular future events in mind, while an investment is the sort of financial product which may or may not be purchased with future events in mind.  But this is not a very careful way to draw the distinction.  For there probably are some sorts of investments which are always purchased with some particular future event in mind.  A "college fund," for instance, is a type of investment, yet when one purchases a college fund, one does seem always to have in mind a certain kind of event, i.e. the event of "going to college."

Thus: Both insurances and investments can be purchased with an eye toward some future event, so that is not the important difference between them.  Still, it is possible that we can distinguish between insurances and investments by looking at the kinds of events to which each of them are related.  I take it that this is what Will Wilkinson is doing in this post.  In that post, Wilkinson seems to think that one insures oneself only against unlikely events.  I might buy insurance against, say, losing my arm in a combine, but it would be absurd to buy insurance against paying my rent.  Losing my arm in a combine is highly unlikely, but I am fairly certain I will have to pay my rent.  So if I buy a financial product which is meant to help me pay my rent in the future, it would not make sense to classify that product as a form of "insurance"; we would instead want to call it an "investment."

So Wilkinson’s idea, I take it, is that if one buys a product to help prepare one for some unlikely future event, then it is a form of insurance, whereas if one buys a product to help prepare one for some likely future event, then it is an investment.  I do not think this is quite right; anyway, it does not seem to square with our ordinary use of the words "insurance" and "investment."  Two counterexamples: 1. I have medical insurance which will pay for a doctor visit when I get the flu.  I am virtually certain that I will get the flu sometime in the next few years, but I still want to say that my medical insurance really is insurance, and not just an investment masquerading as insurance.  2. Some wealthy people, I have heard, choose not to buy medical insurance, opting instead to invest some money in some sort of low-risk, low-yield investment fund.  They reserve this fund for the unlikely event that they will have an expensive medical emergency.  I take it that this fund is an alternative to insurance; it is not simply another form of insurance. 

The counterexamples just discussed show, I think, that a person could be insured against highly likely events, and could buy an investment with an eye toward some highly unlikely event.  So, it seems to me, the likelihood of the event with which a financial product is concerned does not determine whether the product is a form of insurance or a form of investment.

Here’s how I want to distinguish investments from insurances.  Consider that, typically anyway, one only "gets paid" by one’s insurance company if the event against which one is insured actually happens.  So for instance, if I have insurance against some natural disaster, and the natural disaster never happens, I never see a penny; but if the natural disaster does happen, then I will receive some form of compensation.  But suppose that, instead of buying insurance against the disaster, I simply set aside a sum of money in, say, a savings account, and plan to use the money only in case of a natural disaster.  In that case, I get paid either way.  Whether the natural disaster happens or not, I get the same interest rate at the bank.

So, I think, the difference between an investment and an insurance is this: When one invests a sum of money with an "eye toward" some future event, one gets a return on that money whether the future event happens or not.  On the other hand, when one uses money to purchase insurance with an "eye toward" some future event, one gets a return on one’s money only if the future event actually happens.  (Usually, the "future event" in question is something bad, but I don’t think it needs to be.  One could conceivably buy insurance against the possibility that one’s children will get into an extremely expensive college.  I think this would count as insurance as long as one will only get paid if one’s children do in fact get in to such a college.  And, incidentally, I think it would still count as insurance in that case even if it is highly likely that one’s children would get into such a college.)

So: Is Social Security an investment or is it an insurance?  I don’t know the actual workings of Social Security well enough to answer this question, but my lack of knowledge hasn’t stopped me up to this point, so I won’t let it stop me now.  The person behind Sick Transit provides the following two scenarios for our consideration:

1. A 55-year-old factory worker gets laid off. At his age, it makes no economic sense to go back to school and learn a new profession. As manufacturing jobs are scarce, he ends up spending the last 10 years of his working life as a WalMart greeter. By basing his pension on his 35 highest years of income, Social Security insures him against this risk.

2. An office worker invests a third of her 401k in her employer’s stock. (As boneheaded as this is, a lot of people do it. Remember, close to half of all people are below-average investors.) As the employer declares bankruptcy and the stock tanks, a third of her retirement savings go out the window. Because Social Security has a defined rate of return, she is insured against that risk.

In both these scenarios, the worker’s plans for retirement somehow fall through, and the worker is left with much less to live on than the worker had planned to have.  Let’s assume it is this sort of event which Social Security is supposed to "guard against."  In that case, to know whether Social Security functions as an investment or as an insurance, we should ask: Does the worker get paid even if this sort of event never occurs?  For instance, if the factory worker hadn’t gotten laid off, would he have still gotten his Social Security benefits?  If so, then I think Social Security ought to be characterized as investment which society makes on behalf of workers; if not, then I think Social Security ought to be characterized as a form of insurance which society provides to workers.

My impression is that workers "get paid" by Social Security whether their normal retirement plans fall through or not.  If that’s right, then Social Security, I think, is a form of investment.  The bigger question, of course, is whether Social Security ought to be an investment, or a form of insurance, or something else entirely.  I won’t try to answer that question here.

What is it about one’s home team that makes one hope it will win?  I do not understand it.  There is nothing particularly "St. Louis-y" about the St. Louis Cardinals except that the Cardinals play their home games at Busch Stadium, and the word "St. Louis" appears in the name of the team.  These rather nominal relations appear to be the extent of the Cardinals’ relation to the city of St. Louis.  If anyone involved with the Cardinals, from the owners to the players, happens to have some relation to the city of St. Louis beyond the nominal relations already mentioned, it is purely an accident.

I have to admit that I do not see any point in being a sports fan.  I see no reason for a St. Louisan to hope that a particular team will win just because it has the word "St. Louis" in its name; nor do I see any reason for a St. Louisan to stop hoping that that team will win the moment "St. Louis" is replaced by, say, "Kansas City" in the name of the team.  Yet many, many people are sports fans.  They cannot all be irrational.  So I assume that there is some good reason to be a sports fan.

I think being a member of a major political party might be something like being a sports fan.  The players, management, coach staff, and owners of a team can all change, and a loyal sports fan will keep on cheering just the same.  Likewise, a major political party can radically reverse its positions, personalities, and lines of argument, and the vast majority of voters will keep on voting and thinking in line with the same party. 

Just a few years ago, the notions of federalism and states’ rights were core Republican doctrine.  It is now obvious that today’s Republican leadership holds precisely opposite views on those subjects.  Similar reversals are observable in mainstream Republican foreign policy.  These major "flip-flops" have occurred within the space of less than a decade, so that in many respects, today’s Republican leadership holds views more like those of yesterday’s Democrats than yesterday’s Republicans.  Yet it appears that the vast majority of those who were Republicans ten years ago are Republicans still. 

This kind of loyalty is inexplicable if you think that people join parties because they share those parties’ positions on issues.  But maybe that is the wrong way to think about being a member of a party.  Perhaps being a member of a party is something like being a fan of a team; perhaps the vast majority of Republicans are simply fans of the Republican party.  This would explain why it appears that you can change almost anything you like about the Republican party, and as long as the name does not change, most Republicans will stay loyal.  After all, you can change anything you like about the St. Louis Cardinals, too, and as long as the name does not change (to "Kansas City Cardinals," for instance), most St. Louisans will stay loyal.

Similar points, of course, could be made about the Democrats.